Breaking Free: L.A. Wine Culture

Anne Fishbein

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Anne Fishbein

Chilled, I'm sure: Marilyn Snee of Wine House's Upstairs 2, above, has wine pairing down cold.

Anne Fishbein

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More About

• Pieter Verheyde
• Vincenti Valentino
• Joe Pytka
• Wine
• Seafood

Anne Fishbein

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I don't need no stinkin' decanter: Wilshire's Matthew Straus likes his Hermitage unfiltered.

Anne Fishbein

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Through a glass darkly, Cut's Dana Farner can see clearly.

Enoteca DragoIn New York City, Italian wine bars multiply like mosquitoes. In Beverly Hills, we have Enoteca Drago, an outpost of Celestino Drago's pasta-driven empire, where you can chase a plate of prosciutto, a mess of baby octopods, or occasionally the elusive lardo— cured pig fat in the style of northwestern Tuscany, melted onto a slab of fried bread — with a glass of crisp Verdicchio from the Marches. Some of the wines are served in flights — sets of small pours arranged by grape or by region. Enoteca Drago does function as a full restaurant, although it is occasionally hard to remember this when you're floating in the middle of a Brunello reverie, but you will also find great pasta with pesto and one of the few proper versions of spaghetti carbonara in town. 410 N. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 786-8236. Open Mon.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m., Sun. 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, DC, MC, V. Entrees. $13.50-$18. Italian.

Ford's Filling StationFord's, whose chef-owner is Benjamin Ford, formerly of the restaurant Chadwick, is a bar that happens to have ambitious, organic food as opposed to a restaurant that happens to have a bar attached, a gastropub where you can enjoy pretty decent cooking while being bounced around like a pachinko ball. If you manage to power your way to a barstool or to an actual table, you will find most of the usual Los Angeles gastropub classics. If you like the fried Ipswich clams at Jar, you will probably like Ford's rudely indelicate version. There is a hamburger tricked out with blue cheese and an onion compote, the requisite butter-lettuce salad with bacon, and a decent selection of cheeses and meats, some of them procured from Armandino Batali in Seattle, to help down the White Dog Grenache. And there's butterscotch pudding for dessert. 9531 Culver Blvd., Culver City, (310) 202-1470. Mon.-Fri. 11 a.m.-11 p.m., Sat. 4-11 p.m. Full bar. Parking at city lot around the corner. AE, MC, V. California Contemporary.

FraicheAgain we are in Culver City, where new, vaguely Mediterranean-influenced restaurants multiply like roly-poly bugs after a rain. And again we are in the presence of stripped brick, an open kitchen, an ambitious wine list rich in Rhône reds and Loire whites, and women who wear interesting eyeglasses and eat blood sausage instead of tofu. But the project from chef Jason Travi and Thierry Perez, a bluff Frenchman of classic maitre d' temperament who could probably sneer at your wine choice in any of nine different languages, is clearly a restaurant of love and obsession, from the meticulous plateaux de mer that rival the majestic displays of shellfish at Parisian brasseries to Travi's house-cured guanciale, from the careful juiciness of the Kurobuta pork chop with violet mustard to the subtle sweetness of the rabbit tortelli with brown butter, to the sweet delicacy of the smoked eel in a salad with arugula and mint. Fraiche is a tough reservation, but there is a separate bar area where you can drink "sangria" concocted from Grey Goose and farmers-market strawberries soaked in Grand Marnier, inhale giant portions of mussels and fries, and gingerly sip a Fernet-Branca when the bacchanalia becomes too much. 9411 Culver Blvd., Culver City, (310) 839-6800 or www.fraicherestaurantla.com. Open daily 5-10:30 p.m., bar open till mid. Full bar. Nearby parking in city lot. AE, MC, V. Mediterranean/wine bar.

GraceIf Los Angeles restaurants are like rock bands, Neal Fraser is the glamorous indie-rock hero, a chef with a wobbly, idiosyncratic style that couldn't be further from the finish-fetish crowd pleasers, a detailed, strongly flavored New American cuisine, heavy on French technique and inspired by farmers-market produce and big slabs of animal. From pork belly to boar tenderloin, Fraser is clearly aspiring to greatness here — this is tremendously ambitious food. The wine list is strong on small California producers and big global reds. There's a program that introduces the occasional cellar-aged wine at a reasonable price. And there are freshly fried jelly doughnuts for dessert. What more could you want? 7360 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (323) 934-4400. Tues.-Thurs. & Sun. 6-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 6-11 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking; difficult street parking. AE, MC, V. New American.

Hungry CatTo aficionados of the ruddy beasts, Crab Day at the newly expanded Hungry Cat is an annual event up there with Christmas and the Fourth of July, a chance to take a mallet to as many spicy boiled crustaceans as their wee stomachs can hold. Somebody call the mayor: It is an occasion worthy of a city holiday. But even on the other 364 days, the Hungry Cat is a civic treasure, a place to drop into for a dozen oysters or a bowl of shrimp, a crab cake or a bowl of chowder; a greyhound or a glass of Picpoul. The wine list is tiny and delicious. The primary object of desire here is the lobster roll, an abstracted rendition of the New England beach-shack standard transformed into a split, crisp, rectangular object about the size of a Twinkie. In Maine, the $20-plus it costs would buy you a lobster the size of a small pony. But we are in Hollywood, where the next acceptable lobster roll may be 2,800 miles away. 1535 N. Vine St., Hlywd., (323) 462-2155 or www.thehungrycat.com. Mon.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. & 5:30-11 p.m., Sun. 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. & 5-9:30 p.m. Full bar. Validated parking. AE, MC, V. Seafood.

Il MoroIn Bologna, one tends to eat very well — on prosciutto, Parmesan cheese and mortadella, on creamy emulsions and butter-basted chickens, on long-cooked ragus that incorporate the entire barnyard into a few tablespoonsful of sauce. It is not for nothing the city is often called Bologna the Fat. Il Moro, which recently transformed itself from a better-than-average office-building restaurant to a center of Bolognese cuisine, may be the only place in Los Angeles where you can taste the cooking of the region: the tiny, meat-stuffed cappelletti floating in a deep-yellow capon broth; the baked lasagna enriched with a wheelbarrowful of bechamel; the house-made pasta, alive under the teeth, buried under an ultradense sauce fashioned from tomatoes and minced pigeon. Prosciutto and salami are served in the traditional Modenese way, with gnocco — oblong, unsweetened beignets that would be equally appreciated by New Orleanians and Homer Simpson. What do you drink? Fizzy Lambrusco, of course. Tucked into the corner of the Westside where you might least expect a restaurant, busier at lunch than at dinner, it backs up onto a rather romantic patio, has an attached bar with occasional live music — and is usually pretty easy to slip into without a reservation even on a Saturday night. A useful restaurant. 11400 W. Olympic Blvd., W.L.A., (310) 575-3530. Mon.-Fri. 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. & 5-10:30 p.m., Sat. 5 p.m.-1 a.m., Sun. 4:30-9:30 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, DC, MC, V. Italian.