Italian-Korean fusion restaurant from Nancy Silverton
FYI reservations are live: Lapaba Restaurant - Los Angeles, CA | OpenTable
Looks like it is opening on 2/11
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Cool concept.
Both cuisines derived umami from different methods/ingredients.
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Just booked for 2/11 for 2
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Amazing! Thanks for the heads up 
Already booked out quite far on weekends .. booked for 2/12
this will be great research for our gerd-friendly asian-italian pasta fusion efforts!
For the record, this is a Nancy Silverton - Joe Bastianich - Robert Kim project, a Korean-Italian fusion “pasta bar.” Chefs previously worked at Mozza, Dialogue, and Pasjoli.
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Very skeptical but I booked. I appreciate the heads up!
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Really enjoyed Lapaba this evening. What were your favorites, @avantbored ?
Meatballs were outstanding. Milk toast there to sop up all that yummy sauce…
Dishes ranged from good (Calamarata & Kimchi pasta with an overly timid kimchi profile), to very good (Fried Chicken appetizer), to just superb (Bucatini & Amatriciana pasta, Orrechiette & Sausage pasta). No misses. My Huge Bite of the night was the Bucatini & Amatriciana jjajang style.
Desserts: BTS (Black Truffle Soft-serve) was enormously satisfying (if you are a truffle fan)…
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Fried chicken is a pasta?
Brain fart: The fried chicken is an appetizer, not a pasta. Will edit.
@J_L had a superior experience than we did, and it came down to his order vs. ours.
Our order:
Cacio e pepe rice cakes
Kimchi suppli
Charred broccolini
Garganelli & Pesto
Radiatore & Galbi jjim
Agnolotti & Cheesy corn
Very good bottled Italian beer. Also 2026 is the Year of the Lactase Pic
Kimchi suppli. Echoing @J_L, the kimchi was far too mild. Aioli too garlicky.
Cacio e pepe tteok[bokki]. Great sauce and forgiving tteok. In other preparations I would have said that the cakes were a little over, but in this context it read much more like a gnocchi. Needs more sauce, and would have liked it a little thicker.
Charred broccolini with whipped tofu. Love the idea of whipped tofu; was thinking about how to use this in a pasta sauce. Great flavor on the green but a little too spicy for us.
The pesto sauce uses perilla, but like the kimchi, we thought this was also far too timid. More perilla throughout please! A great idea though.
Agnolotti. The underwhelmer of the night. The butter to us was not very browned, if at all. Guanciale was nice and the pasta was made very well.
Radiatore & galbi jjim. Winner of the night, but again, I wished more of the Korean spin came through here. Love the pasta for the galbi.
If you go I’d probably follow @J_L’s order and not ours, but for the cacio e pepe! As you can see, between us we ordered (almost) the entire menu at opposite ends of the bar (which I discovered too late! see you next time). His choices fared a lot better than ours. I would come back and hit the orrecchiete, bucatini, and fried chicken appetizer. Pasta prep and cookery was spot on.
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New fusion is the old fusion!
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I’m reminded of the time I went to an Indian restaurant in Lucca, Italy. The food they served was so bland that I did not consider it Indian food–or even Indian / Italian fusion food–in spirit. It seems that Italian palates are very sensitive to spice, and perhaps to foreign ingredients more generally.
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We had some good Indian food in Rome, but it was a restaurant catering to tourists from India. You can probably find at least one restaurant there serving a decent version of the cuisine from any country with a substantial Catholic population.
Chiles are rarely used in northern Italy but common in parts of the south, e.g. Calabrian preserved peppers and chili oil.
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Going next weekend. Appreciate the write ups. We walked by 2 weeks ago and the place was only half full on a Friday at 8:00. Any idea what the corkage policy is?
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went saturday couple weeks ago and every seat was full.
if i didn’t know the concept beforehand i would have thought this was a straight up italian restaurant. it felt like 95% italian and 5% korean.
favorites
- kimchi suppli, very well executed but didn’t taste any kimchi
- sweet potatoes, not sure what was korean about this, the chili crisp?
- orechiette & sausage, tasted like mozza’s
- radiatore, dish of the night
- soft serve
misses
- agnolotto was somehow dry and not cheesy
- jjajang, way too salty with no sweetness you would expect from a jajangmyeon
kimchi suppli, fontina, park’s bbq kimchi, aioli
burrata con crema, satsuma sweet potato, sweet soy, chili crisp
agnolotto & cheesy corn, smoked scamorza, brown butter, thyme
k meatballs, bulgogi meatballs, milk bread, truffle tomato sauce
fried chicken, calabrian chill, yuzu ranch, kohlrabi
orechiette & sausage, gochugaru, fennel, bloomsdale spinach
bucatini & amatriciana, guanciale, jjajang, pecorino
radiatore & galbi jjim, short rib ragu, shiitake, red wine
bts - black truffle soft serve, brown butter
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They definitely fixed the jjajang issue by the time I went last week…
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Finally suppli that uses pastello and no egg coating lol. Super crispy right
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Thanks all for reporting back!
We went last week. Also agree it’s mostly Italian ….
I thought the bucatini amatriciana was also too salty. But my partner said it tasted appropriately Roman …
We got the orecchiette, bucatini amatriciana, and perilla pesto. I really liked the perilla pesto and would try to recreate it at home …
Nice spot, but I almost prefer my own k-itali fusion 
We picked up some house-packed looking doenjang from california market on the way back. Used it to make a quick mushroom sauce for some trader joe’s heart ravioli after some white wine reduction. That was also really good.
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Did you ever visit Supplizio in Rome?