Newsletter: Counter: Poolside dining and ramen lines
A grilled 12-ounce Piedmontese rib-eye steak is on the menu at Viviane restaurant, in the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills. Viviane features dishes by award-winning chef Michael Hung.
If you're reading this, you've survived the transition to 2016. Congratulations may be in order, depending on your relationship with Champagne and other forms of liquid entertainment, with parades and with college football. Maybe make another pot of coffee and go read the paper — it's a good solution for many of us.
This week, Jonathan Gold considers Viviane, the new restaurant in the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills, where chef Michael Hung is cooking updates on classic French dishes in a Kelly Wearstler-designed setting. Boudin blanc by the pool!
Other restaurants we've been looking at include a new ramen-ya in Pasadena, a shawarma restaurant downtown, a place for cold noodles in Koreatown and something that won't open until summer — a new project from the chefs behind Madcapra and Animal. And to go with all that lovely food? A new brewery, set to open in January in downtown's Arts District. Happy New Year indeed.
Poolside dining
Hotel dining can either be a lot of fun, or pretty mediocre. Which is why the food-minded have been waiting to see what would happen with the new restaurant that's gone into the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills. It's called Viviane, and is by restaurant veterans Stephane Bombet and Michael Hung, who previously worked together at Faith & Flower. Jonathan Gold heads to the hotel, where he finds Hung's food, including updates on French dishes such as boudin blanc and tartines and chocolate crémeux, to be surprisingly classical.
Long lines for ramen
If you've been in Old Pasadena lately and seen lines up Fair Oaks, it's not for some post-seasonal sale — it's for bowls of ramen. Ramen Tatsunoya opened recently, the first American outlet for a popular Japanese tonkotsu specialist. This is classic stuff, chewy noodles in a pork-intensive broth, with only a few variations, but with plenty of availabe chashu, or slices of roasted pork. Worth the wait? Well, yes, especially considering how far Pasadena is from other good ramen joints.
(Amy Scattergood / Los Angeles Times)
Cold noodles for winter in Koreatown
Sure, it's cold outside, at least for us here in Los Angeles, but there's a tradition of eating food in winter that's as cold as the weather. (Ice cream, for example, is oddly more popular in cold than in hot weather.) In Koreatown, Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee reports, Hansol Noodle specializes in naengmyeon, one version of which is housemade noodles in an icy broth with egg and slices of beef. And there is bibimbap on the menu — and shots of soju — to warm you up.
(Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee / For The Times)
A shawarma feast
Jenn Harris checks out what's on the menu at Souk Shawarma, a newish place in downtown that has not one or a few but seven versions of the popular Middle Eastern dish. There's duck shawarma, beef shawarma, vegan shawarma and shawarma in a bowl. There is also za'atar chicken wings, and something called dirty fries, which is a bowl of French fries with feta, onions, harissa — and more shawarma.
(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)
A new project for the Madcapra chefs
When the news that the popular pizzeria Mother Dough was closing came, we mourned the news — but also wondered what would go into the space, in a close-knit quadrant of Los Feliz. It turns out that four chefs are working on a project, a Mediterranean restaurant to be helmed by the two chefs who opened the Madcapra falafel stand at Grand Central Market. Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson will be partnering with the chefs from Animal, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, who are more than just chefs these days as they've built a small empire of their own.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
A new Arts District brewery
The L.A. craft beer scene keeps growing. Into a 10,000-square-foot building built in 1904 in downtown's Arts District is going Iron Triangle Brewing, set to open in January. The new brewery, from founder Nathan Cole, will feature a tap room styled after downtown’s early 20th century architecture.
(John Verive / For The Times)
Jonathan Gold's 101
The 101 is here! Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants, the authoritative annual guide to local dining, is online for subscribers. Find the list at latimes.com/jonathangold. Official hashtag #JGOLD101.
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