Stranded In The Southland

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

The Bachelor Lifestyle

With M. off in England for a month and a half of study, I've been getting along as best I can, leading the bachelor lifestyle.

My work buddy G., entertainingly eccentric and a fellow foodie, headed out with me tonight to grab some grub. As usual, I depended on the fabulous Jonathan Gold's 99 Essential Restaurants, and decided to check out Il Moro, LA's only Bolognese restaurant.

From the description, I'd assumed that it'd be a dumpy, quiet little place with great food, but it actually turned out to be a beautifully designed place with some rockin' food, and even some amazing beer, a rarity in LA.

LA is full of wonderful restaurants, but they usually all have a handful of crappy yellow beers on the menu, along with maybe a cheap British brown beer thrown in. This place had an amazing menu of interesting beers from around the world that I'd never heard of. While they had my favorite Italian beer, Moretti La Rossa, I opted for a strange spiced ale, Nuova Mattina. It turned out to be fairly interesting -- not "I'll have to have that again!" interesting -- but I was delighted to have the chance to try something new.

G. had a pretty solid risotto, and I had pappardelle with roasted wild boar ragu which was right up there with the best I'd ever had (although I guess I've always had it with rabbit in the past). The setting was great and the service was friendly, if spotty at times -- there's not much excuse for failing to refill my water glass even once.

I'm definitely anxious to return -- the menu was chock-full of interesting looking options, and it was totally trivial to get a reservation for two at 7:15PM on a weeknight. All things considered, I was kind of shocked we didn't have more of a wait to get in!