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

Test Kitchen
The buzz in Los Angeles dining belongs to restaurants that don't technically exist; the pop-ups, roving trucks, temporary residencies and secret feasts that have transformed dinner out into a competitive sport. So in a way, the most interesting opening of the season may have been Test Kitchen, which is less a restaurant than it is a club that happens to feature food instead of music, a venue where every night is opening night, the name chef is always behind the range, adrenaline is the drug of choice and cooking is a performing art. As LudoBites or Chicks With Knives functions as a restaurant without a physical space attached to it, Test Kitchen is a physical space without a restaurant, a loud, softly lit basement with a wine menu chalked onto a pillar; a big, open kitchen; a French maitre d'; and the feeling that anything could happen. Whole restaurant teams, including waiters and runners, may be booked into Test Kitchen for rehearsal runs before their own places open, or a wandering chef may be recruited to cook for an evening or two.

Is Test Kitchen any good? It depends on the chef. But in its scant months of existence, I have had stellar meals from Javier Plascencia and John Sedlar, and merely fine ones from chefs I won't mention. But if you're more interested in the creative chaos of a restaurant's first days than you are in the polished product of a kitchen that has worked together for years, Test Kitchen was designed for you. 9575 W. Pico Blvd., L.A. (310) 277-0133, testkitchenla.com. (Online reservations only.) Open daily, 6 p.m.-mid. Full bar. Valet parking. All major CC. Location map here.

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Campanile's sauteed trenne

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Leo Bulgarini, gelato impresario

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Zelo Gourmet Pizzeria

328 E. Foothill Blvd.
Arcadia, CA 91006

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Foothill Cities

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The Gorbals
The Gorbals, perhaps, is a restaurant that should not be seen by the light of day, when the boxy tables look like a shop-class project, the artfully scuffed floors look worn, and the backroom speakeasy vibe is overtaken by the thought that the dim space in the old Alexandria Hotel may have once served as an industrial laundry room. The music is still good, various Iggyisms and post Iggyisms and proto Iggyisms, but you get the feeling that chef Ilan Hall and his crew would rather be smoking cigarettes than flipping around matzo brei. If cooking is theater, and it occasionally is, what comes out of the Gorbals kitchen is the confrontational kind, food that challenges your belief systems about what cooking should be.

The menu's conceit, Scottish-Jewish food, is at first glance a transgressive fantasy cuisine designed to alienate as many people as possible: bacon-wrapped matzo balls, pork belly braised in Manischewitz, BLTs made with gribenes instead of bacon. Sacrilicious! Hall served chicken thighs stuffed with haggis, and then took them off the menu just before Burns Night, the one night of the year when people might want to eat them. Scottish-Jewish cuisine may be a construct that exists solely within Hall's perfervid imagination, but an order of his french fries, cooked with whole garlic cloves and great, aromatic handfuls of fresh dill, is, as they say, a fact on the ground. Do you eat them before, after or along with the bacon-wrapped matzo balls? That part is up to you. 501 S. Spring St., dwntwn. (213) 488-3408; thegorbalsla.com. Lunch, Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-3 p.m.; dinner Mon.-Wed., 6 p.m.-mid.; Thurs.-Sat., 6 p.m.-2 a.m.; Sunday brunch 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Full bar. Street and nearby pay-lot parking. All major CC. Location map here.

Tirupathi Bhimas
Atop a newish mini-mall in Artesia's Little India, Tirupathi Bhimas is a glowing, flying saucer of a restaurant, popular with the chic desi crowd but serving fairly orthodox Andhra Pradesh–style vegetarian cuisine, the heavy southern Indian stuff, without a Bombay mojito or a chakratini in sight. Tamil is spoken, and dishes are assumed to be searingly spicy unless specified otherwise. The standard order at Tirupathi Bhimas is the thali, the traditional combination plate of nine or so stews, soups and grain dishes, spooned into tiny bowls and arranged around the perimeter of a gleaming stainless-steel platter, garnished with a thin pappadum cracker, a pliable round of chapati bread and perhaps a wad of spiced potatoes rolled into a spliff-size dosa. Will you know what is in the bowls? Probably not, and nobody will bother to explain it to you. Suffice it to say that the spicy Andhra thali will be spicy and the non-spicy thali will be pretty spicy, too. After dinner, stop by the Saffron Spot downstairs for a dish of Indian ice cream. 8792 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia. (562) 809-3806, tirupathibhimas.com. Tues.-Thurs., 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. and 5:30-9:30 p.m., Fri., 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. and 5:30-11 p.m., Sat.-Sun., 11:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m.; closed Mon. No alcohol. Catering. Lot parking. All major CC. Location map here.

Vincenti
Valentino may be grander than Vincenti, and Giorgio Baldi may draw a more famous clientele, but Vincenti feels like the spiritual center of fine Italian cooking in Los Angeles, its hearth. And befitting a hearth, much of Nicola Mastronardi's food comes from the big, hardwood-burning ovens, flavored with the presence of smoke, forests, stone chimneys and chilly afternoons — a scallop, say, sprinkled with bread crumbs and baked in its shell until it sizzles; a magnificent veal chop; soft curls of cuttlefish tucked into an herb salad; a whole, truffle-laced squab. The adjacent rotisserie turns out the best restaurant version of porchetta I have ever tasted in California — loin and belly are wrapped into a spiral, seasoned with fennel and spit-roasted to a crackling, licorice-y succulence. It is certainly possible to eat several mediocre Italian meals elsewhere in this neighborhood for the price of a single superb one here. At these times, it is good to remember that on Monday nights, pizza also comes out of these ovens. 11930 San Vicente Blvd., Brentwood. (310) 207-0127, vincentiristorante.com. Mon.-Sat., 6-10 p.m., Friday for lunch, noon-2 p.m. Full bar. Takeout. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. Location map here.