Good Eats Coming to LA
Mina's take on goat cheese at XIV.
by Mollie Chen
You say Los Angeles, I think Pinkberry. But perhaps it's time I shook off my East Coast prejudices and faced the (long-established) fact that there is serious eating in the City of Angels. My former editor, who has since decamped for the fabulous Bon Appétit, writes me rapturous food-filled emails (oh my God! the farmers' markets! the weather!); she's luring me west this fall with the promise of fresh produce and a Sunday supper at Lucques.
Last week I got even more incentive to take an LA trip from two well-known chefs who are rolling out two very different restaurants. First Michael Mina came by the office to talk about his latest high-profile launch of XIV, a slick collaboration with LA hotspot-maker SBE (Katsuya, SLS Hotels). This new restaurant has all the requisite hip elements--Philippe Starck design, plum location on Sunset Boulevard--plus a novel dining concept. Mina is debuting an eating formula (one that necessitated a 34-page explanatory press book) he calls "Social Dining." I understand it as a small plates-themed Choose Your Own Adventure spot: the entire table picks a line-up of dishes, and for each course the waiters bring large silver platters with individual portions of those dishes.
To avoid the logistical nightmare that comes with any group dinner (and XIV will handle 180 seats' worth of these orders), the waitstaff will tap away at Palm Pilots, diners will keep the same flatware throughout the meal, and the 25 chefs in the massive open kitchen will have a huge plating table at their disposal. "There's no doubt it's going to be complicated," Mina says, but he wants to do away with the fussy pomp and circumstance--and the interruptions--that accompany most tasting menus.
On the other side of the spectrum, longtime LA star Celestine Drago is teaming up with Wolfgang Puck alum Matteo Ferdinandi to open a paean to Italy in the historic City National Plaza. They're in the process of turning the former bank into a sprawling 250-seat restaurant where they'll serve the kind of soulful cooking they grew up with.
When I saw the duo, they had just returned from a two-week trip that began in Venice and ended, many meals later, in Palermo. In Florence, they ate at Enoteca Pinchiorri, which Ferdinandi calls "the Rolls Royce of Italian cooking," and they also toured its legendary 140,000-bottle cellar. In Sicily, Drago's hometown, they went truffle hunting with the town's former mayor and had a private session with butcher Augustino Sebastiano, who is also the area's biggest champion of the locally raised Puerco dei Nebrodi (their answer to pata negra). In Palermo, a serendipitous run-in with a chef Drago had met years earlier ended with a memorable lunch at Piccolo Napoli. "They brought us out a whole steamed squid--not cleaned or anything. We cut into it and the squid ink and gelatin came out. Theres nothing like when you get seafood straight from the boat."
AT Drago Centro, the chef will give homey, traditional dishes a modern makeover: he lightens pizzoccheri, a rustic buckwheat baked pasta from Val d'Aosta, by using a fontina cheese sauce (but keeps the traditional potato, steamed cabbage, and sage). The chef will also serve full-flavored items like bagna cauda and bacalao ravioli with a caper and sweet tomato sauce.
And there's much more down the LA pipeline: Uber-chef Thomas Keller is moving in with a two-story Bouchon in late 2009 and Jose Andres will debut his fantastical Bazaar at the SLS Hotel sometime this winter.
RSS Feeds
Comments