olive L.A.

From the doorway of Patrick Milo’s gourmet shop, Picholine, the view of the neighborhood reveals a J&P; Auto Center billboard framed by razor wire, a jutting marquee on Cafe Coco-- a smoking and social club for Korean gentlemen--and the “Cat Entrance” to an animal hospital. This short block of 1st Street between Los Feliz and Koreatown would not be an anomalous landscape if one were considering relocation of, say, a lock shop or a 24-hour check-cashing outlet.

But here, in order of appearance, is the view inward from Picholine’s doorway: rows of glass jars filled with saffron and garlic rouille, 60 varieties of cheese (including the Drunken Goat from Spain), rosemary honey from Provence, Michel Cluizel chocolate from Paris, and, sitting on a counter like the store’s own beating heart, a single white truffle floating in a one-ounce jar beneath a beam of diffused light. Outside, passersby clutch bags from McDonald’s and Jack in the Box, which gives rise to the thought: Given the setting, if Milo’s building were a living, breathing thing, would a transplant surgeon have guessed that it would have rejected its heart within a month?

Well, it didn’t. Milo brought the truffle, the chocolate and the honey with him a year ago when he left another gourmet shop, Silver Lake’s Say Cheese, and opened Picholine just south of the bourgeoisie radar. Milo grew up in the South of France, attended hotel school in Nice and lived in Paris before arriving in Silver Lake in 1987 to cover a Christmas shift at the Say Cheese counter. The three-week job lasted 12 years, while Silver Lake became South Beach, TriBeCa and the Paris Commune rolled into one. When Milo decided to open his own shop in the neighborhood where many of the resident gourmets knew him by name, he was priced out of available rents. So he cast his eyes south, looking for a neighborhood that reminded him of Silver Lake, circa 1987.

Early on, there were days when Picholine did no more than $40 in business--about five jars of lavender honey before tax. But in the last year the small shop with the olive-colored walls has prospered. To say the 3300 block of 1st Street has become Silver Lake redux, with the Camembert and tins of white anchovy leading the charge, may be a stretch. But Milo’s customers have followed, and for the gourmet proprietor, the block’s most promising signage is a “For Lease” banner on a storefront next door. (He’s taking over the space to expand Picholine.) There’s also “the sushi restaurant Shibucho down the street,” says Milo, “and the new Evidence Room theater and a couple of guys opening an art gallery, too.”

On a recent afternoon, Milo’s new employee, Scott Charles, could be found behind the counter, splitting duck breast and chopping carrots. In a decade or so, if he leaves Picholine to open his own gourmet shop down the street, he might discover that rents have entered the stratosphere.