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Salads and Pasta in Sor Tino's Patio

On a sunny hot day (and we have so many of these in Los Angeles), the place to eat is the shady patio of Sor Tino in Brentwood.

What you should order is a lunch salad such as grilled calamari with arugula, tomatoes, capers and a squeeze of lemon (above). It's so fresh and light.

Or panzanella with tuna, toasted ciabatta croutons, tomatoes that taste as if they had just been picked, cucumbers, red onion, basil and a red wine vinaigrette (above).

Sor Tino is, obviously, Italian. The name means Sir Tino and refers to Tuscan chef/owner Agostino Sciandri (above). Sciandri has been promoting Italian food in Los Angeles for years, currently at such places as Toscanova, Ago, Caffe Roma, Vespaio and, since 2004, Sor Tino. He's from the countryside outside Florence.

"Italian food is very simple," he says. "When it's complicated, it's not Italian food any more." 

An example is pappardelle cinghiale, pappardelle with wild boar ragu (above).  "We started this [dish] in Los Angeles," Sciandri says proudly. As the photo shows, the pasta isn't overwhelmed with sauce. 

Another dish that represents his style is veal-stuffed ravioli with fresh porcini mushrooms (above). 

The menu offers many choices, plus daily specials (above) and a page of lunch dishes, most of them salads but also a soup and fish of the day and chicken breast in lemon-caper sauce. 

Desserts are house-made. Do not miss torta della nonna (grandma's cake), with its thin dark line of chocolate just above the crust (above). Or mascarpone cheesecake.

The food is "authentic Italian," said Sciandri, but devoid of sauces that have simmered for the best part of a day. "That's old style," he says. "We have to speed it up a little."

Sor Tino Ristorante, 908 S. Barrington Ave., Brentwood, CA 90049. Tel: (310) 442-8466.

Japanese Tacos and Tapas at Necco

Ever seen a taco that looked like this? Probably not, that is, if you haven't been to Necco, a Japanese tapas restaurant on Westwood Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Instead of corn masa, the "tortillas" are made of brown rice and potato starch. The filling is avocado and spicy tuna, as in the rolls you get in sushi restaurants.  

This stack is three servings. You lift off your share, fold and eat for a seductive blend of flavors and textures--spicy, silky, smooth, crunchy and earthy.  

Open a little more than two years, Necco combines traditional Japanese with California healthy. When I was there, Japanese filled the other tables, including L.A. Dodgers pitcher Kenta Maeda and his family.

No wonder they like the restaurant. The food is light, healthy and put together creatively. For example, miso soup (above) is not the standard miso soup that tastes the same no matter where you eat. It's pale, delicately flavored and made with mushroom broth, not dashi. And it's vegan.  

The thick savory cake okonomiyaki (above) is full of healthy ingredients such as potatoes, taro, brown rice, tempeh, green onion and edamame. On top are mayonnaise and tonkatsu sauce. 

Lunch specials range from $13 (a tapas plate) to $30 (a bento box). The five cards attached to the menu (above) show the choice of tapas to go with the main dishes. 

A $20 plate (above) offers a panoramic survey of the lunch menu. On this one are poke, fried chicken in a cone of sasa leaf, salmon topped with shredded daikon and ponzu, edamame, tofu, crisp kale and slices of burdock and lotus root with sesame dressing. The yellow mound is kabocha squash, made even sweeter with maple syrup and raisins. 

For the same price, you can tuck into a plate of Australian wagyu beef seasoned with balsamic and soy sauce, some of which flavors the rice beside it (above). There's also a bit of wasabi to pick up the flavor of the beef. The salad greens have ginger-carrot dressing. Pickles on the plates are made at the restaurant.

The name Necco means roots, so root vegetables get special attention. So do traditional and healthy Japanese ingredients. A card on the table (above) explains what some of these are.  

This beauty of a dessert is a matcha ice cream sandwich with fresh fruit. The sandwich is gluten-free, and the ice cream is soy, an example of the healthy ideas prevalent at Necco.

Necco, a Japanese tapas restaurant, 1929 Westwood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90025. Tel: (310) 446-5241.

Lunching With Seniors in Little Tokyo

Leftovers in a senior citizens residence? Not trendy, but it was a fun lunch.

When I worked downtown, I occasionally ate in the dining room of Little Tokyo Towers on East 3rd Street. Outsiders were welcome, and lots of people lined up to collect the day's menu on a tray, then take it to long tables in the dining area.

Lunch was generous--a main dish, pickles, tea, dessert--at least that's how I remember it.  When I went in the other day, No one was around. The seniors had eaten at 11 a.m and were gone by 11:30.

Whatever was left was packaged in styrofoam boxes tied up in plastic bags.  By the time I arrived, just three of these boxes were left. I bought one, for $2.50. You can see it at the top.

Inside were noodles stir-fried with chicken, bamboo shoots, cabbage, carrots and bean sprouts, and a few zucchini slices cooked Asian style.  Dessert was a banana. The beverage was milk--nutritious to be sure. Tea was gone, so the two women working as volunteers gave me water, and one of them handed me a hard candy from her purse.

Here is what I would have eaten if I had come the next day.  

Outside, the gardens are beautiful.  How many eating places have as appealing an entrance as this one? Afterwards you can linger on benches there to enjoy a peaceful moment far removed from the traffic nearby.  

Little Tokyo Towers,  455 E 3rd St. #101, Los Angeles, CA 90013. 

Ichiza, a Chef's Hangout

Where do chefs go on their night off? In Las Vegas, they might head for Chinatown, a collection of Asian businesses on Spring Mountain Road within sight of the Strip, but very far removed from it.

One place they like is the izakaya restaurant Ichiza. As a matter of fact, I did see a chef there, Wazuzu's Jet Tila.

Ichiza is a real escape, a place where a tee shirt and jeans look dressy, where laughter can be raucous and the beer is icy cold.

Paper slips with the names of dishes that the kitchen can produce are tacked up all over the place, but there's a conventional printed menu too.

The cooks are Japanese, and the small plates they send out are quite good, with an occasional slip. But who cares, when you're this relaxed and having this much fun?

A beef and albacore tataki salad (at right) was first rate.

Stir-fried pork with kimchi showed Japanese restraint and simplicity, which is not to say that it wasn't delicious.

Chewy and gummy, bacon-wrapped mochi was a study in texture as well as taste. It's on the blue and white plate in the photo above the tataki salad.

Grilled corn on the cob with teriyaki seasoning was better than what you get at backyard barbecues.

Robata-cooked asparagus wrapped in bacon should have been just as good, but the cook was in a hurry and didn't grill the bacon sufficiently, leaving it flabby and pale.

No matter, a bowl of ramen provided some comfort. Grilled tofu with bean sprouts (right) was excellent, and spinach with enoki mushrooms and garlic butter was a very nice way to treat the leafy greens.

But the best was on its way, the dessert honey toast. 

Ichiza hollows out half a loaf of tender white bread, toasts it, puts in vanilla ice cream and glazes the toast with honey. 

This sounds like something Mom would throw together for the kids, but it's a grownup-pleaser too. And Ichiza deserves thanks for putting it on the menu.

The only other place that I've had this dessert was Tokyo Table in Beverly Hills, and that restaurant is now closed.   

Ichiza Sake House and Japanese Restaurant, 4355 Spring Mountain Road, Suite 205, Las Vegas, NV 89102. Tel: (702) 367-3151.

 

Agura: New Style Japanese Food

Agura Dining is so far north on La Cienega Boulevard that you can actually park on the street, right in front. And if you get there after 6 p.m., when the restaurant opens, you don't have to feed the meters.

In this part of town, that's a good selling point. But Agura has more to offer than parking. The food is Japanese/fusion, original and interesting, like the collagen terrine that I wrote about for Squid Ink. This may be the fanciest way that you will ever eat pig's feet.

Or sauteed foie gras (right) set on a slice of sweetened daikon root and topped with miso sauce. Or king crab wrapped in a crepe topped with a spoonful of tomato sauce that could just as well have been tossed with pasta.

Or a gorgeous presentation of Colorado lamb chops (below), the meat separated from the bones, set on a bed of couscous and topped with hair-fine, crisp shreds of sweet potato. The Japanese angle is the teriyaki flavor of the lamb.

But yakisoba confused me. The tightly packed dark portions of soba noodles looked like thin-sliced, soy sauce-marinated beef. The texture was crunchy, not soft. 

Dynamite is very spicy, thanks to the highly-seasoned miso-ginger sauce that coats the mixture of shrimps, scallops and seabass.  The seafood is packed into a scooped-out tomato that sits on a scallop shell held in place by more spicy stuff--wasabi mashed potatoes.

There is, of course, a sushi bar, and the sushi that I've seen has been straightforward.  What sets the bar apart is the  huge gold-flecked Buddha behind it, a figure that dominates the entire restaurant and seems worlds apart from the glittering chandelier in the center.

Owner Yasumasa Kawabata has another Agura in Kyushyu, Japan and opened this one last November, bringing over the Kyushu head chef Yuji Nawata. The name Agura refers to the crosslegged position of the Buddha.

Small rooms at the front allow diners to sit on the floor, and a dark lounge at the back is a good place to sip a sake or soju cocktail.   

The building once housed a church, thus the soaring peaked ceiling. It still has a reverential feel, thanks to the Buddha. But the main object of contemplation now is the food.

Agura Dining, 514 N. La Cienega Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90048. Tel: (310) 289-1940. Dinner only, daily from 6 p.m.