As for that long-awaited lamb — the chef was riffing on a Moroccan theme, setting the rack on sautéed vegetables mined with preserved lemon and olives; but the lemon, uncooked, hit too hard, and those powerful niçoise olives (again!) lent a dominant bitterness. The fine meat does not need such superfluous flourish; careful, vigilant cooking would have let the meat’s virtues sing for themselves.
The raw food “prepared uniquely by marinating, soaking, spouting or dehydration” is an acquired taste to most. An appetizer — a tiny thatch of tiny haricots verts, some chopped tomato, and cucumber “capellini” (the mandoline gets a real workout at this restaurant) ever so faintly scented with truffle oil and thinly glazed with crème fraîche — will not affect anybody’s diet or appetite, for that matter, as it can’t contain 40 calories, total. Sweetness also dominates raw dishes — the salad of cunning, fresh microgreens has a honey vinaigrette, and the entrée of dehydrated zucchini straps encasing a dried-tomato-and-pine-nut filling has unidentified sweetness in its core.
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Inn of the Seventh Ray
128 Old Topanga Canyon Road
Topanga, CA 90290
Category: Restaurant > American
Region: Malibu
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Nor will refined sugar be mourned in desserts like the baked banana with ginger ice cream or the almond cake with lavender ice cream. Panna cotta is really more a gelatinized, lemon-scented, sweetened cream scooped from a bowl; it’s served with — thankfully — not-too-sweetened, perfectly ripe berries.
Our body elementals, all told, haven’t quite been provoked into joyful capering.
Like brother coyote, we take one last skeptical look at the twinkling lights and wedding flowers, and slip off, unconvinced, into the summer night.
Inn of the Seventh Ray, 128 Old Topanga Canyon Road, Topanga; (310) 455-1311. Lunch Mon.–Fri. 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m., Sat. 10:30 a.m.–3 p.m., Sun. brunch 9:30 a.m.–3 p.m. Dinner seven nights 5:30–10 p.m. Entrées $22–$32. Beer and wine. Takeout. Valet parking on weekends. AE, D, DC, MC, V.
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2012 - Food & Drink
