Jonathan Gold, the esteemed gourmand of the LA Weekly, has recently published his list of the top 20 Italian restaurants in the Los Angeles area. It is a list that I can’t really speak to the accuracy of, since I have only been to a less than a handful of the places mentioned: Angelini Osteria, Casa Bianca…that’s it. Not even Mozza yet! And to think I call this an LA food blog (well, half a food blog, anyway). How mortifying. It did make me a little sad, however, that he didn’t make space for the small osteria that I’ve been to half a dozen times, the place that for what it lacks in polish, size, and any semblance of a wine list makes up in idiosyncracy, oversized Sophia Loren posters, and the perfect northern Italian carbonara sauce. Namely, La Buca.

I suppose that La Buca can’t really hold much of a (Roman) candle to the high-octane Italian meccas that Gold waxes symphonic over: Valentino, La Terza, Vincenti, Drago. These are serious restaurants with serious goals, serious wine lists, and serious checks at the end of the evening that lead to serious discussions about fiscal responsibility, debt, and the necessity of eating Chex out of the box at Von’s at 2 in the morning while the stockers are refilling paper towels two aisles over.

La Buca and the new restaurant from the same owner, Briganti, are birds of a different feather. La Buca currently occupies a very small space on Melrose in the middle of Hollywood. (There is an expansion in the works that will probably take effect now any day, but as far as I know it’s still in its original space.) It features pastas and pizzas mostly in the $12-15 range, and entrees in the $16-25 range. The pizzas are very nice, but the keys here are the carbonara – made with egg yolks, not cream, in the northern style – and the gnocchi.

Gnocchi are something that I am particularly picky about, because one of the greatest meals of my life was a bowl of gnocchi I had fourteen years ago in a cramped trattoria in Lucca, made by a woman who was not unlike my own Sicilian great-grandmother, and I have spent the remaining years searching in vain for its equal. I’m certainly not saying that La Buca makes gnocchi as good as the ones I had in Lucca – but for less than $15, they are really quite good: pillowy, as you’ll often see gnocchi referred to, but still containing a richness that coats the mouth. That’s the real key to great gnocchi: richness without heaviness. Not unlike wine in that regard. How interesting. Anyway, La Buca does many things well, if on a modest scale, and if you live anywhere near Hollywood it’s well worth inquiring after one of their scant tables for the chance to be lectured on the true meaning of carbonara or the virtue of arugula pesto.

With a trail of happy evenings at La Buca behind us, and finding ourselves in Pasadena recently, we decided to give La Buca’s newly birthed sibling, Briganti, a spin. Briganti is on Mission Street in South Pasadena, only a few blocks away from the admirable wine shop, Mission Wines. The restaurant presents itself as a very different beast than La Buca; the dim lighting and rattling aluminum furniture are replaced with more traditional dining sights – lots of white, classy muted lighting, and space. Quite a bit of space. Well, at least you won’t get your arm bumped by your neighbor when reaching for the wine. That’s a plus. The menu carries some things over from La Buca, including some of the pizzas and the pasta choices, but no carbonara. Maybe the old lady who cooks most nights at La Buca is the only one with the correct carbonara technique? Who knows. There are a few more meat dishes on this menu, though.

We started off with an appetizer of burrata, oven-roasted tomatoes, and pesto. A dish that really is being served all over LA every second of every day, but there’s no denying that this version did it right: excellent pesto and great tomatoes. Good tomatoes are not normally something you would not see in February, but who am I to complain? They were sweet and had nice texture. For our second course, J had the risotto with mixed vegetables and sausage, while I had the pappardelle with a lamb ragu. I’ve got a bit of a weakness for the lamb ragu, so as soon as I had heard it pronounced as that days’s special, I turned to J and said, “It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.” Even superseded the gnocchi. Both dishes were very well done, with La Buca’s trademark “hominess” in preparation and presentation. My ragu had chunks of carrot, celery, and other vegetable products that were bigger than the little globules of meat, but it tasted really good. J’s risotto was also nice.

We bought a half bottle of the 1997 Il Lastro Chianti Rufina at the restaurant, and it was a very nice wine – exquisitely perfumed with that sangiovese dust and berry mixture, with good structure on the palate. The acids I think were starting to fade from this one, but it certainly held up to the food. A good find.

The service was generally courteous, quick, and smart, although a lot of this might have had something to do with the fact that we were the only patrons inside for the first 3/4ths of our meal. Still, the friendliness of the waiters and busboys warrants mentioning.

All in all, Briganti was a good night out, and could definitely turn into one of our favorite places when we are both in the Pasadena way. Goldie, you can keep your Drago and your Ago and your Spago…well, maybe not that one. Give that one back. But for bang-for-your-buck Italian, it’s hard to do better than the one-two combo of Briganti and La Buca.

Not yet! But soon. (ish.)

We made reservations there a few weeks ago for the beginning of April, only two days after the wedding. We’re pumped. And why shouldn’t we be? It’s the California foodie mecca. I really don’t want to go in there with sky-high expectations, but frankly, how can I not? How many times can I read about how TFL changed the way someone thought about restaurants or service or food? How many food blog posts can I see that melt over Thomas Keller’s meticulously crafted cuisine faster than a gelee in the Mojave Desert? And this isn’t even counting my most lasting memory of TFL in the media, which was an episode of “A Cook’s Tour,” the old Anthony Bourdain show. In this particular episode, he went to The French Laundry with some friends, and was served a nicotine-infused custard as the final dish of the night. Now that is brilliance. Who can’t love that? It can’t help but affect you. So on that day in April, when I walk across the gravel driveway toward this sign:

I’ll try to do it with an open mind. But no promises.

That’s not what I wanted to talk about, though. Because announcing that we’re going there eventually is not exciting (to you, anyway). But getting a reservation? That’s something else entirely.

To be sure, I should have done some research before trying to get a table the first time. But really, I told myself, if I start calling at 9:58 am, two minutes before the reservation office opens, two months to the day before my preferred day of dining, and keep redialing til I get through, I’ve got a good shot, right? Plus, my parents got in a few years ago, and they told me that they called in their reservation. How hard can it be? Answer: You don’t want to know the answer. I got a message until exactly 10 am, at which point I was greeted with a busy signal that would last through half an hour of frantic redialing. Half an hour! And this was for a Monday night!

I finally had to give up and go back to work. but J called around noon and got us on the waiting list…right below the entire population of Napa County, I’m sure. Oy. I don’t know how my parents called and actually got through AND got a table, but at this point I’m more inclined that they made the whole story up and actually ate candy beans from the hotel room fridge rather than believe they really did this. Lesson #1: Do not try to call in your reservation. Ever.

So what can we do? Well, we can try and bump off everyone on the waiting list in front of us, Kind Hearts and Coronets-style, but that would be 1) time consuming and 2) unlikely to be graced by the voiceover of a wry British narrator, therefore rendering it an activity with limited appeal. There is opentable.com, however. Many people online swear by its power if you are rigorous in your application of its resources. There are specific instructions to be followed if you want to do this thing correctly. If you go online at exactly midnight, when opentable switches to the next day’s reservations, and search the French Laundry’s site, you can (possibly) get a table. You can see the entire set of instructions, which everybody refers to, here.

Sounds great, right? Only one problem with this plan: that page – and the French Laundry mini-FAQ that appears on opentable – states that there are no 2-person tables listed on opentable for the restaurant. Two four-tops, and that’s it.

Ouch.

After about five seconds of anguish, we looked at each other and figured, screw it. What did we have to lose? So we stayed up (for J, who usually goes to bed around 10, this was a major accomplishment), and at exactly 11:59:57, hit Search, and whaddya know…table for 2. 9 pm. Money. And so, Lesson #2: Don’t believe what you read elsewere. You CAN get a French Laundry reservation for 2 through opentable.com.

I’ve done a little experimenting since then, and not surprisingly, it’s a total crapshoot as to how long you have before someone else snaps up the one 9 o’ clock table. It can be 5 seconds after midnight, or it can be 6 in the morning when it’s finally taken. You never know, which is why Lesson #3 is that the best, safest policy really is to do it at midnight. You have a very good shot at getting your table – for 2 or 4 – if you hit Search at exactly 12 am Pacific Time. That’s it. Good luck to you all. Hope that you make it over the wall. I will always be in front of you.

Actually, one more thing on reservations. J and I went to give blood last Saturday, and we stopped by Father’s Office to grab a late lunch/early dinner afterwards. We got there at 3, when the bar opens, and there was already a line a dozen people deep, waiting for the place to open. Amazing! We were lucky to get bar stools, never mind an actual table. On top of that, we got cursed when two people grabbed our stools as we got up to leave. Why? Because the cursers thought that they had secured our perches – one of them had made eye contact with J. What?! I’m sorry, the burgers are still amazing, but I don’t need to put up with this crap anymore. I don’t even want to think about what a scrum it would have been to try this at 9 on a Friday night.

Reservations can be a bad thing, but they can also be pretty darn good. They may make you stay up late, but they most likely won’t get you punched in the Charlie Browns, either.

Okay, on to the second half of yesterday’s (er, Tuesday’s) story. So the next night, we ended up heading into Berkeley with the ‘rents and the sister in tow to Eccolo, the Italian enterprise headed by Chez Panisse alum Christopher Lee. Eccolo wound up on the most recent Top 100 Restaurants list put out by the SF Chronicle, so I was curious to see what Michael Bauer, CHRONICLE FOOD CRITIC, found so interesting about this place. It was one of the few places on said list I haven’t been to. Curiosity et al.

We showed up for our reservation a little early, which gave me a chance to take a look at the environs. Eccolo is in the 4th St. area of Berkeley, an area of high-end chain stores and trinket shops that borders on the Marina. It’s a nice place to go if you’re looking for a portrait of dogs playing poker in a really tasteful frame. The restaurant looks like a lot of mid-sized Italian joints in the Bay Area – lots of dark wood and windows. The kind of place built to discourage gazing at other tables – oddly enough, the exact opposite of the interior design efforts at Range.

As much as I would love to break down the dozen-plus plates that we ordered that evening, that would be a bit over the top. I love the blow-by-blow restaurant reviews of Vinography, Becks and Posh, and Michael Bauer, CHRONICLE FOOD CRITIC, as much as the next man, but that would get a little long and boring, I think. Plus, I would run out of food-appropriate adjectives and have to resort to using questionable ones like “unctuous” and “saturnine” or some such. So instead, an Eccolo summation formatted in the style of a 1986 personality test.

UPON ENTERING THE RESTAURANT, I FELT: like I had been crammed in a phone booth with Superman, Colin Farrell, and the Nebraska football team. The host’s foyer, walled off from the restaurant, is a bit cramped. Not having anything to do there other than block the exit for departing patrons, I was forced back outside to stare at the menu for a solid 10 minutes like I had never seen the words “prosciutto and balsamic vinegar” before.

MY FIRST EXPERIENCES AT THE TABLE WERE: Decent. They had a nice, rosemary-infused bread at the table, and the waitress even offered up tap water. Hallelujah!

THE MENU WAS: Enticing. Everything looked good on paper (foreshadowing?), with the emphasis seemingly on simple dishes with in-season ingredients. So far, so good.

THE WINE LIST WAS: Italian. Very. Which is great and all, for those who actually know Italian wines. A group of which I am not a part. So when I was handed the wine list, all I was able to do was confirm the presence of wines made from thesangiovese and nebbiolo grapes, nod confidently, and pass the list along. “Yep – looks terrific!”

THE APPETIZERS MADE ME FEEL: Slightly underwhelmed. Of the five we ordered – persimmons with prosciutto, artichoke fritto, tuna tartare toasts, half a Dungeness crab with drawn butter, and a salumi e formaggi plate, only the artichokes stood out as excellent – fried to the point of crispness without dryness, and with a great aioli to match. The rest all seemed better on concept and on paper than in execution – the tuna not quite surrounded by enough flavor, the persimmons a little too overpowering for the prosciutto, and the crab too much damn effort – and left the impression of a kitchen that had good ingredients but hadn’t integrated them properly.

THE WINE WAS: Outstanding. My dad picked a bottle of L’Erta 2003, a sangiovese-cabernet blend. Even though it was a very young wine, it was simply fantastic, with dark, sweet fruit, a great mix of power and texture in the mouth, and smooth tannins that led to a long finish. Unfortunately, I don’t think you can find it anywhere in stores. But if you do, let me know. I’d love another bottle or four.

THE FEELINGS I EXPERIENCED AFTER THE MAIN COURSES CAME WERE: Mostly good. Everything was cooked well without being outstanding. I had a pork loin stuffed with sage, fennel, and rosemary that was cooked nearly perfectly – a very tricky thing to do with that particular cut of meat. However, the spices that the meat had been stuffed with consisted of a neat little circle, about three quarters of an inch thick, made up entirely of fresh green spice. So the experience of eating the dish went something like, “meat, meat,meatSPICE EXPLOSIONmeat , meat…” a little discomforting. Still good, though. I looked around the table and noticed similar expressions on other folks’ faces. That face that said, “This isn’t bad. In fact, it’s pretty good. But.” Which for me, meant Range. Have I mentioned that I love Range? I need to go back. Soon. That place is something.

MY EMOTIONS AFTER SEEING THE BILL WERE: A little up and down, sure. The starters were on the same price level as Range, but the main courses were more expensive, and for no immediately obvious reason. It wasn’t Fifth-Floor expensive, mind you, but it was still pricey.

WHEN I THINK ABOUT ECCOLO, I FEEL: Satisfied. Mostly. There are places I have been in the Bay Area where you can get more for less. More concentration on putting things together to make something unique, or more effort to get the best out of a single ingredient or two. Eccolo doesn’t quite make it to either extreme, and for that it stumbles occasionally. Overall, however, it was an enjoyable experience, albeit one that was slightly more expensive than its goods merited.

That was it for Thanksgiving 2006. A good weekend, and I look forward to next year’s trip already. Any recommendations out there for restaurants that I need to get to forthwith? I’m all ears…

Thanksgiving weekend is always a great time for the missus and I to indulge in some grade-A restaurant haunting. We don’t need excuses to search out one or three places we’ve been meaning to get to – there are plenty of “real” reasons for us to hit the town. First of all, the day after Turkey Day is the day that we decided to call the anniversary of the beginning of our relationship. Technically it’s November 25th, but the T-Day Plus One works so well for us, more often than not it’s the day that we tend to actually do the celebrating. Second, we’re always in the Bay Area for the weekend, which means that the parents and others are in the mood to go out and have a good time to mark our brief time together. Plus I’m away from my kitchen. That usually means at least two dinners out, and sometimes more. And what better time to give thanks for the invention of the credit card? Am I right, or am I right?

Last year’s Thanksgiving weekend saw us at Chez Panisse and Brix. This year, we set our sights on Range, one of the most buzzy places in the City, as our anniversary joint.

Walking down Valencia towards the restaurant, the sidewalk was dotted with figures hunched under blankets or garbage bags. It was a pretty cold night, even for a San Francisco November, and it was hard not to feel like a preening jerk strolling past those who were fighting the cold as we made our way toward a couple meals that would cost a full week’s paycheck for someone working a minimum-wage job. Ah, guilt. Where would I be without you? Wait, guilt – don’t answer that.

Like a lot of young, “edgy” restaurants in the Mission, Range has a pretty low-key exterior, its one distinguishing feature being the streetlight imprinted with the word “Range” outside the door. Once inside, one immediately notices its stylish signatures – the medical refrigerator behind the bar, the metallic gleam of the smooth tabletops, the muted colors and elegantly subtle lighting. Nice place. The main dining room has a good feel to it, urban but comfortable. Kinda the opposite of the restaurant rooms I tend to favor, but hey, the place looked nice.

Shortly after being seated, we were presented with the menu and the bread. Bread was decent, but overshadowed by some sweet, creamy artisanal butter. The menu, which changes daily, was short but not surprisingly so; it listed seven appetizers and six entrees. The choices looked interesting and loosely strung together – a good mix of new Californian with some Asian and Mediterranean touches. The wine list had some good value choices – mencia from Jose Palacios, burgundy from Leroy – and some more standard higher-end stuff like Williams Selyem pinot and Dominus cabernet.

J opted for the raw hamachi with avocado, watermelon radish and meyer lemon vinaigrette to start, and I picked a mushroom-stuffed pasta with brown butter and almonds. Both starters were excellent. The hamachi was fused with the correct amount of vinaigrette to highlight its flavor without drawing attention to its rawness, rounded out by the creaminess of the avocado. The pasta had a woodsy filling that was really wonderful, and the butter-and-sage sauce was well done. Maybe I could have used a bit more sauce, but overall it was a neat little dish. We ordered a half-bottle of HirschGruner Veltliner on the waiter’s recommendation, and it turned out to be a great pick – smooth and elegant with floral notes and some grapefruit on the palate. Excellent.

Happily, the main courses stood up to the challenge of the appetizers. J’s short ribs were carefully cooked to the point of falling apart, but with enough texture to stay interesting in the mouth. The short ribs came with a side of barley and hen of the woods mushrooms that was really quite amazing; I’m not much of a barley man – the nutty taste can be a little overpowering and beat up on more subtle components – but this barley was restrained enough to let the other flavors stand up. Barley in harmony. Who’da thunk it?! I had a dish of braised lamb sirloin with beluga lentils, goat cheese, and broccoli rabe. It sounded simple enough on the menu, but on the plate it coalesced into something else. The lentils were the best I’ve had outside Cobras and Matadors, and the goat cheese was in a sauce that contrasted the spices of the lamb, the lentils, and therabe . I was beginning to get a sense of what made Range tick – they are really good at combining elements on the plate in a way that builds upon their individual strengths into something better. Like the Borg, only with dry grains and sauces. We drank another half bottle with the main courses, a 1995 Gigondas from E. Guigal, which Wine Spectator would have clucked at for being past its designated prime. This bottle, however, was still going strong, kicking out layers of red earth and pepper, and a buttery finish.

We finished the night with a glass of Paolo Saracco moscato d’asti that was very nice, albeit oddly overpriced. (You can find a bottle of the stuff for $15, yet they charge $7 for a half-pour? Eh?) All in all, a great meal out. There were no weak-link dishes, and everything felt just right – everything we were served seemed a natural extension of everything else. The service was spunky but knowledgeable and made good recommendations off the wine list and the menu. It’s a place with a good concept and great execution, and it’s not even that expensive – for a place that is a battle to get a weekend reservation for, it’s a lot cheaper than most other hot spots of its ilk. Highly recommended.

Tomorrow, Eccolo.