Quest for Fire: Out of the Flames

Crust Rules

L.A.’s notorious sushi-bar Nazis have nothing on Pepe Miele, the proprietor of Antica Pizzeria above the Gelson’s in Marina del Rey and more importantly the man who brought the elaborate bylaws of the Vera Pizza Napoletana movement from Naples to the United States. A certified pizza crust must be made with nothing more than yeast, water and flour, must not exceed 30 centimeters in diameter, and must be baked directly on the floor of a hot, wood-burning brick oven. A margherita, by fiat, must be topped with nothing more than sieved tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, olive oil, basil and salt. The crust must be soft and not crunchy; risen and not thin; and notably higher at the edges than in the middle. As far as I know, Miele has never booted anybody from the premises for daring to order a pizza with duck sausage and goat cheese, but I suspect it could happen.
If you get to Miele’s pizza the second it emerges from the oven, there is a faint smokiness to the crust, and a mild crisp skin that yields, like an artisanal bagel, to a pleasant, bready chewiness underneath. Even if you prefer muscular Brooklyn-style pies, the crust is unimpeachable. Still, the rigor of the basic structure is not necessarily carried through when it comes to the rest of the pie. The basic margherita tends to become soggy by the time it makes it to the table, and a topping of sausage and broccoli raab just lays there like yesterday’s spinach — you need to cook those particular ingredients together to bring out their succulence, not just toss pre-cooked clumps of them onto a freshly baked crust. 13455 Maxella Ave., Marina del Rey, (310) 577-8182.

Meat on a stick: Al-Watan’s chicken tandoor

Beacon’s lamb kushiyaki

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Alcazar

17239 Ventura Blvd.
Encino, CA 91316

Category: Restaurant > Lebanese

Region: San Fernando Valley

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Antica Pizzeria

13455 Maxella Ave.
Marina del Rey, CA 90292

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Out of Town

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• Hiro Urasawa
• Gardena
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• Main Dish Recipes
• Bread

The Grill Next Door

You may not think of Beacon as a center of grill cooking. The restaurant, which in its scant year of existence has already helped to stoke the renaissance of Culver City’s downtown business district, is better known for its udon with pork belly, its miso-marinated cod and its delicious avocado salad. But chef Kazuto Matsusaka, who worked with Wolfgang Puck for more than a decade, is a past master of the big fire/big taste school of California cooking, and his shiso-flavored yakitori, grilled lamb kushiyaki and grilled hanger steak with wasabi relish are superb. 3280 Helms Ave., Los Angeles, (310) 838-7500.

Whistling Past the Boneyard

Chefly barbecue, of course, is supposed to be an oxymoron. Decent barbecue is the stuff of distant roadsides, lonely highways and the wrong side of town. Until recently, creative American chefs spent their time reinterpreting stuff like burgoo, tamales and macaroni and cheese, but left the barbecue, which tends to leave dining rooms rather fragrant, to the other guys. But Leonard Schwartz, who practically invented the idea of high-end American comfort food, left his well-regarded kitchen at Maple Drive to open Zeke’s, a barbecue chain. Carolina-style pulled pork is showing up in upscale kitchens almost as often as goat cheese. And Aaron Robins, whose resumé includes a long stint with über-chef Charlie Trotter in Chicago, opened Boneyard Bistro, a full-fledged, beef-intensive barbecue restaurant with a strong side competency in things like pistachio-crusted baked Brie, whiskey-brined pork chops and porcini-crusted salmon.
Does the barbecued brisket match up well with Woody’s? Is the smoked duck spring roll as skillfully put together as it would be at Chinois? It’s not even close. But sometimes it is pleasant to eat spareribs and drink Chateauneuf du Pape. 13539 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 906-7427.

Blame It on Rio

This is the essential appeal of the Torrance churrasceria By Brazil: You eat meat until you die, massive, garlicky heaps of short ribs and spare ribs and sausage and rump and chicken, roasted above a seething bed of live mesquite charcoal and sliced off metal spears onto your plate by a meat-bearing waiter, one hunk of protein at a time. Sausages are pink, garlicky things, like Portugese linguiça; short ribs are chewy, with a distinct tang of smoke; tri-tip is pink and profoundly meaty. Roast picanha, a dripping, rainbow-shaped slab of meat sometimes known as the rump cap, is crusted black, possibly the only piece of cow you’ll ever find that tastes better well-done than medium rare. Churrasco, this Brazilian barbecue feast, seems to be the favorite meal of everybody who goes to Rio on vacation, and By Brazil, where dinner also includes a pass through a rather extensive Brazilian buffet, is about as classic as they come. 1615 Cabrillo Ave., Torrance, (310) 787-7520.

Log-o-philia

Mark Peel may be the most prominent chef in the country whose reputation largely rests with his prowess on the grill, and his Campanile may showcase more shades of fire and heat than any restaurant on Earth. Salmon grilled atop cedar planks takes on the cigar-box fragrance of that wood, and leg of lamb is sometimes flavored with the smoke from smoldering herbs. Rack of lamb is sometimes grilled directly on fresh rosemary, which is a different thing entirely. Thin, broad sheets of veal scallopine pick up all the heady fragrance of the cured oak logs burning beneath them. Sometimes there are even grilled live oysters, put directly over the flame just long enough for their shells to open and their liquor to swell with the essence of smoke. Grilled-fish soup is a sort of deconstructed bouillabaisse, a dish involving four or five sea creatures, each with a different cooking time and a different capacity for heat, taken off the grill and combined at the last moment — a feat of kitchen virtuosity with the same degree of difficulty as a 360-degree slam dunk. 624 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 938-1447.