Nancy Silverton’s New Koreatown Pasta Bar Infuses Regional Italian Cooking With Bold Korean Flavors

Nancy Silverton’s latest restaurant, a jewel box–sized Korean-tinged pasta bar, is readying to open its doors on the busy corner of Western Avenue and Sixth Street in Koreatown. Lapaba will debut on January 28 with limited service; a full opening will follow on February 3. The name is a portmanteau of “la pasta bar,” a language device often used in Korean; other examples include “somaek,” which combines soju and maekju (beer), and mukbang, a blend of meokneun (eating) and bangsong (broadcast).

Husband-and-wife chef team McKenna Lelah and Matthew Kim, who met while working at Osteria Mozza under Silverton, helm the kitchen at Lapaba with a menu that infuses Italian regional specialties with Korean ingredients. Following their time at Osteria Mozza, Kim took a turn at Alinea’s sister restaurant Next in Chicago, while Lelah worked with chef Tim Hollingsworth at his now-closed Downtown Los Angeles restaurant, Otium. The couple also opened Dave Beran’s Michelin-starred Dialogue together, before Kim joined Pasjoli as chef de cuisine.

Hand with a spoon plating radiatore pasta with perilla basil at Lapaba.

Plating ggaenip (perilla) pesto. Emily Ferretti

Silverton’s Lapaba partners include Robert Kim (Mama Lion, AB Steak, Norikaya) and regular collaborators Tanya and Joe Bastianich, the sibling duo behind Pizzeria Mozza, Osteria Mozza, and Chi Spacca.

Although Silverton will advise on the food, Lelah’s and Kim’s cooking forms the heart of the restaurant. “If you went through every dish and you removed all of the Korean ingredients, then they would be more or less Italian dishes,” Lelah says. “So they really are regional Italian with Korean influence.” The menu opens with a roasted satsuma sweet potato topped with a burrata bulb, sweet soy, and chile crisp, while spicy tuna tonnato gets paired with crisp black rice chips. Suppli, a popular Roman street food comprised of a fried rice ball stuffed with cheese, gets stuffed with Spam and fontina. Lollipopped fried wings, which harken close to Korean fried chicken, are plated with Calabrian chile, yuzu kosho ranch, and chicken-mu (pickled cubes of radish).

Lelah and Kim will make their own tteok (rice cakes) for the gnocchi-inspired cacio e pepe tteokbokki, which comes pocked with Parmesan crisps and showered in cheese. Doenjang makes its way into a little gem Caesar with gim (seaweed) croutons; meatballs arrive with a loaf of fluffy milk bread.

Pastas, made on site in the dedicated pasta room, ground the menu. Instead of larger portions found at more traditional Italian restaurants, Lapaba will serve its pastas in smaller portions to let groups try a few at a time. Kim and Lelah’s ethos of integrating Korean flavors emerges in dishes like the bucatini and jjajang Amatriciana, which utilizes black bean paste. “Matt was, like, it would make so much sense to bring jajang into an Amatriciana because they’re both very heavily caramelized, very savory, rich, dark sauces,” Lelah says. Corn cheese, a popular Korean barbecue and pojangmacha side, inspired the agnolotti with thyme and brown butter, while ggaenip (perilla) gets transformed into a pesto for radiatore. Other pastas include orecchiette with gochugaru fennel sausage, garganelli and galbi jjim, and squid ink calamarata with clams.

On the opening menu, find two desserts: the BTS, a black truffle soft serve, and Tiramisu-Garu, a twist on the classic tiramisu with misugaru (Korean grain powder), makgeolli, and Jeju matcha made with black tea leaves. “You get a lot of essence of espresso with Jeju matcha,” Lelah says. For drinks, Lapaba will offer wines from across Italy and Spain, alongside a handful of cocktails, including one with sikhye, and another zero-proof option with clarified Yakult. Because Lapaba’s menu is geared toward ordering a few pastas, Lelah and Kim seem less concerned about pairing bottles with dishes and instead brought in bottles and styles that they like to drink. Alongside the wine and cocktails, Lapaba will offer sake, soju, and makgeolli.

Close-up of tiramisu with misugaru and Jeju matcha.

Tiramisu-Garu. Emily Ferretti

Kosta led the design of the interior, which centers on a U-shaped bar flanked by a handful of four-tops. A puddle-shaped window looks out onto the busy street; the pasta room glows at the back of the space, where cooks roll out noodles. While the materials for the build-out were brought in from Italy, Lelah and Kim aimed to bring more Korean touches into the space. “We really wanted to bring Italian to K-town, but also make sure we’re being respectful of the neighborhood that we’re in,” Lelah says. “I’ve been eating in K-town my whole life, essentially, especially more since marrying Matt, and the food coming out of Koreatown in LA, which is the largest Koreatown in the nation, is just incredible.” Lelah and Kim tapped local artist Claudia Choi to do an illustration of Lapaba in Korean, and help source minhwa (Korean folk art) for the room.

Lelah says that for Kim, whose parents immigrated from Korea, opening Lapaba is a full-circle moment. “For him to be able to bring Korean food to LA, which is such an incredibly diverse city, in a way that we hope is respectful to the dishes and respectful to the neighborhood and culture, is huge for us,” she says. Although the dishes on the menu aren’t exactly traditional in any direction, Lelah hopes that the unfamiliarity will help diners be more open to the kitchen’s reinventions, since they won’t arrive with preconceived notions of what the dishes should be like.

“Once they open themselves up to it, I think they’ll end up finding all of the familiarity in the dish as they’re experiencing it,” she says. “That’s kind of our goal.”

Lapaba is located at 558 S. Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90020. The restaurant opens for limited service on January 28, with a full opening on February 3 to follow.

Hand pulling apart a fried suppli at Lapaba filled with kimchi and Spam.