Campanile: It’s still a love story

BACK in 1989, when I was visiting Los Angeles, friends brought me to a new restaurant called Campanile.

We sat at one of the small tables with a view of the kitchen and the young brigade outfitted in eccentric flat caps instead of chef’s toques. With its gray walls and medieval arches, the restaurant felt more like Siena than L.A. The air smelled of woodsmoke and garlic and sizzling meat. And when a waiter brought out a basket of inch-thick slices of rustic bread with a dark chewy crust, I could have stopped right there. That’s all I wanted, that bread, sweet butter and a plate of olives.

Then the waiter handed me the wine list, an astonishing compendium of handpicked gems from, at that time, relatively unknown appellations and winemakers who have since become superstars. It was the most avant-garde wine list I’d ever seen, and choosing a couple of bottles from it was a distinct pleasure.

We ate a pretty little Bibb lettuce salad showered with herbs, and a plate of handmade ravioli. I remember staring at the platter of gorgeous vegetables that came with the main courses. It looked like something Soutine would have painted. My friend urged me to have the grilled prime rib steak with cannellini beans, a brilliant California take on the famous bistecca alla fiorentina served with bitter greens.

Dessert was a plate of crumbly cream biscuits with huckleberry compote and a mound of softly whipped cream. Heaven. Who wouldn’t fall in love?

A lot has happened in 13 years. The small bakery opened next door to provide bread for the restaurant was spun off into a separate business, baking loaves by the thousands and selling them across the country. Last year La Brea Bakery was bought for $56 million by an Irish conglomerate.

It’s a safe bet that Campanile founders Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton don’t have to work anymore. Yet Peel is behind the stoves most nights and cooks a chef’s tasting menu on Wednesday nights. Silverton oversees the pastries, writes a cookbook a year, and on Thursday nights, mans the panini press, turning out what may now well be the world’s most expensive -- and delicious -- grilled cheese sandwiches.

High energy

In a city as dynamic and changeable as L.A., only a handful of restaurants have made it to the ripe old age of 13, and some that have are barely creaking along. Campanile, though, is as vibrant as ever. That grilled cheese night and a Monday night family-style menu have brought in a younger crowd. Weekend brunch is swamped. And the bar is still a great place to meet for a drink, or to grab a quick bite on your own.

Campanile’s kitchen has been a training ground for a number of chefs who have gone on to open their own places, including Suzanne Tracht, who recently opened Jar with Mark Peel, and Suzanne Goin, the chef and owner of Lucques and the new A.O.C. The current chef de cuisine is Chris Kidder. Kimberly Boyce, a young Spago Hollywood alum, is pastry chef.

Since the beginning Campanile has had an unwavering commitment to the product. A lot of chefs talk the talk and claim to shop the farmers market, but every Wednesday one of the two, Peel or Silverton, loads up at the Santa Monica Farmers Market. In the early hours of the morning, Peel buys fish at the Japanese fish market downtown alongside L.A.’s best sushi chefs.

His ceviche of kanpachi and live scallops in a juicy lime-drenched dressing with a confetti of red and green peppers is remarkable. He roasts the Mediterranean fish daurade whole under a blanket of coarse sea salt, and serves it head on. Cooked this way it has a pure taste of the sea. Parts of the flesh are dark and almost custardy. It’s delicious with a handful of shell beans or leeks cooked so long they’re almost caramelized.

Campanile’s menu pledges allegiance to the seasonal. And if shad roe or Persian mulberries are in season, or Copper River salmon or white nectarines, you can be sure the chefs will be making something with them. Salads, of course, reflect the seasons. Recently there was a grilled squid salad with a gorgeous green goddess dressing. The mildly smoky squid, grassy taste of the herbs, red-skinned potato and feathery greens and a shell pea succotash made a wonderful appetizer. Another favorite is Silverton’s arugula, Medjool date and Parmesan salad drizzled with intensely peppery Tuscan olive oil. Or you might find grilled marinated eggplant, vinegary and sweet, or a delightful salad of young dandelion greens with fava beans and Manchego cheese.

Campanile is such an original that none of these sound like dishes anywhere else. Clam chowder, swirled with cram and chervil, is filled with succulent tender clams, diced potatoes and carrots and corn cut right off the cob, fresh as this morning. A coral-colored bisque floats the deep sweet taste she-crab.

Not everything is wonderful all the time. The restaurant has had its slumps. They’re never very severe, more a leveling of intensity, when somehow the dish that enchanted a few weeks before tastes, well, ordinary. But the kitchen seems to always regain its footing, and the next time, the food is as good as you remember it.

Risotto is the one exception. After all these years the kitchen never quite gets right. It’s too saucy, too rich, too French, though the combination of flavors -- lemon, leeks and pistachio, or green beans, morels and marrow -- are enticing. What I like are the ricotta gnocchi that show up on the menu from time to time. Oval in shape, a yellowed ivory in color, they might be served with fragrant matsutake mushrooms. Pasta tends toward the California model, loaded with ingredients, slightly over-sauced, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for trenne with beef Bolognese sauce or the spaghetti alla chitarra (cut on a box strung with wires like a guitar) with a loose tomato sauce.

The wine list is no longer quite the dazzling assemblage of cutting-edge and short-allocation wines it once was. Maybe it’s the economy, or a new-found emphasis on the bottom line, but the restaurant doesn’t seem to be buying with the same verve and intensity as before. Wine service, like the service in general, is consistently excellent, never pretentious, always informative.

Campanile, in fact, is one of the more comfortable serious restaurants around. And fun. It’s always been a restaurant for people who like to eat, not just contemplate their plates. And the plates here have a lovely, unfussy aesthetic. Dishes look appetizing, a concept that seems to have gone out of fashion.

Peel was born to grill and roast. That prime rib steak grilled over olive and almond wood is his signature dish. There’s almost always fabulous lamb, either rosemary-charred baby leg of lamb or tender little chops, or roasted squab, dark-fleshed and moist. Pork chops, brined to hold in their moisture, may show up with homemade apple sauce and baby Brussels sprouts straight off the stalk. How good is that?

It doesn’t stop there. The restaurant has a smart cheese program with five or six cheeses listed on a menu that describes their characteristics. It’s much more effective than an unwieldy cart, because you have the chance to learn something about the more unusual ones. Like Mt. Tam, a cow’s milk cheese from Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes, or a Swiss alpage cow’s milk cheese, produced only in the summer months.

Sweet and superlative

Desserts are stellar. Silverton may be the best American pastry chef in the country, and Boyce is not far behind. There’s that Meyer lemon tart topped with a hard meringue the color of cafe au lait and paired with a sharp sweet vinegary sauce. “Broken” napoleon is shards of fragile pastry leaves heaped with luscious mascarpone and sweet-fleshed yellow and white nectarines. In season, you might find a Montmorency cherry pie scented with almond and served with a ravishing mascarpone ice cream.

Campanile’s sourdough chocolate cake with “iced cream” and a bitter espresso sauce has walls so fragile they barely hold in the glorious sludge of dark, dark chocolate. I’m still hoping I’ll see Boyce’s peach fritters listed again, the dough perfumed with orange flower water and dotted with sliced peaches. Fried to a pale gold and rolled in sugar, they were served with fat boysenberries and a boysenberry ice cream.

Now I have friends from out of town who never want to go anywhere else. They know we’ll have fun, we’ll eat until we’re stuffed. Campanile is still a food lovers’ restaurant.

*

Campanile

Rating: ***

Location: 624 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles; (323) 938-1447.

Ambience: Contemporary Mediterranean bistro in a 1929 building once owned by Charlie Chaplin.

Service: Warm and professional. Exceptional wine service.

Price: Dinner appetizers, $9 to $17; main courses, $24 to $38; desserts, $9.

Best dishes: (Menu changes frequently) Bibb lettuce and herb salad, grilled squid salad with green goddess dressing, arugula, date and Parmesan salad, clam chowder with fresh corn, trenne with beef Bolognese sauce, salt-roasted whole daurade, grilled prime rib steak, rosemary- charred baby lamb, broken napoleon, cream biscuits with huckleberries, Meyer lemon tart with Champagne vinegar sauce.

Wine list: Eclectic and well-priced, encourages discovering something new. Corkage $20.

Best table: There isn’t a bad one in the house. Depending on your mood, you may prefer the light-drenched garden room in front, the bistro-like middle room, or the more quiet and formal back dining room.

Details: Open for lunch Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; dinner Monday through Saturday, 6 to 10 p.m. (to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday); brunch Saturday and Sunday, 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking $4.50.

Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.