Simon Majumdar

Typically—for me, at least—the Italian port city of Bari just summons thoughts of its perennially underachieving soccer team. However, thanks to this rather enjoyable new restaurant bearing that name, I’m likely to turn towards thinking about the comforting, underrated regional cuisine from the capital of Italy’s heel. Chef Chad Colby’s time in charge of the kitchen at Mozza sibling Chi Spacca and at his own restaurant, Antico, proved his skill at preparing food from across Italy. At Bari, he splits his menu into 10 sections. Each gives a shout out to the fried snacks, breads, semolina-based pasta and grilled meats and fish so beloved in his favorite Italian region of Apulia. Taralli fennel crackers and burrata cheese come served with anchovies and breadcrumbs. A panzerotti di pasquale presents the classic snack with a filling of tomatoes and mozzarella in a rustically crimped fried golden dough. The paparrachielli al tonno, or small-pickled cherry peppers stuffed with tuna, reminds one of the delightful jarred snack that you can buy in most Italian supermarkets.  Perhaps Bari’s only disappointment were the fave e chicoria, a deeply savory puree of fava beans with a chicory topping whose overwhelming level of acidity would have made Joan Rivers blush. My wife and I were restored to the correct path with a perfect version of another Apulian standard, orecchiette cime di rape, a toothsome little ear semolina dough pasta with broccoli rabe and a hit of anchovy and chili.  Then c

For a 95-year-old restaurant and bar, West Hollywood’s Formosa Café is receiving a huge amount of new attention. In part, that’s due to the stunning reclamation of its former glories by the 1933 Group (they of Highland Park Bowl, Thirsty Crow and Idle Hour fame), and in part, it’s also because Angelenos have an intrinsic appreciation of old-school haunts—particularly those that’ve played host to some of the key names in Hollywood’s golden age. I wouldn’t be surprised if unearthed reservation books contained names such as Brando, Monroe, Sinatra, Wayne and Beatty, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Formosa Café embodies that golden glow. Against such a backdrop of A-list celebrity and its stunning renovation—which reportedly cost around $2.5 million and months of painstaking archive research to get things right—it would be easy for the food to become little more than a bit part player. However, with the new American-Chinese and Taiwanese menu from chef David Kuo of the much-admired Little Fatty, it offers far more than a simple something to chew on while you admire all the signed headshots on the wall. The small menu contains many of Little Fatty’s signature dishes, all of which arrive readily from the kitchen. It’s split into dishes to share; dim sum; rice and noodles; and two desserts. Of the shared dishes, the braised pork belly ($20) was well received, but, it was the orange chicken ($16) and kung pao chicken ($15) that received most of the plaudits, particularly th

The menu at Chad Colby’s new rustic, open-hearth Italian restaurant may not offer anything quite so dramatic as the beef and bone marrow pie of my dreams at the chef’s former kitchen—Nancy Silverton’s chi SPACCA—but over multiple visits to Antico, we found enough hallmarks of Colby’s cooking to make us understand why his new spot’s been a hit since its launch. One of those elements included the antipasti ($9 per person) which shows Colby at his best with gently grilled zucchini; house-cured salami; slivers of salty anchovy; and deeply creamy ricotta on crisp toast—notionally simple to make, decidedly hard to make well. Salads were more straightforward. A garden salad ($12) is a hard dish to mess up. Antico almost did. The simple salad with added sungold tomatoes just rang of good shopping, and they followed the current and rather tiring trend of dressing the leaves with enough acid to make your teeth dissolve. Burrata ($14) is ubiquitous in Los Angeles, but with the addition of seasonal ingredients and crunch—breadcrumbs in summer, pepitas in autumn—it takes on a welcome textural dimension. Oddly, given Colby’s provenance, the least appealing dishes were the pastas; they were by no means poor, but L.A. is experiencing a moment in the sun when it comes to matters noodular, and the pasta at Antico felt very much in the shade. Of those we sampled from the short selection, the ziti with tripe ragu and parmesan ($22) was the most successful: The deeply rich sauce found its way int

A decade-old Brooklyn favorite just opened its first West Coast outpost, and yet, despite its newness, there’s something wearyingly familiar about what’s on offer at Five Leaves L.A.  It’s a menu that looks like it’s been put together by a computer fed information about mid-level dining in Los Angeles, and then prompted to splurge out an identikit roster of dishes: some avocado toast here, a crudo there, a token pasta dish or two, some salads and a protein from a named source. Ho and, indeed, hum.  However, it’s not all grim. If you do find yourself in East Hollywood and step into our Five Leaves, you’ll notice that the room is a lovely, bright, open space decorated in Art Deco style. The service is chirpy and efficient, and the food is competently done, if having some noticeable flaws.  The menu’s originality doesn’t show much gumption, but there’s at least a sense that the chefs are putting in a bit of extra effort behind the scenes. The house-made ricotta ($15) was soft and creamy, and came served with some excellent raisin bread purchased from a local bakery. The Arctic char gravlax ($15) gets cured in-house to a perfect texture that works well with its garnishes of beet-cured egg, caper cream cheese and slices of marble rye. The burger (a hefty $17, plus $4 for bacon and gruyere) gets made with excellent grass-fed beef. The crispy chicken sandwich ($14), on the other hand, was crispy as advertised but overloaded with too much wet slaw, making the whole thing dissolve bet

Margot’s location—high on the rooftop of Culver City’s Platform complex—may be the restaurant’s main draw, but it’s pleasing to see that one can get a pretty decent meal here, too.  Chef Michael Williams’s menu doesn’t exactly reach for the stars in terms of ambition, but with a few exceptions, it’s suitably targeted at its trendy clientele and mostly succeeds in providing well-executed and well-sourced dishes to sizeable crowds. Of our two visits, brunch proved to be the most enjoyable; I can’t think of many better spots in town for spending a few pleasant hours day-drinking with friends. But the food is good, too. A crudo of kampachi with pickled mustard seed, horseradish and dill ($19) was balanced with enough accompaniments to complement, rather than overpower, the fattiness of the fish. The wild arugula salad with hazelnut vinaigrette, baby beets, citrus and manchego ($16) was a highlight, with the pepperiness of the arugula working well with the texture of the hazelnuts and the saltiness of the Spanish sheep’s cheese.   The larger brunch courses more or less center around the classics, but show a care and attention that often gets missed in this underrated meal: Fried chicken with Calabrian honey ($24) had a perfect coating and demanded to be dipped into the small dish of heat-and-sweet honey. Porchetta Benedict ($17) was a fun play on a traditional dish, but I wish the pork had retained a bit of cracklin’ to give texture to what was otherwise an all-soft dish. The Amer

The misguided belief that museum restaurants serve little purpose beyond feeding a captive audience here to look at things pretty and artful is, thankfully, on the wane. Unfortunately, Audrey at the Hammer didn’t seem to get the memo.  The menu emphasizes “European flavors”—I’m never quite sure what that means, as Europe is a sizeable place and the food of southern Portugal, for example, has precious little to do with the food of, say, Latvia. In the case of the Hammer’s new courtyard restaurant, what it means is a vague stab at Spain and Italy with a nod to some of the terrific ingredients on offer here in California.  All of this would be fine if the dishes were prepared with  aplomb, but at Audrey, they are not. Over two visits we experienced food that lurched from competent but unforgivably crude to plates that were prepared ineptly enough to be pushed aside on a budget airline flight. Our first and best bite, a Sardinian-style carta di musica cracker ($10), came topped with Spanish bottarga, flecks of Persian limes and chives; the saltiness of the fish roe worked well with pre-dinner drinks. However, after that, the decline began. Of the lighter courses, the fish in a Baja kampachi crudo ($19) took on a rather grainy texture, and any subtle flavors of the amberjack was lost beneath a dressing of kiwi, fermented chili oil and an overly acidic lemongrass vinaigrette. A white bean hummus ($11) suffered, too, beneath a slick of bitter “herb jam.” The salads—an endive salad w

By now, even fine dining traditionalists have come to terms with the fact that we live in a world of small plates and clothless tabletops. While all this is fine and dandy, part of me still craves some of the thoughtful technique—if not some of the overly formal stuffiness—of fine dining’s yesteryear. It’s one reason I was fascinated to hear of Auburn, the new tasting-menu restaurant by chef Eric Bost, whose food I’ve loved at République and whose past includes stints with Guy Savoy and Alain Ducasse. His menu at Auburn is set out quite differently from anywhere else in the city: There are 12 dishes on offer—of which three are desserts—and each diner can construct their own four-course ($85), six-course ($115) or nine-course ($160) meal with optional wine pairings ($50-$120); over our two visits, we sampled every one of the 12 courses on offer (and some dishes multiple times). The meals began well enough, with the arrival of one of the best loaves of bread I’ve eaten recently: made with rye flour and soaked buckwheat and served with an exceptional avocado butter topped with an oil of fine herbs. Then came the three amuse-bouches, which did exactly the job they are supposed to do: They woke up the palate with texture, salt and acid. A deep-fried pork ear crackled on the tongue with its salt and vinegar coating, while a delicate sweet-onion and peas tart felt like a nod to Bost’s time with Ducasse; best of all was a beet-and-buckwheat galette, which came topped with a salty sli

For a restaurant that just hit the tarmac, Alameda Supper Club is already operating like a well-oiled machine. There’s little surprise there, given the team and ambition that led to the creation of the Manufactory, the ROW’s culinary complex in which this restaurant sits: Elisabeth Pruett and Chad Roberston of San Francisco’s Tartine, paired with Chris Bianco of Phoenix’s legendary Pizzeria Bianco, have created a space that, while cavernous, is immediately inviting—and already proving to be a popular and dependable destination. That dependability can be seen in Alameda Supper Club’s short menu, too. With a few exceptions, the food was more than competently prepared, and the ingredients were obviously sourced from terrific suppliers. However, apart from an Italian nod, this particular restaurant’s dishes don’t seem to have much of a viewpoint and operate at a “let’s not frighten granny” level of excitement.  The cheddar and smoked ham toast ($7) is already becoming an Instagram favorite, and I can understand why: It’s a fun upgrade of a grilled cheese sandwich, and was certainly more successful than our other starter, a rather dull bowl of pork crackling ($6) that had been overdosed with smoked paprika. Of the small plates, the market charcuterie ($18) was enjoyable enough but should be filed under the “bought and sliced” category, but a salad of coraline endive with rye croutons, Colston Bassett cheese and a roasted-shallot vinaigrette ($14) proved that the kitchen can take s

September 2021 update: In March 2020, Nightshade closed for the foreseeable future due to operating concerns amid what was then a still-nascent global pandemic. Find Mei Lin's cooking at her new Westlake fried chicken concept, Daybird, which opened in March 2021.  I usually give a jaded shrug when presented with a “Best New Restaurants” list from any publication, but when it comes to 2019’s openings, any omission of Nightshade should be seen as a dereliction of duty.  The food at Top Chef winner Mei Lin’s first solo restaurant is as inventive, exciting and beautifully put together as any I’ve eaten in the United States in the last few years. It all begins with Hokkaido scallops ($23), currently ranked as my number-one favorite dish of 2019: The achingly fresh and sweet scallops are topped with a floss of crisp ginger and thin circles of chili, and then served with a pouring of a sauce that combines the sharpness of coconut vinegar with dots of cilantro oil—a stunning combination that takes extreme confidence in technique and ingredients to execute. The same is true of a truffled Dungeness crab congee ($25), where the deep, savory flavor of the rice porridge would be enough on its own. Arguably, the crab disappeared enough to become little more than texture in an otherwise perfect preparation. The only real weakness I found during two visits was with a squid-ink tagliatelle in cuttlefish bolognese and gojuchang ($23), where another perfectly balanced sauce wasn’t enough to hid

Ricardo Zarate is a “classical” chef, and I’m not just referring to his cooking. His career’s undertaken the path of the mythological Icarus, and then, the phoenix: He experienced a Jonathan Gold-fueled rise from a food court in Mercado La Paloma to national fame, followed by an equally rapid and painful freefall. But given the latter, we've had the pleasure of seeing the talented chef rise from the ashes of his past to create a restaurant as raucous and enjoyable as Rosaliné. Zarate’s latest and quietest opening is already winning nods of approval, and it’s deserved—for the food, at least—because at Pikoh, Zarate’s cooking is as well-executed and fearlessly flavored as ever. Described as “Californian,” the menu at Pikoh contains elements of Japanese, Korean, Levantine, Italian and, of course, his native Peruvian cuisine; generally, the menu avoids what in Britain we call being “culturally all over the shop” because of Zarate’s ability to make unlikely combinations work. Smoked salmon seems an odd choice for a ceviche ($15), but the cured fish worked well to add a briny quality to the dish, and asparagus skewers ($9) delivered more than expected with rocoto pepper aioli and furikake combining for a memorable bite. The arroz con pollo ($19) and the happy-hour anticucho ribs ($9) may be more firmly in Zarate’s wheelhouse, yet they worked the least: The heavily seasoned rice and Huancaína sauce helped to compensate for the dryness of the chicken breast, at least, while the ribs

In Antonia Lofaso’s latest venture, situated in an old banana factory in the Fashion District, the SCOPA chef turns her attention to Spanish and Portuguese cuisines, and the countries that came under their influence. And, while DAMA’s menu takes you on a whirlwind tour, it manages to avoid those dreaded words “Pan American” by giving each dish its due diligence and presenting them as modern expressions of the cuisines they represent. But first, full disclosure: I’m more than well acquainted with Lofaso; we’ve appeared on numerous Food Network shows together as judges, and we’ve even competed against each other. Those culinary battles have left me physically and emotionally battered as I trailed behind the highly competitive chef, but they’ve also proven that when she turns her attention to anything, her determination to get things right remains paramount. While the nature of small-plates eating often leaves me more bewildered than satisfied, the genuine tapas nature of DAMA means you could simply enjoy a few dishes and a glass or two of sherry, or linger through the menu’s larger plates for a fuller dining experience. On the smaller end, bread with farmers’ market tomatoes, confit garlic, parsley, Portuguese olive oil and anchovies ($17) takes the pan con tomate—a beloved staple of Spain—and breaks the tomatoes down slightly to complement the texture of toasted bread and the umami tang of anchovies. A plate of empanadas ($15) belies real care and attention: The flake of the p

Trendy as they are, tasting menus too often become little more than a war of attrition between the restaurant and diner—it seems like dinner only ends when you wave the white napkin in surrender after the arrival of the third round of petit fours. But in the case of chef Mori Onodera, formerly of Mori Sushi, it’s worth sitting through the last course. Inn Ann lives up to the translation of its name—“hidden retreat”—and occupies an elevated but slightly-confusing-to-find space within Japan House, a cultural complex located across multiple levels of the Hollywood & Highland mall. Once inside however, the calmness exuded by both the décor and the service offers a welcome respite from the tourist mayhem on the streets below. You can order à la carte, but Inn Ann is best experienced through the predetermined menus, and within each set menu, you’ll find plenty to keep you interested as the meal progresses. We chose the Ringo menu ($130), which began with house-made tofu bookended by a pool of dashi and a small circle of sour plum salt. The tofu was all about texture, needing a bite to pierce the firmer outer skin to reveal the softness of the inner contents, while the seasonal garnish added definite but delicate flavors. The plating throughout the meal was exquisite. (One should expect no less from Onodera, who’s known for fashioning his own pottery—and does so here for the sake glasses and a few of the dishes.) This was especially true upon the arrival of the bowls of bite-size

Fortunately, even the health fiends of L.A. are getting over the notion that carbs equal death. One of the newer and most exciting aspects of dining out in the city is the growing tally of creative takes on gluten. To celebrate, here are a few of the best bread bites in L.A. Because even when thoughts turn to beach bods and bathing suits, there’s no harm in indulging in a slice or three of these standout carb creations. Elotes Milk Breads at 189 By Dominique Ansel The food at Dominique Ansel’s restaurant at the Grove can be hit-or-miss, but given his provenance as a baker, it’s no surprise the bread is off the charts. The sourdough is worth ordering, but these soft milk breads, which come stuffed with a roasted–sweet-corn (elotes) pudding and topped with cotija, are a Los Angeles must. $10. Photograph: Jesse Hsu Sfincione at Felix Felix may be lauded for its pasta, but Evan Funke’s sublime focaccia is worth its own praise—and will make anyone realize just what a special meal they’re about to experience. The bread’s crisp outer casing, with a thin sheen of olive oil that’s laced with a sprinkle of salt and rosemary, gives way to an inside so soft and fluffy, it could have its own children’s TV show. $8. Photograph: Jesse Hsu Sun Buns at Hearth & Hound Despite the menu’s ambiguity at April Bloomfield’s newish restaurant—the words Sun Buns are followed by no further description—just know that a plate of them will immediately win you over. The warm, nutty and yielding dinner