LAReview
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If you’re anything like us, you award yourself with an imaginary “good job” sticker every time you throw a plastic cup in the recycling bin. When you meal prep for the week, equally distributing quinoa into Tupperware, you become the embodiment of balance and happiness. And when it’s late at night and one of those mind-boggling tiny house shows comes on, you convince yourself that you, too, could squeeze your entire existence into a 60-square-foot house, eliminating your carbon footprint once and for all.
Being a healthy and reasonable human feels good - but only if you balance it out with a night of complete excess every now and then. When you’re due for your throw-down meal of the highest “f*ck it” variety, go to Chi Spacca, a meat-centric restaurant where excess isn’t just encouraged, it’s mandatory. And damn does it feel good.
Chi Spacca is one of the three restaurants inside the Mozza complex at Melrose and Highland. But unlike the well-known Osteria and Pizzeria Mozza next door, Chi Spacca feels like the mysterious younger brother in the family. If you want a sprawling Sunset Strip steakhouse with neon water walls and people you recognize from an old season of Vanderpump Rules, Chi Spacca is not your spot. The easily missable entrance is hidden inside of the Mozza 2 Go pick-up area and the small red dining room has only 10 or so tables total. A meal here feels like an exclusive dinner party inside a famous novelist’s wine cellar. It’s an upscale experience, but one where two bottles of wine leads to four bottles of wine and suddenly you’re staring at five plates of red meat and the impending realization that you aren’t actually Ernest Hemingway.
photo credit: Jakob Layman
If you’re thinking about going to Chi Spacca with a tight budget or diet plan, go somewhere else. Chi Spacca’s food is salty, buttery, and so over-the-top that by the time the beef pie with a giant bone sticking out of it arrives, it doesn’t even seem out of the ordinary. There’s no room for sensibility or restraint at a place where a $98 tomahawk is the third biggest piece of meat on the menu. You’ll eat charcuterie, pate, the aforementioned tomahawk chop, and focaccia that’s so good, it’ll make you angry.
In a time when every restaurant in the city recommends 3-4 small plates per person, eating at a place that drops gigantic trays of red meat on your table like it’s tap water feels revelatory. Most people in Los Angeles don’t want to eat like this most nights - but Chi Spacca doesn’t care about your Tupperwares full of quinoa. And when you’re eating here, neither will you.
Food Rundown
photo credit: Jakob Layman
Focaccia di Recco
photo credit: Jakob Layman
Affettati Misti
photo credit: Jakob Layman
Grilled Octopus
photo credit: Jakob Layman
Beef & Bone Marrow Pie
photo credit: Jakob Layman
Tomahawk Pork Chop
photo credit: Jakob Layman