RESTAURANTS • First Person
For too many years, Westsiders have endured a drive to Silver Lake to taste chef Zach Pollack’s cooking. Still, it was worth it for his house-made pastas, pizzas, and dreamy chicken liver mousse at Alimento and Cosa Buona. But both of those restaurants recently shuttered, making way for Pollack — who once helmed Sotto with Steve Samson in Beverly Hills — to return west. Now it’s Eastsiders who will trek to his newly opened Cosetta, in Santa Monica’s Ocean Park neighborhood. It’ll be worth it for them, too.
Housed in what was once a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (note the signature slanted ceiling), Cosetta is already packed. I sat at the bar on Sunday night next to a couple who marveled at the fact that they could walk there (sure beats the 10). Both the garden and cheery dining room, done up in shades of peach and forest green, were full of families and couples crowding in on week one for Pollack’s Cal-Italian food.
Every dish I tried was better than the next: A playful “bloomin’ radicchio” salad is a nod to the Chili’s classic — delicious, and just barely a salad. It features both fresh and fried radicchio, dressed simply, showered in Montasio cheese. Peel-and-eat shrimp scampi came in a chile-flecked broth with a wedge of house-made focaccia for dunking.
Pollack’s puffy-crusted Neapolitan pizzas are finished with a hefty char. A classic margherita was well-sauced, balanced; trust that the crust was also dipped in my scampi’s leftover sauce. Given the perfect fry on the radicchio “salad,” I’m curious to try his section of Milanesi on my next visit, which includes chicken, whole eggplant, and sand dabs.
One thing giving Cosetta an edge over other neighborhood spots is Brian Summers’s inventive cocktail program. His cannoli Negroni made with cocoa nibs and ricotta was surprisingly well-balanced, not at all sweet. And the Sasa, named for his mother, offered a savory ode to her stuffed artichokes.
Cal-Italian certainly seems to be having its Westside moment (see also Beethoven, one of the other most exciting local openings of late). There’s no one better than Pollack to seize it. –Karen Palmer
→ Cosetta (Santa Monica) • 3150 Ocean Park Blvd • Tue-Sun 5-10p • Reserve.