'Pasta Maestro' Evan Funke Takes Over Former Joe's Restaurant On Abbot Kinney
Chef Evan Funke rolling out handmade pasta dough. (Photo: Life & Thyme for Felix)
It didn’t take long to fill the fine dining void left by the recently shuttered Joe’s restaurant on Abbot Kinney, which after a 24-year run, served its last dinner on Valentine’s Day. In what Eater LA describes as, “huge news for Venice, and anyone who's been waiting for the return of the pasta maestro,” they’ve confirmed that Evan Funke will overhaul the space—now called Felix—and be cooking by this summer.
Felix is said to be an expanded version of what Funke was doing at his critically acclaimed Bucato in Culver City—seasonal Italian with handmade pastas, whole roasted branzinos, steaks, chops and plenty of seasonal veg. In addition to this, he’ll be adding a new section on the menu, which was curiously omitted at Bucato—wood-fired pizzas.
In Patrick Kuh’s glowing review in Los Angeles Magazine, he noted that you wouldn’t find pizzas, “because perfecting those would distract Funke from the driving force behind Bucato: pasta making and the single-mindedness required to create the really good kind—the kind that’s lacy yet tensile, homey yet sophisticated.”
When it opened in 2013, LA Magazine named Bucato one of its 10 Best New Restaurants. Jonathan Gold said that, “nibbling on a plate of grilled octopus tentacles in a juicy puttanesca sauce or a bowl of Basilicata-stylestrascinati with braised duck, it is easy to imagine that you are on the terrace of a country restaurant in Italy, on the outskirts of a forgotten hill town, relaxed after a half-hour drive.”
In an abrupt departure, Funke parted ways with Bucato last May, and four months later, the restaurant closed.
Before returning to the kitchen full-time in Venice (and while Felix gets a complete makeover), Funke will be brushing up on his pizza-making skills in Naples, according to the report, and apprenticing under master pizzaiolos.
Felix // 1023 Abbot Kinney Blvd. Venice, 90291
