First Report: Miro DTLA

Americas - USA West Los Angeles
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Almost beat the Yelpers to it!

Open since Wednesday. Love the space.

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There is a very high end whiskey bar downstairs with many ultra rare who skies (think Yamazaki Sherry Cask at $3500 a bottle or $120 a pour).

Mediterranean food. Food and service is surprisingly good and polished given the location and their soft open.

Pastas are all house made and excellent. It’s nice LA is in a full blown pasta renaissance with so many places serving very good pasta these days.

Octopus is excellent and includes the meaty portion between the tentacles.

Hamachi crudo. Very fresh. Safe and tasty.

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Bacalao croquettes with romesco and aioli. Excellent!

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Delicious octopus.

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Bucatini with ramps. Superb. Not the most al dente because it is fresh but nicely flavored.

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Garganelli with octopus. So good I only got 2 pieces of pasta. Nice briny taste. Great texture.

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Pasta with morels and fava beans. Classic spring dish.

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Not pictured because it was devoured so quickly. The pasta bolognese. Excellent texture on this one. About the thickness of linguine x 2.

Lamb meatballs with flatbread. Lamb meatballs were okay. Flatbread was superb.

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Grilled ribeye. Steak was pretty good. The potatoes caramelized in fat was even better.

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Pork chop. I thought it was pretty good. Others thought it was very slightly dry.

Pizza crust is nice. I would prefer maybe a touch more char. But the texture is nice.

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Not sure how this place will do because it’s allegedly a “cursed” location but I hope they do well.

Come here for the pastas, bacalao fritters, and octopus.

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Hi @Porthos,

Nice report, thanks! :slight_smile: I wasn’t very excited about this place reading the initial press releases, Chef Gavin Mills is from Tavern (which I found to be average (with some good dishes, some bad ones)), so I wasn’t expecting much.

But I’m so glad to hear their pastas and bacalao are good. :slight_smile:

More importantly, how many bottles of the Yamazaki Sherry Cask did you get for dinner? :stuck_out_tongue: :wink:

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Zero. Way too rich for my blood! :slight_smile:

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porthos, did you happen to notice if there are any “affordable” glasses o’whiskey
for the great unwashed like moi?

i looked at their website but there’s no list.

thanks.

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I had the pleasure of checking this place out last weekend for a friends and family event. Absolutely loved it. The garganelli was great, as was the salmon which came with, oddly enough, one of the best fattoush salads I’ve ever had. Also really enjoyed the cauliflower dish. The highlight of the meal though was actually the cocktails. We put back a lot of them and they were consistently some of the best drinks I’ve had in the city. The bartenders have backgrounds at Faith & Flower as well as Otium, and they’re putting out some killer drinks.

The whiskey room was ridonculous and hearing the spiel about how rare some of the bottles are was very entertaining. They’re pretty confident it’s the best selection of whiskey in the city and I’d be hard pressed to disagree.

I really really enjoyed the place and look forward to returning.

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This is funny. I mentioned how I liked it much more than Faith & Flower or Otium. Something about the decor draws comparisons to the other two.

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They have a huge selection including several cask strength ones. Priced same as your usual DTLA whiskey bar.

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One of the GMs is also from Faith & Flower.

I really liked the space and the vibe. Something about the angles of the ceiling and the bar counter, compounded by what seems like a smaller, intimate dining room, made it feel really welcoming. And then you’ve got the downstairs bar and high-end whiskey room, which are a whole nother vibe that I’ll be curious to see how it plays out.

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Was the flatbread also housemade? Sauce w/ the lamb meatballs looks delicious…

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It was delicious. I suspect it was housemade.

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Looks interesting. Thanks for the heads up.

That lighting DOES remind me of Otium.

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Fantastic writeup and pictures @Porthos! Must have been really dark that you had to use the flash, but even then the pics looks a hell of a lot juicier than the others?

How’s the wine list here? I think while looking up wine shops that sell sake in LA, a few places in Beverly Hills sell bottles of the Yamazaki Sherry Cask (not the award winning year but subsequent) also in the four digit range. At those prices, I’d buy a Dassai Beyond retail, a Grand Cru white burg, and a few YOLOmakase meals to go with it with change to spare.

Bookmarking this as a possibility for my upcoming trip! Thanks!

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Somm is into that natural wine thing which I am not.

She did have us try a nice something off the list that was very good. A Bourgogne gamay if I heard correctly.

I didn’t see the bill so didn’t check corkage.

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“natural”?
like, organic grapes, dry farmed, stuff like that?
i love going into wineries and have them try and explain what “biodynamic” means.
never gotten the same answer twice.

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Yeah, I don’t even know what that means.

Part of it is no sulfur.

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Yeah we have a couple or so shops that try to push these natural wines, often also referred to as “biodynamic”. Haven’t tasted any myself, but have seen diners drink a glass or two. The biodynamic white I saw looked rather unappetizing. I’d rather drink nigori sake than that stuff.

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Nice early report. I’m going to try and check it out next week. That location is realllly challenging.

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I was invited to friends & family night for this place.

The alcohol program is great. Especially the high-end whiskey collection. You should go downstairs and really go wild, and try stuff out. I am not even a huge fan of hard liquors but we tasted stuff that was pretty excellent.

For me, hope they start doing better because let’s just say I was incredibly happy to only be eating for a tip instead of paying for the meal.

The lamb kofta was the only dish that seemed good to me besdies their charcuterie selection being also at least alright, especially in terms of funk of their cheeses. I would never pay their asking price for pastas with Bestia like a 5-minute drive away and about 1000x easier parking.

I’m sure this place will do well given its location though, and the people that run the place in general are great. (But getting to the location if you don’t live/work nearby is a considerable hassle).

Hopefully they drastically improved things since actually opening, or else I really wish the awesome management and alcohol people had better food to support… great atmosphere to drink in and well-managed so. I suspect that is more important than food for something like 99% of people anyway shrugs

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@beefnoguy the wine list is basically all natural wines from all over the world. Some interesting stuff. Your basic markup. But there are some fun rarer stuff that you don’t usually find in LA. Corkage I think is $30. We bought a bottle off the list so we weren’t charged corkage on our 3 bottles. (I was at dinner with @porthos)

re: natural/biodynamic. Biodynamic doesn’t mean natural. Lots of biodynamic wineries out there. Most of the top burgundy domaines are biodynamic but they aren’t natural. Natural wines usually mean no added sulfur.