The only martini I’ve ever liked

And some recent restaurant takes

Cool World was in many ways another martini and fries restaurant, a strange home for me to spend 50 hours a week cooking and escaping for most of 2022 and 2023. Fries and aioli are my favorite food, but martinis are the one thing I’ve never been able to enjoy even great versions of. Our bartenders consistently would bring back new riffs on the cocktail for the kitchen to try. I’d sip and say, “Yeah, it’s just not for me, sorry.”

And yet, sitting at the bar at Penny in the East Village recently, I somehow threw back my third martini of the night.

“It’s not really a martini,” our server cautioned at the start of the meal, insisting I indulge. She was right. Penny is likely my restaurant of the year, a flawless seafood bar featuring all the food I’d ever want to eat. But the main thing I’m still thinking about weeks later is this one drink. I messaged the Penny team asking for more details. They told me it’s intentionally low ABV, containing barley shochu, Italian-made dry vermouth, Kijōshu sake, house-made celery vinegar and juniper + citrus aromatics. I’m looking forward to trying to recreate this at home, as well as a number of their head-spinning creations.

I’ve been back in Los Angeles long enough to regain that feeling I had when I lived here two years ago — that longing for the calendar-circling reservation you’re consistently chasing in New York. There’s no better city to cook regularly or dine out casually in than LA, but a particularly special dinner is a little more elusive.

New York breaks your brain a bit this way through sheer difficulty. If you have the funds, it’s actually pretty easy to eat at Kato, Baroo, Republique, Anajak Thai, Bavel or any of the other top-tier, fine-dining institutions in LA that aren’t absurd sushi tasting menus. It doesn’t have to feel like an event. You also can always get a table at Stir Crazy, All Time, or Luv2Eat Thai for a reliably good, accessible meal. There’s little outward difference between those spots and Eel Bar or Raf’s or Thai Diner. But functionally they’re wildly different evenings, heightened by New York’s inherent scarcity and intimacy. There’s more competition to have the Raf’s experience in New York than the All Time experience in LA, and once you’re at Raf’s, you sense everyone else buzzing off that same high.

So I think the build up — and the New York of it all — contributed to my Penny reaction a bit. I’m also a sucker for a seafood counter. The environment, like Claud, their sister restaurant downstairs, is maybe a little sterile. But by the time you’re handed an ice box across the bar loaded with as-fresh-as-it-gets raw shellfish, the good-natured, attentive service breaks through the blandness of the room.

It’s difficult say that Penny’s stuffed squid or tuna carpaccio is meaningfully better than a daily special at Holbox. It probably isn’t. And I’d rather live in LA and swing by Holbox a few times a month than scour Resy for seats at Penny if I lived nearby. But right now Penny claims that eye-popping, holy shit I can’t believe how good this meal was belt that only a few New York restaurants own at a time. And that seemingly no LA restaurant, new or old, is matching at the moment.

Some more noteworthy bites and trends

• Bavel, Horses and Petit Trois: I’ve hit all three of these spots up multiple times since moving back, and they’re coalescing into a reliable trio of modern, classic LA restaurants for me. I appreciate the degree to which they’ve kept the signature dishes on the menu and settled into more mature, dialed in phases after buzzy openings.

• Can we not with this kind of menu? Bar Sinizki is cute, and I get the impulse behind this level of detail. But if you’re going to list every single ingredient and allergy just … go full QR code? It’s dorky, and deeply Atwater Village.

• The Wildair kimchi and cheese pithivier is one of the best dishes in New York at the moment.

wildairnyc

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• The Little Fish Friday happy hour: Absolutely loved this weekly pop where the Little Fish team gets to flex with off-menu dishes. Followed up an early dinner here with a dessert nightcap outside at the newly Resy-able Quarter Sheets. A few days later,

  Emily Wilson
  published this wonderful story on their pastry chef Hannah Ziskin, who shares the correct take that cake is mostly pointless.

littlefish_echopark

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• LUPI by Wolvesmouth: This experimental, Italian tasting menu in Los Feliz made a chilled melon soup with marcona almonds that I’m desperate to mimic at home.

• And here’s some stuff I’ve been listening to lately. I’m personally, selfishly pleased that MJ Lenderman and Karly Hartzman broke up. (The music is only gonna get better this way).