North Italia — Restaurant in Santa Monica

My girlfriend and I found ourselves at North Italia on 2nd Street in Santa Monica this past weekend for the first time. I'll cut to the chase - Best dining experience either of us have had in a very long time. It was a busy night, but not so busy that it felt uncomfortable. I suspect that's because their Covid protocols were being handled so well. There was a wait to get in. We were told "45 minutes", but was seated and had our drinks within 30. Even if the food had been average, the wait would have been fine with us. However, the food was amazing.

We each ordered our own personal pizza. My girlfriend selected hers (the FUNGHI with roasted mushroom, cipollini onion, smoked mozzarella), but I had a decision to make between the SPICY MEATBALL and THE PIG. Our server, Chad, sold me on the Spicy Meatball. WOW. The flavor of this pizza was insane. We even chose gluten-free crust, which most other pizza places have been disappointing. This made-in-house GF crust was so good and added to the already exploding flavors of the provolone picante, house ricotta, mozzarella, pecorino toscano, and mind melting red sauce! We tried each other's pizza and I even loved hers. A completely different flavor, but equally as epic.

Chad, our server, was the best. Super attentive, but left us completely alone to enjoy our meal unless our sparkling water glasses were half full. At that point, he appeared at our table like a $%&#@ magician, and our glasses were back to full!

The service overall was the best ever. We never at any moment felt rushed to leave. Every employee that we could see genuinely seemed happy to be there. We even observed a new server in training. He came to our table with a pizza (not ours), and though it looked extremely good, we let him know that it wasn't ours. Instead of his training server correcting him rudely (as I've also witnessed at many other places), he simply made a joke of it as being a "sales tactic". We got a good laugh out of that, but most importantly appreciated how kind it was.

Our entire experience at this place was exceptional. I'm considering making reservations here for a small group to celebrate my birthday in a few months.

It's also worth mentioning that, due to the pandemic, we were really hoping to be seated in their outside area, but wasn't sure if that would be the case due to how busy they were. As we waited for our table, we observed that the interior dining area was so well spaced and seemed to have such great airflow that we would have felt equally safe had we been seated inside. We did get a table in the outer area, though, and it was perfect.

I can't recommend this place and it's staff highly enough! Thank you, Chad, for making our first time there...

I ate here on 5/2/22 at 9PM. The restaurant is clean and modern, and the wait staff were very friendly. However, I can only give three stars because I was taken advantage of. I ordered a gluten free pizza because the waiter specifically said their GF dough is homemade. I hate the pre-made thin GF crusts and would have never ordered a pizza if I knew that is what would come. The waiter was understanding and said he would take the pizza off the check if I wanted to order something else. I ordered the GF pasta and meatballs. I was dining with a party of 6 that night so rather than watch everyone else eat, I ate what I could of the pizza while I waited for the pasta to arrive. After everyone was just about done eating, the pasta came out. I picked at it to try it but ended up taking most of it home. I would have never ordered a second entree if I had known I would be charged for both. The GF pizza was disappointing but I’m not super picky and wanted to eat at the same time as the rest of my party, so I would have just settled for that and moved on. At the end of the night, it’s partly my fault for not looking more closely at the check to verify that I was not charged for the pizza. I trusted the wait staff to keep their word and remove the pizza from the check. When I realized at home I was charged for both, I called the restaurant and spoke with the manager. She took my information and said they would reach out to me via email after they reviewed what happened. It has been 7 days and I have yet to receive any further communication. Although I could have had a positive experience, I won’t be going back because I feel lied to, whether they did so intentionally or not.

Receipt #0196

EDIT: I filled out their contact form as the owner suggested on 5/18/22 and have still not received any response. Clearly they're just trying to make it look like they care about the feedback. At this point I realize the negative experience I had was not a one-off and is in fact intentional actions of the management. I am reducing my rating to one star as I refuse to support an establishment that intentionally deceives...

I’ve been wanting to try this place out for a while because I LOVE pasta and I work two blocks from it. So finally my friends and I decided to try it out last Wednesday for lunch. I was just on my break so I wasn’t there to lounge; I was there to eat lunch with my friends.

I came in at around 12 pm. One of my friends was already there with a table. It was not busy. Considering how big the space is, there were like at most 5 tables occupied, including ours. Then twice a server came over to ask for our drinks. We haven’t seen each other for a while so my friends and I were just enjoying our time. Time was passing. We then got our drinks then more time passed. We started wondering where our food was. It was their calamari. It shouldn’t be very hard to make and it’s not busy at all. So we called on to one of the servers and followed up with our order. She was very apologetic and gave us bread. We were not sure if that was supposed to come in really early on like typically how it is in other restaurants or they’re just giving it to us because they realized we’re starving and no food has been served to us. We, of course, joked around how they forgot to put in our order. But not very long after we got our main courses - some pasta and salad. But where’s the calamari? The one that was supposed to come in before all these? We called on to that other server again and asked. Now we were sure that the order wasn’t put in. We then finally got our calamari and she was again apologetic and said that the plate is on her.

Going on to the food - my strozzapretti was delicious. It was very creamy, maybe even too creamy but it was so pure. I started feeling full halfway through. I could smell the truffle oil and Parmesan scent as soon as it came to our table and even my friends thought it was delicious. My friends both had salad and they said they’re also good. The calamari was just alright. I’ve had better calamari.

TL;DR: So overall, their food is good. Not the best. I really liked my pasta though. The servers were nice. But your food will take forever to arrive. Even when...