Rossoblu, from chef Steve Samson and wife Dina, was already one of L.A.’s most remarkable Italian restaurants, showcasing elegant pasta dishes and wood-grilled meats inspired by Bologna in the downtown Fashion District’s City Market South development. Rose Wilde’s 2019 arrival took dessert up a notch, adding a sweet exclamation point that draws on seasonal Italian and California influences.
Wilde began her market-driven methodology with Red Bread, which started with bicycle deliveries in 2011, operated as a Culver City café from 2013-2014, and continues to provide her with a “purely Southern California” creative outlet. She honed her plated dessert skills at restaurants like Manuela and Rustic Canyon.
Before starting at Rossoblu, Wilde hadn’t worked much with Italian desserts, though she baked breads like ciabatta, mafalda, and bigio at Red Bread. She now mines Italian dessert memories from sfoglino Francesco Allegro and Steve Samson, whose mother’s side of the family is from Bologna. “Ultimately what I’m trying to create are things that are recognizably Italian, that are simple enough that you can feel your nonna made them,” Wilde says.
The tiramisu at Rossoblu in Los Angeles. Photo: Courtesy of Rossoblu
Wilde also took a mesmerizing trip to Italy in her early 20s that still resonates with her today. She remembers devouring stracciatella gelato, drinking limoncello, and strolling through lemon groves in Cinque Terre. Artisanal pasta, Parmigiano Reggiano, and olive oil also dazzled her and continue to inform her balanced approach.
Her entry to Rossoblu’s menu was fairly straightforward. “Where are we inspired by? Bologna,” she says. “And where are we? Southern California.” Wilde researched crossover “so we can still source locally, but we’re getting really Italian flavors. I looked at agriculture first. I saw what foods are grown here that matched there.” Getting the grains right was also important. “I went with the spelt, and the Sonora and the rye we would find throughout Italian cuisine.” She also showcases nuts, which are popular in Italy.
Wilde’s family actually goes back four generations on her mother’s side to northern Italy. María Gloria Borgia Serrano Falconi was her grandmother, who passed away when her mom was still young. Wilde didn’t grow up celebrating her Italian side, but as she says, “I’ve reconnected with my inner nonna.”
“I always think about the dessert menu as a whole, because in my world, every single person is coming in and ordering all three,” Wilde says.
Pistachio ricotta cake at Rossoblu. Photo: Courtesy of Rossoblu
At Rossoblu, she typically offers three plated desserts. For instance, she currently pairs pistachio ricotta cake with rosewater whipped cream and Amaretto cherries.
Arancini dolce is a sweet play on savory fried Italian rice balls featuring fried rice pudding coated with crispy rice flour and served with vanilla cream and stone fruit (fresh-cut and jam). This felt like an epiphany to Wilde, but when she served Allegro the dessert, he said, “We have this in Italy.” She took his advice to stuff hers with luxurious pastry cream flavored with split vanilla bean and lemon peel.
Tiramisu is her take on an Italian classic born at La Beccherie in Treviso in the 1960s. The creamy dessert translates from Italian as “pick me up” and historically combines espresso and liquor soaked ladyfingers with cream and powdered cocoa. Wilde’s version is more of an “almond coffee kind of celebration” featuring light almond chiffon cake soaked with Amaretto-spiked cocoa nib coffee syrup, layered with chocolate mousse, and topped with candied cocoa nib–studded cream. She dusts the cube with powdered cocoa and plates with pitch-black dark chocolate and coffee syrup that delivers an “obsidian mirror” effect.
At Rossoblu, Wilde made seadas, a Sicilian pastry featuring sweet pasta dough stuffed with sharp Pecorino-Romano cheese and fried, serving the puffy pockets with myrtle and juniper infused honey and herbaceous ice cream. She also baked rhubarb poppy seed crostata and gooey brown butter olive oil cake co-starring macerated strawberries, basil, and salty whipped cream.
Wilde also churns decadent gelato in flavors like hazelnut praline, chocolate made with three types of chocolate, and fior di latte garnished with balsamic vinegar and cherries. Her seasonal sorbetto selection recently included passion fruit, blackberry-Lambrusco, and Meyer lemon enriched with olive oil.
Gelato at Rossoblu. Photo: Courtesy of Rossoblu
Wilde found this opportunity by following Allegro on Instagram. She’s also a pasta aficionado who teaches pasta-making at The Gourmandise School in Santa Monica. “I love making pasta,” Wilde says. “It feels like a break from pastry because you are removing a lot of the temperature requirements that become very anxious around baking, like keeping butter cold, but it’s still a lot of the same movements and ideas of building a dough.” She asked to trail Allegro at Rossoblu’s pasta station and brought donuts that impressed him so much, he recommended her to Samson. Two tastings later, Wilde got the gig.
“In Italian, pastry is the same word for both pastry and pasta,” Wilde says. Given that, they now share a workstation in Rossoblu’s basement. “I’ve absorbed a lot by looking over to the other side of the bench,” she says. “It’s been really quite a dream, personally, to share a room with someone who’s making pasta at a similar level of being so in love with their craft.”
Wilde was born in Florida and grew up in Ecuador. She returned to Virginia for high school and college at William & Mary before attending UCLA Law and working as a human rights lawyer. “Then I became a baker,” she says, laughing. “Like your mom always hopes you will.”
Arancini dolce at Rossoblu. Photo: Courtesy of Rossoblu
Being a human rights lawyer ensured that what goes on Wilde’s plates is only part of the equation. “A lot of what my job entailed was access and distribution, not only of resources, but specifically food,” she says. By researching global food systems, Wilde was “appalled by how we did things here and saw so many things here that were the same elsewhere that were problematic and really felt the need to pull back and address my community with concepts that I’ve learned in international development about empowering people and strengthening social ties.” Wilde needed a break from law and loved baking, so she entered the food world, where she remains committed to leading a “social justice kitchen.”
“I’ve tried to hire people who are either ex-cons or have substance abuse that they’re going through a program for,” Wilde says. “We’ve used CLARE and Chrysalis in past years. We’ve also made a quarterly donation to Los Angeles Food Banks for the last 12 years.” For food events, she sets aside tickets for farmers. Last year, she also helped raise $1,200 with a cake raffle for Mavia Bakery in Beirut, a business where Wilde consulted that was destroyed in the city’s ammonium nitrate explosion. (Thankfully, nobody was there on an off day.)
“It was really my attempt in this social justice aspect that we were never in a position where we were taking more from the community than we were giving back,” Wilde says. “The attempt was to close all those loops.” She’s found great support with the Samsons, who are “both very like-minded in order to support people who are disadvantaged or people who just need help.” Efforts there have included Pies For Justice and giving away groceries and baked goods to hungry people. “All food is love, but there’s something about dessert or pastry that feels a little extra,” she says. “It kind of sets the day apart. It’s really so close to a hug.”
Wilde has clearly found a happy place at Rossoblu. “So much of the ethos I like about desserts, about them being balanced, about them being approachable and being driven by the market and what you have, are the tenets of Italian cuisine,” she says. “I hadn’t realized it yet, that this is exactly where I should be.”