Does Mother Wolf Still Have Teeth?

There may have been a time when Evan Funke wasn’t a household name, but a feature-length documentary, shoutout from Meghan Sussex, and Chef’s Table episode will make a chef famous enough, as well as some well-known clientele like Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and the Obamas. For a hot minute, Mother Wolf became, according to Resy, the most difficult reservation to land in the U.S., with 1,500-plus names on the wait list. It’s not quite as difficult to dine now at Funke’s ode to Rome, a sprawling, high-ceilinged emporium with regal touches that spits out blistered thin-crust pizzas, prodigious salads, and some of the best extruded pasta in town. The restaurant has even expanded to a swanky Las Vegas outpost inside the Fontainebleau and all the way to Miami (Funke has said there are no further expansion plans for the brand). But the original still takes the cake — it’s more Hollywood than the others could ever be (how could it not be?), and remains a bustling place for some of Los Angeles’s best homemade pastas and dishes like prawns in salsa verde. Brace for carbs, because they are coming.

Date nights in large, regal dining rooms that have enough bustle to help carry the conversation; big friend groups who like sharing pasta; dinners with the picky in-laws who want a real taste of celebrity-friendly Hollywood restaurants.

There’s a semi-secret lounge called Bar Avoja tucked into the back space that’s ideal for post-prandial cocktails or even desserts if you ask nicely. Nothing helps a heavy Italian meal go down better than a Negroni and gelati.

The towering columns, high ceiling, and grand red-tinted dining room of Mother Wolf act as Evan Funke’s ode to Rome. The menu hews pretty strictly to Roman pastas and dishes, like fried squash blossoms, blistered pizza rossa, and tonnarelli cacio e pepe. Servers don tuxedo jackets while sommeliers offer rare Italian wines by the glass, giving dinners here a celebratory atmosphere. It’s no wonder that, even after some management switches, Mother Wolf remains buzzy, worthy of frequent celebrity sightings.