Nancy Silverton opens a steakhouse in rebuilt Palisades Village

Nancy Silverton opens Spacca Tutto, an Italian-American steakhouse, this autumn inside a rebuilt Palisades Village in Pacific Palisades, the Los Angeles shopping centre that last year's wildfire destroyed.

The restaurant sits at 15225 Palisades Village Lane: a 3,000-square-foot dining room plus a 1,500-square-foot patio and bar that includes a piano bar, designed by AvroKO. It is a partnership between developer Rick Caruso's Caruso, River Jetty Restaurant Group and Silverton.

The menu centres on a steak programme spanning several cuts, breeds and ages, the kind of range that also drives this year's steak awards, alongside Chi Spacca staples such as Focaccia di Recco and a chicken pot pie. Seasonal salads, seafood and vegetables round out the food side. The wine list runs to roughly 250 Italian and domestic labels, paired with what the team calls a “fast craft” cocktail menu, including a playful take on a corn dog.

A steakhouse built to make you want to eat there every night, in a village rebuilt from the studs up.

Hiring before it opens

Spacca Tutto had originally targeted an August opening. That date slipped, and the restaurant instead held a job fair on 4 and 5 September in the Swarthmore Room at Palisades Village, recruiting servers, supervisors, a maître d', hosts, bussers, line cooks, prep cooks and dishwashers. Pay ranges from $18 to $35 an hour, with free parking offered to staff.

Silverton built her name with Osteria Mozza and Pizzeria Mozza, and runs Chi Spacca, the Los Angeles steakhouse whose menu Spacca Tutto expands into a bigger room and a shopping-centre setting.

Rebuilding after the fire

Palisades Village was gutted by the wildfire that tore through Pacific Palisades last year. Caruso has said the rebuilding took the centre's structures “down to the studs,” treating the wood before reopening. He has described the steakhouse as a room meant to “give you a feeling of wanting to eat there every night.”

No firm opening date has been set beyond “this autumn.” The September job fair is the clearest sign yet that the room is close to ready, even if the calendar has already moved once.