Bäco Mercat, the new downtown Los Angeles restaurant from Chef Josef Centeno (of Lazy Ox Canteen fame) centered around his flatbread sandwich/pizza/taco creation, is a restaurant years in the making. Centeno first introduced the hybrid bäco as a staff meal at Meson G in Hollywood, where he was executive chef, and later put it on the lunch menu at Lot 1 in Echo Park. It occasionally shows up at Lazy Ox, too. Now the bäco has a home of its own, and it’s settling in nicely.

A good place to start on this menu is with The Original bäco made with pork, beef carnitas and salbitxada, a zesty tomato sauce made with almonds, serrano chile and garlic. The cocas, or pizzas made with thinner bäco flatbread, are also a good bet, and The Tomato & Cheese with smoked tomato, jalapeno and basil is a nice one.

The Original baco

The Tomato & Cheese coca

Don’t over look the small plates, though. The Caesar Brussels Sprouts, which are shaved and tossed with pecorino, anchovy and garlic, and the Crispy Head-On Shrimp with cubeb pepper and side of pickled cauliflower are delicious and addictive. The braised beef raviolo topped with pesto and egg is a revelation; unfortunately, it’s not always on the dinner menu. I hear the bazole is also good, but I didn’t try it on this recent visit.

Caesar Brussels Sprouts

Crispy Head-On Shrimp

Braised beef raviolo

As for dessert, make sure to try the Almond Cheesecake Pudding served with lemon curd and chocolate crumb. Skip the Banana Cream Cannoli, which just isn’t that tasty.

Almond Cheesecake Pudding

The drinks here are interesting, but I’m not entirely sold on them yet. You pick a spirit and a house-made sweet and sour soda from a list of seasonal flavors. I had a bourbon with a persimmon soda, which was fine but not extraordinary. There is also a rotating list of drink specials, too.

Drinks, bourbon and persimmon soda in back

Another thing to note: One of my dining companions commented that Centeno favors pickled onions, and lo and behold, most of our dishes contained pickled onions. Not that they’re bad, but what’s the deal?

Selvatica Pesto Pizza at Urbano Pizza Bar

What goes nicely with beer and other libations? Pizza, of course!

Urbano Pizza Bar, conveniently located next to Library Bar at 6th and Hope streets, offers a great food option. With pizza crust that’s perfectly chewy and crisp at the same time, as well as good side dishes and respectable beer and wine lists, Urbano is a new go-to for downtown revelers.

Chef Brad Winnaman, best known for his baking skills with stints at La Brea Bakery and Campanile, has created a menu focused on Neapolitan-style pizza and some stand-out bread, which obviously includes the crust and extends to grilled bread topped with crushed tomato sauce and/or hearty meatballs. Winnaman has had help from Top Chef alum and The Gorbals chef Ilan Hall, who was on-hand the night we visited.

Urbano Pizza Bar

Ilan Hall

Our favorite pizzas included the seasonal Scimmietta made with pureed pumpkin spread across the crust topped with applewood-smoked bacon, scallions and goat cheese, as well as the Selvatica (shown above) made with basil pesto, slow-roasted tomatoes, pine nuts, fresh basil leaves and burrata. While the Selvatica was more traditional in flavor, the Scimmietta was a nice departure from the norm.

We were also impressed with the side dishes, especially the Mozzarella Trio and charred corn with balsamic butter. The Mozzarella Trio includes burrata with roasted tomato and basil pesto, smoked mozzarella with grilled radicchio and crushed tomato, and mozzarella with cherry tomato and basil oil. All were complementary combinations. And the charred corn took on a whole new dimension of flavor with the balsamic butter, which melted all over the corn and created a savory, creamy, smoky concoction.

Mozzarella Trio

Charred Corn with Balsamic Butter

Hall plans to continue helping out with the menu for a while longer, but rest assured Winnaman’s delicious bread will be a staple at Urbano. Paired with a glass of California central coast wine or a pint of locally brewed beer, such as the Craftsman 1903 Pale Lager, you’ll have a tasty meal.

Note: This was originally posted on LAist. This meal was hosted.

Mohawk Bend, Echo Park’s new restaurant in a converted movie theater with an impressive 72 beer taps, is a great place for a drink and light meal. Appetizers and salads, as well as a nicely curated beer list, are the stars here, and the atmosphere is lively if a bit crowded. But where Mohawk Bend excels, it overreaches in other areas, especially when it comes to burgers and pizza.

Dining room at Mohawk Bend

...and behind the curtains, the back room

The slightly puffy flatbread and an accompanying dip of mashed avocado and goat cheese was my favorite appetizer on a recent night. The bread was a little chewy, which I liked, and the avocado dip was smooth and creamy. The house ricotta with peperonata and the spicy white beans are also good dipping choices. You can get flatbread with one dip for $6 and with three dips for $12.

Flatbread with avocado and goat cheese spread

Mohawk’s salads are the best here. The Keenwah made with organic quinoa, shallots, herbs, arugula, haricots verts, avocado and pistachios is flavorful and satisfying with different textures, and The Local made with mixed leaves, roasted radishes and haricots verts, Capay Valley cherry tomatoes, toasted pepitas and a lemon maple vinaigrette is another palate pleaser. The Flash Gordon, with flash-grilled Little Gem lettuce, grapefruit, avocado, dill dressing, pine nuts and ume pickled onions, is another tasty concoction.

Keenwah salad

The Flash Gordon salad

Though the salads were great, the burgers were not. The Dork burger, made with ground duck and pork topped with aioli, house ketchup, fennel, pickled onions and apple served on a house-made English muffin, was much too heavy and overwhelming, especially when served on Mohawk’s super-dense English muffin. Same goes for the Pimp burger, made with chopped pork and shrimp, ginger aioli, spicy cress and mustard greens, water chestnut relish, and peanut hoisin. Just too much going on.

The Squash & Chips, a fish and chips vegan substitute made of seltzer-battered kabocha squash, potato slices, carrots and peppers served with yuzu ponzu, is basically a big plate of vegetable tempura. That’s fine, but it was billed by the server as vegan fish and chips, so I found it a bit disappointing. And as far as pizza goes, my table ordered the Pig Newton, with Serrano ham, goat cheese, fig and rosemary tapenade, which almost immediately fell apart as the ham peeled away from the crust and fell onto my plate with a loud smack. Sigh.

I was also disappointed in the cocktail menu. The Mildred Pierce (TRU Organic Gin, FruitLab Jasmine Liqueur, agave nectar, brandied cherries, orange, lemon, Miracle Mile Orange Bitters, soda) tasted fine, but the liquor was hidden by a large amount of citrus. The New Old-Fashioned (Fog’s End Monterrey Rye, muddled orange and brandied cherry, sugar cube, Miracle Mile Forbidden Bitters) was better — not shortage of liquor here — but I feel like I’ve had this drink many times before. The Absinthe Spritzer (La Sorcière Absinthe Bleue, lemon, lime, agave nectar, soda and a licorice stick) was actually not a bad drink, but the inclusion of the black licorice stick was off-putting, mostly because it was clearly the Red Vines kind (if you’re going to charge $14, at least give me a higher-quality licorice!).

Absinthe Spritzer

However, the beer list, which rotates daily, is quite impressive. Choose brews from Pliny the Elder, Racer 5, Solidarity, Grand Cru and many other respectable breweries.

Another thing to note: all the desserts at Mohawk are vegan. I understand that there are many a vegan in the Echo Park area, but Mohawk isn’t purely a vegan restaurant, so why should all its desserts lack dairy products? The cookie cooked and served in an iron skillet, as well as the strawberry-rhubarb crostata served the same way, were both misses for me. I missed the butter too much to enjoy these. Same goes for the s’mores — gelatin-free marshmallows, butter-free graham crackers and dairy-free chocolate sauce. On this particular night, the restaurant’s freezer was on the fritz, so the Pazzo gelato that Mohawk normally carries wasn’t available. Too bad, because I could have at least enjoyed that.

There is a lot to like at Mohawk but also a lot to avoid. I hope it figures out the burger situation — there isn’t even a regular burger on the menu — and adds a non-vegan dessert to its menu because this could be a great spot for the neighborhood.

Further reading:

It’s All About the Beer: Bellying Up to the Bar at Mohawk Bend by LAist

Note: This meal was hosted.

The Lone Cypress in Carmel

The second part of our drive up the California coast started with a stop in Cambria. After a beautiful drive on Highway 46 from Paso Robles, we came upon the cutest little town and gorgeous views of the Pacific Ocean in Cambria. We found a kind-of-crappy-but-good-enough-for-one-night motel called Mariners Inn for about $80 — a price that couldn’t be beat considering the place practically sat right on the water. Listening to the waves crash at night was delightful.

Me on the beach in Cambria

We had dinner at the Sea Chest, a lovely little seafood restaurant with a great view of the sunset. This place wasn’t cheap, and it takes cash or check (yes, check) only. But it came highly recommended by Chef Brock Kleweno of Yamashiro Restaurant, so we had to try it. Rory had the cioppino, and as he was feeling adventurous, he tried all the shellfish in it, a first for him. I’m happy to report that he is now over his fear of shellfish. I had the scallops and shrimp scampi combo over linguine. Both dishes were delicious, but the portions were generous, so if you’re traveling, you may want to split just one dish.

Cioppino at the Sea Chest

Scallop and shrimp combo at the Sea Chest

Sunset over the Pacific in Cambria

The next day, we went up the road to Hearst Castle in San Simeon. I forgot my camera on this tour, so I don’t have any photos of the ornate home media mogul William Randolph Hearst built in the first half of the 20th century. But I do have photos of the elephant seals that live about three miles up PCH.

San Simeon elephants seals

From there, we made our way to Big Sur. But because PCH was closed a few miles up due to a mudslide, we circumvented the closure by going through Los Padres National Forest. It took a long time and had lots of hairpin turns, but once we emerged on the ocean side of the forest, we were rewarded with some some amazing, dramatic views.

View after emerging from Los Padres National Forest

We had dinner at Big Sur Bakery, which has a full restaurant in addition to baked goods. We started off with the soup of the day, which was a vegan broccoli soup. It had a nice texture despite not containing any dairy, and was nicely flavorful.

Broccoli soup at Big Sur Bakery

The pepperoni pizza was really interesting because it was topped with scallions. I’ve never had that combination before, and I liked it a lot. I may add scallions to my pepperoni pizza from now on!

Pepperoni pizza at Big Sur Bakery

The next day we stopped at Pfeiffer State Park. It was gorgeous — beautiful white-sand dunes, huge rock formations — but it was so windy that I was literally pushed back from seeing it all. Rory made it farther than I did, and we managed to get some cool photos.

Big Sur

On our way up the coast to Carmel-by-the-Sea, we stopped at Point Lobos State Reserve, which offered a bunch of hiking trails and more pretty views. We saw more sea lions here and some really cool trees.

Point Lobos State Reserve

Carmel is a place I used to frequent as a child. My parents and I would drive up every few years or so, so I was already familiar with the area. But it had been close to 15 or 20 years since my last visit, so it was nice to be back.

Rory marveling at the crazy trees

Rory and I had dinner at Merlot! Bistro. We opted for the $14.50 two-course dinner — one of the most-affordable meals we could find in an expensive area — and it was OK. However, the roasted garlic appetizer and the house-made sorbets were standouts.

Roasted garlic at Merlot! Bistro

Sorbet at Merlot! Bistro

We stayed at the Carmel Wayfarer Inn. This was a great find at $119 for the night, a steal in Carmel. It was a huge room with a full kitchen, king-size and day bed, and fireplace. We liked it so much we wanted to stay another night, but we had to get to Santa Cruz for the screening of Rory’s short film, “Mountain Man.”

Carmel Wayfarer Inn

Before we left Carmel, we took its famous 17-Mile Drive. After the grandeur of Big Sur, this was pretty anticlimactic. But the Lone Cypress (top) was pretty cool, the mansions along the route were awesome, and these rocks were fun to see.

Along 17-Mile Drive

Last stop: Santa Cruz. Rory was drawn to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk because it reminded him of Coney Island. We rode the sky buckets, even though I was afraid we would lose our flip flops on it. Ha.

Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk

Mmm, chocolate-dipped soft serve

Before we headed to the theater for the screening, we stopped at Cafe Campesino, an absolutely delicious Mexican-food stand that specializes in HUGE custom tacos. One is enough to fill you up in one sitting. I had mine with chicken, spicy guacamole, nopales and queso fresco. The best part? They make their own tortillas.

Taco from Cafe Campesino

We stayed at the Continental Inn. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but our room was really pretty nice — it even had hardwood floors — and the continental breakfast included make-your-own waffles. Not too shabby for a motel.

I loved this trip up the coast (read about the first part of this trip). I didn’t know much about the central coast, and I’m so glad that we did this trip because I learned and experienced so much. We just kind of got in the car and started driving with just a general idea of where to stop and spend our nights, and I think this made the trip more fun. I used the Kayak mobile app to search for hotels in our price range as we made our way, and it came in very handy.

Oliverio's Budino di Polenta

Oliverio, the delightfully sleek yet comfortable restaurant at the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills, is celebrating its first anniversary by offering a special prix fixe menu through Nov. 20:

That’s four courses AND a glass of wine for $40 per person. This is an amazing deal, especially when you consider that the chicken dish normally goes for $24 on its own. The tuna tartare on a crispy risotto cake, the truffle pizzetta and the budino are some of my favorites. Check out my previous post on Oliverio’s happy hour menu for more dining recommendations.

Fig pizza

In honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Osteria La Buca is donating a portion of its proceeds earned through the end of October to the Susan G. Komen Foundation to support breast cancer research. Because many of the restaurant’s friends and family have been affected by this disease, they decided to team up with Komen and painted the exterior of the eatery pink to draw even more attention to the cause.

So you have one more week to eat here for a good cause, or go anyway because the food is good! Some of the dishes I enjoyed at a recent media dinner were a pizza with multi-colored cherry tomatoes, figs, a leafy green (kale, I think) and mozzarella cheese; asparagus spears topped with parmesan and a fried egg; osso buco risotto; and tiramisu.

Tiramisu

Asparagus spears with parmesan and egg

Note: This meal was hosted.

I discovered this new restaurant on Beverly Boulevard a couple of months ago and kept finding myself coming back, if only for the cute waiters and sophisticated owners. Eventually, I invited my friend Maya to have dinner with me there so she could write about it on her blog. But then, because I am a) an over ambitious control freak, and b) an overambitious control freak, I suggested that I write it myself as a guest blogger. So, with much ado, here is the review of one of my new favorite dining destinations in Los Angeles.

To start things off, let me tell the regular ShopEatSleep readers a little about me. Unlike this blog’s author, I am not a fan of Los Angeles. I’m from San Francisco, which makes me bougie enough to say things like, “No thanks, I only smoke in Paris…,” and, “I make it a point to go Europe once a year, and I always stop in New York on the way.” My smug preference for cities with smug dining options makes L.A. a frustrating sea of places that require an hour of research to find and 40 minutes of promising your friends on the Westside that you will give the two hours of their life back to them if they could please just meet you east of the 405.

Then…Della Terra fell into my lap. It fills the void for a spot between a welcoming sidewalk café and a fancy place where you want to match your clutch with your heels. And since I know Maya is always watching the price points for her in-this-economy readers, I should mention that it’s a classy place you can go to without breaking the bank. With the exception of the steak au poivre, which clocks in at an impressive $27, everything else on the menu safely sits between $10 and $20. And most of it is consistently good.

Tuna tartare

Our first appetizer was the tuna tartare. All I can say is that the next day when I came back to take pics of the décor, a couple sitting at the bar having just finished this app said to the bartender, “I tell everybody you have the best tuna in L.A.” (Sushi Park fans, don’t fret. I’m pretty sure she was just talking about tartares.) The tuna was fresh, light, and buttery (the small pieces of avocado didn’t hurt). I liked the greens on top and the shaved fennel. All this made it very flavorful without making me think I had to skip dessert later.

Then our friend Rosy arrived (she came from the beach at 6:00 p.m., bless her heart) and we ordered the beet salad. Everyone agreed it was a great effort on presentation. The yellow beets made it really colorful, and Maya caught on to my favorite thing about this salad: “It’s not overdressed.” Hallelujah! I cannot tell you how many times I get a fresh, vibrant salad and then hate life because I forgot to ask for dressing on the side.

Melanzana pizza

Next came the main course. We ordered the Melanzana pizza, which was very tasty. I’ve had a couple of the pizzas here, and I would say they’re all pretty much a safe bet. The wood-fired brick oven is really the key. The Melanzana came with eggplant, broccolini, garlic and pesto. I’ve heard it’s also good with chicken added. I also like the Fresca, which comes with yummy gobs of burrata cheese. Per the waiter’s recommendation, I add prosciutto to that one when I get it.

Bread pudding

The end of our meal was capped off with a bread pudding that is to die for. I’ve heard that this place actually does have other desserts, but I’m the wrong person to ask because I can never seem to look around my bread pudding tunnel vision. The pudding itself is served warm, but then there is cool and creamy dolce de leche ice cream melting down the sides. If I had my way, I’d probably have less cream and caramel because I don’t like things too fatty and sweet. Okay, I’m lying. I love this just the way it is! This is a pretty evil dessert.

Veggies

This is the right time, I think, to also say what I don’t like about the food. As a former vegetarian and a current dressing-on-the-side girl (see above) I don’t like vegetables that are too oily. Della Terra has a nice veggie side dish that I have gotten on other occasions, and I have to admit it’s flavorful but it’s not the light dish that I want it to be. Less oil. Fewer starchy carbs. More greens. Please take the hint, DT. Another dish to pass on? The tomato leek soup. Sometimes it’s drop dead amazing. Sometimes it tastes like water with a little corn starch and red food coloring added. Too inconsistent. Stick with the wonderful salads here.

A lot of the talk of the night was about the wine. We had our server, Lee, recommend some wine, but the little secret I shamelessly spread around is that the guy behind the bar, Renato, actually has the best record for recommending wines that both go with what we’re eating and take into account the wines that came before. That night he topped off Rosy with a glass that she just loved. She said it tasted like chocolate cake and passed it around. She was most certainly right. So much so that a debate began on whether the wine had flavors added to it to make it taste like chocolate. When Renato came back we told him that we loved it and he said it’s his new favorite, Layer Cake Primitivo.

A little Googling when I got home later taught me that Layer Cake wine is 100 percent pure, with all of its rich, fruity and chocolatey flavors coming from the earth itself. Also, they make different varietals! Della Terra had the Primitivo, which is (I’m quoting the Layer Cake site here) “according to DNA analysis genetically identical to Zinfandel.” Layer Cake also makes a Malbec, which I believe is genetically identical to awesome.

Della Terra's staff: (left to right) Renato, Lee, Michael, Gerard and Courtney

Two things I always consider when choosing where to go are the people at restaurants and their décor. My birthday restaurant was picked on the chairs alone! How does DT stack up on the people and place scale? Well, the restaurant is run by two very handsome and welcoming owners, Michael and Franco, who like to actually get to know their customers’ names, and staff of equal hospitality. And this group knows its culture: Between the owners and wait staff, they speak six languages fluently. Bravo!

And the ambiance? The space is a stylish break from the blinding SoCal sun: Dark awnings, beautiful ironwork on the doors, and brick walls with romantic skylights. When I’m sitting outside on their patio, I think that the only thing missing is the view of a sparkling river and cobblestone sidewalks. Nestled in reality on Beverly Boulevard and Spaulding Avenue, you should skip The Farm or Morel’s on your next trip to The Grove and make DT your five-minute walk destination restaurant. It’s an L.A. favorite, if only because it’s a bit of an L.A. escape.

The L.A. mini chain Pitfire Pizza is about to get just a bit bigger with a new location in Culver City, and even though it’s not officially open for business yet (official word has it opening in about a week), the food is already pretty solid. I guess that’s easier to do when you’ve had some practice at your North Hollywood, downtown and West Los Angeles locations. But the Culver City location has a new kind of pizza oven, so there!

Really, the pizza, especially the crust, is very good. I normally don’t eat pizza crusts, but the crust on these pizzas was so good that I had to force myself to not eat them lest I was not able to control myself. It’s perfectly light and chewy, with just the right amount of bite. As for toppings, stick with the pizzas that come with tomato sauce. The burrata, magherita and pepperoni pies are good. I wasn’t as impressed with the field mushroom pizza, made with fontina cheese and creme fraiche, because it didn’t have as much flavor without the tomato sauce, which is also spicy.

Burrata pie, topped with arugula

Magherita pizza

Field mushroom pizza

But Pitfire isn’t all about pizza. Before this visit, I had been to the downtown location a couple of times and had pasta both times. While we didn’t sample pasta this time (the pasta is good, by the way), we did have some starters. I loved the roasted vegetables, especially the brussels sprouts and the cauliflower, which was dusted in breadcrumbs. I could easily eat a plate of these vegetables as my whole meal. The chicken salad, with roasted chicken, arugula, butter lettuce, croutons, scallions, toasted pine nuts and pickled currants.

Roasted vegetables

Chicken salad

The cucumber mint lemonade was a standout, and the jumbo chocolate chip cookie is one of the best I’ve ever had. The chocolate is layered, so you get the maximum amount of chocolate in every bite. It reminds me of the cookies at Grey Dog’s Coffee in New York.

Cucumber mint lemonade

Chocolate chip cookie

A note about the new location: Though it’s technically in Culver City, it’s not in the downtown Culver City area. It’s west of the 405 freeway. Be prepared.

Eggs Benedict

Last week, Pasadena’s La Grande Orange Cafe, which is opening a new location next week in Santa Monica, invited a bunch of food writers/bloggers to “brinner,” or breakfast for dinner. The special menu (you can’t actually order breakfast food for dinner right now, though some dishes may be added to the dinner menu in the near future) included eggs Benedict with the cafe’s signature English muffins, lemon-ricotta pancakes and huevos rancheros.

I had the egg-white omelet with turkey, tomatoes and avocado, which I found nice and light, though there was a bit too much parsley. The eggs Benedict I tasted had great flavor, with the sourness of the sourdough English muffins a great touch. My favorite dessert of the myriad the restaurant gave us to sample was the cucumber sorbet – it was refreshing.

The cafe is adding a pizza parlor in a space adjacent to its patio. As of last week, the space was used as storage for some of Santa Monica’s furniture, but the restaurant says the pizza will be ready to go some time this fall. Pizza will be served from the get-go at the Santa Monica location, and they’ll also be selling packaged English muffins there, too.

Deviled eggs, with basil!

Cinnamon roll. They serve these in place of biscuits.

Malted buttermilk waffles

Key lime pie

Pizza space

English muffin. They gave these to us to take home. No, they do not come presliced.

More photos on Flickr (on right).

[UPDATE: LGO's Pasadena location doesn't actually serve breakfast; it's brunch. The restaurant opens at 10:30 a.m. on weekends and 11:00 a.m. on weekdays. The new Santa Monica location will open at 6:30 a.m. every day for breakfast.]

[UPDATE #2: I neglected to mention the names of the other bloggers at the brinner - e*starla, LAist's Lindsay William-Ross, Caroline on Crack and EaterLA's Yolanda Evans.]