Somewhere along the way, a malicious ex-New Yorker started a rumor that there were no good Italian restaurants in LA. Probably in a moment when they were homesick for “real” pizza or just wanted to be sitting in a room full of red checkered tablecloths eating penne alla vodka. While we will concede that you cannot get anything like a NYC slice in this town, we’d also like to state for the record that excellent Italian restaurants do exist in Los Angeles - and not just all those new spots making pasta in climate-controlled rooms or playing rap and serving thin, crusty pizzas. There are plenty of classic Italian restaurants that stand up to the red sauce-filled places in New York. One of them is Via Veneto. In an old building at the end of Main St. in Santa Monica, Via Veneto feels like a different world from the nearby bars filled with people celebrating their first night of legal drinking. It’s a small, white-tablecloth restaurant, that is equally suited to a romantic candlelit meal and dinner with in-laws you actually like. Actually, this place works for most special-occasion scenarios, thanks to its enormous menu and an atmosphere that guarantees you’re going to have a great night. A Via Veneto night starts with being greeted in Italian and ordering a glass of prosecco the moment you sit down. From there, go for a mix of classics like fritto misto and spaghetti bolognese, plus a wildcard like the excellent lobster carpaccio, and maybe a veal chop the size of your head to share. The food here is fantastic, but not in a way that means the entire table will spend the whole meal talking about how good the burrata is. You won’t feel the need to analyze Via Veneto’s food - you’ll just want to keep eating it until you can’t anymore. In an ideal world, we’d treat Via Veneto like the Italian place our NYC friend misses so much. We’d be there once a week, eating pasta and making friends with the staff. But dinner for four here can easily get to $500, and since this is the real world, and we weren’t early investors in Snap down the street, Via Veneto is too expensive for that. Via Veneto is proof that the East Coast doesn’t have a lock on this kind of classic Italian spot. Save it for a special occasion, preferably one where someone else is paying, and you’ll almost certainly leave feeling like you celebrated appropriately. Even if the New Yorker at the table complains about the lack of penne alla vodka.