Bucato Review: Evan Funke's Helms Bakery Restaurant Triumphs

Is there a bread in the world more abused than focaccia? Spongy, leaden, heavily oily versions plague everything from fast-food menus to high-end restaurant bread baskets. Yes, the world is full of pitiful, floppy baguettes, and shameful sourdoughs crowd our supermarket shelves. But focaccia is one of those sad instances where the bad version has actually won — there's so much of it out there that only conscious seekers of great bread and those very lucky Italians have tasted anything but.

This, in part, is why the focaccia at Evan Funke's new restaurant, Bucato, is so gobsmacking. Baked ahead of time and then finished in a wood-burning oven, the bread comes to the table with a thin, moist topping of tomatoes and olives cooked into its surface. But it's the texture that's so astounding: the delicately crisp exterior paired with an ethereal, pillowy fluff of an interior.

See more of Anne Fishbein's photos of Bucato.

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Bucato's rosemary focaccia

Location Info

Map

Bucato

3280 Helms Ave.
Culver City, CA 90232

Category: Restaurant > Contemporary

Region: Culver City

Photos

0 user reviews	Write A Review
Save to foursquare

Details

Related Stories

• Now Open: Bucato, Evan Funke's Ode to Pigs and Pasta
  August 1, 2013
• Bucato: This Week's Restaurant Review
  September 19, 2013
• Bucato Opening This Month in Culver City: Pigs Heads A Pasta Lab
  July 12, 2013
• Brunch at Bucato: Octopus Hash and Green Eggs and Ham
  October 2, 2013
• At Bucato, Vegetarians Eat Just as Well as Their Carnivorous Counterparts
  September 20, 2013

More About

• Evan Funke
• Anne Fishbein
• Bologna
• Eating Out
• Ethnic and Regional Cuisines

The focaccia — which is based on the Sicilian recipe for sfincione, meaning "sponge" — loses much of its magic as it cools, becoming less like an otherworldly, savory doughnut. The trick is to make sure its of-the-moment pleasure doesn't go to waste, while somehow leaving enough room for everything else you're going to want to eat here. Which is a lot.

Bucato has been a long time coming. Funke, who had become quite beloved as the chef at Rustic Canyon, left that restaurant in early 2012 to open this new Italian project, the third in the wave of food destinations at the Helms Bakery complex, joining Father's Office and Lukshon. Originally slated to open late last year, the project was held up by construction. In the meantime, Funke launched his Porchetta truck as a way to keep cooking, to keep from going crazy.

But really, this restaurant's roots go back to 2007, when Funke studied for three months in Bologna under master pasta maker Alessandra Spisni. Bucato is the direct descendant of Funke's Italian education, and in many ways a straightforward ode to Bologna's food traditions.

This is most apparent in the pastas. As his pasta maker, Funke has brought in Kosaku Kawamura, a Japanese chef he met in Italy. In a glassed-in room above the regular kitchen, Kawamura turns out some of the most glorious pastas this city has ever seen, each bowl a small miracle. Tiny, tight gnocchetti comes bathed in pesto Genovese. Much like the focaccia, this pesto is revelatory in its vast difference from run-of-the-mill pesto, its flavors bright yet mellow, its grassy, tangy perfume almost sharply floral.

Corzetti, comfortingly floppy rounds of pasta, come with a simple, almost rugged walnut pesto. Orecchiette become dynamic — sweet and smoky with their adornments of sausage, sprouting broccoli and chilis. Braised meats play a major roll in many dishes, and several mellow, soothing ragus appear each night — perhaps lamb over fat yellow pappardelle, perhaps tight rolls of strascinati with supple, juicy duck.

Aside from pasta and bread, Bucato's menu features sputini, which translates approximately to "snacks," as well as vegetables, seafood and meat. Each of these sections holds its own pleasures: a delicate, lemony Dungeness crab crostino topped with lardo; a refined chicken cacciatore with its wild mushroom, herb and tomato components pulled apart and served artfully on the plate under a very good, woodfire-roasted bird; a live scallop crudo with a pert green-olive topping.

In the vegetable section, Funke is presenting some of his best work. He thinks harder about how to get the most out of simple broccoli than many chefs do about far more complex dishes. His sprouting-broccoli dish is incredibly straightforward — sautéed with olive oil and a touch of garlic, and served with thin slices of picked chilis.

Yet it tastes like the platonic ideal of broccoli, the sweetest, most vegetal, most intense broccoli ever. When asked how this is possible, Funke explains in detail the four farms he's sourcing his broccoli from, how one farm is close to the coast; with hot days and cold nights; how another produces broccoli watered with snow runoff; how all of these things contribute to the flavors of each kind; and how, when mixed together, they create "super broccoli." He's right: It really is super.

Yet another tomato-and-mozzarella dish becomes new again, served as a panzanella with roasted fennel, artichokes, grilled bread and arugula, a dish that is a salad but also an entire antipasto plate. Treviso, a longer, thinner kind of radicchio, has its bitter edges tamed with honey dates and pine nuts, and bagna cauda, the hot garlic-and-anchovy sauce generally served as a dip, is used to dress the greens.

Desserts are by Zairah Molina, who previously worked under Sherry Yard at Spago. They take their inspiration from Italy but are also intensely seasonal — right now you'll find ingredients like grilled nectarines and basil ice cream alongside the nut-and–olive oil cakes. It's also Molina who's baking the astonishing breads, with Funke's input and leadership.

For all these successes, Bucato has not been without its controversies — far from it. A note on the bottom of the menu states "Cellphones and photography expressly prohibited," and this alone caused what might be described as a revolt in the blogosphere. The policy is supposed to allow dining without distraction, but it may be a losing battle — on the patio, at least, I saw phones on almost every table.