California

dineLA Recap: Ford’s Filling Station

Ford’s Filling Station
9531 Culver Blvd., 90232
(310) 202-1470
$34 + tax, tip

Bottom line: Yum.

This is the food I love to eat. These are fresh, well-seasoned, unpretentious, and simple dishes borne of a deep hunger within, not of some intellectual curiosity or misinformed science project — I walked out of Ford’s Filling Station last night at 11 pm holding my stomach, half asleep, a blissfully contented cow in a curiously contented meadow.

The six of us, unaccustomed to the Iberian dining hour of 9 pm, were pretty spent and famished by the time we arrived after a long day at the lab. They were a little behind, they said, so we didn’t get seated until about 9:20, when we were placed smack-dab in the middle of the main room with a decent view of the hot plate and (glimpses) of Ben Ford. He looks a lot like his dad.

The jamon serrano flatbread (red bell peppers, cremini, mozzarella, parsley?) first course was, as I remember saying, “better than it should have been.” By that I mean it was obscenely good, because, you know, I’m a sucker for cured ham. It had that savory unctiousness, smokiness, and herbiness that tastes of a good hearth, or rather the warmth from a good hearth around which we huddle during the heart of winter. So what if it’s only in the low 60s outside — dare I say that this was home run?

Four of us ordered the roasted lamb loin as a second course (with green beans, quinoa-wheaty goodness, and caramelized leeks). I’d say that this was “just” a solid dish, losing out in the end only because of its temperature and relative fattiness. Given the sheer number of covers they probably had last night it’s a wonder they even got them out of the kitchen as fast as they did. It was a hair overdone for my taste (i.e. not bloody enough), but sufficiently lamby to satisfy my whetted palate from the earlier dish, an aptly-titled “appetizer.”

After polishing off some of my compatriot’s plates as well, I was pretty full at this point (did I mention that the portions are massively generous?). But it was time for dessert! They had run out of crème brulée, so we had a mixture of apple crumble and Toblerone ice cream orders that, it seemed, none of us could finish. You could tell that we all wanted to add to the already-brewing orgy of good flavors in our bellies but were simply unable to do it due to space limitations.

I guess that’ll have to wait for next time.

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).

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