The new spirit of Beverly Hills | Review: Scarpetta, Los Angeles

When I was searching online for Scarpetta, the result that kept coming up was “Scarpetta happy hour”. This is not what I am looking for. The Beverly Hills I want is silently snobbish, elite and aloof. It is not happy. As Nancy Clare points out in her book In The Spirit of Beverly Hills, which I just bought at Book Soup, “Beverly Hills did not become celebrated – it was famous from its very beginning.”

it’s sucking in its gut to attract a different crowd – moneyed, for sure, but hipper

In a town that runs on the service industry, Beverly Hills has had to up its game. Via lovebeverlyhills.com, it’s sucking in its gut to attract a different crowd – moneyed, for sure, but hipper.

Scarpetta, just around the corner from Hakkasan, is, in its way, all things to all people. At its grey marbled $2m kitchen, you can dine at the Chef’s Counter and in its Paninoteca – headed by executive chef Freddy “Earl of Sandwiches” Vargas – there are deluxe deli sandwiches for those still eating carbs. He also eagle-eyes the dinner menu. Most amusing is his Twitter feed where he joshes “happy wife, happy life”. The poor man. What hell he must endure.

Meanwhile, there’s the big boss. Graduate of The Culinary Institute of America and host of the Food Network’s 24 Hour Restaurant Battle, Scott Conant is one of many high-profile chefs to go west. In interviews, he’s cagey about why he’s there, and there’s been some talk that he’s “fallen out” with them back east. Scarpetta, opened in 2010, is, like Star Trek’s The Borg, one of five Scarpetta iterations.

I don’t care that Conant’s on TV but a lot of people do. Also I don’t like restaurants in hotels unless I’m staying there. I don’t know if I like the fact that Piers Morgan and that actor from Walking Dead dined just hours before me. But Conant says he wants Scarpetta – which means “little shoes” – to be a restaurant in a hotel, not vice versa. After reading the reviews and weighing up the bitching, Conant seems the real thing: he’s famous for his spaghetti marinara and he’s willing to share its secrets. It’s November too, so it’s white truffle season. Prices are high and so is the smell: that rich, pungent, sex-armpit aroma of truffles is alluring and off-putting at the same time. Everyone who is anyone has them on their menus. (Maude, Providence, Sotto, Patina, SAAM and Valentino, to name just a few in this town.)

Jet-lagged, I can’t find the place. It’s next to the Beverly Canon Gardens. Where? A parking attendant takes pity and guides me behind a building façade, through a dumpster zone and voila, I’m in a Mediterranean garden. It reminds me of the time a large rat sprang from the rose garden in front of the Margaret Herrick Oscar Awards Library. So phony, so Hollywood. Then again, Beverly Hills is not, traditionally, about reality.

Scarpetta isn’t Beverly Hills. It is East Coast Italian with a sense of humour

This is the rub: Scarpetta isn’t Beverly Hills. It is East Coast Italian with a sense of humour. “It was voted #1 Bread Basket!” says a waiter. “By whom?” “Oh, that guy over there…” Yay. And so it was written that the Stromboli bread – ours rolled with asparagus – is a bread to wrestle for. The dishes in the $175 white truffle tasting menu – smoked matsutake mushrooms, porcini gnocchi, glazed lobster, wagyu striploin and truffle gelato – all sound like names of strippers. But each drew out a different nuance of the truffle. And no, I can’t believe I just said that either.

One-time London sommelier Roberto Loppi is not an actor/sommelier. He’s a sommelier. That sounds ridiculous but when you’re halfway through a shedload of truffle, you need liquid support. Starting with a Fantinel prosecco (I hate prosecco) it really did taste of “pear and honey”. A Fontodi Chianti classico. I raised my eyebrows in the pompous way I’ve practicing for years. Chianti? With lobster? Reeealllly? He was right. Roberto took time to chat, as did Alicia and Sandro, who may be one of those Coppolas.

As European as an American restaurant can get, Scarpetta is a pretty good fusion of quality and west coast casual. The ingredients are fresh. People know what they’re taking about and nobody’s running off for an audition. So it’s Beverly Hills, but not as you know it. This is a place for food snobs and that ain’t all bad. C

Scarpetta, 225 North Canon Drive, Los Angeles, USA
+1 310 860 7970; montagehotels.com