Press reviews
Il Carpaccio, Old World in modern setting
Don't make the mistake of judging Il Carpaccio harshly by its setting. The restaurant occupies a storefront in a nondescript strip mall in Pacific Palisades, wedged between a Goodwill drop-off center and a video rental shop.
Within its walls, however, chef-owner Antonio Mure is demonstrating that you don't need a prime location in West Hollywood or Beverly Hills to turn out superior gourmet Italian fare. The service, meanwhile, is attentive, deferential and smoothly timed - Old World sensibilities that are a pleasure to encounter.
By Eric Noland, Restaurant Critic Read the whole review
Lisa’s LA: Il Carpaccio Ristorante
In today’s Lisa’s LA, a yummy new Italian restaurant on the west side with a chef who like to keeps things simple.
December 27, 2007
Watch clip on myFOX
from BridgeUsa.com
Meat-Free Carpaccio
Substituting Sea Bass for the traditional dish of shaved raw beef may seem a bastardization of a classic, but we've giving IL CARPACCIO owner-chef Antonio Mure', founding chef of the Michelin-starred La Botte, the benefit of the doubt. Why? Because his rendition is so ridiculously good. He rolls two branzino (italics branzino) fillets sandiwiched with Santa Barbara sea urchins into a tight ball ans lices it paper thin. He tops the pieces with coarse sea salt, a squeeze of lemon, some green onions, cracked pepper, and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil "from Sicily or Liguria," Mure' says, "not from Tuscany". It has to be mild and fruity. The olive oil is the secret.
Los Angeles Magazine, "Best New Restaurant" issue, January 2008
Tired of running between Il Piccolo in Venice, La Botte in Santa Monica, and Wilson in Culver City, Chef Antonio Mure' split from his partners in those enterprises and opened a place of his own. The floors are cement, the black rafters more modern than rustic, and everyone is so besotted with the food that diners enjoying dessert instruct new arrivals on what to order, the list includes shaved artichoke salad, thin-crust pizzas topped with prosciutto and arugola, risotto with radicchio and goat cheese ( a special), black ink tagliolini with crab and roasted garlic, sea bass carpaccio rolled with uni, veal scaloppini, and lamb chops. Tiramisu and outstanding coffee for the coda.
Los Angeles Magazine, december 2007
In a surprising move, Antonio Mure, founding chef/co-owner of La Botte in Santa Monica and Piccolo Ristorante Italiana in Venice, has left both restaurants. He is now chef/co-owner of the recently launched il Carpaccio in Pacific Palisades, where his signature house-prepared pastas from La Botte are part of his new menu.
Chef Antonio Mur? rides again -- as chef and owner of a casual ristorante in hungry Pacific Palisades.
WHEN a new ristorante opens in Pacific Palisades, it's big news for restaurant-starved locals. And when the chef is Antonio Mur?, former partner chef of Piccolo in Venice and La Botte in Santa Monica, is it any wonder the place has been thronged from Day One? His cooking at those two spots put them on the culinary map.
OK, so the location, an upscale strip mall off Sunset Boulevard, is not so simpatico. And because Il Carpaccio is Mur?'s own restaurant, opened after he left his Piccolo and La Botte partnership with Stefano De Lorenzo, the d?cor is simple: black-framed mirrors, vintage photos of Sophia and Gina and Mastroianni, walls surfaced in stick-on bricks, and near the kitchen, a giant poster of the iconic Fiat Cinquecento. The whole effect is something like a large rec room with tables and an Italian theme.
But never mind, the food is what counts, and Mur? is turning out credible Italian cuisine with a menu that features an ample array of antipasti and pasta dishes and just a small selection of main courses.
The wait staff is savvy about the way Westsiders want to eat -- informally, and mostly pasta. And with most pastas less than $20, Il Carpaccio comes in well under the prices at such perennial favorites as Toscana or Vincenti.
The name comes from the popular raw beef dish, which in turn is named for the Venetian Renaissance painter Vittore Carpaccio, who had a thing for the color red. The carpaccio dish was, in fact, created by Giuseppe Cipriani of Harry's Bar in Venice (Italy) to please a client who was forbidden by her doctor to eat cooked meat.
Sliced as fine as prosciutto, the raw red beef covers the entire plate and is decorated with fine lines of mayonnaise flavored with mustard and a dash of Worcestershire. And Il Carpaccio's is one of the better versions in town.
Even better, and more original, is Mur?'s carpaccio of branzino and sea urchin. The chef takes raw Mediterranean striped bass, rolls the fillet around sea urchin roe, and slices it so finely, the fish is almost transparent. Each rose-tinged slice has a heart of ocher sea urchin.I love the iodine sea-taste of the urchin against the branzino, with a touch of lemon to wake up the flavors. Grilled calamari rolled up like little cigars and served with saut?ed Swiss chard is a refreshing departure from the usual fried calamari with tomato dipping sauce. When one of the veteran Italian waiters wants to recite the specials, listen up. He might be proposing moscardelli, tiny octopus cooked with tomatoes; it's delicious. Or a salad of radicchio and greens with halved Red Flame grapes, caramelized walnuts and nuggets of Gorgonzola.
Almost every Italian restaurant in town has a similar salad, usually made with pears, but the tart-sweet grapes set this version apart. Another worthy special is shredded radicchio salad with a pungent anchovy and Parmesan dressing.
It didn't take long for the local, Italian expat contingent to find its way to Il Carpaccio. One night, a big table of Italians is celebrating a birthday, and waiters, the chef, everybody who speaks even a smidgen of the language convenes to sing "Tanti Auguri a Te" (Happy Birthday).
The smiling, dark-hairedhostess remembers faces and is invariably helpful, explaining each dish to someone who wants to order takeout, say, or changing tables for someone who asks for something quieter.
The truffle routine
With voices bouncing off the hard surfaces of the room, the 80-seat restaurant can be quite noisy. But then, so is just about everywhere I go. It's not the noise level, however, that prevents you from catching the price of the special pasta with truffles. It's because the waiter fails to mention that instead of costing less than $20 like the menu's other pasta dishes, that special agnolotti (Piedmont-style ravioli) stuffed with fonduta and showered with truffles is a whopping $70. I don't understand the policy. Customers knowledgeable about truffles are going to ask the price. But what about the less informed customer who thinks it might be fun to try some, without an inkling of the cost? He or she is going to be very surprised, not to mention highly annoyed, when the bill arrives with a $70 charge for a plate of pasta. For shame. After having ascertained the cost, I order the agnolotti with truffles, and the chef comes out to ceremoniously shave the truffles over the dish himself. Hey, that must be worth something. Taking a marble-sized truffle from a bowl of similarly undersized ones, he vigorously shaves the prized fungus over my plate, covering it in a lavish blizzard of truffle flakes. Normally, this would be a good thing, except that you practically have to bury your nose in the pasta to pick up any of the scent, and with a white truffle, scent is the entire point. Granted, this is not a great year for truffles, but these are pitiful -- and expensive. Save your money. I would have been perfectly happy, though, to order just a plate of the pasta. The chef's agnolotti al plin -- ravioli with a plin or pinch -- are stuffed with fonduta, which is Fontina cheese melted in milk and mixed with an egg yolk. The pasta is a bit thick, but the flavor is wonderful.
Sometimes Mur? makes Cassunziei all'Ampezzana, pasta stuffed with earthy red beets and tossed in a butter, Parmesan and poppy-seed sauce, a dish from the ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo that he used to make at his previous restaurants. The combination of flavors is delightful.
Hard work, focus
It's unfortunate that Mur? has given up making pizzas for the moment. Pacific Palisades kiddies may be disappointed, but if that means the chef is now giving his full attention to the rest of the menu, it may be for the good. If you peek into the kitchen, the guy is cooking like a whirling dervish. He works incredibly hard, trying to run this restaurant with a minimum of staff. That means Mur? is offering only a handful of main courses. Maybe with time, he'll expand them, but for now your best bets are the first courses and the pastas. In this neighborhood, that may well turn out to be enough. Look around, almost everyone is having a pasta. As for main courses, the old-fashioned veal scaloppine offers some Italian comfort. The scaloppine are a little floury, but the veal is tender. A thick veal chop, a special one night, is decent too, just not particularly inspiring with its sauce of slippery porcini mushrooms. Tagliata -- grilled, sliced steak -- on a bed of arugula shows better than expected, mainly because the cut is hanger steak and has some real flavor. It's not Italy's most exciting dish, for sure, but a reliable choice here. Roasted rabbit with sage and lemon is good too, but really, it tastes just like a mild chicken. And when almost every main dish comes with the same accompaniments -- diced roasted potatoes and a swatch of spinach or Swiss chard, that's just a bit lazy. Wine buffs who have visions of finding a sweet little list replete with top-notch Chianti Classicos, Rosso di Montalcinos or reds from Mt. Etna will be disappointed with this halfhearted wine list made up of mostly second-rate producers and the most obvious California labels. If you're stuck, there is at least one terrific bottle on the list: a crisp, minerally Pieropan Soave Classico from the Veneto. Desserts are reasonably priced and reasonably good. Check out the panna cotta with berries. Although it doesn't have the seductive silkiness of the best, it does have a robust cream flavor. Bars of dark chocolate ganache with crushed hazelnuts inside will satisfy any sweet tooth. But whatever you do, don't miss the pasticciera alla Napoletana, a dense ricotta cheesecake flavored with orange peel that makes a beautiful finale.
By S. Irene Virbila, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, November 21, 2007
JUDGING from the crowd swarming the doors of the new Il Carpaccio in Pacific Palisades, you'd think the citizens of this wealthy neighborhood were starving. They are -- for a good restaurant that doesn't demand a long drive. And now Antonio Muré, founding chef of Piccolo in Venice Beach and La Botte in Santa Monica, rides to the rescue with this new Italian.
Up front, the pizzaiolo is frantically turning out pies crafted with mozzarella and anchovies, artichokes and sausage. A pile of takeout boxes teeters to his left. A single gentleman reads the Wall Street Journal and tucks into a fine version of veal scaloppine with cubes of roasted potatoes and a glass of Nebbiolo. He's happy. So is the big family group celebrating a birthday, and the two couples regaling each other with tales from the set of their latest movie.
Never mind that the place is a bit bare-bones, the tables wobbly and the lights tend to flicker. Muré is behind the stoves, furiously cooking up dishes familiar from his first two restaurants. There's that wonderful raw artichoke salad with celery and shaved Parmigiano, and a fantastic carpaccio of seabass rolled up with sea urchin and cut in transparent slices. Beef carpaccio is the classic, with mustard sauce. There's a puréed minestrone laced with maltagliati ("badly cut") pasta, and aged prosciutto served with figs.
Pasta is a strong suit. Muré offers "lo spaghetto" with your choice of sauces, so you can actually show up with a kid who will only eat tomato sauce and make him or her a happy camper.
But there are also more unusual pasta dishes, such as tortelloni filled with potatoes and figs, squid ink noodles with Dungeness crab, or tagliatelle with wild rabbit ragù. He also makes a mean agnolotti, tiny pasta packets stuffed with beef and cabbage in a roasted garlic and rosemary sauce.
With all these appealing antipasti, pizzas and pasta, who needs secondi? Muré must be thinking that way, because, at least at the moment, he's offering only a handful of main courses, such as that lovely scaloppine, along with a stuffed chicken, a lamb chop and beef filet. Simple, no?
By S. Irene Virbila, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, September 13, 2007
Chef Antonio Mur? on LX-TV. A short demonstration on how to prepare the authentic beef carpaccio! Watch clip
