Osteria Monza’s round bar serves both Italian-influenced cocktails and an array of mozzarella dishes. | Rey Lopez/Eater DC After months of intensive bi-coastal training, the hybrid of all three of Silverton’s LA brands coalesce in Georgetown The glowing white doors of Osteria Mozza finally swung open on Sunday, November 10, after two years of remodeling the copper and marble covered restaurant, plus a uniquely rigorous training schedule to have every bite and interaction in the sparkling Georgetown space replicate the experience of dining at Los Angeles’ Michelin-starred Osteria Mozza, Pizzeria Mozza, and Chi Spacca. At first, Nancy Silverton was overwhelmed at the prospect of the largest restaurant she’s overseen yet, working with 20,000 square feet of bar seats, tables, upstairs private dining, and covered outdoor space. Osteria Mozza DC/Facebook The Mediterranean-themed, yellow and green dining room. “On a daily basis, I have 10 problems that I have to solve, and now it’s going to be 20 problems because it’s twice the size, twice the problems,” she tells Eater was her initial reaction. But the veteran chef was impressed by Starr’s commitment to preparing for the opening, with the past month treated like an intensive course within the finished restaurant. “He’s just providing such an infrastructure, such layers of people that really are not something that I’ve ever had in opening a restaurant,” she remarked. “We always open in a very skeletal way, and usually that last nail is hammered in, and then the doors are open and we begin. But I mean, he’s giving us an entire month of both front of the house and back of the house support and training, which is remarkable.” Dan Swartz Stephen Starr and Nancy Silverton at the D.C. opening for Osteria Mozza last Friday. A year before the space was completely ready, Starr financed the executive pastry chef, corporate chef, opening teams, and front of house staff traveling to Los Angeles and shadowing Silverton’s staff. “So I know that he wants to replicate the Mozza experience as closely as possible,” she said. If they succeed, she believes diners will “feel like they’re not in a brand new restaurant.” Meanwhile, Starr credits Silverton with creating a perfect rubric to replicate, praising how her “California-style” Italian cooking is unlike anything else. “The dishes are classics, but then she puts her own spin on it, using the local ingredients and maybe a touch of something else, outside of the Italian genre, another ethnicity in terms of the herbs or spices that just makes it unique,” he says. The new menu reflects the refined dishes at each of her restaurants, like the single, plump ricotta and egg ravioli served in browned butter at the original Osteria Mozza and the crispy focaccia di Recco that can be paired with every meaty dish at Chi Spacca. Birch Thomas This crispy, cheesy focaccia originally won Starr over, inspiring him reach out to Silverton to bring Osteria Mozza to D.C. In a city obsessed with thick, fluffy focaccia sandwiches (see the pandemic obsession and places like Fosette Focacceria, Ama, and even Dog Daze jumping on the trend), Silverton is baking up the thinner, cheese-filled variety from Ligoria, Italy, for dinner service. The yeast-less focaccia is simply made with high-quality olive oil and flour, plus water, and is pulled thin “like a strudel dough” before being filled with “a fresh cow’s milk cheese” and baked in a copper pan. While many famous West Coast Italian dishes that Silverton is known for will be on the menu, including a mozzarella bar serving the whole “family of mozzarella, that includes burrata and ricotta,” there is one new dish joining the fray. Inspired by the five-foot slabs of thin-crust pizza from bakery Roscioli in Rome, Osteria Mozza will serve large, oblong pizzas during midday lunch (which will be added in the coming weeks, along with brunch). “It’s a very thin crust, but it’s not a cracker crust. It’s a thin crust that still has some heft and some chew to it, but it’s kind of misshapen and very long,” Silverton explained. She made the switch when she realized she couldn’t fit the same wood-fired oven from Pizzeria Mozza into the Georgetown kitchen. Most of the other dishes do not stray from the Los Angeles classics the D.C. team has been extensively trained on. However, a perfectionist famous for focusing on dough for years at a time, Silverton still doesn’t think the new restaurant will operate perfectly within its first few months. She still thinks that the almost two-decade-old original Mozza and Pizzeria Mozza have “so far to go.” “When a restaurant fails, it’s because they just feel like, okay, we got there, we achieved it, and now we’ll let it go just as is... and that’s not the way we operate our restaurants.” Silverton says. “It’s like every day you get to walk in and say, ‘How do I make something taste better, look better, be better than it was yesterday?’” Birch Thomas A spicy chicken dish on drippings-soaked toast is another add from Chi Spacca. The same thing goes for a signature, as Silverton wouldn’t even speculate on which menu item could become a local favorite. “I always think it’s funny when a new restaurant with a new menu opens up and on day one, they have a signature steak, like ‘Says who?’ You know, it’s the customer that drives the signatures,” she emphasized. Silverton plans to visit D.C. often to learn which dishes fit the D.C. palate, the same way she constantly made the drive to her now-closed Orange County outpost. “In that 45 minute drive, the palate and expectation is very different than what we have in Los Angeles,” Silverton says. “That’s the only way we can tell, is by being there and having the feedback from our guests.” As for her favorite seat in Osteria Mozza, Silverton says that she “prefers standing” when she’s in one of her restaurants. The 70-year-old couldn’t stop moving across the room at the Italian spot’s opening party last week, leaving the throngs of people vying to meet the legend to go check in on the mozzarella bar and praise her chefs on the fabulous spread they had created.