A private dining room upstairs looks over the entire bustling ground floor with floor-to-ceiling windows. | Rey Lopez/Eater DC The first East Coast location of LA chef Nancy Silverton’s restaurant touches down in D.C. next month. Filled with glowing copper accents and lush emerald chairs, Georgetown’s iconic Dean & Deluca space has been completely transformed into the luxurious D.C. outpost of Osteria Mozza. Acclaimed chef Nancy Silverton and mega-restaurateur Stephen Starr debut the Los Angeles born-and-bred restaurant on Sunday, November 10, unveiling a combination of all three of Silverton’s California menus in one 20,000-square-foot setting (3276 M Street NW). Starr courted the massive market space for years, finally securing the lease about three years ago. Despite only being an acquaintance of Silverton’s, he immediately thought of collaborating with the West Coast chef to bring one of her famed Italian restaurants across the country. “He approached me with the idea, and it was such a great idea, and I didn’t even have to think twice about it,” Silverton tells Eater. “I think the only thing that I had to kind of wrap my head around, to be honest, is the size because I feel like it’s twice as big as anything I’ve done before.” Rey Lopez/Eater DC The retail space in Osteria Mozza filled with bright products mostly sourced from Italy, Spain, and the rest of the Mediterranean. Another challenge was integrating a retail space into the regional Italian restaurant, which was a stipulation in the lease for the historic building. Silverton made it clear from the beginning that she was going to source ingredients she believed in and actually uses in the restaurant. “When I walk into a place that has a retail shop, I just have to look at the shelves for a second to know if somebody’s doing their homework or not and just relying on a salesperson. I did my homework,” says Silverton. “More importantly, it is the producers of the product that matter.” Despite the expense of shipping in specialty items and constant restocking, she was adamant to have the best jarred vegetables, dry pasta and rice, high-quality olive oil, fresh produce, tinned fish, and even fresh Italian cheeses. “A lot of the olives that are on our menu we’ll be selling. So what’s great about it is it complements the menu,” she says. “If somebody has one of the dishes with anchovies and remarks like, ‘I’ve never had an anchovy like this, where can I get these?’ And you just point to two feet away.” While Silverton had final say on the menu and market, down to assembling how the products will be displayed, Starr has brought his classic style and go-to interior decorating firm, Roman and Williams, to the multi-faceted restaurant. Natural light pours through the large arched windows into the open first floor, covered in dark wood and marble that not only tops tables and the bar but is integrated into chips of the bright terrazzo floors. There seems to be every seating situation imaginable, with booths, two and four-tops, and softly rounded yellow benches making up the center of the dining room. In the middle of the entryway, the classic circular bar evokes the same people-watching vibes found at Starr siblings El Presidente and Pastis DC. Rey Lopez/Eater DC The round bar serves both Italian-influenced cocktails and an array of mozzarella dishes. “I think that style of bar is just more friendly, it’s more like a community looking at each other,” Starr says. “I reminisce a little bit about, you know, I grew up in New Jersey. The New Jersey area reminds me of the shore bars in Asbury Park and at the Jersey Shore, sort of a bar that everyone can stare at and talk and mingle.” On the left, the outdoor seating area that was famously busy at Dean & Deluca during the warmer months is now enclosed in glass so diners can enjoy the outdoor space year round. The Mediterranean paradise, called “the Solarium,” is filled with small olive trees, palms, and pencil cacti is mossy terracotta plants from Italy. “It’ll be great if it ever snows here again,” Starr remarks. “It’s also going to be very romantic during a snowy day.” Rey Lopez/Eater DC Homemade pottery and wine bottles line the upstairs private dining room that seats up to 21 guests. To complicate the decision on where to sit even more, the whole menu is available throughout the entire restaurant. Even Starr struggles to imagine which seat will be the most coveted. “I’m not sure about that right now,” Starr told Eater, as he sampled the menu in Osteria Mozza. “I’m in the back, right near the kitchen. I think I like that the best. But I also yearn to sit at the mozzarella ball... But right here, I’m sitting at the back, and you can see everything.” Birch Thomas A mozzarella di buffalo trio, burrata, and ricotta combinations come from the mozzarella bar. That mozzarella bar, one of the essential pieces of the original Mozza, makes up one half of the round bar sitting in the entryway. The bar seems to almost represent Silverton and Starr’s teamwork, with one side adorned with bottom lit bottles and a bartending station and the other half a mozzarella bar where diners can watch chefs build perfect milky mounds of cheese accented with anchovies, tomatoes, and peppers. “It’s really a pleasure having pretty much a legend as a partner,” says Starr. “Like having Paul McCartney help you put the show on.” The rest of the menu features classics like the thin focaccia di recco, a deconstructed Caesar served with an anchovy and leek crostini, hearty oxtail ragu-covered tagliatelle, plus mains like braised lamb neck, whole branzino, and grilled pork chops. Silverton’s innovative “California style,” as Starr calls it, shines through every dish. She’s excited to dive into D.C.’s booming dining scene, saying there’s “a lot more people pay a lot more attention” to the nation’s capital right now. They seemed to have genuinely enjoyed building the restaurant together, with Silverton likening Starr to a captain adept at commanding an “enormous crew” and him calling her an inspirational “wikipedia” of information on food. “It’s really a pleasure having pretty much a legend as a partner,” says Starr. “Like having Paul McCartney help you put the show on.” If their collaboration in this rendition of the Italian spot could extend to the rest of the country is hard to say. “I you know Mozza will will go where Mozza makes sense. So right now it makes sense in Washington,” Silverton says. “So we’ll take it from there.” Rey Lopez/Eater DC The glass-encased patio has warm mood lighting and brings nature indoors with verdant plants.