Animal - A Miracle

Animal

435 N Fairfax at Rosewood

Los Angeles, California

In March and April I was living in Park Slope, Brooklyn, one block from New York City’s superior park and a stone’s throw from all these restaurants that Food & Wine and Ruth Reichel and her minions at Gourmet are busy scribbling furiously about, when I experienced a series of disasters both major and minor (break-ups, job-loss, realization that my skin had changed from sun-kissed bronze to snowy white to see-through) packed my bags, declared the whole city hopeless and depraved, and ran home to momma in the San Fernando Valley. For those of you who have been following my escapades on the Internet from the beginning (which means none of you) you’ll know that I have a thing or two to say about my infamous hometown– the smog, the strip malls, the 1,000 Applebes, locations, the truly impressive ability of its inhabitants to get somehow tackier year by year, even in the face you believing they just couldn’t possibly wear their white and rhinestoned Ed Hardy track pants any tighter. Anyway, I used to think that an abundance of porn starlettes was the only thing our side of the hill had going for it*, until I discovered that the San Fernando Valley, with it’s c-list movie stars and discount Botox, was just a 30 minute drive from foie gras, biscuits and maple sausage gravy at Animal.

Add Animal to the very tip-top of the list of restaurants that would make any New Yorker or San Franciscan shut their mouths about Los Angeles not being a serious food city. I went this Tuesday with a friend I met at a Silverlake Wine event at the Barnsdall Art Park*. I showed up panting and a little sweaty in my black and floral mini dress after having pushed my mother’s stalled Mini Cooper up Santa Monica Blvd only to have it stall again in front of The Grove at peak traffic time and have to push it again, practically all the way to 435 N Fairfax and Rosewood where Animal discreetly resides. By the time I got there, I was half an hour late and they’d had to give our table away, and I, being both the most obsessively punctual person and the most compulsively guilty feeling person I know, felt terrible. But being late just meant we had to sit at the bar, which I prefer and with one look at the menu, I could hardly feel the exhaust pipe burn on my inner thigh. Animal is a true masterpiece and the first sign of that is the menu, where every dish makes your mouthwater and is something you’ve never tried before. As I was busy getting anxious about not being able to taste everything, my friend ordered a big, juicy Holus-Bolus Syrah (chosen because of its pretty, kitschy, octopus label) ($42) from the very nice, quite global, though perhaps kinda pricey wine list which featured almost 30 wine you could drink by the glass, carafe, and bottle.

While I made difficult decisions between things like poutine/oxtail gravy/cheddar, porkbelly/kimchi/peanuts/chili soy/scallions, and quail fry/grits/chard/slab bacon/maple jus, my dining partner quite impressively charmed the folks next to us into forking over three gloriously tender ribs from their Balsamic pork rib rack ($37, serves two decent eaters or 1 really good eater). After agreeing that we shouldn’t feel guilty about not ordering a vegetable, and that the sole/green beens/mustard butter/potatoes dish sounded fine but was obviously put on the menu for sissy, dieting girlfriends or Jewish, kosher fathers, we ordered a chicken liver toast ($3), the foie gras, biscuit, maple sausage gravy ($22), and pork belly sandwiches with slaw ($10). The first two dishes came out in under two minutes and the adventure began. The chicken liver toast was big enough to share so we cut that in half and tried that first. Excellent. I’ve been making a lot of chicken liver pate on my own lately and, after realizing how easy it is to make, have been particularly scathing of my critiques on this dish. Few things are more awful than poorly executed offal dishes. But this was excellent, exactly the right amount of sweetness with balsamic onion jam on top. The pate was pilled high, though, and the dish could have used some Dijon mustard or something else a little acid underneath it to cut the intensity of the liver flavor. Onto the foie…we took small bites at the very same time. Our responses were the same. A very long moment of total silence, closed eyes, swallow, excessive laughing. Nothing I’ve ever eaten made me smile quite like that foie gras. A truly perfect dish – so rich, sweet, tender, just salty enough.

We had a few minutes to shake our heads and figure out how exactly a dish could bring us that much joy before our pork belly sandwiches with slaw came out and we repeated the same exact response as we had with the foie. How can something be so good? You bite into this sandwich and feel a gently toasted, slightly sweet and glimmering bun, a crispy, well seared outer layer of pork belly, then an explosion of juicy, fatty, barbequed flavor leads way for melt-in-your mouth belly paired perfectly with a crunchy, tangy carrot and cabbage slaw beneath it. Another perfect dish! As rich as it was, I could have eaten six of those sandwiches and finished it up with a foie gras with biscuits for dessert! Speaking of, the desserts at Animal sounded great and, fittingly, featured chocolate bacon. But we opted out and headed across the street to the new Golden State, a burger and salad joint featuring only ingredients from our beloved California. Green Flash Saison, a refreshing, herby, summer white ale from San Diego, and two scoops of pistachio/honey/cardamom and strawberry/basil somehow didn’t make me feel ill with fullness after such a fatty meal, and was the perfect sweet and savory ending to a sweet and savory and utterly delicious meal.

For those of you who have ever felt guilty for spending most of your budget on food…go to Animal, order sandwiches and foie gras, and be reminded how lucky we are that our tongues have taste buds, that the earth provides us with thousands of ingredients, and that when someone uses those ingredients just right, eating can be a laugh-out-loud, thank-your-stars, joyful and delicious reminder that the world is good.

*This isn’t exactly true. Other things in the San Fernando Valley that are truly spectacular include: Cupid’s Hot Dogs, QT’s Hot Dogs, Xpress Sandwich Shop (Banh Mi! Banh Mi! Banh Mi!0, plenty of quality Mexican food, Aroma Café on Tujunga...