When we first moved to LA we were staying in air bnb’s exploring different neighbourhoods- something I highly recommend when moving to a new city. While we were staying in Silver Lake, and Jax was visiting, Cosa Buona opened, and it looked good! Nice black corner frontage, hot pink neon signage- we just knew it was going to be good. Now I’m not sure how we didn’t end up eating there when it first opened, but I finally made it!.
DineLA is a great opportunity to get out and explore new places, with a set menu so you don’t have to worry about it biting you in the ass and coming out with an exorbitant bill- unless like me you can’t help but add on extras “just in case”. Some DineLA places require all of the table to be eating on the menu (not sure why), but this is not one of those so we went to town. No that’s not true, Al & Kelsey kept me in the more realistic zone 🙂
DineLA menu
We opted for 2 sets of the DineLA menu with the intention of sharing everything. There are actually 3 entree options and 4 mains, so it is decent selection. We grabbed the chopped salad and the market salad. These were really big portions! The chopped salad was definitely the winner out of the 2. It was beautifully balanced with little, but effective, chunks of cheese and salami. Both salads actually mixed together really well.
Then it was the eggplant parmigiana and the meat lovers pizza (as if we weren’t getting that with Al here). Holy moly that parm was good!! Baked to perfection, with the eggplant sucking up all that beautiful sauce and a Parmesan crust on the top to give a flavour hit and an actual crunch when you eat it– this is a dish that brings a surprising wow. Pizza was good too, I’m not as big on the old meat lovers (I think it’s he sausage that puts me off), but the pizza was good. Beautiful, light, wood-fired pizza. Not overwhelmed by cheese or too much topping. Just a great Italia pizza, how it should be.
That brings us to the desserts. As we all know, I am not a dessert person, but I always want to try it. The options were tiramisu and cheesecake. I love coffee, do not like coffee in anything other than my mug, with nothing added to it- no milk or sugar. So coffee cake and tiramisu are not for me. It was a very tall one though and more like a coffee soaked cake than a mousse. The cheesecake however, I thought was very good. Not sweet, almost leaning more towards savory with some berries on top. Kelsey didn’t like it not having the biscuit/ graham cracker (depending on what you call it) base, but I think that is usually my least favourite part, so I was fine with it. Didn’t really notice it missing.
Al la carte
Bearing in mind there were 3 of us, we then went al la carte as well, and I am glad we did. To start we added in the spicy potatoes and the artichoke. Those diavola potatoes are phenomenal, a definite ‘do not miss’ item for anyone dining here, They came out not what we were expecting but man, tasty AF! Big chunks of potato nicely roasted with their diavola seasoning. They aren’t overly spicy, just packed full of yumminess.
The artichoke was nice, but nothing special. However, the garlic sauce they had with it was really good. I’d like to see them do something with that more because I think we could have all happily sat there with bread and a bowl of it dipping it in 🙂
I really wanted the njudja and squash blossom pizza but they sold out, so I switched in the hawaiian. I am a big hawaiian fan (I know controversial), and I always add jalapenos to it. The one here comes exactly like that! It was meant to be. I would have to say this was the most grown up hawaiian I have every had. The pineapple was sliced thin and big pieces of fancy ham- even non-hawaiian people are going to like this. Al did not pick anything off, which he normally does!
So that was pretty much it, the wine list is all Italian, and not overly priced, which is good. The service is attentive and not annoying and the atmosphere is good. At one point the music got seriously loud but it was trying to drown out this screeching woman who was driving everyone mental, so I’m not complaining about that!
Things I’m going back for
- That damn njudja and squash blossom pizza, I want it!
- The chicken parm. They did such a great job with the egg plant, I’m positive the parmie is going to be amazing.
Jilltopia 