Antico Nuovo

Chad Colby first popped up on the collective radar of LA’s dining conoscenti with the culinary classes he taught (on pizza-making, whole hog butchery, charcuterie and more) in a small test kitchen wedged between Nancy Silverton’s Mozza2Go storefront and her flagship Osteria Mozza. Eventually, Silverton turned the test kitchen into a real one, made Colby the chef and helped him create a jewel box of an Italian restaurant that in short order became one of the city’s preeminent temples of wood-fired meats.

Colby’s kinship with fire became the cornerstone of his own restaurant, Antico, which he opened in 2019; he rechristened it Antico Nuovo following the trials and tribulations of the pandemic. It’s an intimate, warmly-lit room, rustic in all the right ways and dominated by an oversized wood grill along the back wall, over which hang all manner of primal cuts and whole fish, and bundles of drying herbs.

Meats and vegetables cooked over fire remain one of Colby’s calling cards, and you’ll find them in abundance at Antico Nuovo… this is precisely the type of restaurant where roast chicken is exactly the right call. You might be equally tempted, though, by the fruits of his years-long fascination with pasta. His take on ‘agnolotti del plin’ (called here ‘plin dell’ Alta Langa’) is especially delicious and could probably fool a Piedmontese, though it’s hard to resist the ‘foglie d’ulivo’ with roast squab if it happens to be on the menu.

Wine Director and General Manager Rachel Grisafi knows a thing or two about Italian wine and food. Like Colby, she did a tour of (sommelier) duty at the Mozza complex down the road, and it shows. Her selection reflects not only a deep understanding of the current Italian wine landscape, but a real sensitivity to the spirit of the Antico Nuovo as a whole.

Clocking in at nearly 30 pages, Grisafi’s list has a bit of a goldilocks quality about it – not too big, not too small, and replete with interesting options to consider. It radiates a sense of confidence but also a refreshing lack of dogma, and a real striving to offer wines that complement the food on the menu.

Piedmont is an especially rich vein, featuring exciting new talents like Giulia Negri and Philine Isabelle alongside some well-chosen heavy hitters and an expansive range from the Alto Piemonte. Wines from Etna are another pillar, with a particularly tightly-curated set of Etna whites backing up nearly forty Nerello Mascalese-based reds. For the Italian-averse, fear not: there’s a solid line up of grower Champagne to be had, a small but perfectly respectable set of white and red Burgs behind it, and a smattering of options from countries further afield.

$50/750ml for first two bottles, $75/750ml thereafter