In spring my partner booked a reservation at Nancy Silverton’s Melrose Avenue flagship to celebrate a colleague’s 20th birthday. I watched this singer take her first-ever bite of the restaurant’s legendary raviolo, her fork cutting the pasta so the yolk in the center ran onto the plate, bleeding into a slick of browned butter. “Oh, wow,” she said, and the muscles on her face stretched into reflexive joy. Mine did too. I was absorbed in my own ricotta-filled pasta — bauletti, parcels tinted green from pureed English peas, pinched into squares and served in lemony broth. Our shared dessert was a handsome bookend to the season: almond-crusted cornetto (an Italian pastry in which the croissant meets brioche) with jeweled roasted cherries and almond gelato. Her delight reminded me how much Osteria Mozza gets right, night after night: consummate service; a wine program that’s biblical in scope and depth; market-dictated salads laced with herbs, followed by an entree like duck confit with rightly acidic pear mostarda. Since opening in 2007, the selection of mozzarellas has illustrated the infinite degrees by which milk can wobble between cream and cheese. Given her status as empire builder and global food ambassador, Silverton entrusts the restaurant group’s culinary director Liz Hong, on-site executive chef Kirby Shaw and their team with the institution’s day-to-day excellence. They keep 17-year-old Mozza relevant in L.A.’s hyperdrive dining culture. — B.A.

6602 MELROSE AVE., LOS ANGELES, (323) 297-0100 l OSTERIAMOZZA.COM