Alma

Bon Appetit Magazine named Alma the best new restaurant of the year in August.  Makes you wonder how they define year as they obviously don't use the Gregorian calendar.  But of course, once that happened, I had to make a reservation.  I decided that our dating anniversary, known by my husband as our "unniversary", would be the proper occasion for such a celebrated restaurant.

After riding the Metro we walked through some seedy parts of downtown Los Angeles before coming upon the "blink and you missed it" restaurant.  It doesn't look like much from the outside, and its sparsely decorated on the inside.  We were seated in our clear lucite chairs near the wine bar where there is shelving featuring cookbooks from presumably some of the chef's favorite chefs.

The menu is simple and looks like its printed on a small pad of yellow lined paper.  Drinks are limited to water, beer, wine, or seasonal soda.  No iced tea.  Our server expalins that the menu is broken into three sections: tiny, small, and medium and then advises us how many of each we should get.  She also tells us that the dishes will come out as prepared, so it'll be a surprise as to the order.  We decide to order two from each of the three sections.

My husband decided to try the seasonal soda as neither of us had ever had yam soda before.  We're not certain if the soda is made in house, or from a craft soda factory, as it was served already in the glass.  Upon first glance it looked like a mixed Thai iced tea with foam on top.  It was actually quite tasty, but I stuck to my water.

spiced yam soda

First dish served was the Seafood and Tofu Beignet.  Usually when I think of a beignet they are light and airy, but these were dense.  They were surprisingly spicy, but that's because we did not realize that yuzu kosho is a type of Japanese seasoning: a paste made from chili peppers, yuzu peel and salt, which is then allowed to ferment.  I just thought it was some sort of yuzu juice sauce.  All in all it was an interesting dish, but I'm not certain I would ever order it again.  Beneath each beignet was a small drop of citrus aioli, which was so small you barely even knew it was there and yet it was needed to enhance the dish.

seaweed & tofu beignet, yuzu kosho, lime

Next up was the housemade bread which tonight was rye and ale bread.  Being Jewish I have my own expectations of what a rye bread should taste like and this was nothing like it.  This was a hearty loaf that was complemented by the cultured butter, and the rye and ale complimented each other nicely.

housemade bread with cultured butter

Now, as you know, I love crab, so when we saw a crab dish it was automatically ordered.  What I appreciated about this dish was its simplicity.  This dish was about the crab and simple unadulterated taste of crab.  The citrus added the perfect touch of acid and brought out the flavor of crab. While not appealing to look at, the avocado smear was tasty.

dungeness crab, smoked avocado, citrus, fennel

The tartare looked nothing like a traditional beef tartare.  It was a deconstructed tartare made with rib eye and barely cooked egg yolk droplets.  All in all it was very tasty, but it was missing one key element: toast.  Tartare is traditionally served with some sort of food delivery system like toast, but this tartare could only be eaten with a fork which made it difficult to incorporate the egg.

beef tartare, tangerine, maitake, Flower Avenue egg

My main course was the Brussels sprouts.  It was surprisingly more filling than one would suspect.  The mushroom mousse smear tasted like a pate. It was obviously made with red wine and was a tad too salty.

mushroom, brussel sprout, apple, miso

My husband's main course was unsurprisingly the 60 day dry aged rib eye which should have been served with one more slice of beef.  We were never quite certain what the green smear was as it didn't really have much flavor at all.  The server recommended that we order it medium rare, and that was definitely the right call.  While enjoyable, we both felt that the alfalfa sprouts were an odd accompaniment for the steak.

dry-aged rib eye, carrot, wild mushroom, grass

Having never had sunchoke before, we had to have the sunchoke split for dessert which had like six elements to the dish.  The candied sunchokes were just eh.  The applewood ice cream was good. The marshmallow whose specific ingredients I can't recall was yummy, as was the hay ash meringue.  The whipped cream was surprising as it had little to no sugar.  I could have eaten the meringue and the ice cream just as its own dish and been quite happy.

sunchoke split

Alma is falling under two current trends in the culinary world: small plates and dishes that spotlight the food.  Each dish you could truly make out the main dish as it was never overdressed with any other flavors.  That said, I love flavorful food.  I'm glad I got to experience Alma, but to me it was just okay and not worth the walk through the scary neighborhood.