The Din at Dinner

Re Ruth Reichl’s “Dear Restaurant Critic,” Dec. 30:

Over the holidays we had several visitors from out of town, people with whom we had many things to talk about and who enjoy good food and wine. We invariably take such friends for dinner to Le Dome, where the ambience is sedate and quiet.

Because Le Dome was closed and we did not want to pay the huge tabs of L’Orangerie and L’Ermitage, we settled on La Toque and Pazzia. However, we came to realize that what seems essential restaurant qualities for taking visitors to dinner have all but disappeared from our city.

While we in Los Angeles increasingly claim the center position in the culinary world, we sadly lack the ambience and spaces of Le Crocodile or Auberge de L’Ill or even those of thousands of ordinary establishments from Germany to Italy to Spain and France.

I often wonder what people do, other than eat, in the critic’s “chosen” places when through the sea of open kitchen noise, clanging china and noisy neighbors one can catch friends’ attention only by shouting directly into their ears.

For better or worse, Los Angeles has become a city of truly superb lunch establishments serving dinner.

GEORGE CALOYANNIDIS, Los Angeles