Meet Me at the Brasserie

It didn’t seem odd that we had none until we suddenly had three--or, we at least have two and another big one on deck.

La brasserie. So many non-French international cities have a couple of good ones--New York, London, Tokyo, even Chicago. A bright, boisterous all-day kind of restaurant where you can go anytime and wash down a plate of oysters with draft beer, or tuck into a bowl of onion soup topped with good Gruyere before running off to a movie. Or you can sit for a couple of hours and laugh as loud as you’d like with friends over a full meal--Champagne, escargots, salade frisee aux lardons, perfect steak frites. The butter’s French, the bread feels fresh and warm as you tear it apart with your fingers. The servers, efficient but never formal, bring plates of cheeses at just the right temperature. Lots of good wines. The clanking of plates and silver. Ah, life.

After suffering some years of decline in Los Angeles, French dining is coming back--brasserie-style. Chef David Myers opened Comme Ca last fall; it’s easily the hottest ticket since the Mozzas. Last month, a stylish West Hollywood boutique hotel called Palihouse Holloway introduced its courtyard brasserie, the Hall. And finally, after leaving Bastide four years and two chefs ago, chef Alain Giraud will make his return in the shape of a shiny new venture in Santa Monica called Anisette Brasserie, which, if all goes according to plan, will have its premiere next month.

It’s not exactly that we didn’t have any brasseries until now--we’ve had Brass-Cap in Santa Monica and Kendall’s Brasserie downtown (part of Joachim Splichal’s Patina Group). But this new crop feels different--vibrant and relevant in a new way. Though they may be as serious as Parisians about the food they serve, these new places naturally have an L.A. vibe, a blithe spirit you just don’t find in less sunny climes.

It’s the rare spot that attracts celebrities and foodies, but from the moment it opened, Comme Ca has been packed with both camps. (Robert Duvall showed up four days in a row because he could not get enough of the French onion soup.) Clamorous and exuberant, they gather at the bar, sipping serious cocktails that are mixed with care--and served with slabs of ice chipped from a glacial block. At the tables, well-dressed couples share elaborate seafood plateaux and groups of young agents ignore their cellphones while negotiating plates of brandade de morue gratinee and sole meuniere.

Why brasseries, why now? Myers says he wanted a place where diners can “forget about everything that’s happening outside and just have fun.” And he wanted to serve the food he wants to eat. “As soon as I got off the plane in New York,” he says, “I’d go to Balthazar or Pastis.”

A brasserie is not a bistro. Brasseries are big and brash and noisy; in French the word means “brewery” (the first brasseries brewed beer). Bistros, on the other hand, tend toward the small, quiet and cozy, with ever-changing menus often chalked on a blackboard. Brasseries serve throughout the day and evening and are definitely associated with cities.

It all started in Alsace, explains Anisette’s Giraud. “The Germans invaded in 1830,” he says, “and a lot of people fled and went to Paris. That’s when the brasserie as we know it began, when beer became urban, when Parisians started pairing beer with food. The atmosphere is festive and baroque but never formal.”

Avi Brosh, owner of Palihouse Holloway, is a businessman, not a chef. But he too was inspired to open a brasserie because of “two little places called Balthazar and Pastis. “They have been unbelievably successful for years,” he says. “It’s strange that Los Angeles took so long to emulate them.”

Born in Paris, Giraud needed no New York model for Anisette. “A diner is never intimidated at a brasserie,” he says. Brasserie food, he explains, is “democratic” and “approachable. It’s urban country food; the food is clear. It may have a small twist to it, but you don’t deconstruct anything.” Think of it this way, he says: “It’s serious food without the covenants of serious food.”

Downstairs, workers are still hammering away at what will be a long zinc bar (seating about 36) near the front. At a brasserie, continues Giraud, “You always feel comfortable. The service is good, but you don’t notice it.”

In fact, they’re waiting for the bar--poured zinc rather than the less expensive skimmed--to be delivered from France, where le zinc (as zinc bars are known) is de rigueur for brasseries. (You’ll also find one at Brass-Cap in Santa Monica.)

Comme Ca’s look is an Americanized homage to Chanel--there are a lot of clean black-and-white blocks with small splashes of color. And black pillars, tufted white banquettes, black tabletops covered with butcher paper, glossy red Peugot pepper grinders on the tables and touches of silver at the bar. In the back hallway, a long blackboard is filled with chalk drawings, recipes and miscellanea. Up front, backlighted by black-trimmed windows, a fromager carves a wedge of Epoisse on a marble-topped cheese bar--shoppers can drop in and buy from his first-rate selection. The breakfast, lunch and dinner menus, with their blocky French typeface, also say brasserie.

Myers explains that Comme Ca gives him a chance to let his hair down a bit. Sona, his 5-year-old restaurant nearby, is austere, formal, costly and quiet--a “Zen sanctuary,” he says. The vibe at Comme Ca, on the other hand, is much more “fierce.”

At the Hall, Brosh, who hand-picks or constructs every design element at the restaurant and hotel, went for a dark, sophisticated feel with unusual touches. The intimate dining room, which opens onto an interior courtyard, has marble-topped tables and fan-backed chairs like you’d find in any corner cafe in Paris. But the wood chandeliers look like earrings Goldie Hawn might have worn on “Laugh-In,” writ large. Brosh also chose a staghorn fern, which sprouts huge frisee-like fronds, and mounted four of them on boards in a delirious homage to taxidermy. It works, somehow.

And on the plate, chef Stephanie O’Mary (formerly chef de cuisine at the Hollywood Roosevelt’s Dakota restaurant) sends out salade frisee aux lardons topped with a poached egg, as well as croque madame, steak tartare and roast chicken with bread salad.

Giraud’s partners at Anisette, Mike Garrett and Tommy Stoilkovich (owners of Falcon and Pearl Dragon), wanted a more classic look. In April 2006, they took over a 5,000-square-foot, high-ceilinged space around the corner from Third Street Promenade, in the 1929 Art Deco clock tower building on Santa Monica Boulevard, and renovation began. The walls, they say, will be wood with wainscoting; they’ll be hung with antique mirrors. The cement floor will be antique white with mosaic tile, the booths burgundy red.

In Paris, you can count on a brasserie for one large menu that’s unchanging all day year-round. At Comme Ca, Myers offers separate breakfast, lunch and dinner menus, but these menus stay essentially the same (though there is a standing rotation of specialites du jour, including Wednesday’s choucroute garnie, a brasserie fave, and Sunday’s cote de boeuf for two).

At Anisette, the innovation will be on the plate. The brasserie will also have separate menus, Giraud says, for breakfast, brunch, lunch, late afternoon, dinner and late night. (At first, though, it will offer dinner only.)

But don’t ask Giraud not to change the menu. Seasonal dishes, he assures us, will appear as daily specials. “We are one block from the farmers market,” Giraud says. “I could serve cherries in December, but I won’t. I like to feel connected to the seasons.

“When spring is coming, we cook asparagus.”

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Comme Ca, 8479 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 782-1178; www.commeca restaurant.com. The Hall, Palihouse Holloway hotel, 8465 Holloway Drive, West Hollywood, (323) 656-4020; www.palihouse.com. Anisette Brasserie, 225 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 395-3200; www.anisettebrasserie.com.

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Salade de Legumes

From Chef David Myers

8 fingerling potatoes, about

3 inches long, peeled

1 teaspoon black peppercorns,

toasted in a skillet until fragrant

3 sprigs thyme

1/2 pound haricots verts,

ends removed

4 artichoke hearts, leaves

and choke removed, trimmed

and cut into quarters

8 slender spring carrots, peeled

8 breakfast radishes

8 garlic cloves, halved lengthwise and germ removed

1/4 cup olive oil

4 garlic cloves, sliced thin

4 romaine hearts, quartered

lengthwise

Put the potatoes, peppercorns and thyme in a medium pot with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, add enough salt to the water so it tastes like the sea, and simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 8 to 10 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to remove them from the water, and let cool. Blanch the carrots in the same water for about 3 minutes, drain and shock in ice water. In fresh boiling salted water blanch, individually, the haricots verts, radishes and garlic halves until just tender, about 2 to 3 minutes each. Remove each from the pot and place in ice water until cool. Blanch the artichoke hearts until just tender, about 5 minutes, remove and place in ice water until cool. Pat dry all of the vegetables.

In a small saute pan, heat the oil to 300 degrees or until small bubbles appear. Fry the garlic slices just until golden, about 30 seconds.

for the vinaigrette:

1/2 cup best-quality olive oil

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1/4 cup creme fraiche

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground

black pepper

Whisk together the oil, vinegar and creme fraiche in a small bowl. Whisk in the salt and pepper; adjust the seasoning.

Quarter the potatoes, carrots and radishes lengthwise. In a large bowl, toss together the haricots verts, artichoke hearts, carrots and radishes and add dressing to taste. Divide the romaine among four shallow bowls and scatter the vegetables on top. Sprinkle with the garlic chips just before serving.

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Spring Vegetable Tartines

From Chef Alain Giraud

Serves 8

8 Roma tomatoes

6 tablespoons olive oil, divided

2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

Pinch of sugar

1 tablespoon thyme leaves

24 medium asparagus tips

1 1/2 cups English peas (1/2 pound)

1 1/2 cups small fava beans (about 1 1/2 pounds in the shell)

4 baby artichokes

Juice of 1 lemon

4 breakfast radishes, thinly sliced

8 slices olive bread

4 tablespoons black olive tapenade*

4 tablespoons Banylus vinegar*

Salt and black pepper

Fleur de sel, for garnish

2 tablespoons mixed herbs (basil, chervil and chives) for garnish

Core an slice the tomatoes in half lengthwise. Coat a nonreactive baking pan with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, then sprinkle with the garlic, sugar, thyme, salt and black pepper. Place the tomatoe halves on the pan, cut side down. Brush the skins with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Dry the tomatoes in the oven at 250 degrees until the skins pull off easily, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Reserve the tomatoes and save the cooking juices in a small container.

Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot and add 3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon Kosher salt. Add the asparagus tips and cook for two minutes. Remove the tips with a slotted spoon and shock in ice water. Add the peas to the water and cook for 1 minute; remove and shock in ice water. Add the fava beans and cook for 30 seconds; remove and shock in ice water. Peel the fava beans. Pat dry all the cooked vegetables and set aside.

Trim the artichokes, slice them lengthwise finely, and toss in a large bowl with the lemon juice. Drain the juice, add the asparagus, peas, favas and radishes and gently toss. Reserve.

Brush the bread slices with a total of 2 tablespoons olive oil and toast on a grill pan until golden on both sides.

Prepare the dressing by whisking together the reserved juice from the tomatoes with the Banylus vinegar and the remaining olive oil.

To serve: Spread the tapenade on each slice of grilled bread. Arrange the tomatoes on top, then mound the combined vegetables on top of that. Finish with a drizzle of dressing, a touch of fleur de del and black pepper. Sprinkle with fresh herbs.

*Use either purchased tapenade or go to latimes.com/magazinefrench for Alain Giraud’s recipe.

*Banylus vinegar is available at select Whole Foods stores and Surfas in Culver City

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Maine Scallops With Meyer Lemon-Pistachio Emulsion

From Chef Alain Giraud

Serves 4 as a main course or 8 as an appetizer

2 large leeks, white and pale green parts only, washed and finely diced

1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, divided

2 cups heavy cream, divided

4 shallots, finely chopped

1/2 pound white mushrooms, thinly sliced

1 cup Monbazillac*

1 cup chicken broth

1 cup chopped pistachios

2 teaspoons olive oil

16 sea scallops,* cleaned and dried

2 ounces pistachio paste (scant 1/4 cup)

Juice of 2 Meyer lemons

Salt and black pepper

Fleur de sel for garnish

Melt 4 tablespoons of the butter in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, add the leeks and cook until tender, stirring occasionally, about 10-15 minutes. Add 1 cup of the cream and reduce, stirring occasionally, until it’s thick enough to coat the leeks, about 15 minutes. Season to taste with 1/4 teaspoon salt and a pinch of pepper and reserve.

In another medium saucepan, melt 4 tablespoons of the butter over medium-low heat, add the shallots and cook until transparent and tender, about 5 to 7 minutes. Add the mushrooms and continue to cook over medium-low heat until the juices are released, 4 to five minutes. Pour in the Monbazillac, increase the heat to medium, stirring to scrape up any bits and reduce until the pan is almost dry. Add the chicken broth and reduce the liquid by half. Add the remaining 1 cup of heavy cream and reduce over medium-low heat by a third, stirring frequently, about 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer and reserve.

Heat the olive oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Season the scallops with salt and pepper and sear about 2 minutes on one side and 1 minute on the other, until the edges are golden. In the meantime, reheat the leeks and stir in half the chopped pistachios.

Cut the remaining butter into small pieces. Reheat the wine-and-cream base over medium-low heat, then whisk in the pistachio paste, the lemon juice and the butter. Emulsify the sauce until it’s frothy, using either an immersion blender or a regular blender. Season with 1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste.

To serve: In the middle of each of 4 large plates (for a main course), spoon two rounded tablespoons of the leeks. Place 4 scallops on top, adding a touch of fleur de sel. Spoon emulsion around each plate and sprinkle with the remaining pistachios.

*Monbazillac, a sweet French white wine, is available at fine wine shops. Giraud prefers Maine scallops for this dish. Pistachio paste is available at Surfas in Culver City and at www.chefswarehouse.com