Monday Nights at Campanile: Just Like Home, Only Better

When Campanile recently began a new Monday night series of family-style dinners, I called a couple of friends and signed up for the first one: bouillabaisse.

Family-style means everyone at the table eats the same menu. It’s like eating at home--except you’re in a restaurant and Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton are much better cooks than most of us. For this first series of dinners, they’ve wisely chosen festive and elaborate dishes few amateur chefs would have the time or moxie to take on at home.

By 8 that night, it felt more like a party than a regular night at Campanile, with groups of friends spilling over into the bar as they waited for a table.

There were house-cured green olives, warm almonds and fougasse, the ladder-shaped Provencal bread to nibble on. Then came a svelte version of the Nicois flatbread called pissaladiere, this one a circle of puff pastry topped with caramelized onions, good anchovies and Nicois olives, accompanied by a little arugula salad.

And then our waiter arrived with the piece de resistance, soup bowls of ruddy bouillabaisse broth, and--ta dum!--a huge platter piled high with all the good stuff fished from the broth: cooked monkfish, daurade, mussels, clams and grilled shrimp. We got a generous crock of rouille (basically, a good garlicky aioli punched up with saffron and hot red pepper) and slabs of crouton cut from country bread. We happily set to, smearing the rouille on the croutons and floating them in the soup, until we had entirely demolished a staggering amount of bouillabaisse.

There was more to finish, a generous apple crisp to share, topped with a ball of melting vanilla-scented ice cream.

At Campanile, however, it’s hard to stop at one dessert. We had to order Silverton’s stunning new bitter-almond panna cotta, too, which she serves on a glassy pool of coffee with shards of her dark chocolate, nut-studded “bark.”

Coming up Monday: cassoulet.

BE THERE

Campanile, 624 S. La Brea, Los Angeles; (213) 938-1447. Monday nights; 3-course menu includes coffee or tea, $28 per person. Valet parking. Call for information.