Where to Eat Now

Comments (0) By Jonathan Gold Tuesday, May 13 2008

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Campanile 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. Thin, broad sheets of veal scallopine pick up all the heady fragrance of the cured oak logs burning beneath them. 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 — a feat of kitchen virtuosity with the same degree of difficulty as a reverse 360 dunk. Peel is the LeBron James of the grill. 624 S. La Brea Ave., L.A., (323) 938-1447. Lunch Mon.–Fri. 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.; dinner Mon.–Wed. 6–10 p.m., Thurs.–Sat. 5:30–11 p.m.; brunch Sunday 9:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, CB, DC, MC, V. California/Mediterranean.JG

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Location Info

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Vietnam Restaurant

1011 S. Glendora Ave.
West Covina, CA 91790-4921

Category: Restaurant > Asian

Region: Central San Gabriel Valley

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Foundry Patina, overseen by Joachim Splichal, perhaps the greatest technical chef in the history of Los Angeles restaurants, was the laboratory where a generation of young chefs learned to pair the mellowness of cooked vegetables with the sharper flavors of their raw counterparts, to compose brown-butter vinaigrettes, to arrange dishes using flavors and techniques from 12 phyla and three continents: a vibrant, intellectual, farm-friendly cuisine. Foundry, a Melrose supper club run by Patina alum Eric Greenspan, is the newest restaurant to emerge from Patina’s orbit, as relaxed as a place with a $90 tasting menu can be, with a spacious patio, a dining room weirdly commingled with the open kitchen, and a bar area dominated by laid-back piano music from founding Fishbone keyboardist Christopher Dowd. Waiters rush by with little cast-iron pots of pork belly with fried eggs and fitted rounds of toast; rare, crisp-skinned salmon with shaved beets and puréed beets; and braised short ribs with an exceptionally airy horseradish-potato purée. The intimate patio is pleasant; the eclectic wine list is long and reasonably priced. 7465 Melrose Ave., L.A., (323) 651-0915 or www.thefoundryonmelrose.com. Tues.–Sat. 6–10 p.m., Sun. 10 a.m.–3:30 p.m. Bar open Thurs. till mid. and Fri.–Sat. till 2 a.m. Full bar. Music. Valet parking. All major CC. California/American. JG

Jitlada Thai RestaurantJitlada has always been one of the most respected Thai restaurants in Los Angeles, the fanciest place in Thai Town since at least the late 1970s. But with a recent change of ownership, it’s been reborn. The kua kling Phat Tha Lung at Jitlada may be the spiciest food you can eat in Los Angeles at the moment, a sweet, thick, brown curry tossed in a wok with shredded beef, a turmeric-rich endorphin bomb that is traditionally one of the hottest mouthfuls in southern Thailand, which is to say the world. Jitlada’s auxiliary menu is almost a thesaurus of southern Thai specialties that you probably haven’t encountered outside a guidebook — things like delicious, foul-smelling yellow curries of fermented bamboo shoots; a Songkhia-style rice salad, khao yam, tossed with toasted coconut, dried shrimp, shredded fresh lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and a sweet sauce called naam khoei; and whole sea bass shellacked with fresh turmeric, deep-fried and showered with crunchy bits of crisp, fried garlic. The house version of the classic Thai dessert of ripe mango and coconut-scented sticky rice is superb. 5233½ Sunset Blvd., Hlywd., (323) 663-3104. Mon. 5-10 p.m., Tues.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Fri.-Sun. 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Beer and wine. Difficult lot parking. AE, MC, V. Thai.ILM

Square OneIt is hard to go wrong with bacon, but Square One, a cheerful, brightly painted breakfast place in the L. Ron Hubbard district of East Hollywood, may have the city’s best: Nueske’s bacon, the well-regarded artisanal product from northern Wisconsin, sliced thick, laid on a rack and slow-roasted until it becomes crisp but pliable, sweet and deeply smoky, exploding under your teeth into gushers of fragrant juice. Still, even without the bacon, Square One is a pretty good place — epochal breakfasts, big salads for lunch made with roasted beets or house-cured salmon, pressed ham-and-cheese sandwiches, organic grits, fragile chocolate-chip cookies as big around as dinner plates. The chefs shop the same way you do, or at least the way you would like to think that you would do if your life were devoted to cooking breakfast rather than to such unimportant concerns as work, television and sex. 4854 Fountain Ave., Hlywd., (323) 661-1109 or www.squareonedining.com. Tues.–Sun. 8 a.m.–4 p.m. No alcohol. Street parking. AE, MC, V. American.JG

La Terza What chef Gino Angelini is attempting at La Terza may be no less than seeing 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. Perfumed by a wood-fired rotisserie at one end of the restaurant, and lubricated by a sharp wine list put together by former Campanile maitre d’ Claudio Trotta, it even looks Italian. Many of Angelini’s signature dishes surface here, including guanciale-wrapped monkfish, roasted sole with thyme, beets with Gorgonzola and walnuts. Pastas may not be a priority here — that would be the tremendous rotisserie meats — but they are among the best in town at the moment. 8384 W. Third St., L.A., (323) 782-8384. Lunch daily, 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.; dinner daily, 5:30–11 p.m.; brunch Sun., 10 a.m.–2:30 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. Dinner for two, food only, $58–$96. Italian.JG