Gusto's Tomato-Centric Lunch - L.A.

Some of our favorite summer lunches have consisted of nothing more than sliced backyard tomatoes scattered with salt and splashed with olive oil.

We recently had a similarly spirited tomato-centric lunch, albeit one that involved meat and carbohydrates and actual cooking, at Vic Casanova's three-month-old Gusto.

You'll find red sauce on the Bronx-bred chef's menu throughout the year, as his hybridized Italian/Italian-American cooking is as reliant on tomatoes as any self-respecting nonna's is. But with the candy-apple red and bruised purple hues of the summer crop offering a sweet pop in a lunch-only dish of cold farro ($12) studded with cherry tomatoes, and a savory, salty edge in a burrata-draped salad ($13), Gusto is a tomato lover's dreamland.

Casanova's gravy, made from La Valle San Marzanos, anchors a number of the pizzas and some delicious meatballs (pictured; $13), but we recommend going the pasta route. As he showed at Culina, Casanova has a way with the simplest noodle dish: pasta with tomato sauce. At Gusto, it's knotty strands of fresh tonnarelli ($13 at lunch) slicked with pleasantly spicy sauce; it's a plate of pasta that could give Scarpetta a run for its money. 

Gusto, 8432 W. 3rd St., Mid-City; 323-782-1778 or gusto-la.com