![]() ![]() The meal started with masa “chicharrones” and vinegar followed by fried blue corn mackerel in a tart fermented peach, reaper chile and dashi sauce with pickles green papaya salad with XO sauce a take on tortelloni filled with Hokkaido scallops and TransparentSea shrimp in a seafood birria broth and a sweet sticky rice cake with caramelized coconut curd. The first in the series was a dinner with Alex Ruperto of Sakura Chocolates. “I want to do a menu in a storytelling way.” “I went to a restaurant in France, and they didn’t have a menu, it was just what was available, and I really gravitated towards that because it’s minimal waste and pushes creativity,” Ortiz said. In December, she started a monthly tasting menu series with chef friends to develop some dishes and introduce locals to a different style of dining. She serves a small a la carte menu of vegetable and seafood-centric dishes. Ortiz, who staged at Mélisse and was a sous chef at Connie and Ted’s, signed on as the head chef at Rose Park on Pine in July 2021, after finishing a tour of duty in Afghanistan. The desire to relay a personal journey through food was what propelled Army veteran Melissa Ortiz to start cooking out of the 350-square-foot kitchen of a coffee shop in Long Beach. ![]() Or maybe a savory mochi with Sho Chiku Bai sake crammed with lardon, chrysanthemum and sweet snap peas. Or a rich porridge fortified with brown butter and abalone liver. If you’re lucky, you’ll be presented with a bowl of black vichyssoise studded with pickled green figs and fermented plums. In the middle of the Second Home communal workspace, which serves as Phenakite’s lush outdoor dining room, Phan’s cooking staff serves dishes directly to diners. Tired of packaging her food in takeout boxes, the new format of 10-plus courses afforded more of a dialogue for Phan to forge a connection with diners and her staff. “And one that delivers not only emotionally, cerebrally but physically and very few art forms deliver on all three levels and communally too.” “People are craving culture and experiences now more than ever,” Phan said. ![]() Known best for Porridge and Puffs, her porridge-centric restaurant in Filipinotown, Phan opened Phenakite just as the pandemic was wreaking havoc in late 2020, at a time when people were hungry for any form of comfort and connection. Minh Phan says a collaboration dinner with Niki Nakayama and Carole Iida-Nakayama of n/naka, one of the most lauded kaiseki menus in the country, inspired her to open Phenakite, her tasting menu restaurant in Hollywood. These are tasting menus born in the early days of quarantine, the need for a creative outlet, staffing constraints and a city’s constant appetite for something new. The Eurocentric foods and dinner bills that could easily cover a month’s rent are being replaced by folding tables, ‘90s rap music and cuisines that span the globe. It’s part of a growing wave of tasting menus that are shifting the traditional format to something more casual and distinctly Los Angeles. The omakase service is on a brief hiatus and will return in April at $175 per person. Pichetrungsi launched his $150 omakase menu (called omakase for the 12 years his father, who co-owns Anajak with his wife and son, worked as a sushi chef) in July 2020. “There really is a certain level of scrappiness.” “Being in the alley, it’s kind of a nice metaphor because Thai food is seen so much as street food, but I’m trying to do a tasting menu on a white table cloth so you have the contrast of all these plates and this tiny delicate food presented in a dumpster alley,” he said. There were bowls of khao man gai rice slick with duck fat under plump blue oyster mushrooms marinated in coconut milk and tom yum made from the dry-aged bones of striped bass and garnished with shrimp heads. The grilled A5 wagyu was accompanied by wilted radicchio, sorrel and a fish sauce caramel. The dry-aged steelhead salmon sushi was covered in a spoonful of panang curry before it was torched until just cooked and then kissed with a drizzle of Thai basil oil.īoat-run scallops from Maine floated in a cold coconut soup seasoned with a swirl of chile crisp, lime and pink salt. Dinner began with golden pastry cups made from coconut and rice flours and filled with marinated Hokkaido ikura, Santa Barbara uni and peas they were followed by a procession of “nigiri” fashioned with aged fish from the Joint Seafood restaurant and fish market in Studio City atop nubs of sticky rice. ![]()
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