Beverly Hills bar and red-sauce joint counts multiple U.S. presidents and celebrities as former patrons
By Dolores Quintana
The traditional Italian “red sauce” restaurant La Dolce Vita has reopened as reported by The Los Angeles Times. The restaurant first opened in 1966 and became a home away from home for celebrities like the Sinatras, the Reagans, the Pecks, the Douglases, and the Bloomingdales and every President since John F. Kennedy.
In the beginning, servers from the restaurant Villa Capri, another popular celebrity eatery from the time, and one of their principal investors was Old Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra. The restaurant underwent a seven-month renovation or as the website calls it waggishly, a “facelift”, and has been restored to its original glory. The restaurant has turned back the clock and will be serving the original menu and recipes and the sixties decor has also been revitalized and returned to its original state.
Call Mom restaurant group is behind the reopening of the La Dolce Vita and will now be under the ownership of Call Mom’s Marc Rose and Med Abrou. They also own Genghis Cohen and Spare Room restaurants. A new chef, Nick Russo, will be leading the kitchen as well. Russo used to be the chef at E.P. & L.P. and Nightshade. His great-grandmother is from the Calabrian region of southern Italy. Chef Russo intends on bringing specialty and imported ingredients to the kitchen and “lighten up” the menu. There will still be iconic dishes like veal Parmesan, meatballs, Caesar salads made tableside and chopped salads. Another change is that the chopped salad recipe comes from the mind of Chef Russo.
Marc Rose said, as quoted by The Los Angeles Times, “Every single element, every single piece, every single person that would come and make this place what we believe could be so special was integral in getting this open. It wasn’t just Marc and Med quickly painting a place and opening up and being like, ‘This has been here forever!’ We want to continue to keep it great, maybe even better than it’s ever been. We want it to keep evolving.”
