I went to Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, and Chrissy Teigen's favorite Italian restaurants to compare their go-to pastas, and the best dishes were the cheapest
Rihanna and Kardashian both love Giorgio Baldi, and the reality TV star has also been spotted at Jon & Vinny's — one of Teigen's favorite restaurants in LA.
I love comparing celebrities' favorite restaurants, so I decided to try all of their favorite pastas and see which one tasted the best. Here's how it all went down.
Giorgio Baldi attracts stars on the daily (Beyoncé and Jay-Z were spotted there just this week), but Rihanna is easily its biggest fan.
The Fenty beauty mogul has been dining at the family-owned restaurant since she was 18, and has been known to stop by for dinner up to three times a week.
Rihanna often holds her media interviews at Giorgio Baldi, and once told Rolling Stone that she bought a home in the Pacific Palisades partly so she could be in the restaurant's delivery zone.
The restaurant is also a favorite date-night spot for Kardashian. She's been spotted at Giorgio Baldi with both Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, and Pete Davidson.
I've been to a number of Hollywood hot spots, including Boa Steakhouse and Catch LA (another Kardashian favorite). So I was surprised to find that Giorgio Baldi was so unassuming. There was no big neon sign at the front or a line wrapped around the corner, even on a Friday night. If there were any paparazzi waiting around for the perfect shot, I didn't see them.
The lights were dimmed, the walls were painted a soft turquoise, and the vibe was calm and intimate. It was the last thing I expected from a place loved by the most famous Kardashian.
First up in my taste test was Kardashian's favorite dish, Giorgio Baldi's agnolotti. The $30 dish — which has been on the menu since the restaurant opened in 1990 — features ravioli with sweet white corn and a white truffle sauce.
I thought the agnolotti sauce had a lovely, delicate flavor profile. But I couldn't really taste the sweet corn filling, potentially because the ravioli were so tiny that each bite just didn't make much of an impact.
Overall, the pasta just wasn't very memorable. And, for $30, I was really surprised by how small the portion was.
The billionaire's Giorgio Baldi order includes ravioli with ricotta cheese, gnocchi, and spaghetti pomodoro.
The only ravioli with ricotta cheese that I could find on the menu was ravioli con asparagi, a $23 dish that comes with asparagus sautéed in a butter sauce.
While I liked the ravioli con asparagus more than Kardashian's favorite, I was an even bigger fan of the gnocchi.
Giorgio Baldi's $23 homemade gnocchi is served with a meat or Gorgonzola sauce. I opted for the meat sauce and cheered when the plate arrived at my table with a generous sprinkle of parmesan on top.
Each gnocchi was perfectly cooked, striking that precarious balance of being soft and fluffy without turning gummy. And the thick and savory meat sauce was packed with flavor and felt warm and comforting — perfect for a winter dinner.
The spaghetti pomodoro with basil is not currently on Giorgio Baldi's menu, but they were happy to make the dish when I inquired if it was available.
And I can definitely see why Rihanna orders this dish every week. The spaghetti pomodoro might look simple, but it's bursting with so much flavor. The tomato sauce had a lovely, light sweetness to it that paired perfectly with the delicious spaghetti.
"This is maybe the best red sauce I've ever had," my boyfriend declared after taking his first few bites.
The spaghetti was also double the portion size compared to the ravioli dishes. And there are few things better in this world than a big, heaping bowl of great spaghetti.
Davidson and Kardashian loved dining at Italian restaurants in New York, London, and LA during their nine-month relationship, and they were spotted at Jon & Vinny's multiple times.
Kardashian posted pictures of the couple snuggling in one of the booths at Jon & Vinny's Fairfax location back in April, and the couple made headlines when they ordered a pizza named after Ye (the name has since been changed).
Teigen is also a huge fan of the laid-back Italian spot. She's been spotted at Jon & Vinny's with her husband John Legend and even put it on a list of her favorite restaurants in Los Angeles.
While Giorgio Baldi feels like a romantic escape you'd find in a small seaside town in Italy, Jon & Vinny is all about the California vibe.
There's light-blonde wood everywhere, along with bright green-and-white pizza boxes stacked to provide decoration and pops of color. There are no tablecloths or candlelight — Jon & Vinny's is clearly meant for a relaxed night.
I used my investigative journalism skills (aka analyzed Kardashian's Instagram picture) to determine that she and Davidson ordered Jon & Vinny's chopped antipasto salad and Margherita pizza during one of their visits. Both dishes were superb and my favorites of the night.
But I also wanted to compare how Jon & Vinny's agnolotti compared to the version that Kardashian loves at Giorgio Baldi. After all, the $19.75 dish — which features brown butter, sage, and Parmigiano cheese — is significantly cheaper.
And I far preferred the agnolotti at Jon & Vinny's. Each ravioli burst with a rich and decadent filling that reminded me of a beautiful pastry. The brown butter added a memorable sweetness, while the sage kept the flavors in balance. It was a huge hit for me, and I'd definitely go back for the agnolotti again.
Jon & Vinny's spaghetti with six-hour bolognese is a Teigen favorite, with the model once sharing a video of herself enjoying the dish on Twitter.
At $23.75, the six-hour bolognese is one of Jon & Vinny's most expensive pastas, but it just didn't seem worth the price, in my opinion.
The dish I received was overloaded with sauce and cheese, almost burying the thin spaghetti noodle strands underneath. I'd love to try this dish with mafaldine pasta, like Teigen had in her video, as it would've been a much stronger noodle for so much sauce. But even the bolognese wasn't very memorable.
"Six-hour bolognese? More like 30-minute bolognese," my boyfriend quipped.
Of the seven dishes we tried that night, the six-hour bolognese didn't even come close to making the top of our list.
It's been almost a year since my first visit to Giorgio Baldi, and I've thought about Rihanna's spaghetti pomodoro and gnocchi many times since. From the delicious noodles to the perfect sauce, they just couldn't be beaten.
Overall, though, I loved the food more at Jon & Vinny's and think it's a fantastic place for anyone who wants an affordable dinner that will still impress your date.