Situated in the heart of LA's financial district is this Italian patisserie/bistro/bar in one. You could literally go on any website such as yelp and urbanspoon and check it out for yourself the sheer quantity of excellent feedbacks. It just happened that we stumbled upon a Starbucks and decided to browse through what there is to eat around our hotel when we found this restaurant. All I have to say is, THANK YOU INTERNET! This is by far the best meal I've had in Los Angeles.
(From left to right) Purple hibiscus, vanilla, raspberry, rose macarons. This is only one of the four sections of their macaron display. They also have earl grey (heavenly!), lemon etc.
If you didn't want to have a sit down meal here (though I cannot imagine why you wouldn't), you could just buy these pastries (along with others not shown in these photos) and go. The prices of these pastries are comparable to prices in Europe (~$5 per piece), but let me tell you, they are well worth the price!
Our appetizer; fried mozzarella. On top is an olive with a spicy salsa-esque sauce. The amazing thing is, even though it's fried and it's cheese, it does not taste oily!
Hallelujah~
Our cute bread with frozen butter; kinda disappointed about the bread though; a little bit too hard and it literally scrapes the inside of my mouth.
Short ribs (braised beef short ribs served with lardon ragù, white polenta, sage & ricotta). The beef is surprisingly tender and seasoned to perfection. I don't know what sauce they used, but this tastes very Asian. It reminds me of a sweet version of soy sauce and well, the ricotta is like congee kinda.
My yummy entrée: clam linguini (surf clams, roasted garlic, garden herbs, Italian parsley & white wine broth). A-ma-ZING! The broth and spices are not overpowering and actually works with the seafood to bring out it's freshness (although the broth is a bit too spicy, more wine, less Tobasco taste would be perfect). The different types of clams were so fresh, so tasty!
Open kitchen right in front of us.
Berries crème brulée. Up to Parisian standards. Enough said.
Nectarine Cobbler (poached nectarines, aromatic spices, raspberries, crumble & crème fraîche) made with fresh vanilla beans. It's quite sour, especially the raspberry jam at the bottom, but it mesh well with the sugary & heavy crème fraîche and vanilla ice cream. There sure were a lotta different flavours, but I wish it would have different texture to it; it would just be that much more interesting.
Chocolate soufflé with a vanilla sauce. For those who have never had a soufflé, it's a dessert that rises like a mushroom in the oven and it slowly shrinks when it's out of the heat. You usually eat it by poking a hole in the middle and pouring a sauce of some sort (vanilla in this case) into the hole and start eating from the middle. A good soufflé is very fluffy, warm and still moist inside.
I'm not a chocolate person, and I still find this soufflé AMAZING! It's very light, unlike a browny, but they were able to retain the richness of the chocolate flavours. I don't know how they do it, but I would definitely have this again!
Yes, we eat 3 desserts in one dinner. We're just cool like that.
The shrunken soufflé; kinda like popping a balloon.
So we decided to buy ourselves some souvenirs since we don't know when we'll be back again :'( These are macarons (that we ended up eating). The earl grey and rose macaron are my favourite! Earl grey macaron sounds like an odd combination, but they made it work! They infused the flowery scent of earl grey but left out the tea after taste. I still crave for this today. I just wish they have something like this in Toronto. :'(
There's conventional and unconventional flavours (i.e. hibiscus). Perfect for a souvenir!
Overall Review:
Food: 9.75/10
I've never given any restaurant this high of a rating (I think), so that tells you about the quality of the food. Even though the bread is complimentary, I'm still quite disappointed. But I mean, there's always room for improvement.
Ambiance: 8/10
It has a very slick modern-chic feel to the restaurant with lots of windows and a high ceiling. A very enjoyable place to eat. The only complain is that we were seated right in front of the kitchen and since it's not enclosed, our clothes and hair smelled like food by the end of the dinner. Also, the restaurant is VERY loud. On top of the rowdiness of people, they try to use hardcore rock music to drown the noise (unfitting for the atmosphere and crowd that dines there). This is probably the only major criticism I have for the restaurant.
Service: 8.5/10
I always love a friendly waiter, but ours was the cool, badass type. We can never find him when we need him and he's always there asking if we need anything else (a polite way of trying to get us to pay when we didn't even finish our food). But the service IS up to par in the mechanical sense and the food came in reasonable time.
Price: 10/10
Typically, I would expect restaurants like this to be in the $30-$40 range, but their entrées are surprisingly cheap for the quality and the ambiance! Pastas ~$15 (mine's $16), and meat entrées are all $20! This dinner with 1 appetizer, 2 entrées, 3 desserts cost ~$35 per person! I mean, where can you find this in Toronto?!
Final Verdict: 9.5/10
Dear owner of Bottega Louie, PLEASE come to Toronto! I'll eat here at least 3 nights a week! But please cut back on the rock music. Thanks.
Address (for those lucky ones in LA atm):
700 South Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90017, United States
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