LA Weekly

Downtown L.A./Chinatown/Westlake

Chop Suey Café From 1935 until it faded away 50-odd years later, the Far East Café was a mainstay of the Little Tokyo neighborhood, with battered wooden booths, tall ceilings and a neon “Chop Suey” sign outside as grand as anything out of an Edward Hopper painting — also a reputation for unusually tired Chinese food. Now reopened, cobwebs scrubbed away but otherwise looking pretty much as it did in the mid-1980s, the redubbed Chop Suey Café seems to pick up just where the Far East left off: a mixed clientele of hipsters and old-timers eating sweet-and-sour pork flavored with one part vinegar, two parts nostalgia — there are probably dishes here you haven’t tasted since Richard Nixon was in office. Happy hour is a specialty. And if you are so inclined, Chop Suey Café is an aromatic, Chandler-esque place to kill an afternoon. 347 E. First St., dwntwn., (213) 617-9990. Tues.–Thurs. 11 a.m.–2 p.m. & 5–10 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.–2 p.m. & 5–11 p.m., Sat. 11 a.m.–11 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.–10 p.m. Full bar. Street parking. AE, MC, V. Asian.(JG)$

Liberty Grill The Liberty Grill smells like money, or at least as much like money as you can expect from a restaurant that serves deep-fried mac-’n’-cheese balls. The bronze plaques boasting a roster of investors in the renovated building are a surer sign of the downtown elite than anything published by a magazine, and the patriotic gewgaws on the walls would make a senator proud. This is probably the last place you’d expect from wacky avant-gardist Fred Eric, who put the place together (Twain Schreiber is the chef of record), and Eric’s skill at putting together a menu is more in evidence here than his love for bizarre details. The wine list is thick with expensive California Cabernets; the chili is thick and chunky; the almond-smoked rib-eye steak is thick and rare. 1037 S. Flower St., L.A., (213) 746-3400. Mon.–Thurs. 11 a.m.–9 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.–10 p.m., Sat. 4–10 p.m., Sun. 4–9 p.m. Full bar. Street parking. AE, MC, V. American. (JG)$$

Nick & Stef’s Joachim Splichal’s downtown steak house pushes the genre’s envelope. The décor is sedate enough — banquettes wear banker’s gray — but annexed to the dining room is a climate-­controlled glass case filled with slabs of darkening, crusting, dry-aging beef — a library of meat. The à la carte menu features 12 kinds of potatoes, 12 sauces and at least as many other side dishes. The outside patio — a sunny clearing in a forest of skyscrapers — may be the best urban dining spot in town. 330 S. Hope St. (Wells Fargo Center), dwntwn., (213) 680-0330. Lunch Mon.–Fri. 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m. Dinner Mon.–Thurs. 5:30–9:30 p.m., Fri. 5:30–10:30 p.m., Sat. 5–10:30 p.m., Sun. 4:30–8:30 p.m. Full bar. Parking in Wells Fargo Center. Entrées $19–$37. American steak house. MH $$


Silver Lake/Los Feliz/Echo Park

Canelé Dinner at Canelé, a Southern French restaurant in the old Osteria Nonni space in Atwater, can feel a lot like crashing a dinner party, with oddly minimalist décor, people you probably know and friendly but puzzled waitresses who aren’t quite sure why you’ve stumbled into their domain. The chef/owner is Corina Weibel, a Nancy Silverton protégée who also cooked for a while at Lucques, and she works the urban rustic side of new Los Angeles cooking. If this were your dinner party, and your kitchen guru of choice is Julia rather than Marcella or Madhur, this is the kind of food worthy of the good china. And on your way out, the hostess will hand you a small example of the restaurant’s namesake pastry, a dense, fluted cylinder of crisp-edged pudding traditional in Bordeaux. 3219 Glendale Blvd., Atwater Village, (323) 666-7133. Tues.–Sun. 5:30–10:30 p.m. Beer, wine. Street parking. AE, MC, V. Entrees $16–$22. French.(JG)$$

The Kitchen Here is the quintessential Silver Lake canteen. Its former subtitle — “Lunch to Late Night” — reflects the circadian rhythms of its neighborhood clientele. The interior is early East Village — deep colors, battered tables, crumbling cement, loud music. The service tends toward the casual and offhand, which belies the big-hearted, darn good food — try a bowl of quite viable cioppino. 4348 Fountain Ave., Silver Lake, (323) 664-3663. Mon.–Thurs. 5 p.m.–mid., Fri. 5 p.m.–1 a.m., Sat. 11 a.m.–mid., Sun. 11 a.m.–10 p.m. No alcohol. Lot parking. AE, D, MC, V. Entrées $10–$18. American. MH ¢


Hollywood/Melrose/La Brea/Fairfax

BLD This bustling café from Grace’s Neal Fraser may be the most useful restaurant of our time, open for quick breakfasts of croissants and cappuccino, for sybaritic brunches of fluffy ricotta pancakes and eggs Benedict, for salady lunches and meaty feasts, for serious date-night dinners and after-movie snacks of burgers and beer and butterscotch pudding. When the bouncers at Simon won’t let you within 50 yards of the restaurant, the wait at BLD, a high-turnover place that takes no reservations, is probably about 15 minutes. Neal Fraser has long been a bwana of complexity in fourth-stage Los Angeles restaurants, rarely content to settle for one garnish where three will do. Freed of the formal requirements of the destination-restaurant menu, Fraser also turns out to be a genius as a short-order cook. 7450 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (323) 930-9744. Open daily 8 a.m.–11 p.m. (bar food till mid.) Full bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. Dinner for two, food only, $26–$66. American. (JG)$$

LA99 Cobras & Matadors Steven Arroyo is the Bill Graham of tapas in Los Angeles, the impresario who made the concept of Spanish drinks ’n’ snacks as popular as sushi platters after dozens of others had tried and failed. And his dark, buzzy tapas parlors are teeming dens of olive oil and garlic, octopus and cured pig, grilled meats and pungent concoctions of seafood and paprika and beans rushed to the table still crackling in unglazed crocks. The Los Feliz restaurant has a nicely curated list of Spanish and South American wines; at the Hollywood restaurant, you buy your wines from the shop conveniently located next door. When you bring your prize back to the table, don’t be surprised if the counter guy is standing right there, corkscrew in hand. 7615 W. Beverly Blvd., L.A., (323) 932-6178. 4655 Hollywood Blvd., Los Feliz, (323) 669-3922. Dinner Sun.–Thurs. 6–11 p.m., Fri.–Sat. 6 p.m.–mid. BYOB. Valet parking. MC, V. Spanish. JG $