LA Dining Wrap-Up
During our visit to LA, we made many casual visits to some popular kosher spots. Our most frequent destination was The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Imagine a chain as pervasive as Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks are on the East Coast, but every location fully kosher (at least in LA and Orange Counties).
These busy coffee shops feature a wide variety of KSA-certified coffees, teas, and blended drinks, as well as KoLA-certified pastries, cakes, salads, bagels, and sandwiches. All drinks are made to order and the rest of their offerings are great quality — we’ve tried and enjoyed their muffins, scones, bagels, and mozzarella-tomato-basil sandwiches. In all honesty, if I weren’t tied down to Boston already, I’d move to LA just for the Coffee Bean.
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Delice Bakery, Los Angeles, CA
Overall, our epicurean strategy during October’s trip to LA was to focus on the kinds of shops and restaurants we didn’t have back home, and in that spirit we twice visited Delice Bakery on Pico Boulevard. First, we were hankering for an mid-afternoon snack to tide us over until dinner. It was a challenge to decide between all the perfect-looking cakes, petites-fours, tarts, cookies, and pastries (both dairy and pareve varieties available) but we settled on a miniature pareve fruit tart — as delicious as it was visually striking.
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Greta Restaurant, Los Angeles
With our private night-time tour of Los Angeles coming to end — friends Alan and Rachelle having given us a real insider’s view of their city — it was time to park the ‘Stang, put the convertible top up, and enjoy some fine dining. Our hosts brought us to Greta, a Mediterranean restaurant on Melrose Avenue. The decor, much like the evening’s weather, was crisp and clean, and the open grill visible from the dining area added a bit of excitement. Upon being seated in the cozy dining room, we were served fresh bread with a variety of tasty accouterments — pickled turnip, matbucha, and two other items whose identities escape me. Once we placed our order, I was introduced to the owner, Cedric Marmet, who welcomed us personally, and after learning that I did indeed eat meat, convinced me to change my order from seared ahi tuna to his favorite dish, steak au poivre.
Our first course arrived promptly - the kemia royale, a pairing of two items, Tunisian pizza and tuna brick. The pizza hinted at Tunisia’s historical relationship with France, featuring the nicoise combination of olives, tuna, and chopped hard-boiled egg, over a light tomato sauce and a soft, thick crust. Until then, I had always been put off by the thought of tuna on pizza, having first seen (and avoided) such a topping at Sbarro in Israel, but somehow this combination of ingredients was quite delicious when their individual identities were put aside and enjoyed together within each bite. The tuna brick was also a surprise hit - little triangles of perfectly crisp filo dough stuffed with a bit of tuna and what tasted a lot like tartar sauce. The triangles were perched atop a mound of fresh greens, dressed simply with lemon juice.
The owner next treated us to an unexpected dish — brick a l’oeuf — which was really nothing more than a fried egg in between circular layers of crisp filo. As we cut the brick into four pieces, the runny yolk spilled out and made a natural dipping sauce. It was an ideal execution of simplicity, and just enough to excite the palette without overwhelming the stomach.
Despite the owner’s apologies that my steak’s sauce would take a bit of time to make from scratch, our entrees arrived promptly. The steak au poivre featured a creamy, peppery sauce over a perfectly grilled steak and was served alongside hot, crispy pommes frites — exactly the right combination of potato to salt. The penne pistou (the French version of Italian pesto) showcased its requisite basil without being overwhelming and the chunks of chicken breast nestled among the pasta were cooked just right. A sprinkling of pine nuts added a nice contrast in texture. The hamburger du chef was a sight to be seen, though it made me wonder where traditional Tunisian fare ended and the chef’s creativity began on Greta’s menu. A large, toasted bun sandwiched a hefty half-pound beef patty topped with grilled pastrami, harissa, red onion, mayonaisse, tomato, lettuce, and a fried egg.
Were it not for the late hour and our full stomachs, we would have tried a dessert or two, but that will have to wait for our next visit. Without a doubt, we’ll stop here again when we return to LA.
Under supervision of the Rabbinical Council of California.
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