I actually almost ran him and Calista Flockhart over about 5-10 yrs ago at Westwood and Missouri. I assume I must’ve been either going to Cal Chicken Cafe or Pink Orchid.
I’m too much of a pagan heathen to know what it’s like to motorcycle through wherever, but the place sounds great. Thanks for also including the description of the prosciutto. Prior to reading the text, I was able to ask if the proscuitto seemed a little… THICK.
Thick = Rustic and Generous
Is it just a different thickness, or is it cured a different way? The reason I ask is b/c, when I’ve had thicker prosciutto (when it was incompetently sliced at a previous iteration of 800 Deg), it was nearly inedible b/c it was TOO chewy.
There are Australian winter truffles in season now, June 5, 2018 - Italian Black Summer Truffles and Australian Black Winter Truffles are now available!. I haven’t tried them yet, but they are supposed to be just like those from the Perigord - minus the castles, rivers, and forested hills.
It is ridiculously hard to find melons in California that are anywhere near what an Italian would consider ripe. I used to know one vendor at a couple of inconvenient farmers markets who had them, but they retired and the new owners started picking green like everybody else.
This can have a different connotation…
Go to Armenian markets for great melons.
What does this mean? Are they different from the regular melons available in L.A.? Sincerely curious, especially because we seem to be limited to a very few varieties, whether regular markets or farmers’ markets.
I’m not a melonologist per se… but our shops have better, sweeter, more aromatic melons… both in the type that’s common (different sources, probably more ripe, maybe less warehouse ripening) as well as types that aren’t common in american shops. central asian varieties are especially good
get some field tomatoes while you’re there and you wont care about heirloom since these are 1-1.5 per lb
Back to Casa Modena. I finally got to visit Modena last year and it was amaaazing
True for the produce and melons found at some Persian Mom&Pop bodegas too…
Emilia Romagna is really fantastic. It’s been about a decade for me but it was so much more friendly, relatively quiet, rustic and delicious compared to many the more popular spots in Italy. Same could be said for Umbria and the less touristy spots in Sicily. Though I suspect it is all a lot more crowded nowadays.
Correct. I should have said “not the season for great truffles”.
I haven’t had an Aussie truffle I thought was superior to a European truffle yet. Always has a sort of petrol nose. But here’s holding out for the hope of year round amazing truffle.
That’s how small towns always tend to me. We got in Venice, out of Rome … couple days each, but then spent 13 days in the country… so nice… taking day trips TO bigger towns like Modena, instead of out.
Casa Modena was consistently less than we expected, hoped for, or paid for.
As we entered Casa Modena earlier tonight, Saturday, June 9, at 5 pm, a small sign advised me that the chef was away in Italy this week, “hunting truffles.” I was assured that a good chef that he had trained was in the kitchen, using his recipes, so we went in. We shouldn’t have.
Our wine order was taken and served. The pours were so skimpy that I measured the diameter of the glass and noted the height of the wine carefully. At home later I pulled a similar glass from our menagerie, verified the diameter, and put water in to the same height as the waitress had put wine. A measuring cup said that was exactly a 4-ounce pour. Not 5 ounces, the semi-standard 5-glasses-per-bottle pour, but 4 ounces. $9 per glass.
We ordered an appetizer, two pastas, and two main plates, anticipating small portions and figuring on taking home any leftovers. The late Giovanni’s in Culver City had a standout melanzana appetizer we ordered there on almost every visit; we’d enjoyed it elsewhere too. Always served fully heated, a dishful of eggplant was smothered in an herby sauce of fresh tomatoes so good that you wanted to pick up the leftover sauce with bread. It was generous enough for a light dinner for one person. In contrast, Casa Modena provided six little tea-biscuit rounds of eggplant, each 1/8 inch thick, knife-spread with a simple tomato sauce–with enough pepper on each round to season half a dozen eggs! The rounds were barely warm. Could they have just come out of the refrigerator, had a moment in a pan or microwave, and been “improved” with pepper? $12 for a skimpy and poor version of what can be a delicious vegetarian dish. But less was still to come.
We have been to Italy (Rome, Florence, Siena, and Volterra, anyway), and know that lasagna in Italy is different from lasagna in New York and Boston, the model for LA pizzeria lasagna. So the small stature and absence of red sauce did not surprise us. Layers of lasagna noodles were filled by a tomato-meat paste and what appeared to be bechamel sauce. There was essentially no cheese flavor (a container of grated Parmesan was offered). Tasted separately, the meat paste did not suggest beef, but was meaty. Taken as a whole, I can’t analyze the lasagna except to say that its flavor combination was not harmonious, unlike the lasagnas that I had in Italy. I would not order it again. $17.
This was a birthday-week dinner; I wanted to splurge and experience truffles for the first time in my life. Why not at “The Truffle Hunter’s” restaurant? The FTC discussion had said mostly nice things about Casa Modena’s Tagliatelle tartufo, noting that these were not the better winter black truffles, but less-expensive summer truffles. The waitress said that the kitchen was out of tagliatelle noodles but would prepare the dish with fettucine. A generous bowl of fettucine amply covered in a butter-cream sauce arrived. The waitress, holding a 1-inch-diameter, round, light brown object that I assumed was a truffle, proceeded to shave many, many millimeter-thin slices from it until the fettucine was almost covered. Some small slices even fell onto the floor. She had shaved about 2/3 of the object when she finished shaving and put the bowl in front of me. I picked up a small clump of two or three slices from the top of the dish and tasted them by themselves. Astonishingly, after all I had read, they were nearly flavorless, though a very slight mustiness remained afterwards in my mouth. Their mouthfeel was that of the stem of a fresh mushroom. I mixed the truffles into the dish and my wife and I shared it, as we had the other items. I had expected something that would be noticeably new and interesting, certainly not something flavorless, but that is what I got. There would have been much more flavor had the round objects been ordinary fresh supermarket mushrooms. As I went through my part of the bowl, I kept trying to find the flavor, as did my wife. Except for maybe a slight mustiness, there was no flavor but that of the butter-cream-sauced noodles, pleasant but monotonous after awhile. $29.
Pollo alla Cacciatora, my choice, was flavorful and familiar. Fresh green peppers, tomatoes, and onions were in a pleasant tomato sauce in which chicken was cooked, or at least heated. Casa Modena’s was served in a bowl. The contents were hot. But where was the chicken? Finally I found a single small drumstick. $21.
Salmon in lemon sauce, my wife’s choice, was a good-sized piece of well-cooked fish, but there was no lemon in the lemon sauce! It was semitransparent, slightly brown, thickened, and without acidity or flavor. My wife called it “glop”, scraped it off, and enjoyed the fish. She loves potatoes but refused to eat the accompanying mushy and oily roasted potatoes. $22.
Although some of the faults of our meal may be laid at the feet of the substitute chef, others are likely endemic. This restaurant is only 7 minutes from home and is accessible even at trafficky times, but I doubt that we will return.
Thank you for your informative report, and Welcome to FTC!
They grate the raw truffles thinly on top of the dish because they don’t have much flavor, just aroma. They’re considerably less aromatic than white Alba truffles so they need to use a lot. If you didn’t detect much aroma, they probably weren’t as fresh as they should be.
Black truffles have flavor that’s brought out in cooking.
Rule number one of FTC: always make sure Sergio is cooking