The beasts are back! While we’re looking forward to Tender Greens’ $35 Red Wattle pig roast this Sunday, with beers from Smog City among a spread of Oktoberfest eats, and can’t wait for Joseph Gillard’s upcoming goat supper at Napa Valley Grille, we see another restaurant introducing an animal-themed dinner to its lineup. On October 27th, Locanda del Lago’s new chef, Gianfranco Minuz, who recently joined the northern Italian restaurant after leaving Pasadena’s own esteemed northerner, Tre Venezie, is preparing a $60 meal titled Morso della Bestia (Bite of the Beast), that finds the chef preparing five-courses using different parts of a Niman Ranch all-natural lamb. What will be served?
Served family-style at the restaurant’s communal table, the wine is promised to be bottomless, while dishes include an insalata of cripsy lamb belly with market greens and herbs (the restaurant sits directly in the Santa Monica Farmers Market on market days); antipasto of sauteed lamb offals with onions, white wine, and Italian parsley; a first-course of hand-cut parpadelle with lamb ragu (the restaurant recently introduced a phenomenal duck ragu, too), and a secondo of garlic and thyme-roasted leg of lamb, sliced table-side, and served with horseradish mashed potatoes. Sorry, dessert does not incorporate lamb parts (nor sheep’s milk), but a wild apple sorbetto with caramel sauce should make you forget about the beasts’ fate anyway.
Morso della Bestia starts October 27th at 7:00 P.M. and will continue with different animals every last Thursday of the month. Reservations are available at 310-451-3525.
