We were just headed to the Century City Mall to go to Bloomingdale’s. We saw Eataly there which we’ve never eaten at any of them, so we decided to give it a try. Walked around briefly and saw all the wine and pasta and meat and such available. We decided to eat at La Pizza & La Pasta. Of course, in the time we just looked at the menu to make th decision, there was suddenly a line about 10 people long for the walk-in. But I saw that there was also a line for reservations so I hopped on to OpenTable and made a reservation straight away and then was able to jump ahead of all the walk-ins, hehe.

We were seated a great little corner area that gave us a view of the rest of the dining area. Andrea ordered the Burrata e Pappa al Pomodoro. Since they had truffles there (black and white) from Alba, I asked if they had white truffles available and they said yes, so I went ahead and ordered the Tagliolini al Tartufo Bianco.

Our dishes arrived and they served us our dishes. For mine, they shave the white truffle tableside. Truffle was the last bit of it and crumbled a bit, not a great sign. When I smelled the truflles, there was literally no truffle aromatics at all. The truffle was just dead. After a bit of bank and forth with the server and eventually the manager, I just decided to order another dish, so I want with the Bucatini Cacio e Pepe. It took them about 15 minutes to get to me and perhaps they rushed it slightly since the pasta was a little bit firmer than al dente, but at that point, so be it.

They didn’t charge me for the tagliolini dish (would have been $59, so at least they did a reasonable job to make it right. It does always shock me how dead truffle gets sold to people (we’ve had this happen at more than 2-Michelin star restaurants, one on each coast even) and the reality is that most people don’t know and probably just buy it because it’s supposed to be relatively rare and expensive I suppose.

https://www.eataly.com/us_en/stores/los-angeles/restaurants/la-pizza-pasta