Finding Italy in California: Giardino Restaurant in Westlake Village
Westlake Village is a quiet and wealthy suburb in Ventura County and not the typical place one travels to unless you have friends or family to visit. All this is about to change because I’m going to give you the best reason to make that drive (other than movie star spotting, but that’s for another post). If you love Italian food with a crazy passion like I do, a new Italian restaurant called Giardino has made Westlake Village its home.
Situated in an industrial area where another lovely restaurant, Plug Nickel used to reside, Giardino restaurant’s interior is warm and charming. It’s almost like the dining room of a modern Italian grandmother, or rather nonna, decorated with dark wooden furniture, mismatched antique china on the wall and a beautiful wall-to-wall wine rack. It was an unexpected cold and rainy night but the servers made us feel warm and welcomed instantly with their Italian hospitality.
My friends and I were starving that night so everything on the menu looked amazing. Finally we decided on a starter of burrata that came with roasted beets, spinach and basil leaves, and toasted bread. I’m kicking myself for forgetting to take a photo but it’s a testament to the food when we are devouring it before Instagramming it! It was creamy, sweet, savory and crunchy. It was the perfect starter to our dinner.
We ordered three dishes, gnocchi di ricotta, vincisgrassi (a traditional lasagna dish from Marche) and the best dish of the night, handmade spaghetti tossed in a parmesan wheel.
Let’s start with the gnocchi. The ricotta dumplings was served with speck and a creamy porcini and truffle sauce. My friend took a bite of her dish and proclaimed the dumplings to be “little clouds of heaven.” I’m not a fan of mushroom or creamy sauces but found the sauce to be rather light and flavorful. My friend said that the balanced sauce married earthy porcini and salty speck to perfection.
When you taste the tomato sauce in the lasagna, you’ll feel like you’ve woken up in Italy and your real life is just a dream. My friend Teresa has relatives in the southern region of Italy and said that the sauce takes her right back to the kitchen table in her aunt’s house. The lasagna is not what you imagine a typical lasagna to be like. It’s not oozing with meat, cheese and sauce like how they make it in other restaurants. It’s rather delicate, even the pasta is thinner and softer. But as delicate as it seems, it is packed with beautiful flavor from ripened tomatoes. It’s simple yet elegant.
The pièce de résistance, in my humble opinion, is the handmade spaghetti tossed in a parmesan wheel. I had no idea what to expect when we ordered this dish. Imagine my delight (I may have squealed) when our server rolled a small table with a huge parmesan wheel right in front of our table. He added hot spaghetti into the wheel and proceeded to toss and scrape the sides of the parmesan. The end result was this gorgeous cheesy pasta with huge chunks of parmesan on top. It’s topped with freshly grated black pepper and nothing else. When you create a product as incredibly perfect as this freshly made spaghetti, you don’t need sauce or anything else! The cheese was the icing on the cake but the star of the night was certainly the spaghetti.
Our server is from Rome and he spoke Italian to several guests in the restaurant. When your Italian restaurant is frequented by Italians, you know you’re doing something right! Southern California has a lot of incredible Italian restaurants, and Giardino certainly ranks right up there with the best of them. You will leave with a full belly and a huge smile on your face. Buon appetito!