ShopEatSleep

I’ve heard a lot of hype about Bottega Louie, mostly that it’s fabulous. So when I finally made it over to the restaurant/market/deli/patisserie in downtown L.A. over the weekend, I was expecting a lot. Having those high expectations may have been the wrong way to start the visit, but that’s what happens when there’s a lot of hype!

The good: The restaurant space is gorgeous with its clean, mostly white decor that’s reminiscent of an East Coast eatery and market (kind of like Dean & Deluca). It’s huge, too. As for the food, I went during brunch on a Saturday. Most brunch items cost less than $10, with the most expensive dish being the $22 steak and eggs. I ordered a $7 roasted vegetable and aged fontina frittata, which was really large considering the price. I also had a blueberry mint lemonade ($4, kind of pricey) that had just right balance between sweetness and tartness for me, though my friend thought it was too sweet for her. To each her own, right? Anyway, I also checked out the market, deli and patisserie sections before settling on an apple cinnamon muffin, which was really nice with whole slices of apple baked into it. The nice woman ringing us up at the register even gave us a few macaroons for free (after it was obvious I wasn’t pleased with the $20+ price for a box of macaroons).

Frittata and blueberry mint lemonade

The bad: My frittata, though there was a lot of it, wasn’t as tasty as I had hoped. It was actually kind of bland. There weren’t enough roasted vegetables, and I could only really find mushrooms and red bell peppers in it. The fontina was nice, though. My fellow diner had the ham and gruyere frittata, which I think she liked. But the biggest problem we had with our visit was the table service. I’m not sure if it was our server’s first day or what, but we ordered a latte that took about 45 minutes to arrive at our table. Whenever we looked for our server, we couldn’t find him (though again, the place is huge) so we flagged down another server to check on the status of the latte. After another 5 to 10 minutes, the latte arrives with profuse apologies from someone who isn’t our server. Then our actual server comes and asks if we need anything else, at which point we asked for the pastry menu, which was part of the brunch menu we had seen earlier. Our server looked confused, then proceeded to tell us that there isn’t a pastry menu but that he would check with the patisserie. And then he comes back, ostensibly after speaking with someone in the pastry section, to tell us the same thing again. Just confusion all around.

Macaroons

Apple cinnamon muffin

Even with the slow and confused service, I would come back and give Bottega Louie another shot. No one was rude, and like I mentioned earlier, we had great service at the pastry counter. Though next time I’ll try it for lunch or dinner and avoid the bland eggs.