Pickle fried chicken and a honey wax cocktail at Osso in Little Tokyo

Name of the restaurant: Osso, a new restaurant in Little Tokyo by Pierre Casanova and Dana Hollister of Cliff’s Edge, and two Momofuku alums, chef Nick Montgomery and Ami Lourie.

Where you are: The former One-Eyed Gypsy bar, but it’s no longer the space where you spent drunken nights playing free skee-ball. For one, the exterior wall is grey instead of bright purple. And once inside, there’s a dining room with multiple doors that open onto the street, giving diners an unobstructed view of the Metro Gold Line trains racing by outside. The stage area remains at the back of the dining room, where the restaurant plans to host a rotating list of performers.

What you’re eating: There are no actual pickles or pickle brine in the fried chicken at Osso. But when you take a bite, the familiar tang of a dill pickle lingers on your tongue, in a good way. That’s because Montgomery uses a mixture of buttermilk and dill to brine his chicken. It’s like biting into a dill pickle and a fried chicken sandwich at the same time, and the effect is simply addictive. You’ll find yourself declining the sauce cart that accompanies the chicken, not wanting anything to mask that dill flavor. If you do want sauce, available are squeeze bottles of everything from Frank’s Red Hot to Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce and sambal.

You can order the chicken whole or a half with potato salad; or spend $69 on a whole fried chicken and a bottle of bubbly.

Also on the menu is house charcuterie such as the duck mortadella (soft rounds of pistachio-studded meat served with bits of cherries); foie gras torchon; and pork and chicken liver pate. There’s one housemade pasta on the menu, the cavatelli with mushrooms; and a selection of “snacks,” including beef jerky, cheese popcorn, salt and vinegar chips and onion rings. On the lighter side, a hamachi crudo; market greens with crispy chickpeas and chilled wax beans.

What you’re drinking: Cocktails by “cocktailmolologist” Darwin Manahan, who’s putting kalamansi fruit and leaf from either his mother’s, father’s or girlfriend’s father’s tree in his Padre gin cocktail; and honey candle wax in his version of an Old Fashioned, called the Portola. According to Manahan, the wax gives the cocktail the flavor of honey, without the sweetness.

Who’s at the next table: A tattooed couple at the bar shares a laugh over a couple beers, and a larger table of friends has a hard time deciding on which hot sauce squeeze bottles to grab for their chicken. At a banquette lined with pillows at the rear of the restaurant, a man and a woman giggle after throwing back two shots of whiskey.

Service: Friendly may be an understatement. The server’s suggestions were spot on and he had no problem running back to the kitchen to check why the fried chicken tasted like pickles. You’ll find yourself wanting to leave a tip on top of the 20% service charge.

Info: 901 E. 1st St, Los Angeles, (213) 880-5999, www.ossodtla.com.