Dining out in Beverly Hills is always great fun, if for no other reason than the people-watching. Even if you don’t spot any celebrities, you’ll doubtless encounter over-the-top outfits and questionable plastic surgery choices. And sometimes, the food can be as attention-grabbing as the crowd.

I noticed that a number of well-regarded Italian restaurants had opened since my last visit to town, and as an Italophile, I happily paid incognito visits to four of them.

Dante Beverly Hills

On the ninth floor of The Maybourne Beverly Hills, sunny and stylish Dante draws a moneyed crowd of Hollywood types, identifiable by their designer sweatsuits or expensive T-shirts and baseball caps. They come to nibble superbly executed Italian and contemporary American cuisine while ensconced in navy-velvet demilune booths or on a narrow terrace with sweeping views of the city. Perhaps because my collared shirt identified me as a nobody, the host gave my companion and me a little table between the more desirable booths and terrace seats. We split a well-composed salad of delicata squash and endive garnished with goat cheese, apples and almonds, combining sweet and bitter and pungent flavors. A Neapolitan-style pizza had an unimpeachable crust and well-considered toppings of crunchy pistachios, savory mortadella slices and creamy stracciatella. Make reservations in advance, even if you’re a guest of the hotel.

Dante Beverly Hills 
225 North Canon Drive. Tel. (310) 860-7990

La Dolce Vita

Food critics and travel writers have lavished praise on this historic restaurant, a former favorite of Frank Sinatra’s and many of his contemporaries. It reopened in 2023 after a three-year closure and a refurbishment. I appreciate that the new owners have maintained the character of the place, but any luminaries who once brightened its crepuscular interior have already moved on to the next new thing. Seated at a table between rows of red-leather booths, we started with a competent Caesar salad tossed tableside, followed by blue prawns in a spicy tomato sauce that overwhelmed the shrimp. The paccheri arrived al dente, but it was just pasta in salty cream, clumsily topped with full slices of prosciutto. Only the juicy pork chop in peperonata sauce with sage and fried pine nuts was an unqualified success. My guess is that critics are acting as if this restaurant is a swinging celebrity haunt to sound as if they’re insiders and part of the club.

La Dolce Vita
9785 South Santa Monica Boulevard. Tel. (310) 278-1845 

Funke

Acclaimed chef Evan Funke opened Beverly Hills’ buzziest Italian restaurant in 2023, focusing on pasta — three words that are better than “I love you.” We started with sundowners on the romantic roof terrace furnished with sofas and candlelit tables. Pricey cocktails there often incorporate unusual Italian liqueurs like finocchietto and mirto. One level below is a lively bar and dining room, but we sat at a banquette in the brighter ground-floor space, illuminated by innumerable dangling glass spheres and with a view inside the “pasta laboratorio.” Determined to carb it up, we began with the sfincione Palermitano, a flavor-packed focaccia-like loaf. We saved some to dip in the garlic-basil oil that bathed several perfectly cooked South Pacific blue prawns. The arrabbiata tomato sauce clinging to al dente spaghetti offered impressive richness and depth of flavor, if not much spiciness. Salty Barese-style orecchiette had more heat, the vase-shaped pasta cups topped with zesty ’nduja, savory sausage, bitter rapini and slightly pungent pecorino. And we couldn’t resist a light dessert of tart lemon-blueberry granita garnished with sweet cardamom meringue and tangy crème fraîche panna cotta. Friendly servers sometimes seemed overwhelmed by the crowd, but overall, our dinner here was a great success.

Funke
9388 South Santa Monica Boulevard. Tel. (424)-279-9796

Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura

Perhaps Beverly Hills’ most exclusive Italian dining option is this conservatory-like space atop the Gucci boutique on Rodeo Drive. Conceived by chef Massimo Bottura, this Michelin-starred restaurant is run by Lombardian chef Mattia Agazzi, who uses top local ingredients in creative Italian dishes. We took the elevator up to a sunny dining room, filled with potted tropical plants and shoppers on their lunch breaks. I wondered if the prices might reflect a desire to discourage the wrong sorts of patrons more than the quality of the food, but everything we ordered impressed me. My insalata di mare starter — a kitchen-sink combination of littleneck clams, baby calamari tentacles, scallops, shrimp, green beans, asparagus, trout roe and purple seaweed grapes — was heaven. The carefully poached seafood was exquisitely fresh, and the salad paired beautifully with a flute of toasty Franciacorta. The signature “risotto camouflaged as pizza” is an imaginative and comforting bowl of rice topped with tomato, basil and stracciatella. Convinced by our waiter, I also indulged in an incredibly rich miniburger of rib-eye and cotechino sausage topped with salsa verde and balsamic mayonnaise. Gucci Osteria is expensive, but you’re paying for the fine food at least as much as the atmosphere.

Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura 
347 North Rodeo Drive. Tel. (424) 600-7490