la.foodblogging

I’ve been simmering about this one for a while, so excuse me if my memory doesn’t deliver the detail a writeup so richly deserves.

LA is a city where you can get great food, despite its reputation of having an aloof, narcissistic consuming public that grinds through a restaurant because it is the ‘place to be,’ then flits over to the next hot joint to leave the previous one in smoldering ruins.

Yet, there are those places that people flock to, swoon over, accredit the highest praise to…only to find in reality it is a cut rate dining experience people put up with, just to be part of a hip vibe. That is how I unfortunately feel about the Hungry Cat. In my estimation, its popularity can only be attributed to the notion that it is the hip seafood eatery for the time being.

I am also perfectly cognizant that I am accumulating a reputation of being a hatchet man.

Owners David Lentz and Suzanne Goin are attached to some of the powerhouse restaurants in LA: AOC, Luques, Campanille and Opaline. They know what they’re doing. Like a review I did recently on Surfas Cafe, I was really pulling for this place. It had two key phrases attached to it: East Coast and Seafood. Doesn’t get much better than that. Hollywood is breathing a sigh of relief that we now have one to call our own. The only problem is that many LA residents have not learned to cleave the difference between “buzz” and “hype.”

Wedged in an uncomfortable space between Borders and smokers in the struggling Sunset + Vine residential and retail complex, it possesses all the warm, cozy invitation of an iron maiden. I like minimalist looks, but The Hungry Cat feels cold and distant, like my mother. Damn you mother! Black and white color scheme, exposed HVAC, cement floors make it resemble an internet company more than a restaurant. I wondered where they hid the foosball table.

So, why am I so furiously dinging a place that is currently the hot topic of the LA food press? It begins with the hostesses attitude. LA has the undeserved reputation of snotty waitrons, which I have rarely encountered. Lo and behold, this was a scene straight out of Beverly Hills Cop.

She sized us up as we approached.
“Table for two, please.”
Hesitation. Looking. Looking. Scouring the reservation book.
“Um, and do you have a reservation with us tonight?”
I look past her at the half empty space that they’ve front loaded to make it look more crowded.
“No.” You know, I usually announce my reservation when I walk up, “Hi, I have a reservation at six for two. The name is Steve.”
Sigh. Checking. Checking. “Ok, follow me.” she sounds resigned, almost like “You won’t help our image, we have a table next to the bathroom.”

As I said, the space is bleak. It is made more bleak by the neo-black chic slicked back hair crowd that camoflauge themselves in the monochromatic scheme of the restaurant. White people dressed in black, fronting like Yves St. Laurent. We sat down, the unpadded seats clearly removed from San Quentin and spray painted black. My wife, as she always does, took the booth. The unpadded, black booth. She immediately bruised her coccyx.

We were presented our “menu” which they could have saved money by just printing it on a business card. It was limited and exhorbitant. $20 for a half pound of king crab legs. $42 for the fruits de mer platter. I never have a problem with price when the excellence of the food radiates from the plate. The people next to us ordered the platter, and it looked pretty good. I wasn’t down for a $42 app, though, so I cruised through the remaining strip mall of items.

Hmm Hmm Hmm. Chorizo and braised clams, Pacific swordfish, and the heretical “Pride of Baltimore Crab Cake.” Understand, I am writing this from the perspective of having eaten there a little while ago, so these thoughts weren’t yet going through my mind. We did casually look around and noticed the ‘hipness’ of everyone. This is usually a red flag for us, but not always. Bandera on Wilshire and Barrington is such a place that caters to hipsters but also has good food. These two elements are often mutually exclusive.

I chose the chorizo and clams with an app of two little necks; my wife, the crab cake. I don’t even bother with crab cakes out here anymore. The staff was attentive, but we didn’t really order a high maintenance meal, so it was quick and pleasant. The food also didn’t take long to arrive.

It’s not so much that the food is bad, it’s just there. The littlenecks were briny and sufficiently chewy. Not bad for 120% markup.

My wife complained first. “$16 for this microscopic crabcake? It’s like a crab coin!”

Yes, the food was small, desperately small. This must have been what it was like to live in L.A. during the nuveau 80s. Mine had a fair amount of broth, but there were only a couple of clams listlessly floating around, and the chorizo was underflavored. So, that would have been the end of this tirade if my wife hadn’t given up on the crabcoin and given me the last couple of morsels.

It was watery, undercooked and tasteless. Now you’ve pissed me off. I know, I know. Me eating a west coast crabcake is an instant setup. A short fuse lit with a blowtorch. But to call it the “Pride of Baltimore” made me want to throw it at the cook. It was terrible. How can you take something as pristine and wonderful as a fresh crabmeat and strip all the flavor and Karma out of it? I was flummoxed, speechless.

It was that bad, I lost the capacity to speak, and that rarely happens.

Seriously, I have built a reputation of theatrically putting down West Coast crab cakes, and it is mostly schtick. There are some good dungeness crabcakes out there. I don’t demand everything tastes like backfin lump blue crab east coast crabcake, really. But this thing fell apart on me, and it was leaking a watery brine from the bottom. It was cold and the center was still gooey, which usually indicates uncooked egg. These are seasoned restauranteurs! Product like this should never leave the kitchen, and in a place that toutes fresh seafood, it is unconscionable.

But, I save my complaining for the written word. We paid our tab, tipped well, and left.

We even gave it a shot a month ago. We said, hey, maybe it was growing pains, lets try the Sunday brunch. Ok, fair enough.

I’ll make this short. The menu was so unappealing (Yoda’s home fries, house made granola) we were sat and promptly got up and gave our table to another sucker.

So, what’s the problem? Well, I had yet to read any negative reviews about this place. It was amazing. I really started to doubt myself. Until I read reader feedback on websites like citysearch. Right! They may be the darlings of the LA Food press, but the person on the street felt the same way we did. Not all of them, but comments arrayed from ‘purrrrrrrrrrrrrrfect’ to ’scratch this cat off your list’.

I don’t want people to hate this place, on the contrary. I hope true negative experiences are shared with others in the hopes it eventually gets back to the owners. LA is a fickle town, and more than a fair share of decent restaurants undeservedly crash and burn. It is a shame to see what happens when owner/chefs who have a dominant name, start resting on their laurels because the insular nature of their staff prevents true, unvarnished opinion to pass into their ears.

By Zteve (see more of his posts). You can find more of Zteve's writing at his own website Gastrologica