“This is not a restaurant,” says Daniele Uditi, addressing a crowd of 32 diners in a spacious warehouse in West Adams on a recent Sunday evening. “It might look like it, but it’s not.” Uditi wants to set the record straight, as soon as you sit down for a meal at Le Le Dinner Club.

The warehouse is outfitted with tables facing a kitchen that looks like the set of a daytime talk show. It’s meant to be a stand-in for Uditi’s home. Steam billows from big silver pots on the stove and the fire from three Gozney ovens warms the room. “When you go to a restaurant, you never meet the chef, never understand the story behind the food,” he says. “I want to be close to you and explain dish by dish and, hopefully, make you very full.”