Dinners Can Be Quite Leisurely at Unpretentious Flora Kitchen

At Flora Kitchen on a hot summer night, couples perch on stools at the high tables outside on La Brea, sipping Flora’s “kitchen lemonade” and oaky yellow Chardonnay. In Rita Flora, the shop next door, hothouse flowers have been tucked away for the night and the old brick floors swept clean. In the restaurant, the lights are dimmed. Votive candles and cutout lanterns flicker from the shelves next to bottles of Big Ass Monkey hot sauce. In the corner, the takeout case emits a glowering bright-white light.

Our waiter goes in search of wine glasses and comes back with two. Then somebody else finds two more. The wine selection is pretty thin; only a handful of selections. Bustling at lunch, Flora Kitchen is a low-key haven at supper time, with earnest, if slow service. It’s already 8 p.m., but the kitchen and wait staff don’t seem quite ready for customers. Breakfast and lunch they’ve got down pat after six years, but dinner at Flora Kitchen is something new.

Chef Jack Harding’s menu is appealingly unpretentious: good meaty crab cakes with a sharp bite of heat, gazpacho and potato leek soup, a flavorful “baseball” steak nicely cooked to a true medium rare and served sliced in a red wine sauce, rack of lamb with a heavy, tasty spinach pie. For dessert, there are a tall, shaggy coconut cake, crumbly peanut butter cookies and other pastries.

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BE THERE

Flora Kitchen, 460 S. La Brea, (213) 931-9900. Open daily for dinner (breakfast and lunch are served daily as well). Major credit cards accepted. Parking in small lot in back. Dinner appetizers $5.95-$7.95; entrees $8.95-$14.95.