Newsletter: Denmark and drink

March 3, 2018 8 AM PT

Welcome to a cold and wet weekend in Los Angeles, probably a good time to stay off the roads and in the kitchen if you can. To which end, we have — you guessed it — a few recipe suggestions for you. First and foremost, there is pie, though might we suggest you make it savory instead of sweet. Mustard green and chorizo hand pies, for example. Or peanut butter cookies, and other recipes that use the stuff in interesting ways, including cheesecake and carrot soup. We also have suggestions for what to do with all that puntarelle you’re seeing at local farmers markets.

If you’re heading out, there is of course much going on, restaurant-wise. We check out the new menu at Maude, which recently reopened with a new focus on wine. And lovers of aguachile, the addictive Mexican seafood dish, can check out our binge-worthy list of specialists. We also have news on the brunch front, as well as a piece devoted to carnivores and a new spot devoted to bagels. As for our restaurant critic, he’s been further afield, to Copenhagen, where he checks in on the reopening of Noma, often called the best restaurant in the world. Not a bad job.

— Amy Scattergood

NOMA REDUX

Danish chef René Redzepi’s Copenhagen restaurant Noma has been called the best restaurant in the world; it’s certainly been among the most influential. Redzepi closed it, took it on the road, and recently reopened it in a new building and with a new focus. Jonathan recently visited the restaurant, and reports back on what he thought and, of course, what he ate. Century-old clams. Squid linguine with seafood butter.

DRINKING WITH CURTIS STONE

When Australian chef Curtis Stone opened his Beverly Hills restaurant Maude in 2014, the menu was an ambitious conceit: each month would feature a particular seasonal ingredient, which all dishes would showcase. Lots of vegetables! Lots of work! Stone closed the restaurant at the end of 2017, and has now rebooted it with a focus on wine. There will be quarterly seasonal menus built around the wines (and food) of a single wine region — starting with Rioja, in Spain. And next up? Burgundy.

AGUACHILE OBSESSION

There are the obvious highlights of Mexican cuisine — birria, barbacoa, tacos, etc. — and then there’s aguachile, a lesser-known but equally craveable construction. Food writer Ben Mesirow finds four notable versions of the chile-spiked seafood dish, at Taco María in Costa Mesa; Holbox in downtown L.A.; Coni’Seafood, which just opened a second location; and Mariscos el Faro, a Highland Park food truck.

MEAT AND GREET

Food writer Zan Romanoff talks to butcher Katie Flannery, whose family owns and operates Flannery Beef in in Northern California’s San Rafael. Flannery, 28, is one of the few women in the industry, in which she’s been working since college, and has been pushing the family business forward — and down to Los Angeles, where Flannery meat is now on the menu at many notable restaurants.

MORE FUN WITH BRUNCH

In her weekly restaurant news column, Deputy Food Editor Jenn Harris checks in on Ari Taymor, the chef of the now-shuttered restaurant Alma, who has begun a weekend-only brunch pop-up in Santa Monica called Little Prince. (Seaweed hollandaise with smoked salmon hash? Check.) There’s also a new Silver Lake restaurant and retail shop called Scout, and dozens of restaurants participating in Make March Matter, a month-long campaign to raise funds for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Our lunchtime chats with Jonathan Gold are back! On Friday at noon, our restaurant critic will be fielding your questions on restaurants, dining and food.

L.A. Times FOOD BOWL returns for a second year this May. It’s 31 days of events celebrating L.A.’s food and drink scene and helping raise awareness and funds to fight food waste, hunger and food insecurity and to promote sustainability. Guest chefs include Ben Shewry (Australia), Yoshihiro Narisawa (Japan), Virgilio Martinez (Peru) and Yu Bo (China), along with Diana Kennedy (Mexico) and Fuchsia Dunlop (United Kingdom), with more to be announced. The full program will be released on March 31. If you have a restaurant, bar, market or other establishment and are interested in hosting a Food Bowl event, here’s how to register.

Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants, the authoritative annual guide to local dining, is online for subscribers featuring his 2017 Best Restaurants. If you don’t have a copy of the booklet, you can order one online here.

Goldbot: You can talk to Jonathan Gold any time you want — or at least the robot version of him that now lives on Facebook Messenger. You can ask Goldbot for a personal restaurant recommendation based on location, type of food or price. The bot will also deliver Jonathan Gold’s latest reviews straight to your device.

Check us out on Instagram at @latimesfood.

And don’t forget the thousands of recipes in our California Cookbook recipe database.

Feedback? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at food@latimes.com.