Where to Eat Now

Thirty-five new entires to the list

Comments (0) By Jonathan Gold Tuesday, Feb 6 2007

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Social Hollywood The first local effort from Manhattan/South Beach restaurant czar Jeffery Chodorow is pretty velvet-rope-intensive even for Hollywood. By the time you make it through the gauntlet, you may have the definite sensation of having joined an exclusive club, even if you are sequestered in a soaringly empty seraglio of a room. This may be the point — the upstairs portion of the restaurant actually is an expensive private club, and the Moroccan-themed complex itself began life as the Hollywood Athletic Club. Service seems to revolve around a loving recitation of the special cocktail menu — Rob Roys and Rusty Nails reimagined for a generation that has probably never tasted Drambuie, and may be all the better for it. Cooking, while often accomplished, is usually beside the point at a Chodorow restaurant, even the ones involving superchef Alain Ducasse, and Social Hollywood is no exception. The appetizers tend toward well-executed American creative — sweetbreads with bacon and black-eyed peas, nicely seared scallops — and the main courses toward an overcreative interpretation of Moroccan cuisine: a tagine, Moroccan stew of short ribs and Puebla-style short ribs for example, or a fairly standard roast chicken breast with a tiny b’stilla, the flaky, sugar-dusted pastry of poultry, eggs and almonds that is the glory of the Moroccan table, tossed on the side like a plop of mashed potatoes. If you’ve had enough of the splendid white-peach Bellinis, you may not even notice. 6525 Sunset Blvd., Hlywd., (323) 462-5222 or socialhollywood.com. Sun.–Wed. 6–11 p.m., Thurs.–Sat. 6 p.m.–1 a.m. (bar open till 2 a.m. nightly). Full bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. Entrees $31–$50. JG$$$Â?

Square One If it didn’t have so many vegetarian-friendly options on its menu, Square One might almost be a bacon-specialty restaurant. There are bowls of stone-ground grits studded with tiny cubes of bacon; frittatas of bacon, tomato and cheese; a kind of deconstructed Egg McMuffin with bacon on toasted brioche — and when you order pancakes, you have the option of a thick caramel sauce whose buttery qualities have been enriched by bacon fat. Even without the bacon, Square One is a pretty good place — big salads for lunch made with roasted beets or house-cured salmon; pressed ham-and-cheese sandwiches. The grits are the stone-ground kind from Anson Mills in South Carolina; the beef from Harris Ranch; the eggs from Mike and Sons. Still, breakfast is the one meal where ingredients and technique tend to matter less than the ability of the cook to prepare things exactly the way you like them. I don’t want to oversell this restaurant — the aesthetics are not quite my own. I tend to like pancakes that are thin, a bit rubbery and magnificently sour; Square One’s are big, thick, fluffy creatures. But it is hard to imagine anybody able to resist the baked eggs with a fava–wild mushroom ragout over grits. 4854 Fountain Ave., Hlywd., (323) 661-1109 or squareonedining.com. Tues.–Sun. 8 a.m.–4 p.m. No alcohol. Street parking. AE, MC, V. Lunch for two, food only, $15–$25.JG$b[Â?

BLD: A most useful restaurant. (Photos by Anne Fishbein)

Danube: Last Bulgarian food for 2,400 miles

Location Info

Map

Bin 8945 Wine Bar & Bistro

8945 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90069

Category: Bars/Clubs

Region: West Hollywood

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Tan Yu Tou Judging from its menu, 12 Dishes of Basho — yet another mini-mall storefront in San Gabriel — was probably the most ambitious Sichuan restaurant ever to open in the Los Angeles area. But as wonderful as it may well have been, there are apparently a finite number of locals willing to pay $600 for a bowl of shark’s fin–turtle soup, no matter how exquisite. By the time I made it to the restaurant, the owner had changed it into a hot-pot joint — all-you-can-eat, $12 a head — called Tan Yu Tou. If you’ve ever been to a hot-pot restaurant, you know the drill. You tick off the meats and vegetables you’d like from a long checklist, a waitress sets a bifurcated boiling pot in the middle of the table, and you dunk chrysanthemum leaves and shaved lamb and mushrooms and beef tendon into either a fiery, complexly herbal red broth or a somewhat milder white broth until you are full. Tan Yu Tou’s red broth is a mean little animal, hotter than sin, resisting even the healing powers of cold Taiwan beer. An hour with the broth will have you sweating as if you have just finished a marathon. 529 E. Valley Blvd., No. 168, San Gabriel, (626) 280-8909.JG

Tender Greens A line outside a restaurant in downtown Culver City is nothing new these days. You could probably put a “Sunday Brunch” sign outside a shoe store on Culver Boulevard and see a queue begin to curl down the block. But the line outside Tender Greens, the salad café opened by veterans of Shutters and Casa del Mar, is unusual in its velocity, the utter speed with which you find yourself facing down a counterperson who wants to know whether you want to trick out your big, stainless-steel bowl of organic Scarborough Farms greens as an ahi-tuna niçoise, a grilled-chicken Caesar, a mesquite-grilled flat iron steak salad or a Mediterranean-style grilled Oxnard vegetable salad. Tender Greens is the Cold Stone Creamery of the Alice Waters revolution, but with a pleasant, umbrella-shaded patio, organic lemonade with mint and a decent microbrew selection. Tender Greens may be the very first place in Los Angeles where it is possible to get a delicious meal made with locally grown, sustainable, Earth-friendly ingredients with less hassle (and not much more expense) than it would take to pick up a double scoop with Heath Bar bits. Don’t miss the chocolate cupcake sprinkled with toffee. 9523 Culver Blvd., Culver City, (310) 842-8300 or tendergreensfood.com. Open daily 11:30 a.m.–9 p.m. Beer, wine. City lot parking around corner. AE, MC, V. Main dishes $9–$10. Salad bar. JG$b[