Inspired Food and Design at Santa Monica’s LA Puglia

As designers we appreciate walking into a space and immediately getting a sense of the architectural design approach. As foodies we love when a well-designed restaurant is paired up with a thoughtful menu, which is why when we saw that AIALA awarded 2021 Restaurant Design Awards (Merit and People’s Choice) to LA Puglia of Santa Monica, we were compelled to interview the owner and find out more. And we loved her story.

Valentina Bianco, owner of LA Puglia, is not only a chef but is also an interior designer. During our conversation, Valentina gave us wonderful insight behind her concept for the design of the restaurant’s space. She drew inspiration from the masserie of the Puglia region in Southern Italy, which is where she is originally from. Masserie are old farm complexes that were built as early as the 14th century. Many of them are now being converted to boutique hotels, restaurants, or residences, a shining example of adaptive reuse and sustainability.

Bianco designed and owned restaurants in Italy and wanted to bring Pugliese cuisine and aesthetic style to Los Angeles. To help make her mark in Santa Monica, she hired architecture firm Twichell Studio to work on the plans and build out her concept for LA Puglia. After completely gutting the space in 2019, it took about a year and a half to get through the rest of the design and construction. The restaurant opened December of 2020.

Bianco wanted her space to feel intimate like a masseria (singular form of the plural masserie), evoking the feeling one gets when stepping inside a lovely home. She wanted it to be inviting, light and airy and used materials such as Pietra Leccese, a stone quarried in Italy, to bring in colors from Puglia. When we visited LA Puglia, we found it to be chic with a modern European charm. The use of various greens adds nice color accents. And the projection of architectural images on the back wall is a cool touch.

As far as the food goes, guess where the next SweisKloss staff lunch is coming from? We are excited to try the Panzerotto and traditional Puccia sandwiches. As always, we encourage everyone to please support local businesses. Put LA Puglia, located at 1621 Wilshire Blvd., on your list of places to dine. To learn more about LA Puglia, click here.