Quest for Fire: Out of the Flames

Coal Chillin’
Other Korean barbecue restaurants in Los Angeles are more refined. Many serve more elaborate side dishes, and use pricier meat. Perhaps all of them feature tableware more elegant than the singed, battered, half-melted bowls, most of which have strayed too close to the flames of the inset tabletop grills. But the pop and crackle of the glowing live coals, the thick, blue haze that cloaks the dining room, the drifting embers that burn tiny holes in your sports jacket or sizzle when they hit the surface of your beer — nowhere else is the aesthetic of flame expressed quite so profoundly as it is at Soot Bull Jeep, where the deep, round aroma of smoldering hardwood charcoal plays across the sizzling, blackened surfaces of marinated short ribs, beef tongue or squid the way that last night’s best dream still flits around your mind. The first thing you see when you walk in the door at Soot Bull Jeep is a sign that reads “This Is a Non-Smoking Area.’’ Nothing could be further from the truth. 3136 W. Eighth St., Los Angeles, (213) 387-3865.

Primordial Fire
The original Spago on Sunset was to New American Cooking what the Armory Show was to modern painting or Meet the Beatles was to rock & roll: the one that changed the rules. Designer pizza got its start in that Sunset Strip dining room, the casual miscegenation of Asian flavors and European technique, and the idea that fine dining could be casual and fun. It launched the idea of the celebrity chef. And it was also probably the first serious restaurant in the United States to put the grill station at the No. 1 position, so that an enormous percentage of the protein that passed through the kitchen (as well as the clothing worn in half the dining room) ended up being flavored with mesquite. The modern American grill has been such a dominant part of the restaurant culture for so long that it is hard sometimes to remember where it actually had its start.
When Spago moved to its current Beverly Hills location six years ago, chefs Lee Hefter and Wolfgang Puck, moving toward a new vision of the traditional luxury restaurant, de-emphasized the grill that they had made so famous — practically everything but steak is pan-roasted, seared or sautéed. Pizza is only served at lunch now, but game birds and rabbit are baked in the wood-burning oven, which tightens the skin and flavors their flesh in such a subtle way that you probably wouldn’t notice unless somebody pointed it out to you — the rabbit comes out of the oven especially autumnal and delicate, with a practically subliminal hint of burning leaves. Hefter points out that the iron grate of his grill is designed to flip up, so that he can cook seafood directly in the high heat of the charcoal flames as if he were using an Indian tandoor. If, as Levi-Strauss suggests, pot cultures are more advanced than fire cultures, Spago is leaving its atavistic ways behind. 176 N. Cañon Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 385-0880.

Grilling Kobe: Hiro Urasawa takes it to the brazier’s edge.

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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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More About

• Hiro Urasawa
• Gardena
• Foster Phillips
• Main Dish Recipes
• Bread

Put ’Em on the Glass

If live-fire cooking is like sex, the kitchen at Spark Woodfire Cooking is its peepshow, a glassed-in wonderland of shooting flames, ashy coals and hissing slabs of meat, carbonized pizza crusts and fire-roasted chickens, char-speckled vegetables and big, sloppy plates of lasagna that are smoking and blackened from their voyages through the ovens. Does the food approach the ethereal quality of Alto Palato, the old West Hollywood restaurant that was the progenitor of this tiny chain? Not yet. But as with a peepshow, quality may not quite be the point. 9575 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 277-0133. Also at 11801 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, (818) 623-8883; 300 Pacific Coast Hwy., Huntington Beach, (714) 960-0996.

Big Meat
One of the mysteries of the universe may be the recent popularity of steakhouses among the former arugula set, sparked by a newfound female proclivity for strong alcohol and gargantuan hunks of charred Angus beef. Maybe it’s the license granted by Atkins, maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the bartenders’ enthusiasm for cocktails that don’t happen to be vodka martinis, but for beef eaters, these are brand-new times. Sterling may be the ultimate Hollywood steakhouse, a discreetly marked VIP restaurant grand enough for premiere parties but sleek enough for a night out with the girls, a palace of $50 filets and $14 martinis that may actually be worth the expense. The hostess may have told you she was saving all the good tables for Gwyneth Paltrow, although Ms. Paltrow is probably sucking down macrobiotic twig tea at M Café instead, but when the meat arrives, prime and rare and dripping with butter, the satori of flesh is enough. 1429 N. Ivar Ave., Hollywood, (323) 463-0008.

Into the Fryer

Sure, there’s the gumbo, the best in town, now served every day of the week. But the heart of Stevie’s on the Strip may be the big, black smoker out in the parking lot, through which runs the raw material for what the restaurant straightforwardly calls Smoky Fried Chicken, delicious chicken that carries a lovely smack of hickory underneath its crisp, peppery coat. Stevie’s smoky chicken is the stuff that makes house parties legend. 3403 Crenshaw Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 734-6975.