Cecconi’s Los Angeles

Cecconi’s sits on Melrose Avenue. It specializes in classic Italian seafood.

The room runs smart and elegant, but it lacks the stiffness found in the city’s more formal dining rooms. While the menu leans on traditional staples, it performs better than its neighbors because it manages the volume of the West Hollywood crowd without sacrificing the pace of the meal. Choosing a table here is a gamble on atmosphere over intimacy; you go for the energy of a room that is perpetually full, rather than for a quiet corner to hide in. It sits a fifteen-minute walk from the core of the Melrose shopping strip, a distance that keeps the tourist foot traffic at bay while preserving the neighborhood’s buzz.