Of all the world cuisines upon which Los Angeles might base its culinary personality, Italian is not the most obvious. Pasta and braised meats and pizza hardly fit in with the cliché of L.A.'s light and healthy eating habits, nor are they what come to mind when thinking of the appropriate food to complement our perpetually sunny weather. Yet that's what we like, and that's how it's been for a very long time.

A Ruth Reichl article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in 1990 — 17 years before Nancy Silverton opened her palace of Italian food at the corner of Melrose and Highland — begins, "California cuisine started in France and began a gradual glide toward Italy."