Bestia's Best Bone Marrow

Possibly the best dish I've had this year is the roasted marrow bone at Bestia. It's served on the bone, but you scoop it out and mix it with their spinach gnocchetti, a spaetzel like spinach pasta. The gnocchetti has been sauteed so its chewy and crispy with some garlic. The marrow bone is coated with balsamic to give it some acid. When you mix the fatty bone marrow chunks into the pasta, you get the contrast of chewy and creamy textures and fatty, acidic and salty flavors. It comes together beautifully.  Everything about this dish is great; it's one of those dishes I'll dream about until I have it again.

Bestia
2121 E 7th Place
Los Angeles, CA 90021
(213) 514-5724 

Scarpetta: Celebrity, Chain, Delicious

I'm usually fairly skeptical of celebrity chef chains. After all, how good can a restaurant be when the chef has ten locales in five countries. For this reason, I mostly avoided Scott Conant's Scarpetta for a long time. Conant's not a huge celebrity but his high-end Italian chain, Scarpetta, originated in New York and now has branches in Miami, Las Vegas (natch), Miami and Toronto. Here in LA, Scarpetta is located at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills which also houses another celebrity chef spot, Thomas Keller's Bouchon.

Despite my skepticism, I had an amazing dinner at Scarpetta a week ago and am a complete convert. The menu is fairly simple but the food is spot on. Things started on a positive note with a broiled octopus appetizer that was one of the finest octopus dishes I've ever had. The octopus was not at all chewy, with more of a texture of pork than anything else, and a fresh from the grill, slightly charred exterior that was just fantastic.

Pastas were also exceptional, the highlight being a short rib agnolotti in brown butter sauce. You would think the richness of short rib in butter sauce would be a bit much, but it wasn't. The short rib really shined through. Each of these was a perfect mouthful.

Entrees were equally wonderful. The veal chop, topped with marrow, was as moist and juicy as any I've had, cooked to a perfect medium rare. The spiced duck breast had a great flavor (I'm guessing some tea spicing). The only entree that was less than fantastic was the black cod, which was fine but unexciting.

For dessert, the chocolate dishes really shined, particularly a chocolate budino, a sizable serving of rich, silky pudding.

The only downside of Scarpetta, other than the high prices, was the service, which was a bit lackluster, not matching general feel of the place. It could have just been an off night, but the service was quite sporadic. The waiter would take a partial order, then leave and come back later for the rest, water was luke-warm and water service was a bit sporadic. It wasn't horrible, but not up to the level of the food and prices.

My go-to Italian spot is another celebrity chef owned restaurant, albeit one with shared local ownership that originated here, Osteria Mozza. I'd say Scarpetta is every bit its equal.

Scarpetta
Montage Beverly Hills Hotel
225 N. Canon Dr
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
(866) 743-7559

Mama Mia!: Paying More for Less at Mother Dough

Mother Dough (spelled hipster/ee cummings style with no caps - "mother dough") is a Neapolitan style pizzeria on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Feliz that's been getting a lot of praise, and while the pizza is generally good, the prices are way out of whack for what you get.

We orderd two appetizers. The sardine crostini, for $8, was two slices of bread topped with a single basil leaf and a white sardine with lemon juice and orange zest. It was fine, but very small. The charcuterie plate, on the other hand, was quite good with a variety of salumis, speck and other cuts.

The pizzas are the single serving, traditional Neapolitan style and range from $15 to $19 per pie. The Margherita pizza was quite good, with a thin, chewy crust, and a tangy sauce that went well with the gooey buffalo mozzarella. The sausage pizza was less interesting. The house made sausage sliced over the top was decent but not great, lacking much in the way of spice and it seemed like an afterthought, tossed on top without a sense of how it would meld with the sauce and cheese.

I must say I don't get the hype around this place (given there is an Umami Burger across the street, this may be the most overhyped block in LA). In the world of LA pizza, Mother Dough is pretty decent, though not fantastic. Unfortnately, the place is a terrible value. The prices at MoDo seem to average about a dollar more than Mozza, while the pizza is nowhere near as good as those revelatory pies, and the portions are much smaller. Of course, it's a lot easier to get a table at Mother Dough, so maybe you're paying for the privilege of being able to dine-in, sort of a reverse delivery charge. Still, I'll take Mozza2Go over a table at MoDo any day of the week.

In any case, while the food was decent, I had no desire to return.


mother dough
4648 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Phone: (323) 644-2885

Koreatown Italian: All'Angolo

Koreatown is a great place to live, culinarily speaking. We've got hundreds of Korean choices, dozens of Central American restaurants, a good handful of Oaxacan spots, and we're just a short jaunt from Thaitown and Little Armenia. What we don't have, though, is great Italian. There's La Buca a bit to the north, but it's gotten pretty expensive since the old days when it was a cramped, hole in the wall. Now, I'm happy to report, we have another choice.

All'Angolo Pizza and Pasta is a small restaurant squeezed into a Third Street strip mall between a Baskin Robbins and a liquor store (no dusties, I checked).

Despite its primacy in the name, ignore the pizza, it's served on a soft, sort of pita bread like crust that's not at all crispy. The thing to get here is the pasta.

The pasta at All'Angolo is all made to order, fresh, perfectly cook and tastes handmade (I don't know if they actually make it in-house or not); I've tried a variety since the spot opened last fall, and they've all been great. The highlight for me is the strozzapreti alla trentina (pictured above). Strozzapreti is a short, twisted pasta; it's served in a cream sauce with prosciutto and radicchio. The combination of the meat, the slightly bitter lettuce and the cream in every bite of toothsome, hand rolled pasta is one of those perfectly balanced bites.

I also enjoyed the special of tortellini with sage and butter sauce which featured a rich, ground veal stuffing (pictured above). Even the spaghetti with meatballs, which I order for my daughter is impressive, featuring a somewhat thicker than usual spaghetti, cooked to a perfect al dente, and a rich, tomato-cream sauce...it's all I can do not to eat it right off of her plate.

Desserts are also quite good. The panna cotta was silky smooth without being overly gelatinous and the custard tart, infused with just a touch of booze (maybe marsala) is rich and creamy.

I love my neighborhood's great Asian and Latin American options, but now Koreatown has great pasta too!

All'Angolo Pizza and Pasta
4050 W. 3rd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90020
(213) 368-7888

Chicago Deep Dish Pizza at Masa

Masa of Echo Park has been around for about five years, but I'd never made it there until now. The owners are from Chicago and they specialize in Chicago style deep dish pizza. Now, I must admit that I've never been a huge fan of Chicago style pizza nor have I had one in Chicago. In fact, I've only been to Chicago a few time, and when there, I tend to concentrate on hot dogs and Italian beef. Most Chicago-style pizzas I've had in other places are just too doughy for me.

The first thing to know about Masa is that the deep dish pizza takes 40 minutes to bake. Next time I go, I'll call ahead, but otherwise, get some appetizers. I especially enjoyed the artichoke dip which was thick with artichokes, and a nice acid in it and was less cheese-heavy than some versions.

The pizza itself was big and dense. Deep dish pizza must way more per pound than any other food. A single slice of the large pie was sufficient for most people in our group. We ordered the traditional pie which has mushrooms and a nice, well spiced sausage slice on top. The sauce is tangy and packs a big garlic wallop. The crust is crunchy, glistening with oil, though I still feel like it's a lot of bread in there, but at least it was all well cooked.

If there are any Chicago-ites or deep dish lovers out there who've been to Masa, I'd love to hear how it compares to the real thing. For my part, I liked it and will likely head back. They have a large menu beyond the deep dish, including regular pizzas, pasta, other entrees and a particularly enticing sounding croissant bread pudding, which I will undoubtedly need to try.


Masa of Echo Park
1800 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(213) 989-1558

Angeli Caffe - Affordable and Fun!

Angeli Caffe, the Melrose Italian restaurant, has been around for years but I never made it there. With high powered Italian spots like Mozza and Angelini Osteria within a short drive, it's impressive that Angeli has held on for so long, so I figured I would finally check it out.

The atmosphere of the restaurant reminds me of Manhattan. It's a tiny cube of a room with small tables pressed up tightly against each other. It's a bit cramped.

The hot loaf of bread delivered to your table is delicious, tasting a bit like a good, pizza dough (and they do serve pizza, so that makes sense). We next headed for the antipasti which was just fantastic. The marinated veggies which dominated the antipasti plate (ours was the special, but they have several), were wonderfully done. Carrots had a nice tang and zucchini a sweet zing, along with a nice goat cheese wrapped in marinated eggplant. The small sprinkling of olives and mozzarella balls on the plate were sort of throwaways that didn't seem to match the great veggies.

For entrees, after hearing much lauding of the gnocchi of the day, we went with the ricotta gnocchi and a chicken piccata special. Both of these were very nice as well. The gnocchi were light and fluffy in a luxurious butter sauce, and the piccata was very nice, creamy and not too sour.

And one of the best things about this place was the price. There aren't many more formal LA dining spots where you can eat and enjoy a few drinks in the $70 range and finding one, was indeed gratifying.

I'm glad I finally made the trip after all these years, and I will be back, for pasta, pizza and more.


Angeli Caffe
7274 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90046
(323) 936-9086

Butchering the Pig

How did I miss this?

One of Mozza2Go's classes for their "scuola di pizza" was entitled "Introduction to Pig Butchery" and included this great description:

Join Mozza Chef Chad Colby as he demonstrates how to utilize a whole pig and turn it into a meal.

Yes, for only $150, I could have learned how to butcher a whole pig. Now granted, this is not the most practical of classes for the lay-cook. I mean, the closest I ever come to a whole pig is at the LA County Fair, but it just seems so cool.

If anyone has taken the class, please chime in. I'd love to hear about it and to know what you did with the snout.

Leave the Cannoli: Vito's Cannoli

I've long enjoyed the New York style pizza at Vito's on La Cienega. Their white pie, with its creamy clouds of ricotta, is one of the best pizzas in LA. Their other pies are also good, though their tomato sauce is a bit on the sweet side for me.

Recently, I ate in at Vito's and ordered a cannoli. Given how good their ricotta is on the white pie, I figured this would be a winner. I was right. The filling was fluffy and sweet and the cookie was crisp. A dusting of sugar and cinnamon makes it complete (and none of those objectionable green sprinkles). It's everything you want in a cannoli. Next time you go to Vito's, order dessert.

Vito's Pizza
846 North La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90069
(310) 652-6859

Cure Me With Ham: La Quercia

La Quercia is a small, family-run Iowa prosciutto maker. (Angelenos will be tempted to pronounce it in Spanish, but it's [la Kwair-cha], Italian for oak tree). Their prosciuttos have developed a cult-like popularity.

La Quercia makes a wide variety of prosciutto, including an acorn fed variety; they also make guanciale, pancetta, copa and lardo. Many of these are only available wholesale to restaurants, but there is a limited variety that can be ordered directly from the La Quercia website. I was lucky enough to receive the "prosciutto tris" as a gift with three distinct varieties.

The Prosciutto Americano was amazingly rich, meaty and even a bit nutty. It had a much deeper flavor than some milder prosciuttos. It had a melt-in-the-mouth quality that reminded me of jamon iberico. Definitely some of the best prosciutto I've had.

Speck Americano is a very different ham, but still wonderful. It has a more traditional American ham taste and is saltier than the Prosciutto Americano.

Prosciutto Piccante is a hunk of cured ham in a spicy rub. It had great flavor, but I would have preferred the type of paper-thin slices that were used for the other two prosciuttos. It's hard to get that level of thinness if you don't have your own meat slicer, an item which I regrettably lack.

If you're a fan of cured meats, you definitely need to check out La Quercia.

Vegas Baby: My Birthday Journal and a Fabulous Steak

So, I had a birthday recently, one ending in a zero. To celebrate, I spent a long weekend in Las Vegas, eating my way through the strip and environs. I hadn't been to Vegas for a few years, but in this town, things change so much that a few years can seem like a lifetime. I'll begin my series of reports on Sin City dining with one of the best meals I had on my trip: Carnevino(at the Palazzo).

Mario Batali's Italian steakhouse Carnevino was a tour de force of a meal from start to finish. I mean, how can you not love a place that serves its bread not only with butter but with a little tub of lardo. Yes lardo, pork fat, whipped up and seasoned with rosemary and salt. It had the texture of a very creamy butter and the taste of a rosemary butter with an underlying porkiness. The stuff was addictive. It made me want to lick out the tub, to take it home with me or to buy a brick of manteca and try to make it myself.

Given my experience at Batali's Osteria Mozza, we expected the pasta appetizer to be good, and it was. We opted for the cannelloni, stuffed with braised rabbit, spring garlic and lemon zest and topped with cheese. The pasta was Batali-perfect and the stuffing was a delightful fusion of sour, salt and garlic.

But beef is the thing here, BBL Beef to be specific. BBL is still sort of a mystery to me. As far as I can discern, it stands for Belgian Blue Lefaivre, which appears to be a proprietary breed; a hybrid between a particularly lean breed and a fattier cow which is both lean and well marbled, if that seeming contradiction makes sense. The menu states that BBL is "often beyond regular USDA prime standards for marbling and flavor and is hormone and antibiotic free."

Whatever the stuff is though, it's tasty. We ordered our favorite cut, the porterhouse, which was stunning. The beef tasted like no other I've had. The marbling, evident in the bone left on the plate (all steaks are carved tableside) was more similar to that of Wagyu steak than any other steak I've had in the US. The flavor was much more beefy, almost gamey, than a standard cut. This was one of the best steaks I've had, ever, and I like steak. And yes, I picked up the bone and tore the last bits of meat from it caveman style, to the amusement of surrounding tables. I'm sorry, but if you're going to give me the bone on a plate, I'm going to eat it.

Dessert was also excellent. Caramel date fritters, were warm and perfectly fried. The date and caramel, which you might think would be an excessively sweet combination, came together perfectly, the date puree adding some texture to the burnt sugar of the caramel.

My only complaint of the meal was that one of the sides we ordered, a fregula pasta (a sort of large couscous) with fava beans and pecorino romano, was too salty. The pecorino, cut into little balls and mixed in with the fregula, overwhelmed with their saltiness and there were too few favas in the dish to make an impression.

The more I eat at Batali restaurants, the more impressed I am that this seemingly class-clown type of a guy with a television, restaurant and cook book empire is still putting out food of this quality. This was a meal that was worth a pilgrimage. If you are a steak lover, you need to check out Carnevino.

The LA Gelato Tour

Recently, I've been in a gelato phase, lapping the stuff up like a thirsty mutt near a puddle. I've also been downing my share of affogato (gelato doused with espresso). Obsessive that I am, once I got the gelato jones, I had to try a broad swath of SoCal gelato and write it up.

Before we start, a brief note on the distinction between gelato and ice cream. Generally, gelato uses more milk and less cream than ice cream, so it actually has less fat. Because it is churned at a slower rate than ice cream, gelato also has less air whipped into it than ice cream. The rich, thick characteristic comes from the lack of air, not from added fat. Traditionally, gelato did not have eggs in the custard base, which ice cream generally does.

That being said, as a practical matter, there is a lot of murkiness in the distinction. Many people simply consider gelato to be an Italian style of ice cream and judge it based on presentation (e.g. laid out on trays rather than in tubs) and aesthetic rather than anything technical. I pretty much just went with places that called their product gelato. Note that I did not include Scoops on Heliotrope here since I believe they call their product ice cream, but hey, you all know Scoops rocks anyway and I was after places that were new to me.

Not every place offered an affogato but I tried to have one at each place that did (though I did miss one). The beauty of the affogato is that the rich espresso melds with the gelato and forms a heavenly coffee ice cream float. When done well, it is a beautiful gestalt of flavors, halfway between a solid and liquid but filled with flavor. When done poorly, it's a scoop of ice cream sitting in a cold puddle of coffee, a sad affair to say the least.

As I am wont to do, I've broken the contenders out into tiers to rank them.


FIRST TIER

Bulgarini Gelato, Altadena. I'm happy to report that the hype surrounding this Altadena gelato shop is well deserved. Tucked away in a run down strip mall anchored by a Rite-Aid and a Kragen on East Altadena Drive, just west of Lake, Bulgarini was my favorite gelato. The best flavors here were transcendent in both flavor and texture, particularly the olive oil yogurt, a fluffy, light as air tart frozen yogurt with a smooth olive oil taste topped with olive oil. It reminded me of some sort of olive oil foam you might get at Bazaar. The day I visited there was also a beautiful sheep milk and parsley gelato with madeira. Also excellent were the regular chocolate and the lemon cream. The Florentine chocolate, a chocolate with sea salt, had a nice chocolate flavor but was a bit too salty to have more than a bite.

Affogato is an off menu item at Bulgarini but they do make it. The one I had was very nice with a nice crema on the espresso and good proportions, but although they said it was an item they served, they asked for instruction on how to do it correctly. It was nice enough, but I would stick to the excellent gelato at this place.

Bulgarini Gelato
749 E. Altadena Dr.
Altadena, Ca. 91001
(626) 791-6174


Gelato Bar, Studio City. The biggest surprise in my gelato tour was how well this relatively unsung gelateria compared to the others. Owned by Gail Silverton, sister of Nancy, Gelato Bar offers innovative (though not overly weird) flavors that are bold without being too sweet. Their gelato is a perfect textural, specimen, rich and creamy with a dissolve in your mouth quality. It's neither as innovative nor as transcendent as Bulgarini but it is perhaps more what I think of as traditional gelato (at least in my American experience) done about the best way it can be done. My favorite flavors here were the chocolate sorbetto, stracciatella (chocolate chip), mango, ricotta and Veneziana (candied orange peel with chocolate).

The affogato at Gelato Bar was the best of the bunch. Made with a perfectly pulled Ecco Cafe espresso, whipped cream and Valrhona cacao nibs, the Gelato Bar affogato shows the importance of proper espresso preparation in the dish's composition. Gelato Bar makes a great espresso with a thick head of crema which blends perfectly with the scoops of gelato, creating that lovely synthesis that is the affogato. Why this place hasn't entered the pantheon of great LA gelatos is beyond me, but you owe yourself a trip.

Gelato Bar
4342 1/2 Tujunga Ave
Studio City, CA 91604-2751
(818) 487-1717


SECOND TIER

Pazzo Gelato, Silver Lake. I'd been looking forward to this popular Sunset Boulevard shop, but unlike Bulgarini, it did not live up to the hype. While I liked the milk chocolate, which had a Mexican chocolate spice to it, the flavors, in general, were too sweet, not intense enough and generally lacking in excitement.

The pazzagato, Pazzo's version of the affogato, got points off for using canned whipped cream and too much gelato. It's tempting, I'm sure, to load the cup up with gelato for the affogato, but moderation is part of the key. Too much ice cream turns the espresso cold and gives you the aforementioned cold puddle of coffee. And while I love Intelligentsia espresso in cappuccinos, it's too tannic for affogato, which really calls for something darker. The popularity of this place leads me to have serious questions about hipster tastes.

Pazzo Gelato
3827 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(323) 662-1410


THIRD TIER

Al Gelato, Beverly Hills adjacent. This was another disappointing one for me. I'd heard a lot of praise for Al Gelato, on Robertson, but it simply didn't live up to the hype. The issues were similar to Pazzo Gelato: unexciting flavors, too sweet and a texture that lacked the rich and creamy qualities that I crave, and was even a bit icy, which is a cardinal sin of gelato. Al Gelato makes an affogato, but I didn't get to try it.

Al Gelato
806 S Robertson Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90035
(310) 659-8069


Hollywood Gelato, Los Feliz. Hollywood Gelato, on Hillhurst in Los Feliz, was simply uninspiring. The flavors were too sweet and the gelato was icy. It lacked the rich and creamy qualities that make a great gelato. Apparently they are not doing so well as they have scaled back their hours fairly severely. They didn't have an affogato on the menu.

Hollywood Gelato
1936 Hillhurst Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 644-3311


TO SUM UP

Best Gelato: Bulgarini with honorable mention for Gelato Bar

Best Affogato: Gelato Bar

Mozza on the Home Front: Mozza2Go

I've dined once each at Pizzeria Mozza and Osteria Mozza, and while I enjoyed the food, the hassle of trying to wrangle a reservation has, thus far, been too much to lure me back. All of that changed with the recent opening of Mozza2Go, the new, take-out arm of the Pizzeria.

Operating out of a little storefront on Melrose adjacent to the Osteria, Mozza2Go offers a stripped down version of the Pizzeria menu. A recent visit confirmed my previous assertion that the pizza is good, but the most amazing tastes can be found elsewhere on the menu. In this case, the dish that warmed my innards was the chicken liver bruschetta with capers, parsley & guanciale, a spruced up version of chopped liver on a cracker topped with bacon. The chopped liver had a liberal spritz of citrus which cut the richness perfectly, and the guanciale added salty, porky notes which gave it the perfect balance of richness, salt and acid, and a beautiful contrast of mushy liver and crunchy pork fat.

Also excellent was Mario's Lasagna. This was one of the richest lasagnas I've ever had. I'm not sure what they use to get that effect, possibly veal, maybe some livers, but it is rich and creamy and wonderful, though pricey at $21 for a modest serving.

And yes, they do have the butterscotch budino on the take out menu.

Even more enticing is that fact that they deliver, and to a wide area. I was shocked that they my Koreatown abode was within their delivery zone. Not even Village Pizza in Larchmont, which is 5 minutes away, will deliver east of Western.

So kudos to Mozza for this stroke of brilliance. At last, chicken liver bruschetta with guanciale on my couch!

Mozza2Go
6610 Melorse Ave. (park in the Mozza lot on Highland)
Los Angeles, CA 90038
(323) 297-1130

Angelic Agnolotti: Osteria Mozza

After visiting the much-hyped Pizzeria Mozza last year, I left enjoying it, but thinking the pizza was overrated. For me though, the test of a truly great restaurant is whether it calls you back. Do you get that itching feeling that you have to return, either to revisit the food you previously ordered or to explore the rest of the menu? Sometimes, I get that feeling the minute I walk out the door, other times it takes a few days or weeks, but that to me is the true test of whether I really loved it, not as an academic matter, but on an intensely emotional level. With Pizzeria Mozza, I never got that feeling.

Possibly because I never got that feeling from the Pizzeria, I never made a huge effort to get to its sister restaurant, Osteria Mozza. Having recently visited, though, I can already tell that the Osteria is in an entirely different category.

There were many great things at Osteria Mozza, from the burrata with fried guanciale to the perfectly cooked sweetbreads picatta with artichokes (and extra points to them for putting sweetbreads back in the entree category where they belong), but the highlight was the pasta.

Pasta is nice, but it isn't usually a dish I go nuts for. The Agnolotti at Mozza, however, was a whole new level of pasta. The small pasta squares were delicate, just a tad chewy, and stuffed with a rich combination of pork, lamb and salami. They were served in a beautifully subtle burro e salvia (sage and butter sauce), which was thicker than you would expect, almost as if the butter would congeal at any minute, though it never did. This was way beyond your typical ravioli in sage and butter, including the very nice version served at Fraiche. The tenderness of the pasta, the salty meat filling, the thick butter and sage all came together in an extraordinary way to create one of the great pasta dishes I've tasted.

The $19 serving of Agnolotti would make a light entree for one or a nice, shared appetizer for two.

I know already that I'll be back.

Osteria Mozza
(You really don't know where it is?)
641 N. Highland Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 297-0101

Super Salumi: Fra'Mani

Fra'Mani is a Berkeley based producer of hand crafted salumi, or cured pork products. Founded and run by Chez Panisse alum Paul Bertolli, Fra'Mani makes various styles of dry salami, sausages and pate.

I've enjoyed their products in the past, but for my recent birthday, I was lucky enough to get a big Fra'Mani gift pack. There were all pretty wonderful, but not for the faint of heart. These are big, spicy, garlicky pork products, full of fat and protein, but no hormones or other unnatural ingredients. Here's how they stacked up.

Pork Liver Mousse: For pates, I generally favor fowl, but this pork liver mousse was phenomenal. It was creamy, but not quite as strong as I expected. The pork melded well with the spices, and there was a good, thick layer of aspic on top.

Classic Italian Sausage: This was a great sausage, with great pork flavor, if a bit heavy on the garlic.

Spicy Italian Sausage: This one was more like a chorizo. It was red, with big chunks of fat and, when cooked up, leaked that deep orange grease that you get with chorizo. Like all of these products, it was hyped up on garlic. As to the spiciness, it had a light kick, but nothing to heavy in that department.

Breakfast Sausage: Of all the sausages, this was my favorite. It was like a breakfast link on steroids, with more spice and juicier, more flavorful pork. They held back a bit on the garlic with this one, which was good.

Salametto, dry salame: This is great dry salami in small doses. It is a huge garlic bomb, which makes it a tad overwhelming, but I still can't seem to stop eating it.

Salametto Piccante, spicy dry chorizo: I loved this chorizo in a dry salami-form, something I hadn't had before. It has a nice, light hotness to it and contrasts well with the Salametto.

All of these were good, though Bertolli could use the occasional restraint with the garlic. If you like the pork and the garlic, you should definitely explore some Fra'Mani products.

Sunset & Hollywood: Il Capriccio Pizza

There is a section of Disney California Adventure called the Hollywood Pictures Backlot which is set up to like the backlot of a movie studio. It's all very post-modern; Disney's parks, of course, use various sets and props to create an artificial environment, but the Hollywood section contains sets and props that are meant to look like Hollywood sets and props. That is, they are fake fakes.

As a resident of the greater Hollywood area, I've always been amused at a street sign in this section of the park which indicates that it is the intersection of Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards. As a tourist from abroad or the Midwest, the idea of this intersection must conjure some romantic notion of movie stars and glamor. We Angelenos, of course, know that this particular intersection is anything but glamorous. Standing in the shadow of the Kaiser complex and within view of a Circuit City, there's not really much there, other than a Von's.

Now, however, the Italian restaurant Il Capriccio has opened a pizza shop, Il Capriccio Woodfire Pizzeria, right at this apparently storied intersection. I took a few trips to check it out.

First I tried the salsiccia, a sausage, garlic, rosemary pie. The sausage was nice, but I didn't taste the rosemary. The whole thing was a bit too salty, but I did find myself reaching for more. I went on to try cheese and pepperoni pizzas, both good, if standard pies.

The thing that really shines at Il Capriccio is the crust. It's the right amount of chewy, slightly charred and just a tad salty. Crust is probably the hardest element of pizza to get right, but Il Capriccio does a good job with it.

All of the pizza was above average, though none of it left me in the throws of pizza exhilaration. Still, if you're in the area and wanting pizza, it's a good bet, and Disney California Adventure would be lucky to have pizza that good at its Sunset and Hollywood.


Il Capriccio Pizza
4518 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 644-9760

A Porky New Favorite: El Caserio

Do you have restaurants that you really should have made it to but that you just never did? There is no rational reason that I had yet to set foot in El Caserio. The well regarded Ecuadoran-Italian restaurant is close to where I live; I've driven by it literally hundreds of times, both the original location on Virgil and the newer, fancier Silverlake Boulevard restaurant. I've eaten at nearly every other place within a one mile radius going any direction, but I just never made it there. Finally, I decided enough was enough, it was time to go, so we hit the location on Silverlake Boulevard.

It's a nice looking restaurant with a good vibe. The clientele on a Sunday night appeared to be mostly South American and many were larger groups there for special occasion dinners.

We ordered a few things, but the highlight of the meal was the Cosas Finas (fine things), a giant plate of sausage, roast pork, potato cakes, roast potatoes, fried plantains and mini-tamales topped with hard-roasted corn. This was outstanding and enough to feed two. The tamales were sweet and did well with a dash of the restaurant's spicy tomato water, the sausages had nice flavor, and the roast corn added a nice crunchiness.

My favorite cosa fina, though, was the roast pork. The pork was roasted to the melt-in-your-mouth point in which the fat and meat mix together to create that beautiful smoky, porky taste, similar to a Cuban lechon. I kept picking at the bones to get every last morsel.

El Caserio also has a variety of homemade pastas. We had the Pappardelle Bolognese with meatballs. The pasta was nice but the meatballs were dense and didn't have great flavor.

I will definitely go back to El Caserio, and even though I didn't like the meatballs, I would like to try more of the pastas, as they had potential. Most of all though, I'll be back for that plate of Cosas Finas.

El Caserio
401 Silverlake Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(213) 273-8945

309 N. Virgil Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90004
(323) 664-9266

Mozza, Hold the Pizza

I'm not one to flock to the latest big restaurant on opening night. I avoid crowds and celebrity chefs. Sure, in the first month or two when Tom Colicchio is babysitting Craft or Wolfgang Puck is running the grill at Cut, the food will be great. But after they get their three stars from Miss Irene at the Times and the hubbub dies down, then what happens. Do they keep producing quality food or do the rest on their laurels? The true test of a great restaurant is whether it can produce high quality food over time.

This is why I had so far avoided Pizzeria Mozza and its cousin Osteria Mozza, the product of a collaboration between Iron Chef Mario Batali and local bread-winner Nancy Silverton. The restaurant opened to rave reviews from Virbila, Jonathan Gold and the like, some calling it the best pizza in LA, but that was last year, and now Mario has gone back to New York and it's just another restaurant, one that I decided it was time to visit.

Of course, it's still impossible to get a reservation, unless you like booking dinner at 3:30 (am or pm), but when I walked into the Pizzeria at 6:00 on a Wednesday evening, there were a few spaces at the bar and a pretty good turnover.

We had an appetizer, two pizzas and dessert. The funny thing is than while the appetizer and dessert blew us away, the pizzas, while good, did not seem all that special.

Our appetizer was bone marrow al forno, consisting of ovenbaked beef bone marrow, served with toast, roasted garlic, sea salt and a microscopic micro-greens salad. The marrow, served in three sections of a cow femur, was luscious...fatty, tender, beefy, garlicky, rich and served so hot that I burnt a finger grabbing the piece of bone. The salad, which really should have been larger, had a nicely acidic lemon dressing which cut perfectly through the grease and richness of the marrow. The roasted garlic was superfluous.

The two pizzas were the Gorgonzola dolce, fingerling potatoes, radicchio & rosemary and the "meat lovers pizza" with sausage, salami, bacon & guanciale. These were both good pizzas. The crusts are big, fluffy...nice and chewy, and the toppings are well done, but they just didn't live up to the hype. Frankly, I'd just as soon eat a good ole' Casa Bianca sausage and green olive pie.

Much has been written about the butterscotch budino dessert, and it did live up to the hype. A rich, creamy butterscotch pudding, topped with salt and whipped cream, the budino joins my custard hall of fame. I briefly considered ordering a second, but decided better of it. The accompanying rosemary cookies were not to my liking, but I was a bit over-rosemaried from the pizza.

I may go back to Mozza, if I hear the siren song of marrow or butterscotch pudding, but it won't be for the pizza.

Pizzeria Mozza
641 N. Highland Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 297-0101

Quick Pix: La Buca, Fassica

La Buca (Melrose west of Wilston): Best gnocchi I've had. Beautiful soft pillows of pasta, so different from the hard little pebbles I've been served at other places. They were delightful with the pink fumé sauce which had onions, bacon and cheese.

Fassica (Washington Blvd, across from Sony in Culver City): Forget Ford's Filling Station or all the other new yuppie food temples in Culver City. When I'm there, usually after a trip to Surfas, I can't not stop at Fassica, a small Ehiopian place across the street from the giant Sony Pictures complex. Fassica is the best Ethiopian I've had in LA, beating out anything on Fairfax. The problem with some Ethiopian places is that the dishes have a certain sameness - a parade of different color lentils with the same spicing. Not so at Fassica, with its clear, crisp flavors and high quality ingredients. Get the Fassica special, a combo of eight different dishes. The lentils are great, the sauce on the doro wot (stewed chicken) has the color and consistency of black molé with a sharp, slightly spicy flavor. I always add a side of shiro, the smooth, rich sauce made from powdered roasted chick peas. And the injera is soft, thick and spongy with a perfect sour taste. Much better than the afterthought that is injera at many of LA's Ethiopian spots.