Los Angeles Dining: Sycamore Kitchen

We're just back from a holiday spent in Los Angeles visiting friends. We had some great food, but the dish that I am still fantasizing about was actually a humble brunch pastry. Sycamore Kitchen comes from the chefs behind the well regarded Hatfield's. It opens nice and early (perfect for a baby on East Coast time!) and offers an array of pastries and brunch dishes.

The pastry that stole my heart was a salted caramel pecan babka roll. I would normally not order a sticky bun, but the salted caramel, the flavor combination du jour was too compelling to pass up. I LOVED this roll. Seriously, I might have to cheat on my beloved chocolate banana pancake to take up with this ooey gooey salty goodness. It is simply the perfect combination of salty and sweet. So good in fact that we returned the next day so I could eat it again, and the second time I didn't even share.

If sweets aren't your thing, everything else at Sycamore Kitchen is ridiculously good, too. I'm not exaggerating when I say that every bite of everything I had was utterly scrumptious. The croque madame combined ham, cheese, béchamel and an egg on wonderful grilled country bread to great effect, and the eggs benedict was taken up a notch with the addition of honey-sherry glazed pancetta and fried rosemary.

 

On our return visit, I tried the scrambled egg and chorizo sandwich with melted Swiss cheese, roasted onion, on griddled pan de mie. To be honest, I thought this would pale in comparison to the previous day's dishes, but I didn't want to order the exact same thing. Well color me surprised, it might have been even better than the other two dishes. Or maybe they were all equally delicious. Tough to say when my brain is melting from overwhelming pleasure.

Our friend ordered the granola both days, so it must be good, but I could not possibly resist the siren call of less healthy fare. Probably that is why he has Hollywood good looks and we look like regular people, but it's totally worth it.

Shoot, now I'm sad that I won't get to eat this food again any time soon. I'm usually somewhat ambivalent about brunch food, but this was the business. Can someone in Atlanta pretty please begin making a salted caramel pecan babka roll? Add to that a pleasant outdoor eating area, low humidity 70-something weather, Stumptown coffee and dog friendly dining, and I was in heaven!

Sycamore Kitchen

143 S La Brea Ave‎

Los Angeles, CA 90036

The Dish: Katsu-Ya's Crispy Rice with Spicy Tuna

I love sushi. Having lived in LA and NY, I also know what truly melt in your mouth fresh and flavorful sushi tastes like. Surprise surprise, here in landlocked Atlanta, we are not getting fish on par with my former coastal homes. Don't get me wrong, I love Sushi House Hayakawa and frequently enjoy local faves like Zuma (minus the gobs of mayo they normally put on everything), but for truly epic sushi, LA is where it's at.

So while the Mr. and I were kickin' it west coast style this weekend, we made a bee-line for an old favorite, Katsu-Ya. Not only did we get our first celeb siting of the weekend (Hilary Duff and Mike Comrie - yes Ms. Duff is still eating sushi while prego), but we also go to enjoy my favorite Katsu-Ya dish, crispy rice with spicy tuna.

A symphony of textures and temperatures, this dish is quite simply a party in your mouth. I love the combination of perfectly crispy hot rice, the spicy kick of the jalapeno and oh so fresh tuna. Bliss! Alas, at $14 for just four pieces, it's gone all too fast. Now I'm left to fantasize about it until my next annual westward journey. Oh my, is anyone making this dish in Atlanta? I'm jonesing again already!

We went to the Brentwood outpost, but in my mind, for the classic Katsu-Ya experience, you have to head to the valley to their Studio City location.

Katsu-Ya Brentwood

11777 San Vicente Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90049

Katsu-Ya Studio City

11680 Ventura Blvd. 

Studio City, CA 91604

Quick Bites: The Bazaar by Jose Andres

Not content to sit around while Mr. AT jaunted off to Italy, I headed last weekend to visit my beloved friends, Paul and James, for a weekend in my former hood - Los Angeles. I lived there for several years and now love to visit my dashing pals for great food and even better company.

No trip to LA is complete without a sceney night out. Fortunately Bazaar combines all of the glamour you hope for in a LA hotspot with top notch molecular gastronomy small plates from renowned chef, Jose Andres. The restaurant is huge, loud and oh so swanky. The bar area comes complete with fascinating portraits that change from fuddy duddy old men into their simian counterparts. You just can't stop staring!

I was at a tableful of oh so fabulous men, so I ceded all menu control. The food came fast and furious and was universally interesting and delectable. One of the drawbacks of molecular gastronomy is that tastiness is often sacrificed in favor of surprise. Andres manages to pull off both.

One stand out was the  Cotton Candy Fois Gras which is just as weird as it sounds. It appears to be cotton candy but biting into it reveals its rich, creamy center. Even better was the "not your everyday Caprésé." It looked normal enough, but the mozzarella turned out to be liquified, literally bursting in your mouth - a pleasant and delectable surprise!

Papas Canarias were more traditional but no less successful. These tender, wrinkled potatoes are covered in crystallized salt, which is nicely offset by a mojo verde dipping sauce. Surprisingly given their intense saltiness, these little taters aren't salted, rather, they absorb the salt from their boiling water.

But my favorite dish of all were the "Philly Cheese Steaks." They are of course not what they seem. Andres' take on the hearty classic uses air bread, which is essentially a light air filled bread akin to a roll without any filling. Injected into that is a gooey warm cheddar, and it's topped off with succulent Wagyu beef. Wow! I could eat a whole plate of these. It's love, really.

In the midst of all that deliciousness, I also managed to see Neil Patrick Harris. How's that for an LA night?

My only quibble is that Bazzar has a weird anti-knife agenda and everything has to be eaten with a spoon or a fork. Not always easy. They gave me one when I asked, but I find it odd that it's not standard there. Also a bummer was that our bill was split incorrectly, to my detriment. I realize that it's nice of them to even be willing to split the bill at all, but I'm not sure how the single girl at dinner ended up with the biggest share of a bill that was supposed to be evenly split. Oh well, it was well worth the extra dough.

Bazaar is both scene and substance, which is a rare find indeed! I'll be drifting off to sleep now dreaming of philly cheesesteaks....


The Bazaar by Jose Andres
SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills
465 S La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90048
Phone: 310-246-5567

Los Angeles Dining: Osteria Mozza

I landed at LAX, and by the time I joined my friends Paul and James for dinner it was after 9 Pacific time. My stomach was grumbling wondering why on earth I had waited until midnight to eat. Fortunately, Osteria Mozza was worth the wait. With a culinary power team like Nancy Silverton, Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich it’s little surprise that Angelenos literally lost their mind for this restaurant when it first opened. Even two years later, the place was impressively packed for late on a Thursday night.

For the uninitiated– Silverton is a partner at Campanile, a long beloved LA restaurant and the founder of the wildly successful La Brea Bakery, among other culinary feats. Batali needs no introduction, and Bastianich was born into the biz with famous mother Lidia leading the way and a long partnership with Batali cementing his stature. And they live up the hype.

The menu mixes the traditional primi and secondi courses with an extensive mozzarella bar list. We sat at the back bar for a special weekday night deal – a mozzarella bar dish, a pasta, a dessert and a glass of wine for just $35. Considering most mozzarella bar items are $15 on their own, this is a spectacular deal!

Alas, the deal can only be had at the back bar, not the larger central one, so the three of us had to wait it out. Fortunately the hostess eventually convinced Desperate Housewives’ Richard Burgi to move over a seat so we could sit down.

The pasta and dessert were good. They didn’t rock my world, but they were well worth the price. The Tagliatelle with oxtail ragu was amply meaty and full of flavor, but I’d certainly tasted similar dishes before. The pumpkin, date and bourbon torte was also quite moist, and I love any dessert with pumpkin and dates, but it still was the star of the show. I think I would have fared better with the three different flavors of cannoli as Paul seemed to be enjoying his dessert most of all.

No surprise given it’s the name sake of the restaurant, mozzarella is where Osteria Mozza shines. The dishes we enjoyed from the mozzarella bar were indeed mind-bogglingly delicious. I chose the Burrata with bacon, marinated escarole and caramelized shallots because I love the super fresh, milky texture of burrata. First off, I was thrilled to see they didn’t skimp on this dish. It came with two crostini topped with heaping slices of creamy burrata. The soft cheese had such a lovely texture and lightness. Not the chewy grocery store mozzarella that usually bums me out. The balance of meaty bacon and pungent shallots added umph to the heavenly simplicity of the cheese. Seriously, wow.

Years ago, Mr. AT and I were driving through a town in Italy known for their mozzarella prowess. I insisted we find a fromageria so we could try for ourselves. We ended up buying a ginormous bag of  floating fresh mozzarella. So incredibly, addictively delicious it was, that we ate something like a pound of it in mere minutes with our bare hands as we headed south. This experience wasn’t quite like that, but it was close. Certainly the best cheese dish I’ve had in years and definitely worth an impatiently growling stomach.