Red O: Back to Bayless

Arellano immediately put up a video clip where Bayless did say that he wondered how true Mexican food would play in Los Angeles. Bayless struck out at the comment a second time on Twitter.

I tried to smooth the waters with a private note to him, and we agreed on a truce later in the day, but the damage had been done: The comments on Arellano's post eventually numbered well into the 200s, items on the "feud" hit dozens of restaurant blogs, and the lines had been drawn for a proxy war between the cult of True L.A. Mexican Cooking and the supposed Intruder From Chicago. It was all that people I ran into wanted to talk about, and at El Mercado in East L.A. later that week, a stranger in a Lakers shirt came up to me and slapped me five.

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Behind the scenes in Red O's kitchen

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Red O

8155 Melrose Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90046

Category: Restaurant > Fusion

Region: West Hollywood

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More About

• Rick Bayless
• Gustavo Arellano
• Bill Esparza
• Ethnic and Regional Cuisines
• Eating Out

So it was with considerable trepidation that I started going to Red O again, reluctantly wanting to keep up my side of the battle, but on the other hand knowing that the inadvertent remark, even if reported out of context, had probably done real damage to the restaurant's credibility — I had given people an excuse not to go. I wasn't sure whether the door host, who had seen several of my fake names by this point, would even let me pass.

The first time back, I managed to slink in — he must have been off-duty. The next time he recognized me, even slapped me on the back, and complimented a Squid Ink post that had been written by Caroline on Crack. It felt like a different place — friendlier, more solicitous, not quite the restaurant that had started power-cleaning the floors halfway through the meal on my first visit to the place. The wine list still included a lot of tasty, inexpensive South American reds. And the cooking: Let's say that it resembles high-end Mexico City restaurant food more than Esparza will ever let on, but with a lot less excitement than you'll find in the best local kitchens.

The tamales may be topped with fresh corn and goat cheese, but the steamed masa, the matter of the tamale itself, barely coheres. The quality of the smoked wild-caught salmon may be high, but it seems almost irrelevant buried under avocado salsa and goat cheese on a slice of dry toast. I love the tiny, fried sopes, their toasty corn flavor and their golden crunch; and the crisp pork belly that fills them is expertly prepared, but the result is somehow more a fancy catering dish than it is a soulful antojito, a criticism that could apply to the oddly bland short-rib sopes, the beautifully textured but underseasoned guacamole and the candy-sweet shrimp ceviche.

I loved the mushroom ceviche, minced with herbs and served on a curling sliver of plantain; and the tinga, a Puebla-style stew that has been reinterpreted to incorporate slabs of slow-cooked pork shoulder and a not-insignificant portion of the belly, is succulent, made with tortilla-fed meat from the famous Gleason Farms. The cazuela of lamb, stewed in the clay pot with chiles and cumin until it almost collapses, is wonderful.

Bayless does source great ingredients — he is the impetus behind a lot of the famous organic Mexican farms around Chicago — so when you order a Veracruz-style chilpachole (fish stew) the Carlsbad mussels and Mazatlan shrimp will be firm and fresh, even where the chile broth is laced with a medicinal dose of epazote, and the quality of the sea bass in the pescado Zarandeado will be superb even as the preparation leaves you yearning for the trashy but fabulous version in Inglewood.

At Bayless' Topolobampo and Frontera Grill, a lot of the dishes tend to have similar flavor profiles, the sweet-smoky-hot thing that tends to travel from rabbit to poultry to pig. And you do find a lot of that here, from the queso fundido sluiced with a watery crumble of chorizo to the green-chile-marinated steak, to the dryish, achiote-tinged cochinita pibil also made from Gleason Farms pork.

And then a dish of soft-serve ice cream, maybe topped with goat's-milk caramel, and you float back into the night.

"Do I have to ask your permission to leave, too?" a tipsy man asked the door host.

The door host smiled. "You may leave," he said.

RED O: 8155 Melrose Ave, L.A. (323) 655-5009, redorestaurant.com. Dinner Sun.-Thurs., 6-11 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 6 p.m.-mid. All major credit cards accepted. Full bar. Valet parking. Small courses, $9-$15; main courses, $25-$32. Recommended dishes: mushroom ceviche, lamb cazuela, tinga poblana, soft-serve ice cream.