Baldi, a New Steakhouse From E.Baldi Chef

Edoardo Baldi, among Hollywood’s favorite chefs, plates a dish of sweet corn tortellini at the pass in the gleaming kitchen of his forthcoming steakhouse at the Waldorf Astoria in Beverly Hills. It’s a new variation on one of his trademarks — sweet corn agnolotti — which he began serving at his late father Giorgio Baldi’s eponymous Santa Monica ristorante and is now a mainstay at his own e.baldi a few blocks away.

“My dad had at first told me, ‘You can’t do anything with corn — we feed that to the chickens,’” recalls Edo, as he’s known. “But it sold 30 portions the first night.” It’s since been much imitated across Southern California’s dining landscape.

Edo, 50, had a complicated relationship with his father, whose Italian destination even 15 years after his death is still a white-hot magnet for the likes of Taylor Swift, Meryl Streep, Justin Bieber and, several times a week when she’s in town, Rihanna. (Edo’s mother and sister now run it.) “We fought a lot,” he explains. “He always would say, ‘It’s not your time yet.’ I think he was afraid of losing me. Then I opened my own place and he saw me succeed and acknowledged it. It was beautiful to see a tough dad be so soft to his son.”

Giorgio could be withholding in other ways. He’d bake fried cookies which were, in theory, meant to be gifted to guests. “He only gave them to people he liked,” Edo says. “At the end of the night we’d have a full basket.” At the new steakhouse, named Baldi and opening for dinner Feb. 18, he’ll be making his own daily batches for his own nightly basket, which he expects will be far more freely doled out.

E.baldi, along Canon Dr., opened two decades ago. It’s known for its understated dining room and Edo’s delicately refined interpretation of Tuscan-leaning culinary traditions. “At e.baldi, the food is so light — it’s all about clarity,” explains Gavin Rossdale. “You have to be a very, very good cook to cook that way.” Before they passed, Robert Evans, Sumner Redstone, Quincy Jones and Tony Scott were regulars. Longtime patron Jeffrey Katzenberg tells The Hollywood Reporter that Edo “is an artist, a true master and maestro in his kitchen, and the restaurant makes you feel like you’re a guest in his home. I’ll be there on Day One at the Waldorf Astoria.”

Mark Wahlberg notes that “if I’m having my cheat meal, I’ll wait for e.baldi,” listing off an order of lobster carpaccio, rigatoni bolognese, langoustines — plus vegetable soup “if I feel slightly down or off or jet-lagged.” The actor-producer and serial restaurateur describes a preferred dining double-feature there: “Especially if I’m not training, I’ll have a two o’clock lunch, then wine and dessert, then another meal at five o’clock. It’s that fantastic.”

Edo has become legendary for closing e.baldi if he can’t be on-site to cook, whether due to illness or travel. “I’m emotional thinking about it,” says fellow Beverly Hills restaurateur and loyal customer Michael Chow. “That’s an incredible quality of integrity. I take my hat off.” (The proximity of the new steakhouse Baldi to e. baldi — just five minutes by car — suggests Edo will not be relaxing this policy.)

Rossdale notes that “the repeatability of the [culinary] profession is so brutal; I think that’s why I have such a connection to it [as a musician].” He adds, “so many chefs are not much in their kitchens, and I’ve never been to his restaurant and he’s not there — and I’ve been a lot.”

Edo himself is more abashed: “I have a problem with micromanaging, with obsessive behavior.” This is why, until now, he’s turned down “a lot of opportunities” from deep-pocketed fans to expand. “I always say ‘no, no, no, no, no.’”

In recent years he briefly opened a pair of casual concepts at two of billionaire developer Rick Caruso’s piazza-conjuring local malls, The Grove and Palisades Village. This full-dress, 180-seat steakhouse was a yes because of the new kitchen’s immediate proximity to e.baldi as well as his decades-spanning relationship with the Beverly Hills Waldorf Astoria’s owner, Beny Alagem. “I started serving him when I was about 18 years old, back at my dad’s restaurant,” Edo says. “He’s really like a second father.”

Alagem’s son David, who runs hospitality lifestyle programs for the family’s development firm, says the family learned from the tepid response to the previous occupant of the ground-level space — Michelin man Jean-Georges Vongerichten, known for his haute cuisine — that “people don’t want to eat fancy” these days in Beverly Hills, not even at the Waldorf Astoria. “Our bestseller on the roof is a smashburger,” he observes. “That’s why we went to Edoardo and came up with this concept. This isn’t a special-occasion restaurant. This is eating in his home.”

Well, if his home were a mansion in Beverly Park or Bel-Air. The sprawling, indoor-outdoor Baldi space is an ultra-luxe mood board of stone, marble and terracotta. There’s a serious cocktail list and a seasonal, Etruscan-inspired menu (e.g. white beans slow-cooked inside a bottle). Baldi will lavish attention on fish and vegetables but the main emphasis will be on prime cuts of beef — as well as American, Australian and Japanese wagyu — that take full advantage of the wood-fired grill.

Back in the kitchen, Edo says of the bill of fare, “it’s really going back to what the principle was for my father when he started, which was local dishes with simplicity done correctly. And that’s exactly what we’re aiming for here.”