Donna's

Three years in, Angelenos still descend on Sunset Boulevard thirty minutes before opening, hoping to snag a seat at Donna's, the Eastside red-sauce neighborhood joint that's worth all the hype and then some. The place feels like Cheers, if Cheers were set in Echo Park and had a cast of hipsters.

The intimate dining room is both rustic and retro, and you could spend the whole dinner getting lost in the floral wallpaper and knick-knacks you'd find at your nonna's house. But you could also very well get lost in what is one of the best garlic breads and one of the best fusilli alla vodka renditions in town. The bread, country sourdough sourced from local baker Out of Thin Air, is piled with garlic, oregano, parsley, and parmigiano. It’s decadent enough to last the meal and perfect for sopping up vodka sauce once you've stirred the dollop of whipped ricotta into your fusilli.

The menu reads like a greatest hits of Italian-American classics: fried calamari, shrimp scampi with head-on blue Caledonian prawns, stracciatella, spaghetti and meatballs (meatballs available à la carte), linguine vongole with a kick of Calabrian chili, veal piccata, lasagna, and branzino. We haven't met a dish here we haven't loved, all the way down to the cannoli, tiramisu, and panna cotta.

The bar holds up its end, too. Leading the program, Karla Flores Mercado wants to know your name and your poison; as you'd intuit, negronis, spritzes, and martinis reign here. Guests are properly sent off with a shot of limoncello to punctuate the meal. It's a class act. If you’re not a wait-in-line type of person, tables on the early side (5-ish) have been popping up the day before as of late.