Tag: Los Angeles

To Live and Dine in L.A.

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I’m still in a bit of shock from my long weekend in Los Angeles last month. Shock from the mediocre meals I had. Shock from spending hours navigating the filth and rubble of downtown L.A., and shock from how I was sold a bill of goods describing how a “downtown Renaissance” was going on there. Something is going on all right — every block seems beset by either new construction or a condo conversion — but the progress has been glacial since last we visited a few years ago, and don’t hold your breath if you expect it to look like mid-town Manhattan (or even downtown Seattle) anytime soon.

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L.A. Pastrami Smackdown – NATE ‘N AL v. LANGER’S

ELV was feeling hungry the other day on a visit to L.A., so instead of his usual morning repast, he decided to hit Los Angeles’s two most famous delicatessens (in the same day) to see how each of their pastrami sandwiches stacks up against our offshoot of the Carnegie Deli.

It was no contest.

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Road Trip – DRAGO CENTRO

PART THREE – KICKIN’ IT NEW/OLD SCHOOL

The thing that struck us about Drago Centro — Celestino Drago’s new, northern Italian eatery smack in the middle of downtown Los Angeles — besides the other-worldly pastas, the spot-on food and wine pairings of sommelier Michael Shearin, the packed house, cool design, and the smart move of having Matteo Ferdinandi (formerly of Spago Las Vegas) as Owner/Manager — was how inexpensive it was.

Appetizers ran $12-$20, pastas about the same, i.e., less than $20 a serving, mains were almost all well under $30, and the porter house for two (a steak that Las Vegans get routinely gouged for in excess of a hundred buckeroonies) was $75. And did we mention the place is on the ground floor of a fancy office building in downtown L.A.?

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