Photo by Anne Fishbein


When is a bistro not a bistro? Well, in the space formerly known as Atlantic, on Beverly Boulevard, you’ll find no dark wood or canary-yellow paint, no banquettes or baguettes or long-aproned waiters. EM Bistro — named for the owner’s daughter — is a soft, gull-colored room with comfortable off-white armchairs where a Beaujolais spill would seem a disaster. Midcentury paintings hang in groupings on the wall: drip paintings, murky impastos in avocado green and harvest gold, an abstraction in Chinese red. The white back wall does call something French to mind — Proust’s bedroom, as it’s made of cork, which means that it absorbs sound. Finally, a restaurant where, even with Billie Holiday or Bob Dylan oozing through the sound system, you can not only see and be seen, but hear and be heard. Which makes it a good spot for dates.


Bistros, however delicious their food can be, are not usually synonymous with fine dining. Bistro cooking at its best is hearty and big-souled, all chops and charcuterie, cassoulets and bouillabaisse, moules and steak frites. EM’s executive chef, Anne Conness, who was most recently at Alex, holds to a standard of cooking that well exceeds your average bistro fare. Her food is more nouveau American, at once robust and refined — but bistro is certainly part of the conception. Her menu is a small masterpiece, each dish well-conceived and appealing — with the curious exception of the bar menu, which sports some real clunkers.


The first thing that comes to the table, however, is the house-made bread (that, and the good-humored, near-perfect service), which is soft of crumb, yeasty, and irresistible with salty butter and an eggplant relish. Just don’t fill up on it, because you’ll want a good appetite for the pleasures to come.


Don’t be tempted by bar-menu items like the homemade potato chips, which are too thin, too uniform, too golden, too ungreasy, too perfect, in a word — one wants a bit of thickness or renegade toastiness in a homemade chip, and enough grease to hold the salt! Artichoke hearts, on the other hand, are so greasy that, even with an innovative horseradish cream dip, they’re more in line with deep-fried beer-bar snacks. And the rustic menu’s so-called “rustic pizza” has an average, unrustic crust; one friend remarked, “How can the bread be so good and the pizza crust so bad?”


Start, instead, with the heirloom bean soup, as hearty as any bistro offering, enhanced with cumin-scented crème fraîche. And Conness makes great, juicy composed salads. The spinach with bacon and pecans is hauntingly perfumed with orange oil and zest. The apple, pear and endive salad with Maytag blue cheese and toasted macadamias is crisp and luscious. Other starters include a crab-and-lobster cake, a small fist of sweet shellfish, and the mild seared tuna with haricots verts. Mussels, tender and plump, come with tiny lentils and crunchy steamed leeks in a gentle Thai-style yellow curry sauce.


Entrées do reveal a kind of bistro simplicity, which plays well with Conness’ inherent refinement. A wedge of moist, roasted halibut sits on a bed of sweet corn, baby shiitakes and “Brussels greens” that’s quietly sauced with a light, unifying reduction. King prawns, unassailably fresh and lightly grilled, crown some of the most beautifully cooked risi e bisi (sweet pea risotto) I’ve ever had in a restaurant. Short ribs, slow-cooked to an almost candied intensity, come on soft, cheese-rich polenta and strands of al dente broccolini. Conness evinces the rare ability to cook and serve vegetables at their absolute best textures, be it the broccolini, asparagus rolled in brown butter, sautéed pea tendrils sprinkled with freshly shucked sweet-as-sugar peas, or still-a-little-crunchy haricots verts.


I wished only that the red-onion relish accompanying the bone-on pork roast were as caramelized as the meat; otherwise, it’s a huge — and hugely satisfying — dish. If the saddle of lamb served with scalloped potatoes seems a little prosaic, however skillfully cooked, it’s only because any mere meat-’n’-potatoes entrée would seem that way next to its fellow entrées.


Pastry chef Natasha MacAller hews to the same high standards as Conness. The chocolate-and-pistachio pudding is pure comfort, but the organic-strawberry shortcake is brilliance. If the addition of Meyer lemon curd weren’t sassy enough, the shortcake itself is wonderfully gritty with poppy seeds, and the small berries are of exceptional sweetness and flavor. A brown-butter plum tart proves that MacAller knows how to use salt and sugar and the tartness of fruit all to their best advantage. A plate of cookies with rich Mexican chocolate ice cream is heaped with almond shortbread, cinnamon madeleines, and some espresso brownies so dense and intense they’ll wake you up for the drive home — and then some.


EM Bistro, 8256 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles; (323) 658-6004. Dinner Mon.–Sat. from 6 p.m. Entrées $15–$28. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V.