Maccheroni Republic

We had tickets to see the play "An Act of God" with Sean Hayes the other night at the Ahmanson Theater. The question was where to eat around the vicinity.  Maccheroni Republic's menu looked good. I asked my brother if he had been there before and the answer was yes and he further told me he has been there twice. I called to make a reservation. They do not take reservations so we planned to be there when they opened at 5:30 p.m. There were 3 parties of two already waiting!

This hip restaurant is not big; you have a choice of sitting inside or on the patio. We chose to be inside.  We already decided to get the Fried Calamari for our appetizer.  It was a Friday (Lent) so we could not order any meat. The question was which pasta to order so we asked our cute Italian girl who waited on us which Rigatoni to order since there were several on the menu. She suggested the Rigatoni Pom' Amore which had a creamy tomato sauce topped with Burrata. The other dish we were to split was the  Linguine con Polpo e Gamberoni which was pasta with octopus, jumbo shrimps, garlic, asparagus in a typical Mediterranean flavor. Meantime, we enjoyed the French bread which was a good start with the olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

The Calamari was disappointing. It had no flavor. Even the sauce which they call vegetable dipping was very bland. I had to sprinkle quite a bit of salt on the calamari and the sauce. It was nice and light but absolutely tasteless. We were afraid of the the following dishes being tasteless as well.

The Rigatoni arrived with a big scoop of Burrata and the Linguine came with beautiful jumbo shrimps. We both got excited. The Rigatoni was cooked aldente and the sauce, when mixed with the Burrata was very good. The Linguine was just as delicious. Sandi didn't eat the octopus. It's funny because I forgot it had octopus. It looked like little scallops to me and told her they were scallops. She thought they tasted "fishy". I loved them!

We still had time to have dessert as we ate fast. We decided to split Luisa's Olive Cake. The cake was orange blueberry served with whipped cream. We both inhaled that rather large piece of cake. It was good.

Maccheroni Republic is located at 332 S. Broadway in Los Angeles. It is opposite the Grand Central Market.

BTW, the play "Act of God" is sinfully funny. It's a one man show aside from the 2 angels. It always amazes me how someone can memorize lines and talk for 90 minutes! Sean Hayes was delightfully funny.