Papilles

So now what am I supposed to do? Amdur realizes the inherent value in a Yum Yum-adjacent location and opts to, as they say in certain loosely regulated industries, monetize. Good for him, but I’m totally fucked. What am I supposed to hang at BLD just because it’s on the corner and they sometimes sell Poulsard by the glass? (Well, perhaps.) But am I really supposed to drink said wine with a so-called self-constructive dinner (still sic erat scriptum after over half a decade)? Elsewhere in the neighborhood, there is A.O.C. Wine Bar, but it is yoked to those seemingly immutable small dishes and downright senescent.  It even serves brunch.

It is dumb luck then that Papilles (French for papillae) opened in another dank elbow of a strip center, almost below a bridge in a notably Lynchian section of Hollywood. Papilles may not be in my neighborhood, but it is in one that I can embrace. The restaurant rather boldly claims inspiration from so-called bistronomy, the Parisian trend that emphasizes intelligent, high quality food at affordable prices, frequently on prix fixe menus, and convivial, casual settings. Bistronomy has lured several modernist titans including Le Comptoir’s Yves Camdeborde into eschewing the chase for three Michelin stars with its attendant superfluous frills (and greater financial risk) which perhaps explains its allure to restaurateurs in Los Angeles.  Papilles honors this new Parisian way: For $35, the customer gets two options in each of three courses and may choose from a shelf of wines that are reliably left-wing if not as recondite or enjoyable as those Messrs. Jancou and Amdur would pour. The interior matches the prices; 10 or so tables and an open kitchen squeeze into a tight space whose dark colors and assorted pictures of flowers offer traces of outer arrondissement charm.

The chef is Tim Carey, who despite an apprenticeship with a local Ducasse alumnus, is a kid in a Dodger cap with a chef’s knack for profanity, or at least that is his schtick.  With help from an assistant or two, Carey cooks his heart out on a nightly basis under what I imagine are serious financial and self-evident spatial constraints. Accordingly, the preparations are straightforward and, this being California and not Paris, more Chez Panisse than Le Comptoir.[1]

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[1]Do not expect, as you can at Le Comptoir’s dinner service, a slim jewel of a gougère that demonstrates a virtuoso mastery of balance between bread and cheese or a fusiony Raviole de crevettes dans son bouillon, A La verveine et chanterelles, a dumpling for all intents and purposes served in its own East Asiany broth with dried chanterelles and verbena, the flavorful shrimp inside cooked to a soft near-perfection.  And while Papilles will not serve astoundingly delicious rognons de veau de lait, the chef, I’m guessing, is under strict instructions not to serve said kidneys with deep-fried tuna fingers and broccoli, puréed Hatfield’s style, which Camdeborde strangely has no qualms about doing.

With the statewide ban on foie gras weeks away (which will affect only the few restaurants statewide that serve the luxury item), restaurant insouciance is at a premium these days.  Naturally Papilles added a genuine torchon to the appetizer list that is helped along by a syrup or coulis made from those ever famous Harry’s strawberries plus a few berry wedges for good measure. Forget any asinine comparison to foie gras in France, the foie was good, and any avian suffering, therefore, worthwhile. Let’s hope Papilles practices civil disobedience post-July 1. After all, the de rigueur distribution of ashtrays in K-town watering holes poses an irrefutably greater health risk (and thus deeper moral problem) than the alleged mistreatment of a few birds, and the L.A.P.D. does not seem so feared at Toe Bang.

The Wife loved her soft-shelled crab which was as fresh as can be. Deftly fried to emphasize the crab’s essential lightness and accompanied by piquant mustard greens, my delectable single bite was superior to the one served at Lucques a few weeks later. (Maybe the season had already changed?) At an unavoidable stop-and-chat at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market, I learned that Papilles failed to sell what must have been a minuscule allotment of soft-shelled crabs.  So don’t expect kidneys on the menu anytime soon.  I will lodge no complaints against the roast tomato veloute soup, bright orange in color with a couple of whole, baby sun tomatoes sitting in the mix, but I should have ordered the crab.

My main course, sautéed local halibut served with fennel, olives, baby sun tomato, encapsulates what I love about Papilles. The chef has a knack with halibut, emphasizing the fish’s inherent flavor by cooking to a soft texture. The first time I had the halibut, a small part was slightly undercooked, a mistake not replicated a few weeks later when serving the halibut in a light bourride broth with perfectly tender baby squid and manila clams.

The desserts tend to be a cheese and a sweet. Accordingly, we bifurcated into a separate cheese course, sharing a plate of Brillat Savarin, the soft cow’s milk cheese that was delicious enough to offset the mild nausea I experienced from seeing raisins (the conservative variety!) served as an accompaniment. We ended with a classic strawberry tart that will ensure our return. Anyway, let’s hope Lou reopens soon. I miss the scallops, the Faugeres and even that platter of domestic cheeses.

Papilles
6221 Franklin Ave.
Hollywood
(323) 871-2026
http://www.papillesla.com/

The Olive Tree

Nearly half a billion people inhabit the Middle East, a region that sprawls from Morocco all the way to Iran and comprises nearly 19 countries, that is, because the Palestinians seem intent on taking their chances on statehood at the United Nations this fall. While portions of southern California share the same arid climate as the Middle East, the various cuisines of the vast Middle East are popularly conflated into something sunny and light. Falafel and tabbouleh, both Levantine staples, have long been popular among the unusual breed of people who are acolytes of Dennis! Kucinich. For carnivores, the smattering of kebabs and of course the shawarma, or jahy-roh as it is known in most parts of America, constitute the full breadth of the Middle Eastern diet.

However, these items would not seem to provide the succor requisite by inhabitants of the Arab World--a narrow corner of which is today’s topic--and you may have heard is unstable politically, fraught with autocracy and theocracy, howbeit now under sustained challenge, riddled by poverty and war, but nothing if not gritty. Amidst such strife, the Arab peoples would seem to prize comfort in their food and concomitantly soulfulness. While there is outstanding Middle Eastern food in Los Angeles, as a general matter, it tends to be, to adapt the embarrassing Angelenan coinage, Cal-Levantine in nature.

To eat lustful, comforting Arab food, shorn of any sense of a Californian sensibility, for example, what a Hamas fighter might crave after assassinating a few collaborators and then joining his friends in a game of whack-a-mole with the IDF, the intrepid Angeleno must venture down to the Olive Tree in Anaheim’s Little Gaza section. While the Olive Tree may be initially unsettling to the kafir, the restaurant’s lusty, heartfelt food assuages those anxieties with the ease that it soothes the locals’ craving for a taste of the old country or, as it were, the occupied territory.

The Olive Tree occupies a drab dining room in an anonymous strip center, minimally decorated with Arab bric-a-brac, junk really, with the only noticeable color coming from the green and red in the small Jordanian and Palestinian flags, the so-called Flags of the Arab Revolt (designed of course by a Brit who later supported the Balfour Declaration before reclaiming what I am sure was his deeply held anti-Semitism) that hang by the front door.

At 7:30 or so, despite being moderately busy, not a single female customer was present, and the man who exited the restroom had an addled, malevolent gaze directed at no one in particular. My brother and I hoped his peculiar behavior was the product of nothing more than cocaine. Did I mention that we were the only Jews, not that anyone would care or notice since we were without our Jew-caps, and in Anaheim of all places, a “town somewhere between Buchenwald and Belsen” according to Ed? That is now two distinct sets of anxieties with which we were forced to grapple.

We ordered the two specials of the day, a lamb shank with rice and the meatballs in yogurt or, kibbe labneh and then took in the scene. The well-coiffed chef with movie star looks toiled assiduously in the open kitchen behind a deli counter of sorts. We attempted to keep abreast of our intoxicated friend, but our eyes could only follow those massive portions of lamb being distributed to the tables and which could have been served in a mead hall feast. I read the menu carefully, but saw no item described as a full-fledged Iftar. What could we have missed?

Nothing as it turned out. An order of the lamb shank was a feast for one. After they brought our shank, two middle-aged gentlemen, who by their physiognomies could have suffered at least a few scrapes at the hands of TSA, ordered by simply pointing at our shanks as if we were the experts, two Jews from Pepper Pike, Ohio. By this point, any lingering unease of ours was neutralized.

Most importantly, the shank was so tender, so delicious that our server’s failure to provide us with knives could have been a stroke of the restaurant’s bravado or maybe mere server forgetfulness. Regardless, only the four tines of our forks were needed to carve the shank up into bite-sized portions. Accompanying the shank was the Olive Tree’s version of an Arabian peninsular rice dish called kabsa, a fantastic and hearty agglomeration of innumerable spices, deftly balancing, inter alia, cinnamon, cardamom, and saffron plus currants and almonds. I asked our waitress what spices the chef used, but she declined to answer as if I might steal the recipe.

The kibbee labneh was equally as satisfying. The labneh yogurt was served like a tangy soup-sauce, with old-fashioned kibbee intermixed with bulgur wheat and spices. I remain infatuated with what was for me a dish of first impression. The thickly textured hummus also exuded hominess and careful preparation.

The Olive Tree’s traditional Arabic coffee was just as I like it: ugly and unsweetened. Before making the trek back to antipodal Beverly-La Brea, we walked over to the Forn Al Hara bakery and shared assorted baklava and other treats which in that late hour were fresh and restrained in their sweetness, a fitting finale to a surprisingly fun dinner.

The Olive Tree

512 South Brookhurst Street, Suite 3
Anaheim

(714) 535-2878

Espresso Profeta

According to Husret Hoja of Erzurum,* “Coffeehouses are places where pleasure-seekers and wealthy gadabouts sit knee-to-knee, involving themselves in all sorts of vulgar behavior. . . Do the poor have enough money to drink coffee? Men frequent these places, become besotted with coffee and lose control of their mental faculties to the point that they actually listen to and believe what dogs and mongrels have to say.” While this may be an accurate portrayal of the scene at the Intelligentsia over on Sunset Boulevard, the Hoja would have overlooked Espresso Profeta. He simply never would have found it. I struggled to find it, concealed as it is in a jewel of a old brick building on a quiet stretch of Glendon Avenue, closer to Westwood’s office towers than to the UCLA campus.

Espresso Profeta is a beacon of quality and independence among all the Starbucks and Coffee Beans in Westwood Village where there is an alarming scarcity of charming collegiate cafés serving our local branch of the University of California, that is, unless Boba Loca draws your fancy. Drawing a crowd of actual intelligentsia -- graduate students and professors, and even a few undergrads -- Profeta is all UCLA has. Profeta offers a serene courtyard with plenty of seats for reading and quiet discourse. Whoever designed Profeta’s sunny interior understood that an appropriate amount of table space is required to read the newspaper and enjoy a coffee.

The Hoja might remonstrate that Profeta’s espresso is of such superior quality that men are sure to become besotted with coffee. Profeta’s baristas draw short, thick espresso shots using the dolce beans from Espresso Vivace, the Seattle institution dating to the Queen City’s halcyon flannel-and-grunge era. (Pace Longfellow, there is nothing queenlike about Cincinnati or Catawba wine.) The Vivace beans, as interpreted by Profeta’s baristas. have their own style: they are darker than most and taste on the chocolatey side with no residual bitterness or saccharine fruitiness.

It may be a shame that UCLA undergrads lack a proper coffeehouse with the requisite clunky brown mugs, racks of local weeklies, and late hours, but my guess is that Bruins do not care. After all, the UCLA campus is graced by a branch of a certain restaurant famed for its cheeseburgers and crossed palm trees which happens to be open very late. If their coffee sucks, who cares?

*Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red, p. 12 (Translated by Erdag Goknar.)

Espresso Profeta

1129 Glendon Avenue

Westwood

(310) 208-3375

www.espressoprofetala.com

Fried Chicken at the Momofuku Noodle Bar

David Chang’s success in the East Village with his acclaimed Momofuku restaurants is proof that any culinary rivalry between West Coast and East Coast, New York and Los Angeles, is at best a cliché and at worst a delusion. On the evening of our visit to the Noodle Bar, several employees were wearing t-shirts proclaiming affinities for the East Bay. Chang reveres Wolfgang Puck, the legendary Spago chef famous for fusing Western technique and Eastern dishes and being among the co-creators of “California cuisine.” Indeed, Chang credits Puck as the source of the Momofuku mantra, which appears on the corporate website:

"Ethnic crossovers also occur when distinct elements meet in a single recipe. This country is, after all, a huge melting pot. Why should its cooking not illustrate the American transformation of diversity into unity?"

But let’s be clear: Chang is not about to hold hands in a circle and sing "We Are The World." In a 2008 New Yorker profile of him entitled “Chef on the Edge,” he used the word “fuck” 59 times, and I am sure with great nuance and subtlety. His new cookbook, Momofuku, has received publicity for its Murphian levels of profanity. The chef, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, explained that “There are so many more f-bombs and terrible things that happen in restaurants. It's an ugly, nasty business, the cooking world. It's hard, hot and grueling. Other books choose not to document this." This realism is praiseworthy and effective marketing based on its Amazon.com ranking of 111 the last time I checked.

Moreover, Chang is not some hippie chef serving compost or whatever it is that vegetarians eat. He is a stalwart proponent of cooking and eating pork. Fans of his original restaurant, Momofuku Noodle Bar, prize the steamed buns stuffed with lardaceous pork bellies and the bowl of pork belly, pork shoulder, and a poached egg that happen to be accompanied by ramen noodles and broth. At Momofuku Ko, Chang serves a so-called tasting menu of several courses that can include everything from fried pork rinds, to what Ruth Reichl, writing in Gourmet, described as “triangles of pork belly . . . nestled up to an oyster on the half shell with a swirl of cabbage in a kimchi-infused consommé.”

The Noodle Bar on a Saturday night is a crazed event, since it does not accept reservations except for its special menus. Hordes of youthful East Village denizens bravely wait outside for tables, because diners inside appear to order anything the kitchen can produce. The restaurant is long and cramped, and has an open kitchen that is constantly swarmed with orders. There is no carpeting, and the wood floors and wall refuse to absorb a single conversation. Everyone thus has to shout to be heard, creating a perpetual frenzy in the dining room. The sheer volume of all this shouting inevitably leads to inter-table bonhomie and then exchanges of food followed by de rigueur expressions of gratitude, which always involve more and more beer and liquor and food. Finite gastrointestinal capacity breaks what would otherwise be a very vicious circle.

We Foxes and Graineseseses had a reservation for Chang’s fried chicken dinner. (If I am going to wait outside for a meal, it will be at Bar Pitti or Zingerman’s.) Momofuku serves two whole fried chickens, one Southern style and one Korean style. The Southern style was fried in a buttermilk batter and smothered in Old Bay seasoning, that amalgamation of celery salt, mustard, cardamom, and paprika, just to name a few ingredients, that is another oddball Baltimore tradition. The fried chicken itself was very good. After all it was chicken, deep fried by the hands of a very capable kitchen. Still, all that Old Bay, which should be used in sparing quantities because it tastes like spiced dirt, overwhelmed the chicken. On top of that, the plate of Southern style contained very little dark meat, which is far more flavorful than its dietetic counterpart.

I was more interested in the Korean version, as I love Kyochon, the large South Korean chain with a convenient western K-town location. Kyochon carves up a whole chicken into tiny pieces and then fries the pieces twice in a manner that "renders out the fat in the skin" according to the Gray Lady. Somewhere in the process, Kyochon brush the pieces with a spicy red chili sauce. Everything is made to order at Kyochon, and the wait for a chicken is a minimum of 20 minutes.

Momofuku goes one step further and fries its chicken three times. The platter of Korean fried chicken was primarily dark meat and of greater import placed right in front of me. It should be no surprise that Chang’s red chili sauce is superior to Kyochon’s, which has a medicinal aftertaste. Still I prefer Kyochon’s chicken. The chain’s central genius is its carving up the chicken, because all those little pieces with their bones have an ethereal crispiness. By comparison, Momofuku serves recognizable body parts, legs and thighs, which are larger and meatier but not susceptible to the Kyochon levels of crispiness. To be sure, Momofuku’s KFC is delicious and well worth a visit, but like a Spago hamburger, never quite as satisfying as an In-N-Out Double Double.

Momofuku accompanied the chicken with several superfluities: mu shu pancakes, spicy peppers, baby carrots, red ball radishes, shiso leaves, bibb lettuce, four sauces and a bunch of herbs. What these items had in common with fried chicken is an enduring mystery. I would expect all this accoutering at P.F. Chang’s, not at a premier New York chef’s original restaurant.

The small side order of standard kimchi warrants special mention. The cabbage had an excellent texture--sturdy enough that I had to bite into it, but not so thick that I felt like I was eating a wet notebook. But the kimchi’s red chili sauce was just outstanding. Its spicy, chili flavor revealed more and more complexities until I had to swallow it, regrettably. For all the kimchi I have sampled throughout Los Angeles’s expansive Koreatown, none has matched Momofuku’s tiny little batch.

We did manage to try Chang’s esteemed little steamed buns with pork belly and pickles. I will take the word of others that they are the ne plus ultra of steamed buns and fat. This art form and the bourgeoisie’s fixation on pork belly are lost on me. Yes, I just used the word "bourgeoisie.”

Momofuku Noodle Bar
171 First Ave.
New York
(212) 777-7773
http://www.momofuku.com/noodle/default.asp

The Bar-B-Q Shop and the Beauty Shop

After watching Michigan secure what proved to be its sole conference win of the year, Sossy and I celebrated by sampling some of Memphis’s finest comestibles. We began with a late lunch at the Bar-B-Q Shop, a restaurant and bar located in a stubby old storefront, a few miles from downtown. The Shop consists of a brown dining room with brown walls, brown carpeting, and brown tables and chairs. Neon beer advertisements provide the sole evidence that there are other colors in the visible spectrum.

Of course, design and charm are irrelevant when pork barbeque is involved. But I was skeptical of this small urban outpost that appeared to lack the capacity for a genuine pit. Barbeque is, at heart, a rural form of the culinary arts. In the dusty towns and farmland circumscribing Austin, Texas, where barbeque is at its zenith, the form is austere and primitive, reliant on nurturing pits, post oak wood, and a languid, dreamlike pace of cooking. Venerable barbeques in Texas often trace their roots to the beginning of the 20th century when they opened as butcher shops, a function many still have.

Accordingly, I asked our haggard waitress if the Bar-B-Q Shop even had an honest-to-goodness pit, a question that could be construed as insolent considering that the Shop enjoys a stellar local reputation. She assured me that the Shop is so equipped and steeped in Memphis staples like pork ribs and pulled pork. So Sossy and I ordered the crispy burnt rib ends, a house specialty, and a pulled pork sandwich on Texas toast, which, at the Shop, involves some double-thick white bread fried in lard. The burnt ends were attached to the pork ribs themselves and not served separately. The ribs themselves were too fatty for me. But the burnt ends—that charred, black-red crust that formed at the end of ribs—were delicious. Underneath that crispy exterior was some tender rib meat. The potency of that combination is a rejoinder to anyone wondering why people would travel across the country for barbeque.

I loved the smoky pulled pork sandwich and drizzled on some of the Shop’s piquant barbeque sauce. It was an expertly prepared sandwich in its own right, accentuated by the residual smokiness, and well-proportioned to bring out the flavors without overwhelming my mouth. Memphis barbeque may not reach the ethereal realm of Texas’s finest, but it is solid.

During our meal, the owner, Eric Vernon, came over to our table and introduced himself. He possessed a salesman’s affability and was pleased that we had found the Bar-B-Q Shop, which has not found its way to the guidebooks. Since the Shop does not offer dessert, we solicited some advice from Eric on where to go. He directed us to an establishment called the Beauty Shop, a place he said made an outstanding strawberry cake.

I expected to encounter a nearby, black-owned bakery that served heaping portions of moist red velvet cake made by cherished grandmothers hewing to ancient recipes long ago committed to memory. But to my surprise, the Beauty Shop was an upscale, white-owned restaurant selling $25 entrées of wild striped bass in what amounted to Memphis’s progressive neighborhood – or, at least, corner. (That is, the Beauty Shop was next to the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center, and the bicycle was the neighborhood’s preferred mode of transportation. The locals were white, youthful and dressed like cheerful versions of Troy Dyer and Lelaini Pierce. You will see all of them in Austin within five years’ time.)

I asked the Beauty Shop’s manager why he thought the Bar-B-Q Shop recommended that we drive all the way across town for their cake. My real question, which he intuited, was why did the black owner of a modest barbeque send me to a high end restaurant for dessert? The manager answered matter-of-factly, “The Bar-B-Q Shop has the best barbeque in Memphis, and we have the best cakes. We send people to the Bar-B-Q Shop.” The cross-racial recommendations vindicated my sense of liberal hopefulness in the city of MLK’s murder.

In a chazerish mood, I ordered a slice of each of the six cakes: strawberry, chocolate, caramel, red velvet, coconut, and a Southern yellow cake. They were all interesting, but the chocolate and caramel cakes were the standouts. Both were rich and had alluring textures that somehow compelled another bite… and then another… and then another… until nothing remained. Their flavors were restrained, but I was not.

The Bar-B-Q Shop
1782 Madison Avenue
Memphis
(901) 272-1277

http://www.dancingpigs.com

The Beauty Shop

966 S. Cooper St.

Memphis

(901) 272-7111‎

http://www.thebeautyshoprestaurant.com