Had a mostly great meal. No pictures; sorry. From the top:
We did not do any starters. With just the two of us we went straight to pastas and mains. We got two pastas: spaghettini al limone and maritati in arrabiata sauce. The latter was honestly one of the best pastas I’ve ever had in LA. It felt like something you would get in the Italian countryside. Deeply savory, good house made pasta, with a spicy red sauce, bread crumbs, and chickpeas. Delicious. On the other hand, the limone was a total miss. This pasta is just not being done correctly. I had a feeling from looking at Porkybelly’s pictures, but I gave it a chance given the LA times review. The taste was overwhelmingly just salt, with a finish of lemon. If you want a limone done right, get the one at Terroni, which is fucking great.
Next we had two mains from the fire. Both were excellent. A roasted sweet potato with chermoula hit all the spots you want–fire kissed, crispy, salty, and delicious skin, followed by a perfectly cooked sweet center. Nice balance. The swordfish, which came with three sides (which were all fine, not great), was perfectly cooked and a nice portion.
So then, dessert. Between the two of us we ordered three ice creams and mango rice pudding. I am still regretting the amount of ice cream I ate today. Having said that:
If you are a fan of strawberry ice cream you owe it to yourself to try this. It is strawberry flavor amped to 11. Imagine the most amazing pure strawberry sorbet in terms of flavor, combined with a smooth and creamy strawberry ice cream. Delicious. Similarly, the plum and ricotta was awesome, very tart plum ice cream balanced by a ricotta cream. And the honeycomb ice cream was perfect too; rich and creamy, balanced with some salt and olive oil.
The mango rice pudding was the other miss of the night. As with the limone, this thing was just completely fucked up and shouldn’t be served at a restaurant. The texture was like hard and overly firm cottage cheese.
Will I go back? Not sure. It was not a particularly comfortable place to eat. It was loud, and the prices were very high. For two, all in, it was $245. Now, we did order four desserts and two glasses of wine each. But even if you took two desserts and two glasses of wine off (-$48 in price and -$14 in tax and tip), you’re still looking at nearly $100 a person for a very basic meal. This is homey, good Italian cooking, but it’s being sold at very upscale prices. In many ways this is a good example of the premium we pay for some countries’ food over others. The cooking at Soban is probably more refined but they could never get away with charging this kind of price for what they sell.
Main takeaways: other than two misses, everything was really great and the ice creams lived up to the hype. But it’s very pricey for what it is.
