La Dolce Vita

Step into this lavender-hued windowless box along Santa Monica Boulevard and you’ll be transported to a wholly different era full of stiff martinis and the sort of oversalted, almost inedible food that 1960s America considered the finest Italian cuisine. Now in the hands of Call Mom Hospitality (the group behind the Spare Room and Genghis Cohen), this old-school spot strives for the same sort of glamorous, Old Hollywood allure as Musso and Frank’s and Dan Tana’s—but the overall attempt falls flat on its face with mediocre dinner fare that pales in comparison to actually great throwback joints. While the space itself is charming and the drinks are great, the red-sauce cuisine misses the mark so badly we wouldn’t recommend spending a single dollar on food here. Add in the unnecessarily limited availability of reservations (we found the place half-filled at 7pm) and the aura of pretend exclusivity for yet another terrible case of the L.A. Hype Machine. Hard pass.