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Dialogue with an Epilogue

Nov01

Restaurant: Dialogue

Location: 1315 3rd Street Promenade, Santa Monica, CA 90401.

Date: September 28, 2017

Cuisine: Modernist

Rating: Tasty, but small portions and attitude

Dialogue is a new restaurant in the old Naughty Dog building on the 3rd St Promenade. It’s helmed by Dave Beran, formerly of Next and Alinea! It’s very small and solid only by ticket.

It’s on the second floor behind a hidden door in what I suspect is the hood space for the Wolfgang Puck Express (which I used to eat at 10 times a week in the NDI days).

The space is attractive, modern, and tiny. Tables are very close to each other. There is a small bar and a few tables, maybe 20 seats total.

Here is chef Dave Beran (in the middle). There is just a single tasting menu, no choice. Options of wine pairings and a $75 a bottle (gulp) corkage.

Tonight’s menu.

From my cellar: 2001 Domaine Leflaive Bâtard-Montrachet. VM 96. Leflaive’s 2001 Bâtard-Montrachet (magnum) was intensely sweet, layered and pure. It was pure magic.

agavin: fabulous wine in perfect shape.

Springtime for Sean. Well, that’s all the description they gave me. A “salad” with caviar and some nutty foie paste? It was pretty good but kinda deconstructed in texture.

NOTE: By the way, NO FLASH allowed here. I hate that because my pictures really suffer, but I can understand not wanting the tiny dining room flashing all evening.

Roasted banana tea, browned butter, peanut. An interesting shot.

Blackberry thermidor, short rib, bone marrow. Very small, interesting textures.

Fennel, white peach, and rice vinegar. Microscopic. I don’t think I loved this dish. Gooey sauce was good though.

Larry brought: 2009 Remoissenet Père et Fils Montrachet Le Montrachet. VM 96. The 2009 Le Montrachet, from a parcel on the Chassagne side, is fabulous. Layers of exotic, tropical fruit flow effortlessly from this broad-shouldered, kaleidoscopic wine. There is plenty of freshness in the glass to support the fruit in this magical, captivating wine. I especially like the way this turns delicate, subtle and refined on the finish.

agavin: our bottle was advanced. Drinkable, but pretty deep golden with sherry notes.

Dragonfruit, scented with roses from early spring. This 0.75″ cube of dragonfruit was ridiculous and didn’t even have much flavor.

King crab, popcorn, orchid, earl grey tea. This was interesting. It really tasted of popcorn (not so much of crab) and had that interesting blend of dehydrated crumble and gooey texture. Pretty good actually.

Burnt lettuce that thinks it’s a peanut. No idea where that description fits in. Can’t even remember what it was.

96 hour koji plum, fresh yuba, thai basil. One of my favorite dishes. Very interesting flavors, very Thai in tone, but not in texture. The yuba is a soy milk skim I used to call “skum in a bucket” but I have always liked it. A very soft tofu skin.

Erick brought: 1995 Domaine A.-F. Gros Richebourg. VM 94. Deep red-ruby. Reticent but very ripe aromas of red and black fruits, licorice, truffle and smoke. Fat, suave and multilayered; less immediately sweet than the huge Clos Vougeot but more refined. A complete wine, with an uncanny harmony of components. Finishes with extremely fine tannins that coat the entire mouth. Totally different in shape from the Clos Vougeot: some tasters may prefer that wine for its sheer size and sweetness, but this is superb Richebourg.

agavin: very nice!

Squab, thai long peppercorn creme fraiche, begonia.

Bitter chocolate, cherry, preserved sakura. I have a friend named Sakura (I think it’s a kind of flower).

The sobering of rhubarb. This was actually a gold colored rhubarb fruit rollup. Tasted like sour cherry fruit rollup.

Choy sum, strawberry nahm prik, cashew. Like a mini salad.

Pork belly, nasturtium, strawberry sambal. I liked this dish. Interesting textures.

These are 2 of the wine tasting wines. I didn’t like them, too many herbal notes. Many of the tasting wines are blended with stuff like fruit juice and vinegar too. I can see how they might pair, but they aren’t really that enjoyable even to a wine geek (at least from these 2).

Black cod, yuzu kosho-beurre blanc, sea grape. Not bad but tiny fish dish.

Anthony or Larry brought: 1994 E. Guigal Côte-Rôtie La Turque. RP 96-98. The great glories of this house are its Cote Roties, of which there are now five separate offerings. The single-vineyard 1994s were singing loudly when I saw them in July. All of them scored significantly higher than they did during the two previous years, which is not unusual as Guigal’s upbringing (elevage) of the wines results in better examples in the bottle than in cask. All three wines flirt with a perfect score. At this tasting, they reminded me of Guigal’s 1982s – opulent, sumptuously-textured, forward, rich, precocious, flattering wines that will drink well throughout their lives. The exotic 1994 Cote Rotie La Turque exhibits a dense purple color, and a fabulously-scented nose of licorice, Asian spices, truffles, minerals, and gobs of black fruits. Full-bodied, with great richness, a multi-layered personality, and an exotic, overripe character, this is a sensational, chocolatey, rich wine with more tannin than La Mouline.

Anthony or Larry brought: 1995 E. Guigal Côte-Rôtie La Turque. RP 100. One of the treats when tasting through the profound Côte Rôties made by Marcel Guigal was the opportunity to taste all of the bottled 1995’s. Reviewed in previous issues, they are even better from bottle than they were during their upbringing (a characteristic of many Guigal wines). The 1995 Côte Rôtie la Turque is the stuff of legends and is every bit as compelling as readers might expect. This single vineyard wine will have at least 2 decades of longevity.

Everything is burnt. Not my favorite either. Tiny too.

The next dish came on a weird candle holder multi-tier “plate.”

French onion soup, rosemary aroma. Pretty good, did basically taste like a French Onion Soup tako-yaki.

Sebastian brought: 2006 Colgin IX Estate. VM 95. Bright ruby-red. Exhilarating nose of wild berries, wild sage, bay laurel and flowers. Wonderfully dense and sweet, but with an extraordinary light touch to the black fruit, floral and spice flavors. A terrific core of ripe acidity gives the wine outstanding inner-mouth lift and extends the finish, which builds inexorably. The tannins are firm but fine-grained. The best vintage to date for the winery’s estate vineyard overlooking Lake Hennessey, which was planted in 2000. In fact, this is extraordinary for five-year-old vines.

Memories of a tomato salad. Yeah. Texture of jellyfish.

Whipped Persimmon, lemon shortbread, hibiscus sugar. Interesting.

Ages of seedling farms apples, miso caramel. This was a nice dish.

An autumn morning.

A carrot pulled from the snow. It wasn’t cold. A candied something. Not that memorable.

Overall, Dialogue was “interesting.” Let me break it down.

Setting: Nice enough. A little cramped, but big kudos for being so close to my house and brave for opening a tasting menu restaurant on the 3rd st Promenade!

Food: Taste was all over the place from just “hmmm” to quite good. Per dish portion size was too small. They don’t need to be huge, but these were so small they left little memory of the taste. Textures were very interesting but sometimes the dishes felt a bit discombobulated. Overall food quantity was WAY too small. We had to go to second dinner (you shall see).

Service: Chef himself was nice. The Somm had quite an attitude. They rushed us out. There are 2 seatings, which I can understand from a business perspective, but they pretty much threw us out at the end even though we were still working on our wines. That just isn’t fine dining.

Wine Policy / Service: Limited wine list. Expensive ($175) weird pairings. $75 a bottle corkage. The corkage is a little high but at least they don’t have per table limits — a retarded policy I have lambasted before. This would all be okay if the Somm hadn’t made us feel like he was doing us a favor by allowing corkage. He was very stingy with glasses, complaining that they were going to run out even though we could see them on the shelf. If it’s really a problem they need more stems. We only had 2 each when he was complaining and $75 X 6 bottles really deserves more than 2 stems.

If they change their menu frequently I’ll try it one more time, but I think right now it would be best for couple or something. It really isn’t setup very well for wine dinners.

So being hungry we walked down to Capo!

The room was packed even at 9 something.

Steaks on the grill.

Unlike the Dialogue Somm this one was very friendly and the list is huge. I asked the Somm for a reasonable and older village wine and got this nice bottle.

2000 Domaine Ghislaine Barthod / Barthod-Noëllat Chambolle-Musigny. BH 88. Beautifully pure Chambolle fruit with good harmony. This too is quite supple and not especially complex but it is extremely elegant and fine. Essence of pinot character. Give this 3 to 4 years in the cellar and drink it over the next 3 to 4.

Bread.
Seb got sea bass because he was being “good” — or maybe because sea bass sounds like Sebastian :-).

Carbonara.

Ragu.
Buccatini with lamb ragu. My favorite!

For more LA dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
Comments (1)

Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Corkage, Dave Beran, Dialogue, Foodie Club, Wine

Seconds at Chi Spacca

May29

Restaurant: Chi Spacca [1, 2]

Location: 6610 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90038. (323) 297-1133

Date: April 17, 2017

Cuisine: Italian Steakhouse

Rating: Rich but delicious, a carnivore’s paradise

The little Mozza empire on Melrose now includes the Pizzeria, the Osteria, Chi Spacca, and Mozza 2 go. They do a great job with all their restaurants but their annoying corkage policy (2 bottles per table!) has limited my ability to attend. I only go to this sort of place with my wine groups (my wife being a near vegetarian) and so the limits make it near impossible. But anyway we managed to organize a small group after months of planning.

Chop chop.

The menu.

The small room.

The smoky in the room grill.

I ordered this off the menu.

2015 Bisci Verdicchio di Matelica. 91 points. Bright and crisp, very minerally. Nice summer wine. Great food wine too.

Grilled Octopus. pureed & fried ceci, parsley leaf. Very soft tender octopus. Basically as good as grilled octopus gets (which is pretty good).

From my cellar: 1974 Gaja Barbaresco Sorì San Lorenzo. 95 points. One of the stars in this tasting, the 1974 Barbaresco Sorì San Lorenzo is quite a bit fresher and also more powerful than the 1971. A huge core of fruit hits the palate, followed by savory herbs, leather, tobacco and smoke. The 1974 remains powerful and virile, with fabulous intensity for a wine of its age and a compelling interplay of tertiary nuance, dense fruit and plenty of structure to back it all up. Readers lucky enough to still own the 1974 can look forward to another 5-10 years of very fine drinking.

Focaccia di Recco. Fett’unta. Super light, crispy cheese “pizza.”

See the cheese, feel the cheese. Very very salty though.

Smoked burrata & roasted parsnips. garlic, thyme, honey. Okay, but arguably the most disappointing dish tonight (most were awesome).

1995 Tua Rita Redigaffi Toscana IGT. Big!

“Moorish” lamb shoulder chop. mint yogurt, cilantro.

mint yogurt.

A special salad of citrus, kiwi, etc.

2005 Château Cos d’Estournel. VM 97. I have been fortunate to taste the 2005 Cos d’Estournel three times in recent weeks and it has never been anything less than stunningly beautiful, as it is once again on this night. The interplay of dark, ripe fruit and the more mineral, savory-inflected nuances typical of Saint-Estèphe yield a compelling, wonderfully complete Bordeaux that simply has it all. An exotic mélange of graphite, gravel, smoke, cured meats and dark-fleshed fruits flow through to the explosive finish. Riveting today, the 2005 Cos will continue to thrill those fortunate enough to own it for several decades. Given its price vis-à-vis many of the high-flying wines of the year, the 2005 Cos remains a terrific relative value in its class.

Costata alla Florentina. Dry-aged bone-in New York steak. Solid beef.
2000 Harlan estate. VM 93-96. he 2000 Harlan Estate is in a beautiful place today. Soft, open-knit and nicely mellowed by age, the 2000 is absolutely gorgeous, with soft contours to match is engaging personality. Mocha, black cherries, leather and spice are all quite forward in this succulent Harlan Estate. The 2000 might not be a profound Harlan Estate, but it is a striking wine that is peaking today and that should continue to drink well for at least another few years.

Tomahawk Pork Chop. fennel pollen. The top (far) part is the pork chop itself, wonderfully tender and with a lovely flavor. The bottom long parts are the pork belly, similar flavor but WAY richer.

Roasted cauliflower. crushed lemon bagna cauda. Excellent!

Roasted potatoes. Lardo, rosemary. Flower of sliced crispy potatoes.

2004 Harlan Estate. VM 95+. Bright ruby-red. Superripe aromas of raspberry, currant and tropical dark chocolate. Sweet, lush and large-scaled, hinting at surmaturite and compellingly mouthfilling without coming across as heavy. This extremely ripe wine’s high pH seems fully buffered by huge dry extract. Finishes with big but lush tannins and outstanding palate-staining persistence. A bit port-like but with mineral and licorice notes giving it definition and grip.

Beef & bone marrow pie. beef cheek, cippolini, funghi. Wow! Like the ultimate beef pot pie — and I mean ultimate. Salty, though, like almost everything here.

Mashed potatoes.
The dessert menu.

1986 Château d’Yquem. 96 points. Deep honeyed gold colour. Nose of burnt carameled toffee, soaped new leather car seats and shoe leather, white shoe cream, apricots…very suave but complex. Palate is gorgeously honeyed, rounded, almondy burnished copper and with a medium-cut acidity to stop it getting cloying. Tooth-coating. Massive head-expanding resonance and reverberance and all so smooth-edged… quite silence creating. Wow! Hard to stop sipping. It just gets more head-expanding with more time in the glass and the mouth.

Banana cream slab. hot caramel. Even I loved this, and I hate bananas.

Butterscotch Budino. sea salt & rosemary pine nut cookies. OMG, I love these creamy puddings. I ordered an extra too just for myself.

Cocoa Nib Caramel Tart. whipped creme fraiche. Rich.

Seasonal Gelati & Sorbetti. Pistachio and I can’t remember what else.

Seasonal Gelati & Sorbetti. Passionfruit (great) and others.

Overall, I thought the food at Chi Spacca was quite awesome, if not exactly authentically Italian. Certainly more to my taste than any normal steakhouse. They should import some pastas over from Mozza though :-). From the menu I thought prices looked crazy, but the total turned out to be reasonable ($130 a person before tip) even though we went to town. Really to town as the above was for 6 people! It was salty though. Extremely salty.

Service was great too, and the atmosphere fun. My only complaint is with the bottle limit. The $30 corkage is fine. But the 2 bottle hard limit, apparently strictly enforced, is quiet annoying. It totally breaks down for wine dinners. Their list has interesting Italians, but the wines are too young. Plus I just resent having to buy off wine lists altogether (beyond the occasional white or rose). If they priced a fixed $30-50 markup, and had my kind of wines, it would be fine, but they always use a multiplicative markup. I’m not paying $400-600 for a $200 bottle!

For more LA dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
Comments (5)

Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Chi Spacca, Corkage, Gaja, hedonists, Italian Cusine, Meat, Steak, Wine

Bestia – Bring out the Beast

Sep21

Restaurant: Bestia

Location: 2121 E 7th Pl, Los Angeles, CA 90021. (213) 514-5724

Date: September 17, 2015

Cuisine: New Italian American

Rating: Super tasty, super hip, and a good bit of attitude

Bestia has been on my “to eat at” list since it opened. Opinions generally include the sentiment that the food is great. Some adore it. Some think the place has too much attitude and is too hard to get into. I wanted to see for myself.

It’s located in the Arts District, near Factory Kitchen. Funny to see much energy in an area of town that was nigh on terrifying 10 years ago. But urban renewal is a good thing.

The interior is typical in recent years, brick factory building, I-beams, hard tables.

Open kitchen too.

We sat outside on the porch. It was a lovely evening and this was great because it was a perfect temperature and not nearly as loud as inside.

The menu, with our marked up orders.

We ordered so much that we swore a pact to reaffirm our commitment to hedonism.

2013 Alberto Nanclares Albariño Soverribas. 93 points. Medium gold colour. Mature nose with medium intensity aromas of quince, ripe peaches, very ripe yellow apples, savoury yeast, lemon peel and hints of neutral white flowers.

A very nice Albarino we ordered off the list. A very nice food white. I have some issues with the wine service, but more on that at the bottom.

Smoked Whitefish Crostino. Dill, potatoes, scallions, fresno chillies, celery leaf. An early start on Yom Kippur break fast! Very nice.

Veal Tartare Crostino. shallots, parsley, lemon, tonnato sauce. This was even better, super meaty, totally delicious. The grilled bread was amazing.

Pan-Fried Ciccioli. pickled fenne, candied kumquats, crème fraîche, pea tendrils. Our first server, who was awesome, recommended this. Wow! Like a pulled pork confit crab cake (no crab). Oodles of fatty goodness. In case that wasn’t obvious, the brown stuff is a “cake” made of heavy rich pork meat cooked in some kind of fat and then pan fried.

From my cellar: 1998 Poderi Aldo Conterno Barolo. 93 points. Initially quite tight with reductive nose, some tar and rose petal. Middle weight palate, that at first seemed to lack a bit in fruit, but then flowered brilliantly. Nice perfume of dark fruits, some tar, rose petals. Good structure. Drinking well now with very nice balance. Not overly tannic. Aldo was a genius.

Salumi. chef’s selection of house-cured meats, mostarda, grilled bread. All sorts of pig. All amazing. Left to right: prosciutto crudo, salami, lardo & fig jam, prosciutto, some kind of head meat. The far right was my least favorite. The pinker prosciutto was amazing, and the smoked lard toast was out of this world!

Burrata pizza. san marzano tomatoes, castelvetrano olives, oregano, fermented chilies. A wonderful pizza in the current style. I normally like some meat on my pizza, and not olives, but this was bright, acidic, and delicious. Another recommend from the excellent server.

Mussels and Clams. housemade spicy ‘nduja sausage, fennel seed, preserved orange, grilled bread. A 10. The sauce had all that salty, sausage, spice, tomato acidity awesomeness. We kept a bunch of grilled bread to dip in it.

Quadretti alla Carota. mushroom ragu, summer squash, squash blossoms, carrot puree, carrot tops. My least favorite pasta, but still nice, and quite rich for a non meat pasta.

From my cellar (picked by Seb): 2006 Fattoria Poggio di Sotto Brunello di Montalcino. AG/Parker 97. The 2006 Brunello di Montalcino is an explosive, structured wine bursting with dark fruit. It is one of the most inward, brooding wines of the vintage. Black cherries, menthol, spices and new leather are some of the nuances that flow as this expansive Brunello literally covers every inch of the palate. This is a totally mesmerizing, sublime wine of the highest level.

agavin: A great wine, although it took a few minutes to get going (no surprise).

Roasted Marrow Bone. spinach gnocchetti, crispy breadcrumbs, aged balsamic.

I didn’t even realize this was sort of a pasta, but you dump the bone marrow on the gnocchetti and stir up. Nice, rich, mild.

Cavatelli alla Norcina. ricotta dumplings, housemade pork sausage, black truffles, grana padano. This was one of my favorite pastas during my recent month in Italy. This rendition had the right ingredients, and was very good, but it wasn’t as rich as a really good one in Umbria and was lacking the creamy cheesy strong truffle intensity. Instead it came off a bit more buttery, less cheese. Also in Umbria they pile on the truffles.

Spaghetti Rustichella. lobster, sea urchin, garlic, calabrian chilies, squid ink bottarga, breadcrumbs. But this was to die for. Almost a rich uni Gauzetto sauce. Just awesome umami brine yum. Perfectly al dente too.

From my cellar: 2007 Paolo Bea Sagrantino di Montefalco Secco Pagliaro. 94 points. A rich, sumptuous wine that totally covers the palate with dense, dark fruit. The Pagliaro is impressive in the way it achieves superb density while retaining the elements of delicate, nuanced subtlety that inform Bea’s finest wines. This is a fabulous effort from Bea. 46 days on the skins, followed by a year in stainless steel and two years in cask.

I actually brought this because they had pasta norcina on the menu!

Pici al Sugo di Agnello. lamb ragu, saffron, capra sarda, fig leaf, breadcrumbs. Another stunner. So rich, meaty, lamby. Really fabulous stuff. Great thick al dente bite to the pici too. One of my favorite pasta shapes.

Grilled Pork Tomahawk Chop. served family style. $80 for 37 ounces of meat, but we had to get it. Perfectly cooked. Fatty, but not obviously so. Rich. Delicious. Just a wonderful slab of meat. Not as strongly flavored as the similar Chi Spacca version, but great too.

Grilled long beans. Came with the pork.

The wine lineup, all awesome.

Maple Ricotta Fritters. maple butter ganache, sour cream and huckleberry jam ice cream. Some awesome fried goodness, totally notched up by the ganache and ice cream.

Valrhona Fair Trade Bittersweet Chocolate Budino Tart. salted caramel, cacao crust, olive oil, sea salt. Wow this was great. Soft rich chocolate boosted by the salt and olive oil. A bit like some of Jose Andre’s olive oil chocolate desserts.

Butterscotch Coconut Tart. fresh coconut sorbetto. Not bad, but I was dissapointed as I expected something more “coconut creme.”

Overall, an awesome night. But I’ll break it down.

Ambiance: Exactly what you’d expect from a super trendy DTLA spot in 2015. It’s all there, the rough surfaces, open kitchen, naked wood tables, paper menus, loudness, etc. I suspect if we were inside I would have found it too loud.

Food: Great food. Really quite excellent. Not mind blowing or totally innovative, but a sort of 2014-5 blend of “faux rustic” Italian with gastro pub and other current LA/NY sensibilities. The flavors have been brightened and punched up. There is more of a “grill” thing going on. It isn’t very authentically Italian, but takes itself in a different direction.

Service: General wait service was very good, although not formal. Oddly we had two waiters. Our first one was awesome and not only recommended some good changes but coursed it out really nicely. After ordering he was mysteriously replaced by another guy who was totally fine, but didn’t stand out as much.

Attitude: There is a bit of attitude. It’s hard to make a reservation and hard to move. They didn’t want to seat us partially even though the place was half empty still. The whole wine policy shows attitude. But overall it didn’t bother me too much and they did lean toward customer service.

Wine Service & List: Here were the biggest problems, although admittedly I come at it with a particular viewpoint. Let’s start with pure service. They decanted, if unconventionally into magnum bottles. Stems were mediocre, just regular small crystal tasting stems. They didn’t appear to have good ones, but they gave us 3 each of the little ones without complaint. They didn’t really pour for us, but I don’t like that anyway when we have a small group. Now onto the list. Not a big fan. It’s very small, hard to read, and has extremely few wines for a very good restaurant. The wines it does have re mixed. Far, far too many new world wines. They don’t belong here. Way too few Italians. I couldn’t even find an Italian white at a price I was willing to pay and there were only 5 total. We ended up with the Spanish Albarino (which was very good), but there is no reason for that given the outrageous number of inexpensive but nice Italian whites. Prices were about 3X retail which is a little higher than I’d like (2X would be nice) but not outrageous. There were very few “very good” wines. Most of the bigger reds were way too young. I know new restaurants don’t want to invest in a big inventory, but these are all part of the reason I almost never buy off wine lists. If you are a serious wine guy, and you know prices you just can’t bring yourself to do it.

Corkage: From up on my soapbox, this is a sore spot. All my wine friends talk about how Bestia isn’t really wine guy friendly. It’s sort of middle road. I had to call for the policy and it was first two bottles at $30 and after that $50. While relieved there was no limit (don’t get me started on limits, those are asinine), the hike to $50 is annoying. Really. Particularly given that I opened and poured the bottles myself. I realize they need to make money on the wine, but $30 seems a reasonable max. This isn’t Providence/Melisse type wine service. There also seemed to be an undocumented “can’t bring a wine on the list” rule. Given the list changes everyday and isn’t online, this seems unreasonable. But that being said, the Somm told us he doesn’t enforce it. So why have it? Also to their credit, Bestia made an accommodation for us. There was a little eye rolling with it, and some general somm-attitude, but their actions and words (if not tone) indicated they put customer service first. And after all, tone is just tone so I found this amusing. In the end, they did right by us. But still, one doesn’t get the feeling that Bestia would be a great place to host a Foodie Club type event. At those we have too many bottles to handle more than maybe $10-15 of corkage. Maybe they’d cut a deal, but I think they think they’re too popular to need to. A shame, because the food is amazing and it’d be a fun place to do that sort of thing.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
Comments (8)

Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Bestia, Corkage, Dessert, Genevieve Gergis, Italian cuisine, Ori Menashe, pasta, Wine

Spear your Meat

Feb13

Restaurant: Spear Steak & Seafood House

Location:800 W 6th St, Ste 100. Los Angeles, CA 90017. (213) 688-3000

Date: February 12, 2015

Cuisine: Steakhouse

Rating: Surprisingly good

After the success of last month’s “Foodie Club instigated by Will” dinner, we wanted to do another one in February. We even selected and booked Chi Spacca, the Mozza Italian steakhouse, but at the very last minute (hours before) we tripped up on their “no more than 1 bottle per 2 people” policy. So I’m going to “dis” them here because these policies are obnoxious. They can charge corkage if they like (absolutely no more than $50 a bottle and flat per bottle), but bottle limits are offensive. We open and serve own bottles plus order and tip big too.

So screw them, their loss.

So at the last minute we relocated to Speak Steak and Seafood House downtown. Will knows the owner and THEY welcomed us in, had no bottle limit, and didn’t even charge corkage!

This is one of those sleek modern semi-corporate restaurants.

The menu is large and modern which I was happy about. I’m not a steakhouse fan and really not a fan of old school steakhouse.

Or semiprivate room. We buttoned up the wall to cut down on the noise from the big room. The service was awesome. They weren’t really set up for our type of wine dinner but they really tried. They dug up 4-5 glasses each and dragged in a little wine table for us.

I went through the menu and ordered up a storm family style in 4-5 waves. We even ordered the main meats family style getting a variety (David handled that course). Walker and I (more Walker) divided the wines (we had at least 6-10 unopened ones too as backups/options) into loose flights too.

The staff did a great job bringing out the food in waves too.

Flight 1: Whites

From my cellar: 2007 Benanti Etna Bianco Superiore Pietramarina. IWC 90. Straw-gold. Spicy minerals and apricot on the nose, with herbal and almond nuances. Rich and ripe on entry, then fresher and lighter in the middle thanks to high but harmonious acids, with intense minty white fruit flavors. Finishes long, with a strong saline note and a fusel whiff.

Erick brought: 2007 Domaine Marc Morey & Fils Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Referts. 92 points. This lovely négoce wine from Marc Morey never fails. Very fine fruit with lime, peaces and a hand full of minerals.

Larry brought: 1999 François Raveneau Chablis 1er Cru Montée de Tonnerre. AG 94. Raveneau’s 1999 Chablis Montée de Tonnerre is in a marvelous spot right now. Petrol, smoke, slate, apricot pit and wild flowers are some of the many notes that grace the palate in an utterly vivid, vibrant Chablis endowed with magnificent purity and pedigree. At fifteen years of age, the 1999 Montée de Tonnerre still has a lot to say. What a beautiful wine!

agavin: sadly our bottle was a bit premoxed.

From my cellar: 2000 Etienne Sauzet Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet. Burghound 93. Intense honeysuckle, fresh sliced peach and pear notes with flavors that are not quite as robust and powerful as the Combettes yet finer and more complex. This delivers exciting intensity and a degree of persistence that borders on the astonishing. The Combettes is perhaps grander but this is finer – it’s simply a question of preference, not quality.

Kusshi and Kumamoto oysters.

Uni Toast. roasted seaweed, triple créme, truffle salt. This was pretty awesome with both the rich Santa Barbara uni flavor and a kind of creamy underpinning from the triple créme.

Hokkaido Scallops. yuzu pepper, smoked salt, ponzu sauce, olive oil. A nice bright dish that is cousin to the proper version that sushi chefs serve.

Yellowtail Ceviche. fresno chile, cucumber, coconut-lime sauce.

I’m not actually sure this was the above dish and not one of their other sashimi-style dishes. It was just okay, the weakest of the set.

Butter Lettuce Wedge. Creamy bleu, minced herbs, bacon brittle, tomato, pickled shallot. A pretty awesome wedge, mostly because of the great dressing.

Quinoa Kale Salad. red quinoa, grilled apricot, pistachio, aged goat cheese, honey-olive oil vinaigrette. Slightly sweet and mild.

Flight 2: Italian

Walker brought: 1944 Borgogne Barolo Reserva. 95 points. Amazing. 71 years old. Mussolini was still alive when this wine was made! We decanted for an hour. The nose was incredible, and it had a soft burgundian vibe with lots of fruit.

Emil/Will brought: 1978 Castello di Monsanto Chianti Classico Riserva Il Poggio. 92 points. Powerful and old-fashioned, rustic and polished at once. Complex nose of ancient fruit, tar and leather; real weight on the palate, very long and resonant finish. The nose got better and better. Tons of fruit.

Roasted Bone Marrow. smoked salt, veal jus. Bone marrow isn’t my thing, but this was a good version.

Snow Crab Beignets. bacon powder, old bay remoulade. The description is accurate, like a crab donut, awesome.

BBQ Pork Belly & Shrimp. crispy prosciutto, white bean puree, cilantro. The shrimp were tasty but the pork belly was amazing. Really tender and flavorful, not too fatty.

Flight 3: Old Bordeaux

Erick brought: 1970 Château Mouton Rothschild. IWC 94. Bright red with an amber rim. Captivating nose of dark plum, blackcurrant, oak, coffee, cocoa and flowers. Juicy, sweet and suave on entry, then brightly focused in its red fruit and black flavors complicated by cedar and citrus. Finishes with flinty, saline nuances and very suave tannins. This outstanding wine is perfectly balanced and light on its feet, still very young and capable of a very long life. It might disappoint those looking for a blockbuster, but I love its overall sense of refinement. An essence of claret.

agavin: our bottle was fabulous

Walker brought: 1982 Château Gruaud Larose. IWC 96. Bright red with a pale rim. The still-closed nose reluctantly releases aromas of red cherry, sweet spices, aromatic herbs and coffee. Dense, rich and fleshy, with ripe red cherry, tobacco and forest floor flavors given shape by harmonious acidity and smooth tannins. The very long, slightly chewy finish shows a peppery chocolatey persistence. This is developing at a snail’s space and might last another three or four decades in a cold cellar, but while its tannic structure is noble and impressive, I’d probably want to check in on it again in five years’ time to see how the fruit is holding up.

agavin: our bottle of this was fabulous too. Mature, but has decades left in it.

Char Siu Barbecue Duck Flatbread. smoked mozzarella, passion fruit emulsion, scallion sesame. Fabulous pizza with a richness and a sweet and savory vibe.

Roasted Pork Banh Mi Flatbread. pickled vegetables, jalapeño.

Whole Broiled Prawns. lobster butter, garlic. Pretty good big shrimp.

Seafood pasta. Shrimp, mussels, manilla clams, diver scallops, uni cream sauce. This was a bit controversial. The noodles were actually a ramen egg noodle. They were made very soggy by the rich dish. That being said, it tasted great and the seafood was very fresh. It also was deathly bad with the red wine, but that’s uni. Overall we enjoyed it.

Flight 4: 2000 Bordeaux

David brought: 2000 Pavie. Parker 97-100. I tasted this wine twice during the 2000 horizontals, then I actually popped the cork and drank a half-bottle of it. This wine remains, for me, one of the compelling success stories for proprietor Gerard Perse. An extraordinary effort made from a blend of 60% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Franc, and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon from the limestone soils that dominate this very distinctive terroir, the 2000 Pavie has moved out of the closed, dormant, broodingly backward stage into an adolescent period where one can see its extraordinary vibrancy, and great complexity as well as potential. It boasts an unctuous display of rich, cedar box-infused cassis fruit and liquid minerality. The tannins have sweetened, yet the wine has thirty years of longevity and potential evolution. A beautiful wine of great mass as well as elegance, it is good to see the extraordinary efforts that Gerard Perse and his team have made confirmed in this prodigious wine. A legend now … a legend for the future.

Will brought: 2000 La Mondotte. Parker 98+. In two tastings this garagiste wine performed as if it were one of the wines of the vintage. Proprietor Stefan von Neipperg continues to lavish abundant attention on La Mondotte (as he does with all his estates), and the 2000 (80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc) boasts an inky/blue/purple color in addition to gorgeous aromas of graphite, caramel, toast, blackberries, and creme de cassis. A floral component also emerges as the wine sits in the glass. Extremely dense, full-bodied, and built for another twenty years of cellaring, I thought it would be close to full maturity, but it appears to need another 4-5 years of bottle age. It should age effortlessly for 2-3 decades.

Tomahawk Pork Chop 22oz. double cut, vietnamese bbq. Really nice pork chop.

Short Rib Osso Bucco. 72 hour, roasted garlic potatoes, horseradish gremolata. Great rich meat.

Colorado Lamb Shank. 48 hour, chermoulah, heirloom carrots. A fabulous bit of lamb.

Black Garlic Spare Ribs. tobacco onions, vinegar slaw. My favorite, it was very nicely spiced and I don’t like plain meat.

Tomahawk Rib Chop. prime, dry aged 30 days. 42 ounces.

For me this is just steak, others loved it.

Flight 5: Sledgehammers

Emil brought: 2008 Oasi Degli Angeli Kurni. Parker 85. The 2008 Marche Rosso Kurni is quite unusual in this vintage. The wine comes across as rather compact in its fruit, which accentuates the sweetness of the fruit and the French oak. In a blind tasting the 2008 could easily be mistaken for a sweet red dessert wine. Let’s hope 2008 turns out be an anomaly for one of the Marche’s most famous reds.

Pork Belly Farro.

Uni Risotto. A little mild, but with so many other flavors and dishes it was under heavy competition.

Duck Confit Mac & Cheese. Nice, but could have been even cheesier!

Double Cooked Fries. Good fries and I liked the green chimichuri like sauce.

Grilled Broccolini.

Herb Roasted Cauliflower.

David brought: 2010 Sine Qua Non Syrah Five Shooter. Parker 98+. The 2010 Syrah Five Shooter is straight up gorgeous. A massive wine that somehow holds everything together, it offers a wild array of cassis, blackberry, white chocolate, underbrush and pepper that flows to a full-bodied, layered Syrah that has masses of fine tannin and enough substance to evolve for decades. A blend of 85% Syrah, 5% Grenache, 3% Petite Sirah, 5% Roussanne and 2% Viognier that was fermented with 20% whole cluster and aged 22 months in 59% new French oak, it opens up beautifully in the glass and should be decanted if drinking anytime soon.

Key lime pie. Great key lime pie.

Chocolate hazelnut mouse. Rich and tasty.

Bread pudding. Our least favorite. Nothing wrong with it, but we were very full.

Above is the damage. Seven guys too, and think about the amount of food we had — particularly given we had two of many of the dishes! Spear was incredibly reasonable too. This feast came out to only $110 a person after tax and before tip! The service was awesome too. They weren’t really trained for our kind of dinner, but they really tried and handled it with great attitude and aplomb.

Food was surprisingly excellent. Only a couple of dishes weren’t great, like the fish sashimi. I loved the breath and variety of the menu. Execution was first rate. Personally I like this place way better than almost all of the steakhouses I’ve been too because it isn’t all about just a slab of beef on your plate.

Company and wines were fabulous, this is turning into a really first rate dinner series.

For more big Foodie Club dinners, click here.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Corkage, Dessert, Foodie Club, Meat, Steak, Steak House, steakhouse, Will C, Wine

Food as Art: Capo

Nov06

Restaurant: Capo [1, 2, 3]

Location: 1810 Ocean Ave, Santa Monica, Ca. 310-394-5550

Date: April 30, 2010

Cuisine: Italian with Cal influences

Rating: The food here is really very very good.

Capo has always given me slightly mixed feelings. Not about the food, that part is great, but they have a bit of an attitude at times, and it’s too expensive. I just don’t expect Italian to be super expensive, which Capo is, unless it’s Northern Italian Haute Cuisine, which we have basically no real examples of in Southern California. And they’ve given me trouble several times about my wine (which I always bring), as they’ve an unusual and restrictive corkage policy that is enforced with great zeal. But the food is fantastic, and one of their pastas is the best ragu I’ve ever had — and I’ve spent a lot of time in Italy.

It’s a lovely restaurant too, with a fun intimate atmosphere, and the very high prices give it a full-on star factor. A couple years ago I sat next to SKG (Spielberg, Katzenberg, and Geffen). Spielberg seems to love high end Italian, because I’ve seen him four or five times at said establishments — not that I blame him.

Entering, they now have a pig leg on the counter. I have to admire that. It’s “Jamon Iberico de Bellota,” which is extremely fine ham from Spain. The downside is $60 for one little plate! One time when someone else was picking up the tab I tried it here — with a side of Burrata. It was good, but no ham — as much as I like it — is worth $60 for a few slices. Particularly after having spent the month of June in Spain where every restaurant has a wall of pig legs and you can get a plate of the stuff for $6-10.

This isn’t from Capo, in fact it’s a store in Madrid known as “Museo del Jamon.” This is a chain, and such displays are commonplace in Spain, a land in which pigs live in mortal terror.

I brought this wine, Parker gives it 94 points, saying, “Luciano Sandrone’s 1998 Barolo Cannubi Boschis is another of the standouts in this tasting. Layers of perfumed dark fruit flow effortlessly from the glass with wonderful depth and purity. The wine offers a long, intensely harmonious personality and a refined, aristocratic finish. The 1998 is an excellent choice for readers who may also be cellaring bottles of the 1996 or the 1999, two wines that offer considerable upside potential. Anticipated maturity: 2009-2019.”

Now this brings me to my little corkage rant. Capo’s corkage policy is that you can bring one and no more than one bottle, and that it must not be on their list. It’s enforced — I’ve been rejected for having a wine on the list twice — so it requires me to download the list before going and research which wine I can bring. They have a huge list. It’s not bad, but it is VERY OVERPRICED. I once went through all 112 pages on paper at home with the Parker website and couldn’t really find any good price/value ratios. I know making a profit at a restaurant isn’t easy, but a have several beefs with this kind of list. I know a lot about wine, and have a very experienced palette. Lists like this are stuffed with wines that are good on some aspect, like winemaker, but fail in another, usually vintage. When there’s a crappy vintage in Bordeaux where do you think all the “cheap” Pauillacs go? Restaurant wine lists, priced as if they were from 1982. But the real problem is that a wine I would pay $150 for — and I buy carefully at auction or from well priced dealers I know well — is $400 or more on these lists. It pains me to pay $150, and there is just no way I’m going to pay $250 dollars extra for the privilege of a waiter mangling my cork with a stupid leverage corkscrew when I have thousands of bottles at home. When I have to order off the list it means I have to drink vastly inferior wine, and still pay $150-200 for it — and my friends are so appalled at the price anyway that I automatically pick up the tab. So until Capo (and the couple others that have even worse policies. Giorgio Baldi you know who you are!) modify their lists to only markup by about $40 I can’t be fully satisfied. Frankly, I would go to both all the time if they had open corkage policies. Enough said.

Capo always puts out this little humus-like spread. I suspect it’s fava beans, and it was mostly eaten by the time I got my camera on it. It’s addictive though. We settle down to examine the MENU, which is big, and always a difficult decision because there is so much great stuff on it. They have an odd menu format, in which each item is identified by only it’s principle ingredient, forcing you to guess or ask how it’s actually prepared. Plus they have “fill in the blanks” on the menu which are filled in by a separate sheet of daily specials. No big deal, but it’s kind of bizare. Doesn’t matter though, as the food is great.

Lest you think I’ve been all negative, let’s get to the real meat of the matter, the only thing that really makes a restaurant — the food. “Maryland crab torta.” This really is Crab Norfolk, and it’s probably the best one I’ve ever had, and I spent summers as a boy in Oxford Maryland, land of the blue crab. This is a big juicy pile of delicious blue crab, drenched in butter, and their special touch is a little Meyer lemon in the mix. Bellissimo!

My wife got to this faster than the camera did. But you can see the egg in this fresh pasta. I LOVE fresh pasta. When I went to Italy first in the 80’s, when Italian in the States pretty much meant lasagne, chicken parm, and red and white table clothes, the pasta was a revelation. It never gets old. Some kind of cheese tortelloni in butter sauce. I snagged one. Yum!

This wasn’t my dish, and I can’t remember what it was, I’m sure it was good.

“White corn ravioli.” You can’t beat fresh pasta in a butter sauce.

This is “buccatini with lamb ragu,” and it’s one of the best pastas I’ve ever had. I’ve come back like three times for it. I love a good ragu, and the buccatini (spagetti with a tiny hole in the middle) is perfect. The dish is rich and meaty, divine.

We had to switch up to the overpriced wine list because of the above mentioned corkage policy. Another problem with most wine lists is that the wines are too new. Capo does have some older stuff though, and often there are some tolerable deals (relatively speaking). This is an example, a 90 point Barbaresco, and the list had it for $120. Well, I’d generally get a 94-96 point Italian for that price. I try not to buy things under 92. This is a nice wine, and drinkable, but it isn’t a great wine. I can’t afford great wines off the list, and that bums me out. My cellar is full of great wines. Parker says, “1998 Vignaioli Elvio Pertinace Barbaresco Nervo—Dark ruby in color, this superb Barbaresco features an intense nose of spices, menthol and minerals, and flavors of crushed raspberries, plums, and strawberry jam. It is a gorgeous, multi-layered wine, with plenty of structure and length on the palate. The three wines I tasted from the Nervo cru are irresistible, alluring wines with great personality. They are superb values as well. 90 points/drink now-2010.”

This was a chocolat creme brulee, the deserts here are just as good as the food.

And this. This was to die for. “Meyer lemon semifreddo,” with a blueberry or blackberry sauce. Everything about this was spectacular, one of my all time favorite deserts. The cold-soft texture, the bright lemon flavor, and the tart sweetness of the berries. OMFG!

A nice plate of little petit fours, not so usual at American Italians, more french. In Italy sometimes you’ll get treated to little almond cookies and shots of grappa or sambuca.

So to conclude, Capo is hands down delicious. I didn’t show it, but they also have this huge wood grill fireplace and sizzle up killer Tuscan-style porterhouses and other grilled meats. The food is VERY VERY GOOD, and the service is top notch. The intimate little atmosphere is great also. My only beefs are with the high prices, and the annoying corkage policy.

For another review I wrote of Capo, CLICK HERE.