BLACKBOOK THE TASTE “Before I visited, I had never even considered LA. As soon as we landed, I saw that it was so much more: so diverse, so urban – so much more exciting” (mozzarestaurantgroup.com) empire in 2007. Suzanne Goin was mentored at Chez Panisse, Arpège and Campanile before launching popular spots Lucques (lucques. com) and AOC (aocwinebar.com) in West Hollywood and Tavern (tavernla.com) in Brentwood. And of course there’s the duo of Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger of Border Grill (bordergrill.com), who have almost 38 years of culinary collaboration behind them. “Those are the queens,” acknowledges Jessica Koslow, who is undoubtedly reigning over this latest wave. A television producer turned chef, the native Angeleno opened the wildly popular Sqirl (sqirlla. com) in 2012 as a pop-up in East Hollywood showcasing her line of jams. It was the farmers’-market-enhanced dishes that she created with them – a slice of brioche toast slathered with house-made ricotta and her Seascape strawberry and rosegeranium jam or a bowl of brown rice with sorrel pesto, preserved lemon, watermelon radish and feta – that made her a star, creating daily lines around the block for her daytime restaurant. Anticipating Koslow’s next move has become a food-media pastime. In January, she finally broke ground on Tel, a much buzzed-about, 1,000sq m project in a former Office Depot that will combine an all-day café and evening restaurant, an event space and a drought-tolerant farming initiative. Her food at Tel, which is scheduled to open this summer, will weave together two inspirations: “This is a restaurant that feels indicative of California,” explains Koslow, noting the farm component. “Sqirl itself is a California restaurant. It’s in tune with the seasons, the flavours and the ingredients. That’s where Tel starts. Where it continues is it is more of a look into my own heritage. It has flavours and ingredients and techniques from Jewish food.” Those Cali seasons, flavours and ingredients are what has lured big-name New York chefs like April Bloomfield and David Chang to open high-profile projects. Bloomfield’s Hearth & Hound (thehearthandhound.com) opened in December, while Chang’s Majordomo (majordomo.la), in Chinatown, debuted in January. There’s another element of seduction at work too, one Koslow sums up by quoting that line from Pretty Woman: “Welcome to Hollywood. What’s your dream?” Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson, who made their reputations cooking at the popular Brooklyn restaurant Glasserie, followed their dreams when they moved to LA four years ago. “Before I visited, I had never even considered LA,” Hymanson admits. “As soon as we landed, I saw that it was so much more: so diverse, so urban – so much more exciting.” Adds Kramer, “It still feels like there’s room to do stuff here that felt hard in New York. So we just decided to move and figure it out from there.” Almost immediately they signed a deal to open Madcapra (madcapra.com), a vegetable-forward falafel stand in Downtown’s vibrant revamped Grand Central Market. Last spring, with backing from the chefs who own cult restaurants Animal and Son of a Gun, they opened Kismet (kismetlosangeles.com), a sunny, allday restaurant in Los Feliz serving marketdriven Middle Eastern fare. During the day, you might see tables of film folks At n/naka, the late-summer zensai can include baby corn, squid and natto, sand dabs, pickled cucumber with unagi, uni tofu and velvet apricot gelée PHOTO ZEN SEKIZAWA 24 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
