truffle toast courtesy of yelp:
I wish you wouldâve sketched it tbh
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Went tonight. Iâm putting this spot on death watch. It was about 1/3 full from 630-830.
Is $18 for one spot prawn a good price? Arenât they pretty local and abundant? If theyâre paying retail prices per shrimp, then that markup makes sense. Guess youâre also paying for the tanksâŚ
Ate dinner at Republique tonight and it was $36 for 2 spot prawns. Spot prawn pricing collusion at LA restaurants?
Must be a plot by the Russians to drive up the price of prawns before they flood the market.
Pretty standard. Even at chinese seafood spots itâs about $30/lb. you get 1.5 prawns a lb.
Thatâs definitely incorrect. I buy spot prawns from the fish markets in DT fairly often and depending on the size, you get 4-6 prawns per pound.
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Prices have consistently been going up as more and more local restaurants realize how amazing they are. I remember as a kid growing up they use to run around $12-15/lb? Then they jumped to 18-20/lb in the late 2000s and during this decade its rare to see them below $26/lb at the Asian markets. Even wholesale thru my restaurant seafood suppliers its not that much cheaper, maybe 20-22/lb?
I put it on death watch just knowing that they had opened at the Beverly Center in the old P.F. Chang space. No matter how good the food, I just donât think a lot of people want to go drop a boatload of money to eat on the ground floor of a dinosaur mall. Even if the space is nice once you get inside. I think restaurants catch on for a number of reasons and one of them is location.
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One wonders about the (un) likely success of places (no matter how strong the chef/pedigree) in a place like the Beverly Center. Who is the evil genius that talks restaurateurs (with a semi-marketable name) into these spots?
Fucking Michael Mina keeps opening one loser place after another, in one bad location after another, in LA. Who remembers XIV??? He is either 100% tone deaf to our market, or just doesnât give a fuck, as he licences his name (over-and-over again) to bogus LA projects. Maybe he gets paid and (an-ever-rotating group of) âtheyâ loose a one shit load after another.
All that said - I will probably try Angler before it goes out of business.
I actually had an above average dinner at XIV while they were in business. It was an ambitious restaurant in a location that mainly caters to the party/bottle service crowd. The food they were putting out could have probably worked elsewhere in the city.
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Me too, a few. Iâm not knocking the cooking.
Itâs like Bianca/Tartine at ROW. Are they really going to be successful with so much space in a glorified ghost town most evenings?
I donât necessarily disagree with you, but didnât they say the same about Bestia?
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They probably did.
Yes, but Bestia and Majordomo are random destinations where it is a little thrilling and interesting to visit scary downtown. The Row at night is a dead mall.
Itâs also terrible to get to if you donât live in the area. The mere thought of going to Beverly center from Pasadena gives me the chills.
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I practically went from there (HLP area) and goodness I suffered, and that was on a weekend. Worth it, but just.
I assume Mina is backed or has an open channel with an equity group that has tons of money and is willing to take 1-2 bad concepts and bank on one successful one?
Also could be a good chance that the reason he goes into bad locations is because his investors own them? He probably doesnât have to put up any of his own money, in fact maybe he takes a lump sum in place of equity so that he has no financial liability but still gets a payday and if the restaurant fails hes not out any money and the investors are out a few million at worst, which for a large private equity firm may just be small chump change compared to their diverse portfolio which probably has skyscrapers worth hundreds of millions in it so maybe itâll bring down their total net value by a single, if that, percentage point?
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