12 Hours of Eataly L.A.

From morning macchiatos to after-dinner nightcaps, here’s our guide to Los Angeles’ colossal cathedral to Italian cuisine

- Shelley Levitt

LOS ANGELES IS A city accustomed to bigtime premieres. There are streets in Hollywood where the red carpet is perpetually rolled out. Still, when Eataly L.A., the 67,000-square-foot Italian food bazaar, opened last November in the Westfield Century City indooroutdoor shopping mall adjacent to Beverly Hills, no one seemed prepared for the crush of crowds.

It had been six and a half years since Eataly had started scouting a location for what would be its fifth U.S. location and its 39th worldwide. And it had taken more than three years to build the three-story culinary emporium, the centerpiece of a billion-dollar makeover of the tony shopping mall.

That first weekend more than 10,000 hungry visitors showed up, some waiting over four hours to get in. Eataly responded by implementing a real-time “line-o-meter” on its Twitter feed that measured wait time with peppers. A green pepper signified you could walk right in; a yellow or orange pepper, a 15- or 30-minute wait; a red bell pepper was bad news, indicating you’d be cooling your heels for an hour or more.

Worst of all was the icon of a red-hot chili pepper—that meant more than a two-hour wait, and was accompanied by the advisory, “You might want to come tomorrow.”

A few months in, things have calmed down. Today, Eataly L.A. feels more like a bustling plaza than an overstuffed subway car. You could easily spend half a day here—tasting, sipping, shopping, and learning. We’ve put together the ultimate Eataly itinerary.