Beverly Hills needs another Italian restaurant like Paris Hilton needs another sidekick. Hell, any new restaurant in BH is a potential exercise in misery.
So why does E. Baldi -- less than a block away from Il Pastaio and Enoteca Drago -- work?
Not everything does. Spaghetti with bottarga (grated, pressed fish roe) may as well have been spaghetti with garlic, olive oil and some vaguely briny sawdust. Pasta handkerchiefs with white truffles and fonduta was woozy good, but it was so richly sauced that even the small portion was too much. And while the space isn't fancy -- hard chairs, no tablecloths, close quarters -- it's expensive: Lunch for two came to just over $100.
Not that the pricetag stops anyone; open for a little more than a month, it's already crowded at lunch. Service is eager and friendly, if occasionally confused; our waiter twice interrupted a long recitation of specials to run interventions. "No, no, that doesn't go there," he said, shooing away a plate of sea bass baked in parchment. The couple already had a platter of scallops framed by half a spiny lobster, but they still looked longingly at the plate's departure.
Their lust was probably on target. Seafood is especially fine here; a carpaccio di mare - the thinnest slices of raw salmon, tuna and whitefish, with a lightly dressed salad of mache and heirloom cherry tomatoes - may be the best sashimi you've never had. Farro salad has more of those tomatoes and just-poached butterflied shrimp that pop in your mouth.
The light touch extends to the interior - a clean, white rectangular box of a room. It's anchored on one end by a simple bar dressed in handsome postmodern laminate, but the real star is a wall of glass that faces Canon. (Sunlight is cheap and plentiful; do other, stuffier restaurants think it's too downmarket?)
However, I'm burying the lede: E. Baldi has an ace in the hole. It's the offspring of the Malibu-adjacent Giorgio Baldi, the place that locals treat as a beloved mom-and-pop Italian joint, while tourists and others who live far beyond the reaches of Santa Monica Canyon alternate between wishful worship and fist-shaking fury. It's the former who assure E. Baldi's success.
As Warren Beatty and Annette Bening got up from their lunch Tuesday afternoon, they made a point of shaking hands with a beaming proprietor. "Loved it," Beatty said. "Great place."
E. Baldi, 375 N. Canon Dr., between Brighton and Dayton ways, 90210; (310) 248-2633. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.
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