A Movable Beast: L.A. Weekly's 99 Essential Restaurants

Lou
Lou Amdur, a connoisseur of diaper-pail Burgundies, oxidative whites and Frappato, a man who talks more passionately about biodynamic wines than anyone who hasn't actually buried a dung-filled animal horn at midnight during a full moon, is the proprietor of Lou, a tiny, wonderful wine bar on the south end of Vine. It's home to both his list of organic country wines and the super-sustainable cuisine of his chef D.J. Olsen, as well as a pretty decent range of artisanal cheeses, the garlic-laced salamis of Seattle's Armandino Batali and house-made rillettes. 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 should not be missed. Do we ever get past the pig candy, a chewy, crisp, smoky concoction made with Lou's house-cured bacon and a minor tonnage of brown sugar? Sadly, sometimes we do not. 724 N. Vine St., Hlywd. (323) 962-6369, louonvine.com. Mon.-Sat., 6 p.m.-mid. Wine. Lot parking. MC, V. Location map here.

Lucques
The California-Mediterranean cooking of Suzanne Goin, which is feminine in all the best ways, is profoundly beautiful in its simplicity, and there is satori to be found in every bite of grilled fish, every herb salad, every roasted vegetable. When she's on, Goin teases out the flavor from a tomato with the precision of a sculptor, making textural contrasts dance and playing with bursts of acidity and the resinous flavors of fresh herbs. Lucques, named for a vivid green variety of French olive, is located in Harold Lloyd's old carriage house; it boasts an ultrasleek Barbara Barry design and one of the nicest patios in patio-heavy West Hollywood, but on loud weekend nights the restaurant can sometimes seem as if it is about 90 percent bar. Sunday family dinners are legendary. 8474 Melrose Ave., W. Hlywd. (323) 655-6277, lucques.com. Sunday nights feature three-course prix fixe dinners. Lunch Tues.-Sat., noon-2:30 p.m.; dinner Mon.-Tues., 6-10 p.m., Wed.-Sat., 6-10:30 p.m., Sun., 5-10 p.m. Full bar (limited bar menu available 10 p.m.-mid.). Valet ­parking. AE, MC, V. Location map here.

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Campanile's sauteed trenne

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Leo Bulgarini, gelato impresario

Location Info

Map

Zelo Gourmet Pizzeria

328 E. Foothill Blvd.
Arcadia, CA 91006

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Foothill Cities

Photos

1 user reviews	Write A Review
Save to foursquare

LudoBites
LudoBites is a restaurant scarcely imaginable just two or three years ago, a fluid space that exists as an intellectual construct instead of in plaster and tile and chrome. This week, LudoBites occupies a shuttered fine-dining restaurant in Sherman Oaks. Last year it camped in an art gallery, a diner and a bakery. Next year, maybe it will set up in an abandoned tire factory or the Goodyear blimp. Maybe it will set up in your yard.

Ludovic Lefebvre is an insanely gifted chef who rose through the French kitchens of Gagnier, Passard and Meneau, had brilliant runs here at l'Orangerie and Bastide, and spent a year overseeing spaghetti and meatballs in a new Las Vegas restaurant, one of the most successful in the world, where the food took second place to semi-nude girls wrestling in dining-room bathtubs. Most chefs in his position would have found a safe gig in a Four Seasons somewhere, sleepwalking through molecular cuisine for the swells. He, with wife Krissy in the front of the house, created a meta-restaurant that was closer to a DJ gig or a club residency. He tweets the dishes he's working on, which may or may not make the menu. The food press, including Sam Sifton of the New York Times, found him brilliant. His biggest fans, the self-described Ludobitches, come to the restaurant several times a week, like teenagers following the Grateful Dead. When Krissy opened the reservations for LudoBites 6.0, the thousands of would-be diners crashed Open Table. The seats for the run were filled within 20 minutes. It is haute cuisine at popular prices.

If you are lucky enough to land a chair at LudoBites, what do you eat? The easy answer is, everything. If your party is big enough, say four or five, you can order the entire menu. Maybe there will be a chorizo cream with cornichon ice, maybe panna cotta with caviar and caramel, maybe poached and roasted foie gras with rice vinegar and acacia honey, and maybe bruleed mackerel, but quite possibly none of the above. Lefebvre doesn't like repeating dishes much. You'll do just fine. No fixed address or phone. Follow Krissy Lefebvre on Twitter at twitter.com/FrenchChefWife for announcements and cancellations.

Mantee
Whatever sort of Lebanese restaurant you may be thinking of at the moment, Mantee is the other kind, like a fussy dining room your great-aunt's bridge partner might suggest after her second 7 & 7, and the list of house specialties, which include filet mignon with cherries as well as sliced sujuk topped with fried quail eggs, reads like a catering menu. But Mantee is run by Jonathan Darakjian, whose family owns one of the best-known Armenian restaurants in Beirut, and who cooks as if he still lives there. So while the stuffed grape leaves may be exactly like every other stuffed grape leaf you've ever tasted, the raw, pounded-beef kibbe nayeh has a sinewy presence behind its smoothness, and a dish of baked feta is transformed into something like a pungent Levantine version of a Mexican queso fundido. The su-bourek, a flaky pastry of cheese-stuffed filo, crackles and oozes when you stab it with your fork, which is just what you expect a good bourek to do. And as you'd reasonably expect, Mantee's namesake dish is pretty spectacular: a white-hot gratin dish bubbling with garlic-infused yogurt and a handful of crunchy little beef dumplings shaped like tiny Napoleon hats. The comparison is inexact, but you may be reminded of the sensation, after years of eating polished Chinese dishes in the San Gabriel Valley, of running into the rough, sturdy cooking of a chef freshly arrived from Hunan. 10962 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. (818) 761-6565, ManteeCafe.com. Open Sun., Tues.-Thurs., 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.-10 p.m. MC, V. No alcohol. Street parking. Location map here.