RESTAURANT REVIEW : Few Spanish Ayes for La Masia : The tables are glass-topped, the clientele dressy, and the entrees salty and uninspired.
When I gathered a small group of friends for a Saturday night dinner at La Masia, they were thrilled. Wasn’t La Masia fancy, they asked, expensive--a special-occasion kind of place? Only one of the four had been there before, years before, on a steamy first date and frankly, he couldn’t remember much about the food or the ambience, but it had seemed like a special place to him. Another friend said he thought his parents had eaten there years and years ago, which was altogether possible since La Masia has been in the same location for more than 21 years.
Apparently, their enthusiasm was shared. When I called to make our reservation, La Masia was booked solidly until 10 p.m., unless we wanted to dine early, and would promise to vacate our table by 9:30. We dined early.
Our waiter was Patrick, and Patrick was in a great mood. This was his last night working at La Masia, he told us. He was going off to work on a feature film. He was a hair and makeup man. He had moved to Los Angeles from a successful hair and makeup career in New York. Here, he had to start out all over again, as a waiter. Patrick crouched to confide to us. “The first night I worked here, I came home and cried and cried. I thought I’d never have to wait tables again, and yet here I was.
“Now . . .,” Patrick added with charming self-mockery, “aren’t you glad I shared?”
La Masia’s several dining areas are lit with dim yellow lights. We were in the bar/entertainment area, where there were red button-and-tuck banquettes, dark wood and lots of dark yellow stained glass. I mean plastic . . . dark yellow stained plastic. The tables were glass-topped. The piano in the corner was white. The clientele was dressy--not hip, but dressy, reminding us that Beverly Hills was right next door. There were couples, and dates, and a few pairings that reminded us of a couple in Woody Allen’s “Husbands and Wives”--specifically, the middle-aged Sydney Pollack and his young aerobics instructor.
That night, with four men and me, the service was smooth and attentive. Patrick advised us frankly on appetizers--what did he have to lose? La Masia serves Spanish/Continental fare and ignores virtually all the innovations seen in the food world in the last 15 years or so. The entrees came with salads, which were served before the appetizers. The first food presented to us at La Masia was a very old-fashioned plate of iceberg lettuce garnished with salad vegetables and a dunk of strong dressing. A coffee-shop salad.
The appetizers arrived nicely arranged on a platter. The fried calamari was lightly breaded, almost like tempura--very crisp and good. Mushroom “rellenos” were mushroom caps stuffed with crumbs, pine nuts, olives and a significant amount of garlic and salt. We also tried the empanadas, little crescents of pastry crust filled with spicy, well-salted meat.
Entrees were, well, salty. Salty and rich and tres Continental in conception. The chuleta Navarra was a pork chop stuffed to look like either a fat round little club or an extra-large drumstick, then breaded and deep-fried. The indeterminate stuffing was herbed and salty, the cream sauce rich and salty. Also stuffed, fried and sauced was the Pollo a la Gitana , a chicken breast full of cheese, garlic and herbs in a gluey, rich, salty cheese sauce. “I can feel my blood pressure rising,” said the man who ordered it. Scampi a la Ajillo, shrimp with butter, garlic, tomato and herbs was buttery and, well, salty. The paella turned out to be a skillet of yellow saffron rice topped with a few clams, mussels, some tired sausage, a chicken drumstick and a few good little scallops. Entrees came with a heap of yellow rice studded with carrot cubes and green peas and a salty wedge of cauliflower quiche.
Nothing to write home about, especially if home was someplace like Barcelona or Madrid.
The only dish that made the rest of us envious that night was the Churrasco Mixto , a mixed grill of tasty beef hunks, nice rare squares of lamb, delicious bites of roast pork and tender chicken all served with a fresh salsa.
After dinner, I wandered upstairs to have a look at the tapas bar, which is open only on Friday and Saturday nights. There, behind glass, was a small, pretty selection of Spanish appetizers designed to accompany drinking, including stuffed tortillas and spiced shellfish and chicken wings--all of which made me wish we’d grazed upstairs rather than groaned downstairs.
I returned to La Masia a few days later, this time accompanied only by a woman friend. We were seated in the corner of the unoccupied dining area next to the bar. A waiter brought up mineral water and menus and vanished. After about 15 minutes, three men were seated at a table near us. They ordered cocktails and appetizers and received them. Fifteen minutes later, our waiter reappeared. To his credit, he was apologetic, but that didn’t improve the service through the rest of the meal, which could best be described as intermittent. M.F.K. Fisher once asserted that a woman dining alone is often seated behind a potted palm, and two women dining together are seated behind two potted palms. I like to think that times have changed, but at La Masia, although there was no foliage in sight, my friend and I felt those palm trees keenly.
This evening, we were given a choice of soup or salad with our entrees. I ordered a garbanzo bean soup, which was some tepid beef broth with a few beans and small morsels of meat. A special appetizer of Spanish artichokes turned out to be deep-fried artichoke hearts with melted yellow cheese. A cup of ceviche was lemony and good.
Taking a cue from my previous experience at La Masia, I decided to keep it simple in the entree department and ordered the Pollo a la Parilla , a broiled chicken served with garlic/butter/olive oil on the side. The chicken was a little dry, but revived in the sauce. There was more rice, and some carrots and, surprisingly a few welcome slices of parsnip. My friend ordered a special pork cooked in sherry, which was terribly fatty and, as my friend gingerly suggested, “quite salty.”
We ordered coffee and were served one cup. No refills were forthcoming--those darned metaphorical palm trees again. Eventually, the bill arrived, so we paid it and, gratefully, left.
La Masia, 9077 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 273-7066. Open for dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Full bar. Valet parking. Major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $32 - $63.
