Toscana

A Wine List That Earns Its Own Attention

Most Italian restaurants in Los Angeles operate a wine list as an accessory to the food. At Toscana, the relationship is closer to parity. The cellar carries 3,000 bottles and 305 selections, with declared strengths in both Italian and California wines — a combination that positions it alongside a narrow set of LA restaurants where the list constitutes a destination in itself rather than a complement. Wine pricing sits in the $$$ tier, meaning many bottles clear the $100 mark, and the corkage fee of $55 signals that the house treats outside bottles as a considered policy rather than an afterthought. Wine Director Roberto Facciolla oversees the program, with Edoardo Di Silvestri also credited in the wine team. For a neighborhood Italian in Brentwood, that level of cellar infrastructure is unusual enough to warrant treating it as the frame through which everything else here should be understood.

In the broader context of Los Angeles fine dining, wine programs at this depth tend to cluster around tasting-menu formats — places like Providence or Somni where a lengthy progression of courses provides the natural architecture for a long wine conversation. Toscana runs lunch and dinner service in a conventional à la carte format, which makes sustaining that level of cellar inventory a different kind of commitment. The list is being maintained for its own sake, not because the format demands it.

Where Toscana Sits in the Los Angeles Italian Scene

Italian dining in Los Angeles has never been a monolithic category. The city operates several distinct tiers: trattorias built around neighborhood regulars, chef-driven Italian concepts with serious kitchen ambitions, and a smaller number of establishments where the Italian reference is a regional specialization rather than a general category. Toscana falls into the last group, drawing its culinary identity specifically from Tuscany rather than from Italian cuisine broadly construed. That regional focus , with its preference for meat over seafood, restrained use of sauce, and respect for product over technique , places it in a different register from, say, Osteria Mozza, which takes a more ingredient-centric, market-driven approach to Italian cooking across a wider regional range.

The kitchen is led by Chef Miguel Martinez, whose work here operates within Tuscan conventions rather than against them. The cuisine pricing at $$$ , defined as a typical two-course meal over $66, excluding beverages , puts Toscana in the upper tier of casual Italian in the city without crossing into the tasting-menu territory occupied by higher-spend operations. That positioning, straddling approachable and considered, has sustained the restaurant's presence in Brentwood over a long stretch of time under owners Mike and Kathie Gordon.

Opinionated About Dining and What the Rankings Signal

Toscana has appeared in Opinionated About Dining's Casual North America rankings in each of the last three recorded cycles: Highly Recommended in 2023, ranked #242 in 2024, and ranked #217 in 2025. The upward trajectory in a list built on aggregated critical opinion is not decorative data. OAD's methodology weights repeat visits and expert contributor scores, meaning sustained placement reflects a kitchen performing consistently rather than one that captured attention briefly. For the reader calibrating where Toscana sits among its peer set, OAD's Casual North America list is the relevant benchmark: it places the restaurant in the same conversation as serious neighborhood restaurants across the continent, not merely in the local Italian category.

For comparison, the LA restaurants that dominate OAD's higher tiers tend toward formats with more controlled variables: tasting menus, limited seating, and longer booking windows. Kato and Hayato represent that end of the spectrum in LA. Toscana's recognition within the casual tier is a different kind of achievement, sustaining critical attention in an à la carte format across multiple years of assessment.

The Brentwood Context

San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood has long functioned as one of Los Angeles's more quietly serious dining corridors, drawing a clientele that prefers consistency over novelty and familiarity over spectacle. It is not a neighborhood where restaurants compete on the terms that dominate coverage of the city's more trend-driven dining zones. The trade-off is that the restaurants that survive here tend to have demonstrated genuine staying power. Toscana's address at 11633 San Vicente places it within a walkable strip that services both the residential neighborhood and, less visibly, a professional lunch circuit. Hours run Monday through Friday from 11:30 am to 2:30 pm for lunch and from 5:30 pm into the evening for dinner; Saturday follows the same pattern with a slightly later dinner close at 10:30 pm; Sunday lunch opens at 11:30 am with dinner beginning at 5 pm and closing at 9:30 pm.

For those arriving from elsewhere in the city or from outside Los Angeles, Brentwood requires a car or a rideshare from most central points. It is not a neighborhood naturally served by public transport, and parking on San Vicente, while present, varies by time of day. Those planning a weekday lunch will find the area more accommodating than a Friday or Saturday evening, when the corridor's restaurants fill their rooms simultaneously. Reservations are the practical baseline for dinner; the wine list alone gives reason to plan ahead rather than arrive speculatively.

Italian Regional Cooking in a Global City

Tuscan cuisine as practiced in its source region , in places like Caino in Montemerano or L'Asinello in Castelnuovo Berardenga , operates under constraints that don't translate cleanly to a Los Angeles context: ingredient sourcing, seasonal rhythms, the absence of a tourist-facing glossiness. What survives the translation in a restaurant like Toscana is the structural logic of the cuisine: dishes built around a few well-handled components rather than complexity for its own sake. Whether that fidelity holds in the specifics of the menu is a question the OAD recognition implies an affirmative answer to, across multiple years of critical assessment.

For readers building a picture of serious Italian cooking options in LA, Toscana sits in a different position from the current cohort of high-spend, concept-forward restaurants that dominate the city's food coverage. It occupies a tier defined by sustained execution, a wine program with genuine depth, and a regional specificity that narrows its ambition usefully. That is not a lesser position. In a city with as many Italian restaurants as Los Angeles, a long-running Tuscan operation that continues to appear on OAD's continental lists has answered the question of whether it belongs in the serious conversation.

Planning Your Visit

Toscana sits at 11633 San Vicente Blvd, Suite 100, in Brentwood, Los Angeles. The restaurant serves lunch Tuesday through Sunday and dinner every night of the week. Friday and Saturday dinner service runs to 10:30 pm; the rest of the week closes earlier, with Sunday dinner ending at 9:30 pm. The wine list , 3,000 bottles, 305 selections, with Italian and California strengths and a $55 corkage fee , repays advance thought: arriving with a regional Italian bottle from your own cellar or asking the wine team to guide the pairing are both viable strategies here, given the depth on both sides. For those exploring the wider Los Angeles dining scene, our full Los Angeles restaurants guide covers the range from neighborhood fixtures to tasting-menu destinations, alongside our guides to hotels, bars, wineries, and experiences in the city. For comparable Tuscan cooking at the source, Caino and L'Asinello offer the regional reference point. For those building a broader North American fine dining itinerary, the same critical framework that produced Toscana's OAD placement also covers Le Bernardin in New York, Lazy Bear in San Francisco, Alinea in Chicago, The French Laundry in Napa, Single Thread Farm in Healdsburg, and Emeril's in New Orleans.

Frequently Asked Questions

Would Toscana be comfortable with kids?

At $$$ pricing in Brentwood, Toscana skews toward adult dinner reservations rather than family occasions , manageable for composed older children, but not a natural fit for younger ones.

What's the overall feel of Toscana?

Toscana operates as a serious neighborhood Italian in Brentwood, priced at $$$ and recognized on OAD's Casual North America list (#217 in 2025). By Los Angeles standards, the atmosphere is settled and consistent rather than sceney , closer to a long-running institution than to the city's more headline-driven restaurant openings.

What should I eat at Toscana?

The kitchen follows Tuscan conventions under Chef Miguel Martinez, and the OAD recognition across three consecutive years suggests the food is the primary reason critics keep returning. Regional Tuscan cooking at this price tier tends to reward dishes built on fewer components; the wine program, with its depth in Italian bottles, is worth treating as part of the meal rather than incidental to it.