You are here: Home » Life » Food »

Make it your own at Fritto Misto

August 20, 2011 12:00 AM

Share this Article

Author:

7274E9vYV3CF8D72.lg

Italian restaurant Fritto Misto is a popular spot for pasta, allowing patrons to create their own dishes using a variety of sauces and fresh ingredients, including sauteed calamari. (photo by Michael Ryan)

Only steps away from tourist magnets like the Santa Monica Pier and the remodeled Santa Monica Place, Fritto Misto seems to mostly go unnoticed among the hustle and bustle of summer sightseers.

Adjoined to the other small businesses all sharing the same coordinated turquoise awnings, at a casual glance you may think it was just another chiropractor, law office, or pilates studio. Certainly a different scene from the cafes, bistros, and restaurants jostling for business, blocks away on the Third Street Promenade. It truly is in that sweet spot of being centrally located, making it a quick bike ride away, no matter what part of Santa Monica you may reside, but also is just enough off the beaten path that it is not mobbed by tourists.

However, be warned that it will be packed during peak hours. It is no secret that Santa Monica loves Fritto Misto. And I have a hunch that Fritto Misto loves us back.

To celebrate their recent 20th anniversary, Fritto Misto hosted a party for 500 of their closest friends treating their guests to free beer, wine, and food. Not too difficult to fill the seats when you are giving everything away. If you missed the celebration, the 25th is just around the corner.

For being as popular as it is, advertising has never been a key component for the restaurant’s popularity. Fritto Misto flyers will never be littered on your doorknob. They do not have coupons in the weekly mailer. And you will never see them vying for local airtime unlike the omnipresent ChoSun Galbee commercials that seem to be running every time I turn on the tube. Fritto Misto relies on the most vital form of publicity, word of mouth.

“It’s local people, they tell each other, they bring their friends, when mom comes to town they bring her. It’s that kind of place” explains Fritto Misto owner Robert Kerr

Plus it sure beats hiring a sign twirler.

“Our original idea was this; you go to a pizza place and you pick all of your toppings. Why not do that with pasta?”

And with that, the “create your own pasta” option began. Choose from over a dozen freshly made pastas, pick from even more sauces, and select any number of add-ins from anchovies to walnuts. You may come up with a tricolor fusilli in a carbonara sauce, with sautéed calamari, and roasted capers. Or perhaps a fettuccini in a sage cream sauce, with pancetta, Kalamata olives, and artichoke hearts.

With a list of daily specials, Fritto Misto likes to keep things fresh and are always full of surprises. I would recommend the pasta/salad combination. Pick a rich pasta, balance it out with a light salad and find yourself in a happy place somewhere in the middle. With so many options, daily specials, vegan friendly, and variations on classic dishes, it is a great place to try new things as well as have that go-to dish that beckons you back.

“If I tried to take someone’s dish off the menu, they would be lined up outside with pitchforks and torches,” Kerr says.

Fresh food, at reasonable prices, and personable service is an automatic recipe to a restaurant’s success. If you prefer not to eat fresh Italian food with a real local vibe, go a couple blocks down to the mega franchise Buca di Beppo, I think they just cracked open a can of bologna Parmesan.

Michael can be seen riding around town on his bike. To reach him visit his Twitter at twitter.com/greaseweek or his website at tourdefeast.net

See this story as it appeared in the paper
READ MORE Food Life Tour de Feast

Other News

  • Click to enlarge. (Courtesy City of Santa Monica)

    City Hall calls for cuts, increased fees to balance budget

    CITY HALL — Life in Santa Monica could get more expensive for residents, visitors and businesses as City Hall works to close a potential $13.2 million budget gap that looms within the next four years without cutting services residents have come to expect. The City Council will get its first crack at proposals next week, which include new programs that officials hope will net $1.1 million as well as increased fees that could bring in $1.45 million in new revenue. [...]

    Read more →
    Featured Government News
  • Health workers at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center took a little time to dance during a strike at the hospital on Tuesday. The workers were protesting what they call unsafe staffing levels at all University of California-operated health facilities. (Photo by Daniel Archuleta)

    UC hospitals say patients safe despite strike

    LOS ANGELES — Thousands of workers at University of California medical centers began a two-day strike on Tuesday that prompted the postponement of dozens of surgeries amid reassurances that patients were safe. A union representing some 13,000 hospital pharmacists, nursing assistants, operating room scrubs and other health care workers began the walkout at 4 a.m. at medical facilities in San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, San Francisco and Sacramento. Nurses were not on strike, emergency rooms were open, and about 450 [...]

    Read more →
    Featured News
  • SHE’S OUT: Pacifica Christian's Spencer Dolan (left) tags out Academy for Academic Excellence's Alyssa Fredrick while teammates watch on Tuesday at Clover Park. Pacifica Christian went on to lose the second round playoff game, 12-0. (Photo by Morgan Genser)

    Softball: Rout ends Pacifica Christian’s surprising season

    CLOVER PARK — Pacifica Christian was just bounced from the playoffs 12-0 at the hands of Academy for Academic Excellence, but there wasn’t a long face to be found. Instead of pouting over the loss in the second round of the CIF-Southern Section Division 7 softball playoffs on Tuesday at Clover Park, the Seawolves came together for one last cheer before packing it up for the off-season. The first-year team exceeded everybody’s expectations, including those of head coach Mike Dolan. [...]

    Read more →
    Featured High School Sports
  • Santa Monica High student guitarist Lesley Tuan joins Jackson Browne, Gary Wright and the band Venice at the Artists for the Arts concert Saturday night at Barnum Hall. (Photo by Nina Stewart Furukawa)

    Rockers help raise $125K for arts

    Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jackson Browne headlined the 10th annual Artists for the Arts benefit concerts this past weekend at Santa Monica High School’s Barnum Hall, helping to raise $125,000 for arts programs. Browne shared the stage with fellow rock icon Gary Wright, known for “Dreamweaver” and other classic rock hits, and local rock band Venice, a touring group with more than 20 years playing with some of the biggest names in music, officials with the Santa [...]

    Read more →
    Education Featured News Public

  • Experiencing death too soon

    “I saw a man die,” Amina says as she explains why she’s not smiling in her passport photo. We are sitting in the teenager’s modest living room — which doubles as a bedroom and dining room — in Damascus, to where she and her family fled after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. I have joined Abdullah, whom I met in Baghdad in 2003 just before the war, and his teenage daughters at their spotless, spare two-bedroom flat that they share [...]

    Read more →
    Columns Opinion

  • Legislature’s assault on Prop. 13 begins

    Last week we alerted California taxpayers as to the immediate threats to Proposition 13 being heard by a California legislative committee. As fully anticipated, the Senate Committee on Governance and Finance approved all six of the anti-Prop. 13 proposals. All of the bills in question would gut one of the most important provisions of Proposition 13 — the two-thirds vote requirement for additional “add on” parcel taxes. These “add on” parcel and bond taxes are on top of the property [...]

    Read more →
    Columns Opinion The Tax Man

  • Letter: Clogged by commercial greed

    Editor: I am more than a long-time Santa Monica resident. I was born in Santa Monica Hospital, as was my father and my brother. My family has remained here for over a century because of the lifestyle it provides. Yes, growth is a natural aspect and we’ve all seen the steep rise in foreign visitors, which helps our local economy. But I’m stating the obvious to point out that what now attracts those visitors and dollars is threatened when access [...]

    Read more →
    Letters Opinion

  • Letter: Santa Monica’s Trump Tower

    Editor: We’ve already lost our beach town. If the Miramar expansion goes through, it will be for the residents living around the Miramar, their worst nightmare. One of my friends living near Sixth Street and Wilshire Boulevard has fewer visitors due to the parking situation. There are times she can’t find a place to park, and she has a permit. I got hit by a bicyclist on the boardwalk and suffered injuries. My friend was hit by two skateboarders on [...]

    Read more →
    Letters Opinion
  • Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center

    Health worker strike set at SM-UCLA Medical Center

    MID CITY — Patient care workers at the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center will join thousands of others at UC hospitals across the state in a two-day strike to protest what they say are unsafe staffing levels while administrators rake in fat-cat salaries and pensions. Members of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees union will walk off the job between 4 a.m. Tuesday until 4 a.m. Thursday at both the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and the Ronald Reagan [...]

    Read more →
    Featured News

  • New state standards may cut advanced math course

    SMMUSD HDQTRS — A proposed shift in the progression of math classes at the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District could eliminate the highest level course taught in the district, which some parents feel put students at a disadvantage when applying to top-tier universities. The class, Calculus DE, focuses on multivariate calculus, a class not often taught until students go to college. To take it in high school, a student must have taken algebra in seventh grade, a year earlier than [...]

    Read more →
    Education Featured News Public

  • To cash in or let it ride?

    It seems to me that a lot of people that buy and sell stocks are a lot like the people that go to the racetrack. When you are at the track you are investing — some call it betting — on a short-term result, which horse comes in first in the next few minutes. Of course you do your research. How did this jockey (the CEO) do in the past? How did the horse (the enterprise) perform recently?  How is [...]

    Read more →
    After The Bell Columns Opinion

  • Remembering those who sacrificed so much

    As we close in on Memorial Day, the time America has set aside to honor the men and women who have given their lives for our freedom, a controversy rages. Politicians are using yet another tragedy to once again try to make political hay for their party. The Republican Party is aghast that on-duty diplomats were killed in Benghazi. The Democrats are fighting back by saying that attacks on our embassies have occurred under both parties’ control of the White [...]

    Read more →
    Columns Opinion What's the Point?

  • Letter: Demise of Downtown

    Editor: To the City Council, commissioners and city staff, Winston Churchill simply described “civilization” as the subordination of the ruling class to the will of the people. In this regard, the development agreement process has been more like a game of monopoly than one of environmental and urban planning for the benefit of the community. What’s been proposed and supported to date is going in the wrong direction. (Will it take rallies and bonfires of the 1960s free speech movement [...]

    Read more →
    Letters Opinion
  • PARCHED: The United States is embroiled in the worst drought since the “Dust Bowl” days of the 1930s. The current drought started in 2012, the hottest year on record in the U.S. Pictured: A dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas in 1935. (Photo courtesy NOAA George E. Marsh Album)

    Calling for rain

    Dear EarthTalk: Could it really be true that we are in the midst of the worst drought in the United States since the 1930s? — Deborah Lynn, Needham, Mass.   Indeed we are embroiled in what many consider the worst drought in the U.S. since the “Dust Bowl” days of the 1930s that rendered some 50 million acres of farmland barely usable. Back then, drought conditions combined with poor soil management practices to force some 2.5 million Americans away from [...]

    Read more →
    Columns Earth Talk Opinion
  • Santa Monica Civic Auditorium (File photo)

    Curtains for the Civic

    The future of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was debated at a community meeting held at the Main Library last Monday. The late 1950s era, multi-purpose facility has been operating in the red for years. City officials plan to mothball it on June 30 then decide whether to renovate or demolish it The auditorium was a major show place when it opened in 1958. It hosted the Academy Awards from 1961 through 1968 and was a major regional concert and [...]

    Read more →
    Columns Featured My Write Opinion
  • (File photo)

    Road advisories

    Expo Light Rail Line Project Note the following activities: 1. Colorado Avenue between Fifth and 17th streets: Expect westbound and eastbound lane closures during day time hours. Expect reduction of travel lanes during the non-peak day at Ninth Street at Colorado and 10th Street at Colorado. 2. Colorado Avenue between Fifth and Sixth streets: Night time (9 p.m.-6 a.m.) Colorado Avenue closure, through Thursday. 3. Olympic Boulevard between 20th Street and Cloverfield Boulevard: Westbound and eastbound lane closures during non-peak [...]

    Read more →
    Featured News Transportation