la.foodblogging

Grace
7360 Beverly Blvd., 90036
(323) 934-4400

Grace had a lot of promise. Chef Neal Fraser was a homegrown talent, having worked with the likes of Thomas Keller, Joachim Splichal, and Wolfgang Puck/Lee Hefter. A couple months ago I became very excited upon reading that they offered a “close to home” tasting menu, a series of dishes in which 90% of the ingredients come from within a 400-mile radius of the restaurant. “This guy’s doing something different,” I thought to myself, “he’s proving that an all-local menu is indeed possible, even here in LA.”

Maybe you’ve read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, too. It has profoundly changed my eating habits in the year since I’ve read it, both in and out of the house, which, I suppose may have been one of its goals. Seeing an all-local menu nearby felt like a strong validation that what I was doing was, indeed, The Right Thing.

So I ate there last Tuesday. The food, in general, was fine. It was seasonal and comforting. I would probably pay 3/4-to-full price to eat there again, but I won’t go into it too many details.

It was really the ideas behind menu that struck a foul chord. Apparently they’ve stopped offering the “close to home” menu, even though they said that they still had it when I made the reservation a week ago. “No matter,” I thought to myself, “I trust that he’s got the right idea.” So, I decided to have the nightly chef’s choice menu for a cool $100. I wanted to know what Fraser was about, and I wanted to see his perspective; even if he didn’t offer the local menu anymore, perhaps he still weaved those ideas back into the menu in one form or another.

I’ll just let it speak for itself (though I may be missing some minor components in each dish, and I’m adding them in as I remember them):

Trio of fish
Hawaiian Big Eye tuna, bluefin tuna, and calamari (ceviche style)

Seared Foie Gras
with pumpkin puree, bacon-wrapped fig, and caramelized apple

Lamb terrine
with chanterelles on white beans

Sausage of Scottish Hare
with oozy polenta

Pan-friend Chilean Turbot
with Gruyere fondant, white asparagus, and Siberian black truffles

Wild Boar
with blood sausage and sheep’s milk cheese on orzo

Strawberry sorbet

Trio of donuts
with vanilla and cinnamon ice creams

So let’s go over the biggies: Hawaiian and bluefin tuna? Scottish hare? Chilean turbot? Siberian truffles? These choices hardly reflect the philosophy of a restaurant that only several months ago was serving up Santa Barbara prawns. They instead seem to have taken a big fat U-turn in that regard, or at least in terms of their emphasis.

I would understand if it were the season that forced them to change the menu. Unfortunately, my waiter seemed relatively unapologetic about the fact that they no longer offered a local tasting menu, and he was unable to give me any reasons for that decision.

He did say, however, that they bottled their own water.

sneakypeteiii is a doctoral student in Chemistry at Caltech. He has been eating since he was a child, and reckons himself quite good at it. (see more of his posts).