Marian is a popular food blogger who travels around the world and documents her tasty adventures with food and wine on her blog.   This month she featured her favorite spot in the Valley – Vitello’s!

Check out “Vitello’s Studio City…My New Neighborhood Spot” on Mariane The Foodie online.

Ipson has always had a fascination with Boston and its famed academic institutions including Harvard, M.I.T and Boston College. “I dreamt of being able to go to a top Boston school,” he says. But that was not to be, and he ended up going to medical school in Utah and finally doing his surgical residency in Boston. Ipson was struck by the social divisions in the city, and the way the Harvard elite live cheek by jowl with less formally educated locals who are highly knowledgeable in their own way. “It’s a world where a fishmonger can lecture at (the fictitious) Harvard Veterinarian School, and a fish market employee can study Freud,” Ipson says.

What made the North End—Boston’s Little Italy—particularly inspiring to Ipson was its multiple generations of Italian immigrants. Historically, the North End was a ghetto; a place where Jewish, Irish and later Italian immigrant families tended to settle. But upward mobility and increased wealth slowly pushed the Jewish and Irish into nicer areas of Boston. “But not the Italians,” Ipson says. “They thrived too, but they stayed in the community. Over time, it became home. It feels like its own world. But times are changing still. Now, it too is becoming gentrified.”

“Twenty years from now, I doubt the characters in this film will still exist,” Ipson says. “They’re dying off with each generation. I wanted to capture what it meant to live in a mainstream American city and yet still have strong roots to your homeland. Papa Tempesti is from the old country. Gianluca and Steve are first-generation Italian Americans. And Jake and Marisa are the new generation that knows about ethnic traditions but no longer follows them. The North End encapsulates that.”

For the Los Angeles portion of the production, the filmmakers shot a week of overnight, practical locations and scenes, then shot for two weeks at Laurel Canyon Stages in Arleta during the day. A key location was Vitello’s Restaurant in Studio City, which did quadruple duty as the Italian singles club, the faculty reception, the place where Jake and Marisa had their first date and the Italian hotel lobby.

Several of the film’s scenes took place on sets, where production designer Marla Altschuler was tasked with creating realistic environments such as the fish shop where Jake works. “We knew that if you had any idea or hint of it being a set, you would be out of the story,” says Ipson. “So we were very meticulous in bringing in stuff that made it feel like a bunch of messy guys in a fish shop.”

Creating the sets turned out to be much harder than expected because the crew lost its construction foreman. “Due to this snag, construction ran behind, which meant the art department was forced to scramble every day,” says Burke. “Without sets, the painters couldn’t paint, the dressers couldn’t dress, and we never knew what would find each morning.” But everyone pulled together and the sets managed to get built.

“I think we were ultimately able to fully capture the settings in a way that if I didn’t know, I wouldn’t be able to tell what is a set and what is practical location,” Ipson says.

For the scenes set in Italy, the production’s budget wouldn’t accommodate an excursion to the Old Country. Instead, the crew made do with a long day of shooting on the Universal back lot for the Piazza footage and shot in Malibu for the Italian Riviera scenes.

© 2008 Roadside Attractions

From the Celebrity Wonder website.

Some of you may know Vitello’s as the place where Robert Blake’s wife ate her last meal, but I have come to know it as a place to get excellent Italian food at a decent price.

I have to admit, this is another place where I usually end up getting the same thing, and this time, I did just that. We started with our usual, which is a half carafe of the house chianti and an order of the Margherita Pizzetti. If you’re not sure what a pizzetti is, just think of it as a REALLY thin pizza with about 8 slices. People, this pizzetti is A-mazing! It’s just a simple combination of extra-thin pizza crust, deliciously sweet tomato sauce, fresh basil, and a thin layer of mozzarella cheese. If you only get one thing at Vitello’s, make it a pizzetti.

After the delicious opening act, our main courses came to the table. My sister ordered the Gnocchi, which came in a red sauce with gooey, melted mozzarella on top, and I ordered my Italian restaurant usual, Fettuccine Alfredo with chicken, but I substituted Farfalle for the Fettuccine. I love Farfalle. It is, to me, the most fun of all the pastas. Come on! It’s a bow tie! How could you not love that?! Plus all of the nooks and crannies make it so that you get more sauce with each bite, which is always a plus. The fantastically fork-able Farfalle was al dente, just the way it should be, and the Alfredo sauce was rich and creamy, with a perfect amount of saltiness. I always get chicken when I order this dish, and at most places they give you the worst cuts of meat. At Vitello’s, however, the chicken is always moist and tender, and I have yet to come across any sort of gristle. I HATE when that happens!

As always, the food that night was delish. Everything tasted just like good old fashioned Italian comfort food should taste. The service is worth mentioning too. The waiters and busboys are always very friendly, and there are few places in Los Angeles that bring up food as quickly as this place. It’s crazy how on top of it they always are! I never leave Vitello’s hungry, or unsatisfied. I highly recommend it.

Happy Eating!

From the Accidental Food Critic blog.

From the City’s Best website.

More information at the ZoorkinVision website.

Los Angeles Magazine