Restaurant: The Mar Vista
Location: 12249 Venice Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90066. (310) 751-6773
Date: February 26 & March 8, 2017
Cuisine: Modern American
Rating: Solid New Kitchen
The Mar Vista is a new “small plates” Modern American place I found on the Eater Heat Map — it’s near one of my haunts, the Mitsuwa market.
Big spacious interior.
A little loud.
Le menu.
From my cellar: 2005 Morey-Blanc Corton-Charlemagne. BH 94. More evident wood with hints of spice and vanilla frames the green fruit and spiced apple aromas and a trace of it can also be found on the full-bore, rich and intense big-bodied flavors blessed with excellent concentration and muscle, all wrapped in a minerally, delicious and serious finish of superb length.
Lemonaise. Lola rosa tangerines, radishes, shaved fennel, sunchoke chips. A nice zesty salad.
Blood orange and beets. Collard greens, frisee, cashew butter pecans. Not as good as the first salad.
Fontina bacon crab melt. garlic white wine cream sauce, crostini. The crostini were somewhere between shrimp chips and ciccarone. Tasty though.
Turkish turkey pops. pickled onion, cumber, yogurt. Basically turkey kefta on cinnamon sticks with arugula and yogurt sauce. Tasty, but turkey was a little dry.
Pig hot pot. Pork belly, rice, squash noodles, crispy scallions. A somewhat odd format.
Wild cod hot pot. Aji amarillo toasted tortilla, red rice, chayote slaw, cilantro.
Spicy glazed shrimp. Melted leeks, celery root puree. Tasty!
Can’t remember which this was.
From my cellar: 1996 Domaine Armand Rousseau Père et Fils Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Les Cazetiers. BH 88. Very earthy aromas with ripe, pretty, elegant, very pinot fruit leads to sappy, pure, nicely complex medium weight flaovrs with excellent finishing intensity. This is really lovely juice and if it can add a bit of weight with additional bottle age, my score will be conservative.
Another mystery pot.
Wild boar & gemelli pasta. Charred leek oil, creme fraiche, dill pollen. A nice hearty pasta.
Lamb. Curried carrot couscous, crispy kale, chimichurri, pomegranate.
Pork osso bucco, hominy chile guajilo, toasted pumpkin seed.
Broccoli & cauliflower. sweet chili, pear puree, almonds, grapes. Nice crunch to the veggies.
BANANAS. Run, cashews, pecans, caramel, horchata ice cream.
It came on fire then they added the ice cream. Really delicious and I don’t even like bananas.
Scotch kiss brownie bites. MV marshmallow, salted caramel, coco crisps.
Good stuff!
Lemon Lady. Meyer lemon curd, market berries, basil, toasted shortbread. Nice!
I didn’t have a lot of expectations and The Mar Vista surpassed them. This was good stuff. Very modern platings. Vaguely Middle Eastern Fusion at times, but really just sort of “new plates.” But the flavors were in general bright and good, and if every plate wasn’t perfect, the meal was quiet tasty. Service was a bit disjointed and the waitresses didn’t seem to know exactly what they were doing. We had to nearly trip a busboy to get water.