Fraiche, or, Meeting the Absurd Bastard
After rehearsal last night, Jessie and I went to dinner in Culver City at a new restaurant called "Fraiche." It's been getting a lot of praise in blogs and from the LA Times, in a review called "Experience Beyond Its Age," including the quote "Finally, a restaurant that opens with all its ducks, so to speak, in a row." Hmm. This was not the restaurant we went to last night.
Past an outdoor patio with strangely placed sofas, a huge glass portal opens into a trapezoid-shaped space with high loft ceilings, exposed steel I-beams, an open kitchen along the back west wall, and a bar area immediately to the left of the entrance. Despite all this open space, somehow we kept bumping into people and people kept bumping into us. I'm glad we didn't knock over any of those decanters just sitting there on a dividing ledge between the main room and the bar.
We were a little early for a last-minute reservation I had called in, so we waited at the bar, lucky to get two seats that had just been vacated. A bartender was frantically mixing drinks. I got his attention and asked to see the wine list. Jessie finally decided that she wouldn't drink, as we have a gig tonight, and she's been fighting some mean allergies. But still, since he was so busy crushing fruit into custom cocktails, it was a full 15 minutes before the bartender got back to us to see what we wanted. By then, we were being shown to our table in the main room. We had thought about eating at the bar, but the bar area menu is limited to a few items, and we wanted to try some other stuff. Plus, we were sick of being jostled around by patrons and wait-staff...
We were seated at a table along the east wall, JB faced the kitchen, where all the chefs wore red gang-style bandanas. All the servers wear light blue shirts. Very strange. Our server, a very friendly guy who seemed overwhelmed by his workload, asked what we wanted to drink. I asked what beer they had. This was a difficult challenge I had entrusted him with, to recite the beer list. JB had to tell him that they served Fat Tire Ale. He also called one of the beers "Absurd Bastard," an adorable Beckettian misnomer for "Arrogant Bastard," and he wasn't aware that they were serving Stone IPA, which I had seen while we were in the bar area.
We ordered Beef Tartare to share as a starter, JB got roasted chicken, and I did a little pasta tasting since the pasta dishes were described as small (I had Rigatoni with Lamb Ragú and Agnolotti with some kind of braised pork filling). About this time, JB was starting to feel the draft, the chilly night wind rushing in through the front door, and we were wondering what might happen next. We got chuckles from the way the chef kept knocking into the heat lamps where he had to place the dishes he was sending out: copper shaded lamps hanging at staggered heights from thick coiled wires (like those cool guitar cables I liked when I was a kid!), probably some interior designer's great idea gone awry. The candle at our table extinguished, was replaced, and extinguished again.
The food was good, not remarkable, and only memorable because of the rest of the light-farce of the whole experience. There was a strange taste in the Beef Tartare. I asked if there was pork in it. No, that's the "aioli," I was assured. This morning I looked at the online menu. It's Beef Tartare with "bacon sabayon," whatever that is. Definitely detracted from the flavor of the dish. What is the pressing need to do a "riff" on tartare? JB's chicken tasted fine but was boring, and I sang the praises of my beloved "Pollo a la Brasa" on 8th and Western, a joint that knows what to do with chicken. The pasta dishes were fine, cooked right, and full of flavor, but soon cooled by the cold North wind that by this time was invading the restaurant with force. Hello? It's 10:30 and it's not really warm outside, you can close the doors now. Even our candle wanted no part of this deal.
Jessie ordered tea to soothe her aching throat. The little pot that they serve it in didn't work right, and there were all kinds of leaves and tea-debris in the mix by the time it got into her cup. The floorboards behind my chair sagged every time a server passed by, totally annoying. We were ready to get out of there.
This place doesn't have it together. The space feels cold (literally, last night) and disjointed, and intimacy doesn't exist. Even Pizzeria Mozza, at its most frantic, feels intimate and warm: when I'm there, I want to stay there, and when I'm not there, I want to go back. Oh well, you win some and you lose some. We'll win again soon.
Past an outdoor patio with strangely placed sofas, a huge glass portal opens into a trapezoid-shaped space with high loft ceilings, exposed steel I-beams, an open kitchen along the back west wall, and a bar area immediately to the left of the entrance. Despite all this open space, somehow we kept bumping into people and people kept bumping into us. I'm glad we didn't knock over any of those decanters just sitting there on a dividing ledge between the main room and the bar.
We were a little early for a last-minute reservation I had called in, so we waited at the bar, lucky to get two seats that had just been vacated. A bartender was frantically mixing drinks. I got his attention and asked to see the wine list. Jessie finally decided that she wouldn't drink, as we have a gig tonight, and she's been fighting some mean allergies. But still, since he was so busy crushing fruit into custom cocktails, it was a full 15 minutes before the bartender got back to us to see what we wanted. By then, we were being shown to our table in the main room. We had thought about eating at the bar, but the bar area menu is limited to a few items, and we wanted to try some other stuff. Plus, we were sick of being jostled around by patrons and wait-staff...
We were seated at a table along the east wall, JB faced the kitchen, where all the chefs wore red gang-style bandanas. All the servers wear light blue shirts. Very strange. Our server, a very friendly guy who seemed overwhelmed by his workload, asked what we wanted to drink. I asked what beer they had. This was a difficult challenge I had entrusted him with, to recite the beer list. JB had to tell him that they served Fat Tire Ale. He also called one of the beers "Absurd Bastard," an adorable Beckettian misnomer for "Arrogant Bastard," and he wasn't aware that they were serving Stone IPA, which I had seen while we were in the bar area.
We ordered Beef Tartare to share as a starter, JB got roasted chicken, and I did a little pasta tasting since the pasta dishes were described as small (I had Rigatoni with Lamb Ragú and Agnolotti with some kind of braised pork filling). About this time, JB was starting to feel the draft, the chilly night wind rushing in through the front door, and we were wondering what might happen next. We got chuckles from the way the chef kept knocking into the heat lamps where he had to place the dishes he was sending out: copper shaded lamps hanging at staggered heights from thick coiled wires (like those cool guitar cables I liked when I was a kid!), probably some interior designer's great idea gone awry. The candle at our table extinguished, was replaced, and extinguished again.
The food was good, not remarkable, and only memorable because of the rest of the light-farce of the whole experience. There was a strange taste in the Beef Tartare. I asked if there was pork in it. No, that's the "aioli," I was assured. This morning I looked at the online menu. It's Beef Tartare with "bacon sabayon," whatever that is. Definitely detracted from the flavor of the dish. What is the pressing need to do a "riff" on tartare? JB's chicken tasted fine but was boring, and I sang the praises of my beloved "Pollo a la Brasa" on 8th and Western, a joint that knows what to do with chicken. The pasta dishes were fine, cooked right, and full of flavor, but soon cooled by the cold North wind that by this time was invading the restaurant with force. Hello? It's 10:30 and it's not really warm outside, you can close the doors now. Even our candle wanted no part of this deal.
Jessie ordered tea to soothe her aching throat. The little pot that they serve it in didn't work right, and there were all kinds of leaves and tea-debris in the mix by the time it got into her cup. The floorboards behind my chair sagged every time a server passed by, totally annoying. We were ready to get out of there.
This place doesn't have it together. The space feels cold (literally, last night) and disjointed, and intimacy doesn't exist. Even Pizzeria Mozza, at its most frantic, feels intimate and warm: when I'm there, I want to stay there, and when I'm not there, I want to go back. Oh well, you win some and you lose some. We'll win again soon.
