Actress Alison Brie is best known for her roles in “Community,” “Mad Men,” and “Glow.” But she’s recently co-written, produced and starred in a new movie called “Spin Me Around” about the pasta restaurant business. Ironically, the pasta in the movie isn’t much to brag about, but she and LA Times food columnist Jen Harris recently went on a pasta crawl in LA. Harris joined host Lisa McRee on “LA Times Today” to share some highlights. 

Harris explained how she came to participate in a pasta crawl with the Golden Globe-nominated actress and where they went.

“There’s food in [her new] movie, but it’s not great. So, we thought, why not go on a pasta crawl to try some actually good pasta around Los Angeles and talk about her film. We wanted to stay in a specific area so we could hit at least three places. We ended up going to Osteria la Buca, right by Paramount in LA, then we went over to Mother Wolf in Hollywood, Evan Funke’s place. Then we ended at Antico Nuovo in the Larchmont area,” Harris shared.

The pair ordered three bowls of pasta at each restaurant. At Mother Wolf, Harris and Brie talked about how the restaurant was important to Brie and her husband in the early days of the pandemic. 

“Evan is one of Alison’s favorite chefs in LA. She and her husband, Dave Franco, would drive [to Mother Wolf] often to get the pasta kits. And she said that Evan would actually text her husband specific instructions for how not to mess up the pasta. ... She definitely, definitely frequents that place and was in the know with the pasta,” Harris said.  

At the final restaurant of the evening, Harris and Brie enjoyed Antico Nuovo’s ravioli di nonna and piccola luna. Harris remarked how knowledgeable her companion was about different pastas. 

“When we were at the first restaurant, she was pointing out that the pasta that we started the crawl with actually reminded her more of pasta called pici, which is a thick spaghetti that she had in Italy that I’d never heard of. I was very impressed with her. She said that in between filming and while they’re filming [in Ital], they just would have pasta for lunch every day. And they traveled throughout Italy having great dinners with the cast all the time,” Harris said.

Watch the full interview above. 

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