The Review: Obikà Mozzarella Bar

Not only was there mozzarella, my friend said, but there was burrata straight from Puglia.

I put Obikà on my list for the next trip to Italy but never got there. Obikà, meanwhile, has grown to more than a dozen locations in five countries. Two of the latest are right here — at the Westfield Century City shopping mall and at the Beverly Center in Los Angeles. Guess the founders figured a shopping mall is the closest thing in Los Angeles to a piazza. They're probably not wrong, actually, though I hate to think that's true.

Where Obikà shines is in offering a kind of fast food, Italian-style, that fresh bufala, along with excellent salumi, organic salads and a handful of well-prepared pasta dishes. The Italian wine list isn't bad either, and they make a good espresso. And all in a shopping mall. Not bad.

It's true that Nancy Silverton's mozzarella bar at Mozza was partly inspired by Obikà, but Silverton takes the idea far beyond anything the original is doing. Her menu is inventive and original, pairing familiar and unusual ingredients with the cheese to highlight its taste and texture. Obikà is more straightforward, designed for city folk who want a quick bite of something familiar.

And that would be mostly mozzarella and salumi, and I love both. I consider the time I was served an entire bowlful of fresh, milky bocconcini (bite-sized mozzarella) in Naples one of the supreme food experiences of my life. That experience can't be replicated in L.A. — we can't get cheese that fresh — but Obikà does a good job of serving up some of the freshest mozzarella around.

Obikà has the sleek contemporary looks of a caffè in any big Italian city — except where the brioche and pastries would usually be displayed at the bar, balls of bufala mozzarella bob in their milky liquid. Bufala, smoked mozzarella and burrata and lovely fresh ricotta are flown in from Italy three times a week. By the time you order, the cheeses are, on average, 48 hours old. That's fresh for us, though it would not necessarily seem so to Neapolitans or to residents of the Campania region.

But even at 48 hours old, the fresh, unadulterated cheese is pretty delicious — and very far from the typical rubbery mozzarella that's been sitting around for days. I like that you can order a baseball-sized ball of cheese and enjoy it with a plate of fine salumi of your choice. Or you can spring for the mozzarella dégustazione for two, a platter with a ball each of bufala and smoked mozzarella, plus some creamy fresh burrata. It's rare in this country to get to eat your fill of these luscious cheeses.

Taste the bufala against paper-thin prosciutto di San Daniele from Friuli in Italy's north. The ham is cut so precisely it practically melts on the tongue. Bufala has a distinctive full-bodied flavor that you won't find in mozzarella made with cow's milk, which technically should go by the name fior di latte. Because of its firmer texture, the smoked version works best with peppery Felino salame, whereas the creamy burrata pairs best with gentle pistachio-studded mortadella or culatello (the prized heart of the ham).

This part of Obikà's menu is basically an Italian picnic eaten at a table. For Italophiles, that's enough to zero in on the place as a destination, especially if you need to do some errands at the mall.

If the menu offered only cheese and salumi, Obikà would still be a welcome newcomer to L.A. But the mozzarella bar also has delicious salads generously served in glass bowls. I loved the one with bresaola (air-dried beef), orange segments, perky arugula and raw fennel, as well as one with baby lettuces garnished with cured tuna in olive oil, caper berries and olives. The salads are assembled with care and each vinaigrette is distinctive.