Review: Eating in West Hollywood . Osteria Mozza

This is the last entry regarding our trip to Los Angeles. We hit up the Nancy Silverton/Mario Batali/Joseph Bastianich restaurant in West Hollywood to see what these culinary superstars were all about. Competing with the food was the whole experience:

- Worth the wait?
Despite having reservations at 8:30pm, we weren't seated until 9:15pm and no apology was given at any time by the hostess or the manager manning the host stand. Better yet, it seemed that we were very much in the way of any other guest arriving or leaving and definitely in the way of the coat check (an armoire just inside the door). But the 45 minutes sped by thanks to all the fantastic people watching...

-People watching
I love people watching and this place was the mecca of people watching. You have some people casually dining and some people posturing/looking absolutely ridiculous, but it was the group next to us waiting to be seated that really caught my eye. The group was a party of three that spoke French and the man I was most excited to watch had on a gray suit and wore his shoulder length gray hair back in a low, severely cut ponytail. The man was fairly compact, tan and clean-cut, but with pocked skin. He was older and gave off an air of sophistication that led me to believe he had a cultured profession (as a classical musician, an artist or a book critic)...or maybe he wasn't sophisticated and cultured, but just French. Anyway, while waiting to be seated, I professed my affinity for the guy in what was probably too loud a voice, but he took no notice until I happened to say something along the lines of c'est la vie in my Midwestern accent. Competing with my fascination for this stranger were our celebrity sightings...

-Name dropping like its hot
One profession I know I will not pursue is being a paparazzi. First, I am not sure it is a valid profession and, secondly, I cannot spot a celebrity. Luckily, other people in our party were 'on' that night and pointed out a few people to me. Either during our post at the door or while eating we spotted Katherine Heigl, Christina Aguilera and Joe McIntyre. It is so weird to recognize someone, only to figure out you don't even know them. But, because they are recognizable we feel that we can pass judgement on them, so here it goes: Katherine Heigl had beautiful skin and looked as she does on the screen; Christina Aguilera is petite and wears too much makeup; Joe McIntyre looks like a regular guy and we wavered for a good 5 minutes before proclaiming it was really him. *

- As for the food
As expected, the food was very good. We started out with a mozzarella tasting, consisting of 3 different mozzarellas that were all very good and perfectly salted. We also shared 2 appetizers (linguine with clams and another pasta), which the wait staff very thoughtfully split for us. After that we branched off and ordered our main courses and I opted for the goat cheese ravioli. It was rich and delicious and reminded once again how much I love cheese, specifically goat cheese. The most bizarre dish of the night goes to lawyerchefgirl, who ordered the duck. The duck was cooked to perfection, but came with a pear mustard sauce that smelled like a chemical from a nail salon - I kid you not. After several minutes of passing the sauce around the table and practically huffing the stuff, we finally asked 2 of our wait staff to smell it and make sure it was okay. They assured us it was normal and while two of us thought it enhanced the duck, one member of our party looked positively sick after trying it and our last member declined to try it based on the smell and reaction of our fallen comrade.

- And the staff
It appeared that way too many people worked at the restaurant. Several men in suits walked around and didn't do much of anything. One guy in particular looked like a lanky hipster that had been forced to dress in his suit, wear thick black-rimmed glasses and walk the floor of the restaurant all night as punishment to some unknown deed. He had a certain slouch that I am too short to imitate and cocked his head back just enough so his slacked jaw seemed appropriate. We asked our wait staff who he was, only to find out he was one of 3-4 managers on duty at any time. For all you out-of-work hipsters, please don your best couldn't care less demeanor and apply in person to Osteria Mozza.

* A note on celebrity name-dropping: I don't subscribe to celebrity magazines or even regularly follow celebrity gossip, yet I guiltily leaf through gossip mags at the salon/doctor's office and am embarrassed when I can hold my own on the topic of celebrity gossip. But I will no longer fret about this trivial matter: science has cleared my conscious. A study on the social networking behavior of monkeys showed that male rhesus monkeys would forgo banana flavored treats to look at pictures of high-ranking monkeys and actually demand banana flavored treats in exchange for looking at pictures of low-ranking males. Although I am not an anthropologist, the argument could be made that this same behavior is demonstrated by humans within their own social circles and on a much grander scale (celebrities). Here's looking at you, science.