The Other Critics

The Tasting Kitchen Rocks Los Angeles and Gold’s World

Tasting Kitchen
Tasting Kitchen Photo: Hadley Tomicki

Venice’s The Tasting Kitchen “prepared some of the most delicious food I’ve eaten all year,” states Jonathan “Secret Santa” Gold, enthusing about plates so surrealistically sublime that you “rather suspect there’s an art director.” [L.A. Weekly]

New chef Tony “DiSalvo’s cooking is so good,” ho-ho-ho’s S. Irene Virbila of a yet-again re-launched Whist, even if the formulaic “service could be better.” [L.A. Times]

Dipping again into Westfield Culver City (or maybe he never found his car), Merrill Shindler finds the activity at B.J.’s Brewhouse, a de rigeur family destination for any new mall, “very impressive.” Flipping the partridge-in-a-pear-tree to the foodie police, he calls it “just plain good chow.” [Daily Breeze]

Though Mark Peel’s menu at The Tar Pit “is heavy on Mad Men-era classics,” Jonathan Gold says, “his heart seems to be in the reinvented bar snacks” like clams casino, deviled eggs, and fried oysters. Basing a major chef’s eats around cocktails “still feels revolutionary.” [L.A. Weekly]

“There’s gleeful disorder” at The Tasting Kitchen chimes in Los Angeles, and “Cocktails are just as daring.” [Los Angeles]

S. Irene Virbila thinks Joseph Centeno and Michael Cardenas are providing “just what Little Tokyo could use: an eclectic tavern” at Lazy Ox Canteen, and calls it a “Good start!” [L.A. Times]

The Tasting Kitchen Rocks Los Angeles and Gold’s World