Don’t Become a Refuge

I have an enormous distaste for anything commercial, touristy or corporate. I will be the first to acknowledge how pretentious it is (and the hypocrisy of certain guilty pleasures and my on-call employment with the Ritz-Carlton), but I will defend my stance to anyone who is burdened by my elitism.

Thus it surprises me that I wound up eating at Le Refuge des Fondues, a decidedly unpleasant tourist trap in Montmartre, also a decidedly tourist trap, a sad truth for the onetime bohemian haven. The French customer is few and far between at this raucous restaurant for which the queue never seems to end. Here’s your negative review, Mom.

The moment you walk through the doors of Le Refuge des Fondues, you actually become a refuge, but not to the fondue. A server approaches immediately, giving you a wait time that is certainly inaccurate. When your party is finally ready to be seated, a server will help which ever guests are blessed with a booth seat in the process of stepping over the long, communal table to their seat. Then you are given your only two choices of the night: red or white and cheese or meat. Then the show begins.

An superfluously sugared glass of sangria comes first, with a plate of assorted gherkins, sausages, cheese cubes and olives. Then the baby bottle filled with whatever wine you chose arrives, a custom I find concerning for sanitary reasons, which is only more concerning upon looking at the blackened nipple.

A bowl packed with haphazardly chopped beef is served with a pot of boiling oil and a bowl of cooked, yet cold, potatoes. None of the food was bad, the beef was inherently tasty and the potatoes fried up nicely if you left them in the oil long enough. The dipping sauces were a rather pathetic variety of mustards that flavored heaps of mayonnaise.

The cheese fondue didn’t look much more appetizing as it seemed to constantly congeal and harden, leaving many diners with oily bread that had purely soaked in the separated oils of the cheese.

In all honestly, I don’t want to discuss the dessert of canned fruit topped with a fluorescent maraschino cherry, two fruit phenomena I was happy to leave behind as a child.

For this lovely experience, it will cost you 21 euros, an appropriately priced meal as Le Refuge des Fondues appeals to the not-yet-21-year-old Americans living it up in Paris.

A Knack for the Deutsche

Mignon, a wine and cheese bar in the Historic Core of Downtown, looks and feels like a Parisian café. Deep blue walls shut out the sun, scores of wine glasses adorn the bar and funky music dances in the background. This is where I ate a Käsekrainer with rotkraut and potato salad. I ate German street food in a French wine and cheese bar. That’s totally normal.

Well, it’s normal for Mignon when the Knackig grill pops up on the restaurant’s patio every Friday and Saturday night (12-2:30 a.m.) and Sunday afternoons. The pop-up Knackig serves German street food, beer and wine.

Named after the “snap,” “crackle” and “pop” that ensues from biting into a German sausage, Knackig is the result of two winos on the hunt for something new. Kevin Stuart owns a wine imports company, with experience in Prague, Taipei and Seoul. And Santos Uy owns a French restaurant called Papilles, where he is also the wine director.

I’m still uncertain as to why I consumed a German sausage, with German accompaniments, at a pop-up run by two winos with very non-German backgrounds inside a French café.

Curiosities aside, these two guys executed their German-inspired side-project excellently. As if fresh off the streets of Berlin, these sausages satiated my hunger for authentic German fare. I don’t know where Knackig is getting their sausages, but they’re ample and tasty.

The Käsekrainer really packed the knackig. Biting into its thick casing resulted in such a snap, the melted cheese inside immediately oozed out of the sausage. Each bite gave a little struggle with the thick casing but the entire thing was so tasty I didn’t mind. The ratio of cheese to meat was perfect and the piquant, flavorful meat paired well with the buttery cheese. Topping the sausage off with rotkraut—a red cabbage version of sauerkraut—enhanced the sweet essences of the sausage. While the rotkraut lacked the depth of my grandmother’s recipe that features cloves and bacon, I thoroughly enjoyed the condiment.

In comparison to the flavorful and cheesy Käsekrainer, the bratwurst was much more subtle. The classic German pork sausage tasted sweet with accents of nutmeg. Adding sauerkraut to the sausage gave it a tasty, acidic balance.

Potato salad can really be hit or miss, but Knackig’s salad, served warm, certainly hits the spot. Small pieces of bacon amplified the flavor of the starchy potatoes and creamy dressing. Though Knackig promotes their homemade gherkins, none made an appearance in the potato salad. The bacon took care of the salty notes that the gherkins would have added anyways.

To complete the Deutsche experience, Knackig rotates through German beers and German or Austrian wines. For more information visit their website.

Stout in Sustenance and Spirit

L.A. appears to be home to a perpetual burger competition. Nearly every chef has taken on the new-wave burger, topping bacon-beef patties with fried eggs, truffle oil and European cheeses and swapping fresh lettuce and tomatoes for caramelized onions and sautéed mushrooms. Does ketchup, in its wholesome Heinz simplicity, even exist anymore without curry or chipotle spice?

As burgers become more ornate, innumerable “Best Burgers in L.A.” lists materialize every month or so, making it impossible to know what really is Los Angeles’ best burger. So in a city that has multiple masters of the neo-burger, Stout continues to fly under the radar despite everything that it has done right.

Situated in the heart of Hollywood, within walking distance of numerous clubs, the Pantages and the Hollywood Palladium, Stout has prime location with the best hours — 11:30 – 4 a.m every day. And the restaurant has opened its walls to the mild California weather, giving the space an open and striking aesthetic.

The sinuous layout is coupled with a trendy industrial-style interior, which matches perfectly with Stout’s presentation of artisanal beers. Their menu of local micro brewed beers is exhaustive, even overwhelming to the average customer. And for that, next to each burger option, an ideal beer pairing is suggested.

The sides at Stout are ample, perfect for sharing between two or mixing and matching amongst an entire table. The sweet potato fries are nice. They are actually yams, but the fries are cooked until just soft and lightly salted, and thus, not too sweet.

The onion rings are big and tasty. A light and crunchy batter encased the silky and tender onions to make a pretty classic beer battered onion ring.

Rosemary and garlic galvanized the seasoned fries, which still donned their potato skins. Though the fries were a bit thin for my taste, they were deliciously soft and simultaneously crispy, proving to me that texture can make up for size.

Where Stout really shines is with its burgers. Each one was cooked to a perfect medium-rare. And the servers don’t even ask your cooking preference because Stout knows that medium-rare is universally the correct style for a burger. And the bun. The bun was soft and light with the taste of a sweet brioche.

The Goombah burger tastes as though the classic American burger took a summer vacation to Italy and learned a thing or two. Smoked mozzarella and parmasiano flakes topped the burger, and a spread of lemon basil aioli added a fresh and summery quality.

Perhaps a play on bacon, the proscuitto in this burger is cooked to a crisp. After eating crispy proscuitto, I won’t even bat an eyelash at bacon. The flavor of this proscuitto was delectable. Each crunchy bite expelled so much proscuitto essence, it was heavenly.

Finally, the Stout Burger. On paper the Stout Burger has it all going on: blue cheese, emi gruyere, caramelized onions, roasted tomatoes, rosemary bacon and horseradish cream. Once in the mouth, the horseradish cream steals everyone’s show. The horseradish cream oozed out of the burger and unfortunately masked the imaginably beautiful concoction of blue cheese, gruyere, onions and rosemary bacon.

On the other hand, the Morning After burger was deliciously simple…as simple as the new-wave burgers can get. Aged cheddar and an egg over easy served as mild cushions for the rosemary bacon to pop out from. The chipotle ketchup was a little spicy but mediated by the creamy egg and sharp cheese.

If ending on a sweet note, the bread pudding will please the sweet tooth and fill the stomach. It was huge and loud. Studded with chocolate and butterscotch chips, this bread pudding was so moist it melted in my mouth.

Look out for three more Stout locations opening in Studio City, Santa Monica, and Pasadena. For more information visit Stout’s website.

Starting Down in the Cellar

Welcome to Eating L.A. Layer by Layer!

Typically I will be writing about restaurants in the L.A. area, but today my first review will feature a burgeoning Orange County gem. The Cellar is an artisan cheese shop and restaurant on the boutiquey street of Del Mar in San Clemente, and it is absolutely delicious.

From the cheese shop, we started out with the Spanish Board. Unfortunately the plate was simply dropped off at our table without any explication of its features. Eventually, after probing, a description of the plate was provided.

Atop the deep and creamy Drunken Goat, there is a small piece of fig cake, which was quite crunchy and consisted of a rich nutty flavor. The Manchego was paired with membrillo, both characterized by a grainy texture, and the sweetness of the quince paste accompanied the nutty aged qualities of the Spanish sheep cheese. The charcuterie consisted of slices of wonderfully salty chorizo and light jamon serrano, which was very similar to prosciutto. The sweet stuffed peppadews, the peppery olives, and the salty but sweet marcona almonds served as delicious accoutrements.

Next, we split the heirloom tomato flatbread. Drizzled with balsamic vinegar and topped with julienned basil and shaved parmesan, the flatbread was full of fresh and vibrant flavors. The cherry tomatoes oozed with juice and the bread cracked with each bite. While the crust was a bit crunchy for my taste, the flavors of the flatbread made up for it.

Full of sweetness from the fig butter and honey, yet balanced with a bitter walnut and peppery arugula, the fig butter crostini served as a perfect amuse-bouche to my meal.

I ordered the braised short ribs in a balsamic reduction. Arugula and roasted tomatoes and garlic topped the dish, and rosemary grits sat patiently under the short ribs. Hazelnuts encircled the plate, and I relished their sweet nuttiness after first consuming the small arugula salad. Next I started on the short ribs, which were so tender and juicy it was almost as if butter seeped in between each rivet of the meat. Courageously, I paired a roasted garlic clove with a piece of short rib, and the two melted together beautifully. Nonetheless, I finished the plate by eating the grits alone, and they were thick, creamy and tasty.

The wonderful meal ended with an incredibly moist yet crumbly chocolate mink. The vanilla ice cream and sunflower seed pairing added a nice salty and creamy refreshment to the rich chocolate cake-like dessert. I cannot say there isn’t a picture because I dug into the dessert too quickly since the server actually took five minutes to bring spoons to the table, but the dessert was delicious – as was every plate of the meal.

The dishes are so well prepared with such vibrant ingredients that the prices at the Cellar are completely reasonable. Where the Cellar needs to work out its kinks is in the wait staff – instead of feeling like a leisurely meal with appropriate distribution of meals, frequently those at my table felt neglected and uniformed about what they were consuming. Despite poor service at one table, the restaurant as a whole bustled all evening, proving to be a popular new Orange County culinary destination. To find more information about the Cellar, visit their website.