In late 1972 a twenty-six year-old immigrant from Modica in southeastern Sicily, Piero Selvaggio, and another Italian immigrant, Gianni Paoletti, opened a modest restaurant in what had been a bar on Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica. Serving manicotti, baked mostaccioli, lasagna, Cobb salad, and veal Parmesan, it proved popular right away. At the time, it gave no indication that it would become arguably the most influential Italian restaurant in the last fifty years, providing an example for what Italian food and Italian dining could be in this country.
Selvaggio bought out Paoletti the next year and a few years later, buoyed by research into the contemporary dining scene in northern Italy, Valentino begun to become more truly Italian and more adventurous, aided by a talented chef from the Veneto. The restaurant began introducing products and foodstuffs then unknown like radicchio di Treviso, mozzarella di bufala, burrata, cheeses and the finest olive oils. His dedication was such that he even picked up fresh mozzarella at the redoubtable food section of Harrods in London before there were direct flights between Los Angeles and Italy.
In 1986, Angelo Auriana, another Italian native, took over the kitchen at Valentino, and he “took the food one dramatic step further. “ Part of it, was that he had, “‘an Italian ‘intention’ but he works with an international inventory of products.” This working mandate included the best local and regional produce, which had improved greatly with the growth in California food consciousness, fish and meat that might be flown in from anywhere, and those essential foodstuffs from Italy that could not be replicated. Experience and an expanding number of domestic producers eventually helped Selvaggio determine what was necessary to be imported from Italy.
Valentino’s ethos was something new for America’s Italian restaurants. It was very refined and complicated, as “far from home cooking as any French chef's,” according to a later reviewer. As the cooking evolved, it could be described as creative modern Italian food; authentically Italian in manner and thinking, though the dishes might not be found anywhere in Italy. The next year, the interior was “dressed up” in expensive fashion to more fully match the food. When the kitchen’s brilliant ideas and skillful execution were combined with the best ingredients, a fabulous wine list, an attractive dining room, and Selvaggio, “the Platonic ideal of a host,” organizing a meal, the results were fantastic.
What it was doing along with another grand Italian outpost in Los Angeles, Rex il Ristorante, was not being done elsewhere in the country. It took a few years before New York caught up with the likes of Palio and San Domenico.
By the mid-1990s it was peaking after years of increasing success and innovation. In 1995 it shared Wine Spectator’s top spot as the best restaurant in the country overall. In 1997, a Wine Spectator cover story about the country’s best Italian restaurants, “Valentino passes the rest of the field of Italian restaurants in the United States like a Ferrari in the fast lane of the autostrada.” This echoed earlier pronouncements from the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. That same year Gambero Rosso, a leading Italian restaurant publication, named Valentino as the finest Italian restaurant in the world. At the end of the decade, Italian food writer Luigi Veronelli gave Valentino its highest rating.
Today, Valentino continues along admirably carrying three stars (out of four) from the Los Angeles Times, a very respectable 26 food score from the Zagat Survey, though these don’t tell the whole story. The wine list, which has carried the top award from the Wine Spectator since those began, remains one of the very best in the country. Plus, its sibling Valentino establishments, in Las Vegas and Houston, can claim to be the top Italians in their respective cities.
Though this is the fortieth year in business right now, the official anniversary date is December 4.
To note, some of this was adapted from my booklet, From the Antipasto to the Zabaglione – The Story of Italian Restaurants in America. It’s a good read, by the way.
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