Michele StuevenWe all love a good tableside guacamole, Caesar salad, and mobile dessert tray, which has led to a cart craze involving everything from caviar to after-dinner herb-infused Italian liqueurs to aid in digestion.
Just in time for summer, the rooftop restaurant Terra at Eataly features a roving cart offering gelato made fresh to order with 100% organic milk. One bowl of gelato comes with Amarena cherries and chocolate chips, while the other is topped with olive oil and flaky Maldon sea salt. Make it boozy with limoncello or lively as an affogato with a shot of espresso.
With the help of liquid nitrogen, Chef Tony Nguyen at Crustacean Beverly Hills created the legendary Tahitian vanilla ice cream dessert that’s made in front of your eyes, serving the steaming, freezing concoction on top of a chocolate lava cake. The cart comes to the table with a wooden bowl that gets filled with a crème Anglaise, topped with nitrogen, and stirred with a wooden spoon until it’s the consistency of ice cream.
Gelato Cart at Terra (Courtesy Eataly)
And speaking of after dinner, celebrity hotspot Tre Lune in the Sycamore District of Hollywood offers a digestif Amari cart to top off an evening of satisfying signature dishes like the Grigliata Mista di Pesce with lobster, shrimp, scallops, calamari and swordfish or Lasagna Maria baked with beef, pork ragu, ricotta and Parmesan.
Choose from a cozy patio with sidewalk views, anchored by a fireplace, the main dining area, with a 14-seat bar, or the back room, home to a wood-burning pizza oven and an intimate five-seat pizza bar. Oversized black-and-white portraits dot the walls, borrowed from its Montecito counterpart, near the secret back entrance for those trying to avoid the paparazzi.
A charming nod to the Hotel Bel-Air’s celebrated past, and the garden restaurant that has been restored to its original bougainvillea-draped splendor, it has added a vintage-inspired pastry cart presented tableside, featuring a rotating selection of seasonal pastries from the onsite cafe, The Patisserie. The selection includes flaky almond croissants, signature cream puffs, and house-made cinnamon rolls.
Amaro cart at Tre Lune (Suzanne Lanza)
Encanto in Los Feliz recently re-concepted and launched Baja Brunch service, complete with Bloody Mary/Maria cart featuring the chef’s house-made bloody mix, your choice of vodka or tequila, and candied bacon, alongside an approachable prix fixe menu at $45 per person and 90’s R&B on the speakers.
The caviar cart in the Sky Room at the historic Fairmont Breakers Hotel in Long Beach comes with a choice of Estate, Osetra, or Golden Reserve with chives, crème fraiche, and blinis paired with either Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label Brut or Piper-Heidsieck Rare Brut Millésime 2013.
For dim sum, head over to the San Gabriel Valley to Atlantic Seafood and Dim Sum in Monterey Park, one of the few restaurants that still employs traditional push carts.
Caviar cart in the Sky Room (Brian Addison)
And of course, there’s the grandaddy of them all at the historic Lawry’s Prime Rib, which has been spinning salad bowls with great drama and wheeling around massive shiny silver carts filled with pounds of standing prime rib roasts and all the fixings since 1938. Choose from five different cuts, four different sauces, and sides that include mashed potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, sautéed spinach, and iron skillet grilled mushrooms.
And when it comes to that custom guacamole, we love old school, like El Torito or the newly refreshed La Cabana in Venice, and for a classic tableside Caesar salad, try BOA Steakhouse, Vito in Santa Monica, Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood, or Dal Rae in Pico Rivera. And if you want a proper tableside Steak Diane, you’ll have to venture out to the desert to Melvyn’s in Palm Springs
Tableside Prime Rib Carving (Courtesy Lawry’s)
Lawry’s Famous Spinning Bowl Salad (Palm + Ocean)