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Eating Like Venetians at 041 Bacaro (CLOSED)

Delicious bread pillows.
Delicious bread pillows.

Replacing the not-so-BBQ restaurant in Culver City called Santa Maria Barbeque, 041 Bacaro kind of just appeared out of nowhere a few months ago. Presumably, the closure of Santa Maria Barbeque surprised no one, but the newcomer was a bit of a surprise. Calling itself 041 is an homage to area code in Venice, where the proprietor once lived and the restaurant attempts to live up to that area code.

We started out with an appetizer of Gnoccho. This fried dough was served with prosciutto and burrata and was simply amazing. Seriously, I can’t explain what made it so good, but I can tell you that it is what separated 041 Bacaro from other, more boring Italian restaurants. In fact, resent Yelp reviews tell me this is no longer on the menu, which I really hope is a lie because it is worth coming just for it.

This is what you get if you want to be full.
This is what you get if you want to be full.

Meanwhile, we also ordered two main courses. The first was their bianca pizza with prosciutto on it. It was a pretty good pizza, but simply could not stand out compared to the Gnoccho. Yet, compared to the other main course we ordered, it did a good job because at least it was enough to fill us up.

Small, but tasty.
Small, but tasty.

That other main dish I speak of was their raviolini de pollo. This ravioli in a cheese sauce both looked and tasted pretty great, but the size of the dish was truly underwhelming. I mean just look at that picture and realize that it is not an oversized plate. Let’s just say it was a good thing we were splitting the gnoccho, pizza and raviolini between the two of us or else we would have been very hungry campers.

So as I said, head over to 041 Bacaro to get some gnoccho if you still can. Otherwise, it’s a good Italian restaurant to have around, but doesn’t exactly stand out.