A friend and I caught a matinee showing of Chicago playing at the Pantages Theater, and of course lunch was involved!  We decided on a small Italian restaurant a block south of the theater called Fabiolus.  The restaurant is cozy, with every inch of wall space covered with any given Italian-themed poster.

To start, we had the bruschetta di pomodoro.  The bread was drizzled with olive oil, topped with chopped tomatoes, basil and creamy fresh mozzarella:

These guys don’t just throw some bread on your table to tide you over.  There is a small bowl of this mouth-watering olive pesto tapenade to spread on the bread:

Since the portions are ginormous, we split a pasta dish–fusilli alla ricotta with eggplant and toasted walnuts in this amazing cream sauce that isn’t too thick or too thin (I usually don’t like cream sauces, and I enjoyed this particular one):

We were far too stuffed to have dessert (unfortunately!  They had some fantastic sounding options), so we headed for the theater.  The show was dazzling, even from the cheap seats in the back (literally.  The very. last. row.)  I always love walking into the Pantages…it’s one of my favorite theaters out here.  It’s a stunning historic art deco theater that had a serious overhaul back in 2000 (I think…).

Here is the lobby:

And us after the show:

Not too shabby for a beautiful spring afternoon in LA:)