Eataly — Restaurant in Los Angeles

April 2024

The regular Century City Mall Parking Rates are as follows:

1st hour is free.

After that 1st hour, the next 20 minutes you are charged $4.

Anything past 1 hour and 20 minutes, you are charged $2 for each 20 minutes.

The daily maximum is $32 per 24 hour period.

Eataly: I give this entire experience 4 stars. It's good, but it could be better. Here's why?

Pro: come early in the day, from say 10:30 to 12:30, parking is a little easier, less traffic to get to and from this place from all around town.

Pro: Drew in the wine and spirit, liquor department, is really helpful! Five star service there! He had a sense of the Amaro I was trying to buy, and suggested a couple which I ended up purchasing. He also made an effort to try to look into getting some of the other oddball ones I had on my list which they were out of stock.

Pro: the liquor department does have some items that are less expensive than say total wine, or bevmo. I bought 4 Amaro today, one of them was 50% off their price, coming to around $17... where the price is normally around $24 at total wine.

Pro/Con: there are 3 restaurants here. La Pizza & La Pasta is probably the best of the three. You'll have to be careful what you order here, especially if you're a true italian. Some of the pizza is great. But some of the pasta is lacking in one thing or another.

Capri might be a little off, and the Steakhouse on the top floor might just be a little bit too much for most.

Pro: it's like walking into an Italian deli market, lots of variety, lots of quantity of things.

Pro: I don't know what they're called, maybe a kiosk, but the individual separation between say the fresh pasta, the pizza person, the espresso bar, the cheese person, make the experience worthwhile. You really feel like you're at a Street Market in a small Italian town, that's indoors. Go figure.

Pro: Some things like Pasata Tomato was cheaper than at your typical Monte Carlo, or Cavaretti or Roma Deli.

Con: some things are a little pricier than your local Italian Market. So you'll have to shop to see which spot has the best price. Octopus salad for instance, $29 a pound? It was okay, but not the freshest or the tastiest cold octopus salad I've had. And that price, mamma mia! In a bad way, I don't think it's worth it to buy again. Cheese: $48 a pound for gorgonzola? Yeah, you'll have to do the math on that one. I wonder how much of that they sell. But some of the other cheese was less expensive than Bristol Farm prices. You'll really have to do your due diligence and shop, literally.

Con: $42 for a cake? $8 for a little torta? Maybe too pricey for a true Italian who can just make it at home for a fraction of the price. We thought we were going to find casata here, or something unique.

Con: some things are outdated, like the Amaretti cookies wrapped in paper. I mean that's like an American gimmick from 30 years ago.

Major Con: the whole parking situation. This place is a market, and has three restaurants. You have to expect that people are going to be here for a minimum of 2 hours if they have lunch, and then as an incentive, do some shopping, or have a gelato, coffee, etc. So why won't Eataly validate for 3 hours of free parking?

In summary, I think if the parking was validated for up to 3 hours, maybe they lowered their prices on some of the other stuff, this place would be a true five-star experience. It's good, don't get me wrong, but it could be better with just a few minor tweaks.

For your typical true American person, tourist, etc, I think this would give you a taste of Italy. But for the hardcore Italians, that come from Italian bloodline, first or second generation here in the United States, this place is kind of like going to Disneyland. There's a lot of unnecessary Pomp and circumstance. Meaning, for the hardcore italian, they would shop elsewhere, or cook it at home.

My final thoughts are that it's like a modern Italian deli / market. Nothing fancy, more like a...

I've shopped here, and the market is great. The gelato is also great, if way overpriced. I've also done two classes in La Scuola, and those are fun. They aren't very in-depth to the point of customers walking out prepared to do the taught process flawlessly at home, but they give a good beginner introduction to making pizza, pasta, etc. and they feed you delicious food and wine. It's a great group or couple event, or even great to go alone because it's in a group setting. My teenaged son even enjoyed the pizza-making class.

The whole reason that I'm leaving a review right now, though, is to call out their atrocious customer service, at least for the classes. Beware if you need to reach them for any reason, especially around the holidays, I guess. I've been e-mailing and calling La Scuola for two weeks, and after a week of not hearing back, started venturing out to calling and e-mailing Guest Relations as well as submitting help tickets online and trying to contact them through Facebook. Initially, just over two weeks ago, they responded within hours when I e-mailed questions. After that, I e-mailed back to confirm that I wanted to exchange tickets for a class on another date, as they had advised they could do, and I have followed up multiple times since then. Obviously, the date that I wanted to switch to was available when I e-mailed them and for a while after, but now, two weeks later, that class is fully booked. They just called me today, not in response to any of my communications directly to them, but because I had finally gotten a live person on the phone earlier today at Guest Relations, who assured me they had a message from me and that they would have someone from the class scheduling department contact me today. After so many voicemails, e-mails, and online contact submissions, I have no idea which ONE message actually went through to a person, but it appears that only one did. It was the only one referenced by either person I've gotten on the phone. When I received the long-awaited call back, the person was very polite and professional. As an individual, she was great. But there is a major problem with a business when it takes probably 10 contacts and two weeks for a customer to get a response, especially on something that is time-sensitive. I'd arranged for people to come from out of town for a class on a certain date because the Eataly La Scuola had told me that I could switch the date of my tickets, but then when I asked them to go ahead with that date switch, they completely ignored me until that class had sold out. Now my Christmas gift is a mess and I have to have the recipients reschedule their trip here to accommodate some future unknown date when I'll be able to get them into a class. I recognize this wasn't a standard situation since I asked for the tickets to be transferred to another date, but their policy clearly allows for doing this, so I had expected them to honor that and provide a means of changing to another class. Their quick response to my initial inquiry about the process led me to believe that it would be an easy and quick change, rather than the two-week ghosting that I've instead endured.

So I recommend shopping here, I recommend taking their classes, but I absolutely do not recommend trying to reach a person for any help. If the need should arise, you probably need to call the Guest Relations multiple times a day until a person answers instead of it going to voicemail, if you want any kind...

The grocery has a lot of imported products from Italy which are not available In regular local stores and that is good specially if you want to cook something close to authentic Italian. They have wines, cheeses, cookies, chips, breadsticks etc. Couple of things I didn't find are the bottled squid/cuttlefish ink sauce (there is a squid ink pasta but not the sauce) and anchovies in salt. Grocery items are a bit pricy but understandable. The Gelato place downstairs is way below par from maybe the worst Gelato you can buy in Italy which made their Affogato mediocre. The 3 star review is exactly for the grocery/market place of Eataly Los Angeles.

Now for one of the restaurant inside of Eataly that we tried...not good at all. It is LA PIZZA & LA PASTA. Uses fresh pasta but the pasta was too al dente to the point of it being too chewy. You will be focusing on the taste of the pasta which is overpowered by the flour used than the sauce. But the sauces are not tasty as well, so I guess no harm done there.. We had ordered the pesto and also the pasta alle vongole. Both were lacking flavour and everything. I didn't even see a minute piece of garlic in the vongole pasta (the prepared sauces from little authentic Italian grocery stores are way better). Their pasta dishes will make you full really quick, that I give to them. No need to finish everything, which is a blessing. This might be because the 'fresh pasta' is so heavy (even to chew) that it goes down and settles down heavy too. Their fried seafood plate called GRANDI PLATTI - Gran Fritto de Mare is a disappointment. One of their staffs said it is for sharing (good for 3). It just had a few pieces of cut up squid (1squid), 3 breaded cubed fish and a couple of shrimps and then topped or should I say buried in tons of shredded and breaded deep fried vegetable strings like carrots and I don't know what the other strings are (pictures attached).. at first we didn't notice how much crispy strings are there, but as we dug in we couldn't find any seafood, all we were getting are those crispy strings. Then we decided to remove all the crispy strings and after 2 plates of that... voila! we saw the pieces of fried seafood below. So tricky but not smart, they could have placed the seafood on top to make it look that there's a lot. Maybe we would not have noticed if we already got full and didn't mind if the bottom is full of... yes, crispy strings. We called the manager about it and he said he could just give us two orders of calamari instead but we declined they just removed it from the bill and then took the dish away. Not sure if their other dishes are good as we didn't try anything else anymore. It could have been better if we just ordered from one of the counters in the marketplace that offered meals like burrata bruschetta, pizza, etc. So the 3 star is really for Eataly's grocery store/marketplace as there is no available site for La pizza & La pasta Los Angeles in google maps yet to give a review. I would give them 1 star because our main server is...