Earlier this week, my boyfriend and I decided to try out Stella Barra, a Lettuce Entertain You restaurant, for date night. I have been to several LEYE restaurants, including Summerhouse Santa Monica which shares space with Stella Barra, and they have all been delicious. While Summerhouse Santa Monica is very bright and reminiscent of...Santa Monica... (shocker), Stella Barra has a much darker, trendy vibe to it. The atmosphere is very warm and many of the tables are situated around comfy couches. Our waiter was extremely friendly and explained to us that Stella Barra is tapas style, so they generally recommend two pizzas and one appetizer or two appetizers and one pizza per couple.
Bread with extra virgin olive oil, aged balsamic, and roasted garlic ($1.95)
We started with the bread, which is a great deal for $2. It actually comes with four slices, but we ate two by the time I snapped the above photo ;) The bread was very crunchy and delicious. The balsamic olive oil was exquisite, and we ended up using it later for dipping our pizza crust.
Margherita Pizza, fresh mozzarella, basil, extra virgin olive oil ($13.95)
We opted to order two pizzas and an appetizer. To try as many different things as we could, we opted for one red pizza and one white. The Margherita was a classic pizza with delicious mozzarella and fresh basil. The basil was my favorite part of this pizza as it added a lot of flavor. The sauce was nice and tangy, and the crust was very flaky.
Fennel Bianco pizza, hand-shaved fennel, burrata, rosemary, torn basil, extra virgin olive oil ($14.95)
For our white pizza, we opted for the Fennel Bianco. I am a sucker for fennel so this was a must-try. While the Margherita was a good, classic pizza, this was both of our favorites. It was much more flavorful than the Margherita and each piece was quite addicting. The crust was slightly fluffier than our Margherita pizza, and the fennel was bursting with flavor. My favorite part of this pizza was the burrata. It was extremely creamy and added flavor to every bite.
Chocolate chip cookie with vanilla ice cream
For dessert, we decided to indulge in a chocolate chip cookie (heated up in the oven!) with vanilla ice cream. There is a bakery in the vestibule between Summerhouse Santa Monica and Stella Barra that the two restaurants share. It has a wide array of cookies and other baked goods. Some of the particularly yummy looking ones were peanut butter and s'mores, but we opted for the classic chocolate chip. Stella Barra lets you go to the bakery case and pick your cookie, and then they will heat it up and top it with ice cream for you. The cookie was absolutely delightful. The outside crust was crunchy, while the inside was gooey. The ice cream didn't immediately melt and was delicious atop the warm cookie. Our only complaint was the charge for this dessert - the one tiny scoop of ice cream was around $4 in addition to the cookie. Besides that, this was the perfect finale to a delicious meal.
Each pizza comes with 8 slices, so two pizzas between two people still leaves plenty of leftovers. The slices are light, so you aren't left in the food coma that often comes with classic Chicago pizza. The take-home box includes instructions on how to best reheat the pizza, which (as you can see in the above picture) I greatly enjoyed on Thursday night. I recently took a gander at Stella Barra's brunch menu and it looks to die for. After a wonderful night with delicious food and excellent service, I will most definitely be back.