Chi Spacca Review: Nancy Silverton's Michelin Green Star Room on Melrose Cooks Everything Else Just as Hard
Chi Spacca sits at 6610 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90038, on the corner of Melrose and Highland, tucked into the block Nancy Silverton has owned outright for two decades. Osteria Mozza is next door. Pizzeria Mozza and Mozza2Go are steps away. Chi Spacca is the smallest room of the group and the one people describe in the most reverent terms.
The name is Italian for she (or he) who cleaves, and the kitchen is built around the idea of cooking the way an Italian butcher would cook. That is not a slogan bolted on after the fact. Chi Spacca grew out of the wildly popular family-style salumi dinners held weekly at Scuola di Pizza, the previous occupant of the space. When those nights outgrew themselves, the team built the first dry cure program in Los Angeles so they could work Italian charcuterie techniques in house.
Chi Spacca also holds a Michelin Green Star, the distinction the guide awards for sustainable gastronomy rather than for cooking. It landed in 2022 and the restaurant still carries it today, alongside its listing in the 2026 Michelin Guide California. According to the Chi Spacca Website Food & Wine called it a meat speakeasy. Jonathan Gold, in the Los Angeles Times, called it an ode to meat, beautiful meat. GQ, Esquire, Bon Appetit and Time Out LA have all put it on national best-of lists, and Los Angeles Magazine placed it among the 75 best restaurants in the city.
We spent an evening in the room with Executive Chef Alisa Vannah and did the thing you are not supposed to do at a restaurant known for a 50-ounce bistecca Fiorentina. We ordered around the steaks. What came out made the argument that Chi Spacca is not a steakhouse that tolerates vegetables. It is an oven-and-fire restaurant that happens to be exceptional at beef.
Grilled Squash Blossoms Veal Tongue Focaccia Di Recco Spacca Ceasar
Focaccia di Recco
It lands looking like a pizza that went ten rounds with the oven and won. Two sheets of unleavened dough with stracchino pressed between them, extra virgin olive oil, salt, and enough heat to blister the top into a topography of dark gold domes with molten pockets underneath. The cheese does not stretch so much as run. Eat it the second it touches the table. At minute one it is crackling and liquid. At minute six it holds its crisp. Nothing else on the menu makes the case for this oven as directly.
Veal Tongue, Oregano Vinaigrette
Sliced thin enough to drape and fanned out in pale rose ribbons, the tongue is tender and clean, nothing like the dense, aggressively cured version those two words bring to mind. The oregano vinaigrette carries the plate: loose, green, sharp with vinegar, generous with olive oil, scattered with fresh oregano leaves that cut straight through the richness. This is the dish that tells you the butchery and curing program here is prefection. Order it even if you think you do not like tongue. Especially then.
Spacca Caesar
Escarole instead of romaine, anchovy, croutons, shaved cauliflower and a heavy fall of Parmigiano Reggiano, finished with fried parsley that shatters under a fork. The escarole gives the salad a bitter backbone a romaine Caesar never has, the raw cauliflower adds a nutty crunch, and the dressing is assertive enough to stand up to both. It arrives piled high in a shallow bowl, and it is a real shared plate rather than a garnish course.
Roasted Squash Blossoms
Three blossoms filled with ricotta, set in a shallow pool of tomato vinaigrette so bright it looks lit from underneath, with basil laid across the top. The blossoms hold their shape and pick up a little color at the edges. The ricotta stays soft and barely seasoned on purpose, because the vinaigrette is doing that work: sweet, acidic, loose, and worth chasing with a spoon. It was the most seasonal thing we ate and the one most likely to be gone by the time you read this, since the vegetables here turn over with the farmers market.
The Chef: Alisa Vannah
Vannah came up inside this group. She joined the pastry team at Osteria Mozza under Dahlia Narvaez, switched to savory when Chi Spacca opened, and learned to butcher there, putting in more than seven cumulative years in the building. She left to run the kitchen at Mr. T in Hollywood, where she was named a StarChefs Los Angeles Rising Star in 2024. She is back on Melrose now as executive chef, and it explains a lot about how the menu reads. The precision on these plates is pastry-trained. The nerve with a whole animal is not.
She is cooking at a moment when Silverton's footprint keeps expanding. Spacca Tutto is set to anchor Palisades Village, the Larchmont diner she opened with Phil Rosenthal has a wait that is very real, and she spent this month judging TenderFest in Beverly Hills. Chi Spacca is the room where the meat half of all of it started.
The Room
The dining room is small and warm, candlelit, walls lined with wine, an open kitchen working along one side. It reads less like a restaurant and more like being a guest in a very well-stocked Italian house. The team also runs the place against a stated triple bottom line of people, planet and profit, with attention to water and waste, disposables and chemicals, local sourcing, and the materials used to outfit the space.
The Green Star is not decorative. Whole animals arrive and get broken down in house so almost nothing is wasted, ingredients come from within roughly 100 miles, and energy and water use get steady attention. The greenest room on Melrose is also the one best known for beef.
What to Know Before You Go
Parking. Valet runs in front of Chi Spacca and in front of Pizzeria Mozza, and takes cash, card and Apple Pay. Metered parking is available on Melrose and in the surrounding streets, but read the signs carefully before you walk away from the car.
Corkage. $75 per 750 ml, limited to 1500 ml per table. On Tuesday evenings the fee is waived for one bottle for each bottle you buy from the list, up to two bottles per table. Corkage is not offered on outside bottles that arrive already opened, and the beverage manager will prepare your bottles ahead of the reservation if you email info@chispacca.com.
Cake. You can bring your own for a $12 per person outside food fee. The pastry team also makes custom cakes and cupcakes to order, and cakes need at least 72 hours notice.
Takeout. Local pickup runs through Mozza2Go, ordered online and collected through the Chi Spacca vestibule, on a menu built off Pizzeria Mozza next door.
Large parties. The restaurant can handle groups of any size through its private dining and catering packages.
Gluten-free and vegan. The menu changes daily, so call the day of your reservation to ask what is on, and flag it again with your server. Both get accommodated.
Gift cards. Available online, with balance checks through the same system.
Hours and Location
Chi SPACCA, 6610 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90038. (323) 297 1133. Dinner only. Monday through Thursday, 6:00 pm to 9:30 pm. Friday and Saturday, 5:30 pm to 10:00 pm. Sunday, 5:30 pm to 9:30 pm.
Order the bistecca if that is what brought you. It earns the reputation. But the reason Chi Spacca has held its place on best-of lists for more than a decade is that the focaccia, the salad and the squash blossoms are cooked with exactly the same seriousness as the beef. Very few restaurants in Los Angeles can say that and mean it.
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