Bad Roman self-identifies as a maximalist restaurant.
Bad Roman is maximalist in its design. It will make its West Coast debut today (Tuesday, May 26) in Beverly Hills, with a boar sculpture and greyhound statues standing guard next to green velvet banquettes.
Bad Roman is maximalist in its attitude. Michael Stillman, CEO of Quality Branded Hospitality, remembers opening the original New York location in 2023 on the third floor of the Shops at Columbus Circle, in the wake of pandemic lockdowns.
“People wanted something fun and warm,” Stillman tells Observer. “We were like, ‘It needs to have a sense of irreverent humor.’ That’s very us. It’s like, ‘Hey, stop taking yourself so fucking seriously.’ It’s OK to have a really good time and have fun and be a little out of the box.”
Most important of all, Bad Roman is maximalist in its food. While there are other restaurants that want to be as Italian as possible, Bad Roman is about purposeful excess and about trying new things. This is an Italian-American restaurant that’s influenced by Rome, but also by the red sauce you’ll find all over New York City and the produce-forward Cal-Italian food at Los Angeles mainstays like Gjelina.
“There’s a maximalist thing to having handmade Sungold tomato chitarra but also to have pepperoni cups and ranch and then also have a traditional handmade gnocchi dish and then red sauce,” Stillman says. “Is it too much? A little bit. But if you’re not trying to overdo it with an individual dish, I think it works and is a great meal. And it flows because it’s fun and we’re not trying to be too serious.”
Chef/partner Craig Koketsu and Bad Roman Beverly Hills chef Clint Ives are in charge of an all-over-the-place menu that also features roasted garlic babka, filet mignon meatballs and la figliata. La figliata is like an oversized ball of burrata, and Bad Roman is having The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills bring this cheese in from Puglia every week. So make no mistake, Bad Roman is, in fact, very serious about the food it’s serving, while also layering cheekiness and luxury throughout its menu.
There are starters like crispy calamari casino and eggplant pull-a-Parm, which is a riff on mozzarella sticks. All the pasta at Bad Roman is made in-house, and there are baller dishes like osetra caviar gnocchi, black truffle cacio e pepe and spicy lobster campanelle. Despite all the extravagance, pricing is in line with high-end destination dining in New York and Los Angeles. There’s no silly $200 pasta here. The pepperoni cups with ranch are $14, the caviar gnocchi is $55, and you can get Dover sole for $75.
For dessert, there’s tiramisu ice cream cake. Or if you prefer dessert in the form of a beverage, there’s the reverse affogato with vanilla milk-washed vodka and espresso shaved ice.
Bad Roman is in the Beverly Hills space formerly occupied by the Palm steakhouse, and Stillman has been thinking a lot about old-school Los Angeles destinations like the Palm, Dan Tana’s and the Formosa Cafe.
“I thought about Dan Tana’s and how it’s kind of labyrinthine,” says Stillman, who doesn’t want to have outdoor dining at Bad Roman because he likes the idea of a moody supper club. “A lot of L.A. places have this sort of cool, labyrinthine feel. That’s something I wanted to create here.”
And he’s done it his way with shielded neon, a mini menagerie, curvaceous door handles that look like snakes and trompe l’oeil elements you can gaze at while you enjoy pepperoncini martinis, tequila granitas with habanero shaved ice or an aperitivo in a shot glass attached to a toy car (Ferrari, Fiat, Maserati and Lamborghini, of course).
Stillman is a second-generation restaurant operator whose Quality Branded Hospitality empire also includes New York’s Don Angie, San Sabino, Limusina and Quality Italian. Bad Roman is, in many ways, his most untraditional restaurant. But in the end, the ethos at Bad Roman is very much Italian-American. It’s about taking something familiar and changing things up and making it your own and having a great time in the process.
“It’s not just the food itself, but there’s a certain attitude, a certain nonchalance, a certain swagger,” Stillman says. “That’s very much an Italian-American restaurant feeling, to me at least.”
Bad Roman is located at 267 N.Canon Dr., Beverly Hills, CA 90210, and will be open Tuesday-Saturday from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Lunch and weekend brunch hours are coming soon.
