Spago
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, as did fusion cooking, the notion of the celebrity chef, and the idea that fine dining could be fun. In Wolfgang Puck’s glamorous Beverly Hills space, bolstered by imaginative executive chef Lee Hefter and pastry chef Sherry Yard, he’s redefined our idea of what Spago might be — and the roasted-beet cake with goat cheese, the turbot with Chino Ranch vegetables and the 10-spice roast squab are good enough to make you forget the duck-sausage pizza and the chopped vegetable salad that originally made Spago famous. If a tasting menu is within your budget, it’s probably the best way to experience what the restaurant can do. 176 N. Cañon Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 385-0880. Lunch Mon.-Fri. 11:30 a.m.-2:15 p.m., Sat. noon-2:30 p.m. Dinner Mon.-Thurs. 5:30-10:30 p.m, Fri.-Sat. 5:30-11 p.m., Sun. 5:30-10:30 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, D, MC, V. California with Asia and Europe.
Anne Fishbein
A slice of Cut
Anne Fishbein
Cooking sharp, Octavio Becrra
Related Content
More About
Square One
It 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 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, www.squareonedining.com. Tues.-Sun. 8 a.m.-4 p.m. No alcohol. Street parking. AE, MC, V. American.
Tacos Baja Ensenada
In most of Mexico, the words estilo Ensenada signify just one thing: fish tacos. Specifically the fried-fish tacos served at stalls in the fish market down by the docks. In East L.A., you will come no closer to the ideal than these crunchy, sizzlingly hot strips of batter-fried halibut folded into warm corn tortillas with salsa, shredded cabbage and a squeeze of lime, sprinkled with freshly chopped herbs and finished with a squirt of thick, cultured cream. Entire religions have been founded on miracles less profound than the Ensenada fish taco. 5385 Whittier Blvd., E.L.A., (323) 887-1980. Tues.-Sun. 10 a.m.-9 p.m. No alcohol. Lot parking. Cash only. Mexican.
Terroni
It may be a Canadian import, but Terroni might actually feel more Italian than anywhere else in Los Angeles at the moment, with as many expats at the tables as on the restaurant staff, terra-cotta serving dishes, a roster of decent Italian wines available in half-liter and quarter-liter carafes, and the deftest espresso pull this side of Naples. Terroni, nominally a southern-Italian restaurant, specializes in pizzas — not the artisanal, wood-fired things you find at Mozza and Antica Pizzeria, but stretched thin to order over the lip of a counter and tossed into a regular deck oven. Terroni’s pizza is good stuff: skinny, crunchy most of the way through, served as in Italy in individual uncut rounds, topped with things like broccoli rabe and crumbled sausage; Gorgonzola, honey and walnuts; or plain old mozzarella and tomato sauce. The pastas tend to be very good: linguine with clams and the dried mullet roe bottarga, a definitive penne alla Norma with fried eggplant, and possibly the first L.A. appearance of spaghetti ca’muddica, a Sicilian pasta a little like spaghetti alla puttanesca enriched with toasted bread crumbs. The oddest thing about Terroni may be its name, a nasty term for southern Italians that you sometimes hear directed at Napoli soccer players by ultras in Bergamo and Milan. 7605 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (323) 954-0300. Sun.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. Takeout. AE, MC, V. Italian.
Tiara
If Godzilla decided to explore her feminine side, she might be tempted to wear Tiara’s giant, glittery range hood on her head, just the sort of Audrey Hepburn–esque touch Mothra might find attractive. Tiara, Fred Eric’s Dr. Seuss–flavored Fashion District restaurant, shoots the girly aesthetic up with steroids. Eric practically invented the hypereclectic Los Angeles restaurant, and his Asian-tinged, pan-Mediterranean menu is painted in 17 shades of farmers-market salad. You won’t find fried potatoes, but you will find crunchy sticks of chickpea fritters that have all the sensations of a french fry. There are bubbly, skateboard-shaped lengths of flatbread served with curried squash, preserved lemons and harissa, and a selection of “Freshwiches”: rice-paper rolls stuffed with spice-tinged “Thai” cobb salad, with grilled tuna and vegetables, or with shrimp, mangoes and Granny Smith apples. Low-carb and fat-free, Freshwiches are big with the perpetually fasting fashionistas who comprise a big part of the clientele. I suspect there is not a single peculiar diet or system of culinary belief the kitchen is not prepared to handle. 127 E. Ninth St., dwntwn., (213) 623-3663. Breakfast and lunch, Mon.-Sat., 8 a.m.-3 p.m., and Sun., 8:30 a.m.-3 p.m.; dinner nightly, 5:30-10 p.m. Beer, wine, sake and champagne only. Validated lot parking. All major credit cards (except Discover). California seasonal.
