Showing posts with label fraiche. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fraiche. Show all posts

Monday, February 14, 2011

Chef Ben Bailly Takes Over Fraiche Culver City

As I've mentioned in my recent Petrossian post, Chef Benjamin Bailly recently moved to helm the kitchen at Fraiche in Culver City. Kung Food Panda, an avid fan of Ben's, organized multiple tasting dinners for friends and I was able to join one of them. The meal consisted of a belly-stretching amount of food, so instead of going through every dish, I'll just tell you about some of them.

Our multi-course meal started with two jars of  Smoked trout rillette and chicken(?) pate.
Rillettes

It was hard to stop eating the pate, but after my last tasting at Petrossian with Chef Bailly, I've learned that I've had to pace myself.

Then, pretending to be healthy for a bit, we had a course of three salads. Never mind that one of the salads was topped with bacon and blue cheese ..

Frisee aux Lardons (Oeuf Pane, Bacon, Blue Cheese)
Frisee aux Lardons

Belgian Endives - (Coppa, Apples, Pecan, Goat Cheese, Truffle Vinaigrette)
Belgian Endives
This was the first hint of the multitude of truffled dishes to come. As you can imagine, the whole table went gaga sniffing the dishes.

The truffle spaghetti smelled amazing with tons of black truffles shaved on top, but I found the pasta to be too tough to really enjoy the dish. The creamy Sunchoke Risotto with Black Truffles fared much better.
Sunchoke Risotto with Truffles

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Riva: Travi's New Baby

Jason Travi's (of Fraiche) new restaurant, Riva, sits near the Third Street Promenade and is open all-day, probably to accomodate the shoppers. In addition, though, they are also open until at least midnight every day, Mondays included. So there you go, one of my late Monday night dinners!

The restaurant was big but at late Monday night was fairly empty - 3 or 4 tables filled.

We started with some salmon belly crudo with homemade mustard
The salmon belly was smooth and delicious. I have to say I really, really enjoyed this dish. I didn't see it on the online menu afterwards and was pretty bummed :/ I definitely would've ordered it again if I see it!

Next we had the hachiya persimmon with speck ham and arugula
This was again another dish that would make me come back! The persimmon was sweet and ripe - some of the best persimmons I've ever had. They pair very well with the slight saltiness of the speck ham and the arugula provided a nice texture contrast. I think I would come back to Riva even if just for this dish (I'm very partial to persimmons though).

Since the portions thus far were fairly small, we also got the roasted quail with farro and fall squash and pistachio pesto
The quail was decent, but not the best I've ever had. Not as meaty or gamey as I normally like.
I'm also uncertain about the farro combination.

The other main thing Riva offers that Fraiche does not is pizza. The pizzas here are around $15 - not cheap and actually about the same price as Pizzeria Mozza. So how were they?

We had the pignoli pizza (pine nuts, tomato, smoked pancetta, reggiano)
I liked the thin crust and thought that the whole tomatoes were great. The sage leaves added a very nice aroma and flavor. Overall I enjoyed this pizza (although it's expensive).

We also had the eggplant parmesan pizza.
Literally an eggplant parmesan, baked on top of a pizza crust. Quite an interesting dish - hard to eat as a pizza though since the 'topping' was very heavy. This filled us up quite a bit and was pretty enjoyable.

For dessert we went with the sweet potato cheesecake.
An extremely rich cheesecake, especially so since it is sweet potato and also topped with melted marshmallows!
This was actually too rich for my taste - once the ice cream to cut it is gone I couldn't eat any more of it.

Overall I thought Riva was pretty good with a couple dishes that really highlighted the meal and that I would go back for (the salmon belly and the persimmons with ham!).

Riva
312 Wilshire Blvd
Santa Monica, CA
310.451.7482
http://rivarestaurant.wordpress.com

Riva on Urbanspoon

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Fraiche - Not So Fresh

This is a long overdue post on Fraiche in Culver City, the reason being I wasn't really crazy about it. Disclaimer first, I only went here for an office holiday party, and we had a pre set menu etc, so it may well be I didn't get the representative dishes to convince me that Fraiche was as awesome as I had heard.

It was a three-course menu, and for starters I ordered the beets with goat cheese and pistachios. I have to first say I have heard many many good things about this dish, which was why I ordered it. Upon first glance, the beets weren't as colorful as I am used to. But I won't judge based on that, bright colors may not be everything.
The first few bites of the beets were good and enjoyable, but I could not finish the dish. As I was eating each bite made me feel somewhat ... queasy? It was like the beets were, well, anemic! The beets were a bit bland than I would like, and to top that off with loads of also-rather-bland goat cheese was too much. I stopped eating so I won't feel sick. Is this normal? Or is it one of those let's-give-the-office-party-ppl-second-rate-ingredients?? Maybe it was just us, maybe some people like it way better that way. Dont' know. But no one around my seat finished their beet dish. It was 'good' at first few bites, then 'okay', then on to 'ugh' ...

For the main course I had the duck with black rice. This dish was pretty good but the duck was overcooked and, hence, dry. I did like the black rice though.

I had the chocolate bread pudding for dessert. This was also a bit dry, especially as far as bread puddings go.

The other choice for dessert was the lemon meringue pie. I tried a bit from someone else's plate, but it was way too sweet even for my sweet tooth.

For all the hype I've heard about this place, I was rather disappointed. Is it just because what we got were not as good as a normal Fraiche meal? Tell me, should I go back and give it another try?

Fraiche
9411 Culver Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232
(310) 839-6800
http://www.fraicherestaurantla.com

Fraiche Restaurant on Urbanspoon

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