Why Divino matters.
Divino is a refined Italian osteria where Brentwood Village's intimate commercial character meets Florentine cooking, Adriatic influences and three decades of stewardship by Montenegrin-born chef-owner Goran Milic.
Set within Barrington Court near Sunset Boulevard and just steps from the shops lining Barrington Avenue, the restaurant occupies a tucked-away pocket of Brentwood Village below the Santa Monica Mountains, with San Vicente Boulevard extending through the neighborhood farther south and the Sepulveda Pass rising to the east. A high ceiling and oversized skylight draw daylight into the main dining room, where black-and-white photographs connect the interior with Milic's European roots. An open kitchen brings the cooking into view from the adjoining Library Room, and a smaller upstairs room extends the restaurant across a second level. White tablecloths and closely arranged tables preserve the scale of an independent osteria within the surrounding village storefronts. The result is a compact Brentwood restaurant whose skylit dining room, open kitchen and secluded position reinforce the personal character of a business Milic has directed since 1996.
What defines Divino.
Divino is best known for the three-decade restaurant career Goran Milic built from an immigrant apprenticeship into a family-owned Brentwood osteria shaped by repeated culinary work in Italy. Born in Montenegro, Milic entered restaurant work as a dishwasher in London before reaching Los Angeles and advancing through dining rooms and kitchens, including a period at Giorgio Baldi. He later became a restaurant co-owner with investor Thomas Tatum, then spent formative periods in Florence and Verona that deepened his command of regional Italian cooking. Milic opened Divino in 1996 and developed the kitchen around Italian traditions inflected by the Adriatic cooking of his Montenegrin upbringing. The restaurant subsequently brought guest chefs from Italy into its kitchen, turning those residencies into a continuing means of adding regional preparations to the repertoire. Milic reinforced that exchange through his own return trips to Italy, bringing recipes and techniques back to Brentwood as the menu changed across successive years. His wife Vanja became central to the dining room, placing the couple on opposite sides of an operation in which Goran remained chef-owner and Vanja directed much of the front-of-house presence. By 2005, Divino had already survived nine years amid a rapid proliferation of Italian restaurants across Brentwood, and in 2024 Eater marked its 28th year as one of the neighborhood's enduring independent osterias.
The kitchen's strongest dishes connect northern and Central Italian forms with seafood and ingredients familiar along the Adriatic coast. Rigatoni al ragù builds its sauce from veal and beef, giving the pasta a meat-driven foundation distinct from the lighter vegetable preparations elsewhere on the menu. Risotto all'ortolana develops another register through seasonal vegetables, and tagliata di carne carries prime rib-eye into the sliced-steak tradition associated with Tuscany. Branzino receives a whole-fish treatment from the wood oven, concentrating the kitchen's Adriatic influence around a preparation Milic has maintained as a signature. Zuppa di legumi e calamari combines cannellini, borlotti, chickpeas, lentils and farro with grilled baby calamari, placing legumes and seafood within the same bowl. Insalata di mare continues that coastal direction through shrimp, clams and calamari dressed with roasted peppers, extra-virgin olive oil and lemon. Crespelle shifts toward baked pasta filled with spinach and ricotta under a carrot sauce, showing how Divino moves between restrained seafood, vegetable cooking and richer northern Italian forms without abandoning the regional foundation Milic developed through Florence, Verona and his Adriatic upbringing.
How Divino fits.
Divino works as the anchor for an outing connecting Brentwood's postwar commercial architecture with the hilltop arts institution that reshaped the Sepulveda Pass and the ranch where one of early Hollywood's highest-paid performers built his private equestrian world.
Begin at Brentwood Country Mart, designed by architect Rowland Crawford and completed in six months before opening on November 18, 1948. Its red board-and-batten buildings drew from early American and English country marketplaces, with shops and stalls arranged around courtyards at a moment when horses still appeared among the neighborhood's means of transportation. Louis M. Sentei and A.L. Levin conceived the project as a one-stop market, and its original businesses included a post office, shoe repair shop and barber. Hollywood figures soon became regulars, with Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Burt Lancaster, Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum among the names connected with the property. James S. Rosenfield acquired the aging complex in a $30 million transaction in 2003 and undertook a restoration that returned several traditional uses to the property. Continue to Getty Center, whose creation began with the Getty Trust's acquisition of its Brentwood hilltop site in 1982 and an international architectural search that selected Richard Meier in 1984. Construction began in 1989, and the Northridge earthquake interrupted work in 1994 before the campus opened in December 1997. Meier organized the 110-acre site around the divergent axes of two natural ridges, uniting the museum with the Getty Research Institute, Getty Conservation Institute, Getty Foundation and Getty administrative programs. Artist Robert Irwin received the Central Garden commission in 1992 and developed a 134,000-square-foot work containing more than 500 varieties of plant material. Conclude at Will Rogers State Historic Park, the former ranch of vaudevillian, columnist, radio personality and film star Will Rogers. Rogers began acquiring the property during the 1920s and developed a polo field in 1926 before moving his family there in 1928. His equestrian compound eventually included a 31-room ranch house, stable, corrals, riding ring and roping arena, with 20 to 30 horses living on the property during his lifetime. Rogers died in an Alaska plane crash in 1935, and his widow Betty arranged for the ranch to pass to California after her death in 1944. The progression moves from a postwar marketplace built for Brentwood's emerging neighborhood culture through an immense late-twentieth-century center for art and scholarship and culminates at the preserved equestrian estate where Will Rogers joined Hollywood celebrity with the western pursuits that defined his public career.
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