You will never find cooking exactly like Gino Angelini’s in Italy, where the greens tend to be tougher, the rabbits plumper, the basil more pungent and the best beef leaner than it is in California. Pigeon in Italy tends to have the stink of the forest about it. A good chef in Italy probably wouldn’t use balsamic vinegar unless he happened to be Modenese, and reputable menus rarely feature both Genovese pesto and osso buco alla Milanese. What Angelini is attempting at La Terza may be no less than re-imagining California food through the prism of his advanced Italian technique, re-imagining California as an Italian province that happens to have a few agricultural virtues of its own, produce that translates into supple pastas, complex salads and the subtle vegetable purées with which Angelini enriches his sauces. And look at those meats: glistening, wood-smoke-infused slabs of pork belly; drippingly rich duck with figs; mahogany-skinned squab enveloping a rich stuffing of shiitake mushrooms and its own liver. Sometimes there is even trifolati, a traditional Italian stew of kidneys, melted down in warm olive oil and simmered in red wine. In Viareggio, trifolati may just be lunch. In Los Angeles, it is a revelation. 8384 W. Third St., L.A., (323) 782-8384. Open daily for breakfast 7–11 a.m., for lunch 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m., for dinner 5:30–10:30 p.m. Full bar. Takeout. Valet parking. AE, D, MC, V. Italian. $$$
Literati II
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Apple Pan
10801 Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90064
Category: Restaurant > American
Region: West L.A.
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Literati is just as happy to serve you a really good pork chop as an exquisite organic salad, a stiff drink as a bottle of Viognier, and it seems as if some of the customers have practically set up their offices here beneath the framed pencils and the old photographs of Santa Monica, borrowing novels from the dining-room bookcase to read over lunch — like Literati Café next door, from which it spawned, Literati II is popular with screenwriters and others eager for a second home. Chef Chris Kidder and pastry chef Kimberly Sklar are both veterans of Campanile in the very best way, in love with woodsmoke and seasonal farmers market produce, generous portions and plenty of herbs; tapping old Mediterranean traditions and making them their own — don’t miss the pasta with arugula pesto or the hot churros with bitter chocolate. 12081 Wilshire Blvd., W.L.A., (310) 479-3400. Lunch Mon.–Fri. 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.; dinner Mon.–Thurs. 6–10 p.m., Fri.–Sat. 5:30–10 p.m.; brunch Sat.–Sun. 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m. Full bar. $2 valet parking in rear. AE, MC, V. California Contemporary. $$
The Lodge
Restaurant magnate Adolfo Suaya is the dark prince of the anti-chef wing of the local restaurant scene, the evil one behind half the velvet-rope joints in town. Yet I love the Lodge for its double-fisted Tanqueray martinis, for the thick-cut pepper bacon put out like peanuts at the bar, for the big chunks of blue cheese in the house chopped salad and the onion rings as golden as the bangles on a Brahmin woman’s arm. A waitress will try to sell you a third or fourth martini. The $75 porterhouse-for-two starts to seem not only possible but desirable in the heat of the Lodge moment, and if you do the math, it is one of the least costly items on the menu. But the potatoes are not just baked, but salt baked, crunchy skinned, accompanied by enough condiments to crank the vibe from Ornish all the way up to Atkins with just a few dips of the fork. 14 N. La Cienega Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 854-0024. Open nightly 5 p.m.–1 a.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. California Steak House. $$$
Los Balcones ?del Peru
A scant block below the glowing Sunset + Vine complex, so close to the ArcLight Theater that it shares its parking lot, Los Balcones del Peru lies at the precise border of redeveloped Hollywood and its shadow, a breath of authenticity a few steps south from the overamped velvet-rope district, and home to camarones a la piedra, a warm shrimp preparation from the tropical northern coast of Peru that is one of the most formidable ceviches in town. Los Balcones also may be the only Peruvian restaurant in town without tapes of Andean panpipe music, which is almost a miracle, at least if you ignore the occasional charanga version of “Feelings.” It is easy to spend hours here after a movie at the ArcLight, eating fried fish, fried-chicken “chicharrones” and scallops broiled with Parmesan cheese, drinking Peruvian beer from the Inca city of Cuzco. 1360 N. Vine St., Hlywd., (323) 871-9600. Sun.–Thurs. 11 a.m.–9 p.m., Fri.–Sat. 11 a.m.–10 p.m. Beer and wine. Validated parking at ArcLight Cinema. AE, MC, V. Peruvian. $
Lou
If pigs had their way, pig candy would be made out of chocolate — better yet, out of chocolate that made its way into their troughs. But for better or worse, pig candy is the vernacular name for a snack made out of smoky, thick-cut bacon baked with lots and lots of brown sugar until it transforms itself into demonically fragrant slabs that bear more than a passing resemblance to pork-belly terrine. You want some of this stuff. Really, you do. Lou, a tiny, wonderful wine bar on the south end of Vine, serves a pretty decent range of artisanal cheeses, the garlic-laced salamis of Seattle’s Armandino Batali, and house-made rillettes. The wine list is pleasantly oddball, thick with rustic bottles of obscure country wines. Lou has a minor specialty in both long-braised meats and tasty vegetarian soups, and the elaborate Monday-night wine dinners revolving around, say, choucroute or the season’s first Alaskan halibut have become legendary. Still, on cool nights there may be nothing better than a plateful of the pig candy made with Lou’s house-smoked bacon, a bowlful of olives and a glass of organic Côtes du Luberon. 724 N. Vine St., Hlywd., (323) 962-6369 or www.louonvine.com. Mon.–Sat. 6 p.m.–mid. Wine. Lot parking. MC, V. California Contemporary. $
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