LA's best new pasta restaurant is located in a luxury hotel in Beverly Hills

The most euphoric and exciting plate of pasta I've eaten recently came from a hotel restaurant in Beverly Hills. In the middle, a group of tortellini lay in a puddle of truffle-flecked butter sauce. The tiny packets were just thick enough, nice and taut, and filled with a velvety blend of mascarpone, ricotta, and roasted white corn that tasted like summer. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend I was in a small village in northern Italy.

In reality, I was at Baldi, the new Tuscan steakhouse on the ground floor of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, in the rooms where Jean-Georges used to live. It is run by Edoardo “Edo” Baldi of the Baldi family, a name that over the past three decades has become synonymous with fine Italian restaurants in Los Angeles and the celebrities who love them.

His father, the late Giorgio Baldi, opened his eponymous restaurant in Santa Monica in 1990, known both for its famous clientele (Rihanna was once spotted there weekly) and for popularizing corn-stuffed pasta and beef carpaccio.

Edoardo opened e. Baldi on N. Canon Drive in Beverly Hills in 2006. I've eaten at the restaurant a few times over the past two decades, and always at the invitation of an older man who works in the entertainment industry. Take what you will from this information.

Usually there was a pizza on the table, with a paper-thin crust under a coating of bubbly cheese and truffles. Followed by a plate of agnolotti filled with sweetcorn. The food was presentable, but most guests seemed to care more about who was sitting next to them than what was on the table.

At Baldi, the chef creates some of his best and most inspired dishes, but under the guidance of an Italian steakhouse in the most luxurious hotel in Los Angeles.

The restaurant offers more than a dozen cuts of steak, including USDA prime beef as well as American, Australian and Japanese Wagyu. Prices range from a 12-ounce ribeye for $82 to the olive-fed Sunuki Kawai New York strip from Kagawa Prefecture in Japan for $75 per ounce (minimum four ounces). All steaks, except Japanese Wagyu, are marinated in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, chopped rosemary, salt and pepper. They are grilled over an open flame and then refined under the grill with even more marinade.

When Baldi was a child, his mother served steak with a red and a green sauce for dipping. They are both duplicated in the restaurant. The first is basically an Italian ketchup, sweet with tomato paste, a little red wine vinegar and garlic. The green is a salsa verde, chunky and bright with capers and parsley, egg whites and breadcrumbs.

Each steak, regardless of cut, looks like it was plucked from the set of a Taylor Sheridan cowboy show, with perfect, even crust and ruby ​​center. However, the level of marination proved unpredictable and sometimes threatened to render the cut and origin of the meat irrelevant. A bone-in ribeye seemed bloated and saturated with olive oil and vinegar, while a Kansas City strip tasted perfect with olive wood smoke and a touch of rosemary. The steaks got better with each visit, but purists should stick with Japanese Wagyu.

If you're used to the butter-and-cream-laden side dishes that are a staple of the American steakhouse, Baldi's offerings might seem lackluster. Here, the side dishes are more in keeping with the chef's roots in Tuscany, favoring simple grilled, steamed or roasted vegetables.

While the steaks may not draw your attention—or your expense report—away from your favorite LA steakhouse, Baldi's has become my new favorite pasta restaurant, with every shape, except the spaghetti, made in-house.

The mezzo maniche are coated in a rich, smoky Amatriciana-style tomato sauce with bits of salty bacon. Another evening, the same tiny ridges cling to a beef ragout that Baldi learned from a family friend in Forte dei Marmi. It's a rich sauce made from beef, veal and red wine, made luxurious by the late addition of milk and a bit of Parmigiano. Delicate strips of fettuccine mingle in a silky sauce of butter and Parmigiano. Large, wide tubes of paccheri are dressed in pomodoro with a concentrated tomato flavor enhanced by a surprising thread of pesto.

You might forget the surroundings for a moment as you wipe the Pomodoro from the corner of your mouth, but the surroundings have all the finery of an upscale restaurant in this particular zip code.

Before dinner there is the valet series, featuring a cast of characters whose wealth and inclinations are so extreme that they border on the otherworldly. Stern-looking men emerge from Bentley SUVs, followed by a trail of women. More and more women are getting out of black cars wearing skirts so short that they dare not bend down or look down. Many stop in front of the restaurant's massive mahogany door with the “Baldi” sign to take selfies.

To enter the dining room, pass through the beautiful marble-lined bar, where guests sip Negroni variations or martinis made with gin and Amalfi Coast lemons. Past the impressive wine room (if you have a taste for Barolo or Brunello di Montalcino, this is the place to spend your money) and into a lavish, expansive dining room decorated in terracotta tones, peppered with vibrant greenery and a ceiling covered in large woven lanterns. It is by far the least hotel-looking hotel restaurant in all of Los Angeles.

Because of the prices, Baldi falls into the special occasion category, although most guests wear shirts appropriate for a Tuesday morning golf game. And the service is relaxed and friendly. The staff insists on bringing each dish to the table and then serving portions directly to guests' plates. Once, when I declined another portion of tortellini, my waiter acted like a pushy grandmother and put a spoonful on my plate anyway. “It’s so good,” he said with a wink. “You’re going to eat it.”

I did that.