Why this three-star Michelin chef is messing with Italy’s tortellini ... again
Tacos, L.A. style; Enrique Olvera’s Venice expansion; comfort food for mourning; two new Indonesian restaurants; and three things that should never go in Nashville hot chicken. I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.
Three stages of tortellini
It’s no secret that Italy’s Massimo Bottura loves to break things. At Casa Maria Luigia, the luxury guesthouse and restaurant he and his wife, Lara Gilmore, run on the outskirts of Modena — a quick 15-minute drive from Bottura’s three-star restaurant Osteria Francescana — one wall is dominated by the art piece “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn,” three life-size images of artist Ai Wei Wei letting an ancient artifact fall to the ground. It’s an unmistakable statement of purpose for the chef.
Of course, the thing about Bottura is that putting the pieces back together again in a way that feels new without losing the essence of the object is just as essential as the breakage. His most famous fix-it might be the dessert “Oops I dropped the lemon tart,” which Bottura started serving after pastry chef Takahiko “Taka” Kondo (now the chef at Gucci Osteria in Florence) dropped a lemon tart before service. Bottura declared the spectacle “beautiful” and proceeded to crack the crust and artfully re-create the splatter on every lemon tart he’s served since.
But when it comes to tortellini, one of the sacred dishes of Emilia-Romagna cuisine, Bottura had a harder time persuading the locals that his breaking of tradition made sense. After he saw that diners considered his traditional tortellini no better or worse than what they could get in most Modenese trattorias, he came out with “Tortellini Walking Into Broth.” Six perfectly shaped tortellini were placed in a line, the broth on each side of the procession held back from the plate’s center with a little culinary razzle-dazzle (and possibly a bit of gelatin). Think of the tortellini playing the role of Moses parting the Red Sea.
“it was the most scandalous, outrageous dish we did in the ’90s,” Bottura said in his dining room last month, when I was lucky enough to eat at Osteria Francescana.
Consider that, as food writer Faith Willinger pointed out on the “Chef’s Table” episode about Bottura, most Italians are used to 10 tortellini to the spoonful. “He wasn’t even giving them a spoonful of food,” she said. “At the same time he was saying, here are six tortellini. You have to respect each one.”
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Now, after several tortellini incarnations, including placing the six tortellini on the broth and, for certain lucky diners, a coda of the most perfect tortellini in cream sauce served directly from a copper pot, Bottura has revisited and reconceived many of his iconic dishes for his summer menu.
His new tortellini? For one thing, he’s gone from six to just five tortellini served in a large white bowl with an intensely flavored broth that would make any grandmother proud. But the shape of the tortellini is unlike anything an Italian would recognize as tortellini. Taking inspiration from his international team of chefs, many of whom come from Asia, Bottura’s new tortellini look more like dumplings or something that takes its form from shallots or garlic cloves. Indeed, the name of the new dish is “Tortellini or Dumplings?”
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Take a bite, however, and the essence of tortellini comes through beautifully. Bottura may break the form of a classic dish, but he almost always brings the flavor back to the nostalgic tastes of his childhood. This is a dish that shows why Bottura’s Osteria Francescana was twice named the World’s Best Restaurant on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list and has ascended to the Best of the Best category, no longer eligible to compete since he’s already topped the list.
And what about classic tortellini? Far from ruining all other versions of tortellini for me, I sought out the dish again and again on my trip after eating Bottura’s version. Which led me to Bologna’s wonderful Osteria Bottega.
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It served tortellini two ways: tortellini en brodo, which is listed on the menu as “ricordo il profumo del brodo di cappone della ‘domenica’ e i tortellini” or “I remember the smell of ‘Sunday’ capon broth and tortellini.” And “L’altro tortellino” or “the other tortellino,” served in cream sauce. Both were dishes I could happily eat over and over again.
Which do I like better? The classic or Bottura’s newest take?
I want it all.
Indonesian time
One of my all-time favorite Los Angeles restaurants was the long-gone Agung, a fantastic Indonesian restaurant on the northern fringes of Koreatown at the corner of Beverly and New Hampshire, just a couple of blocks from the first apartment I shared with this paper’s late restaurant critic Jonathan Gold. I miss the fried chicken with bright red chile sauce clinging to the skin and the restaurant’s version of es alpukat, avocado and iced coffee served in a malted glass. (Starbucks would do well to blend its coffee with avocado instead of olive oil as it’s currently doing.)
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But as columnist Jenn Harris writes this week, Indonesian food has been scarce in Los Angeles since the closing of places like Agung, the pan-Indonesia Palms storefront Indo Cafe and the beloved old Artesia spot Susie’s Deli. Over the past few years, Indonesian food lovers have largely been limited to the cooks who decide over WhatsApp to show up Sundays in a Monrovia Baptist church parking lot, the occasional pop-up operation Bungkus Bagus that Stephanie Breijo wrote about in 2021 and Leni Kumalasari‘s Simpang Asia, less than a mile from the old Indo Cafe and recently in a newer Venice location. Now, Harris reports, two new Indonesian places, Wayang Restaurant in Alhambra and LaaLaaPan in Woodland Hills, have opened. As Harris writes, “It’s (past) time Indonesian food had its moment in Los Angeles.”
Comfort me with Albertson’s fried chicken
“Food is one of the easiest, yet most profound ways, to comfort someone in their time of need,” columnist Gustavo Arellano writes in his story about the death of his grandmother and how he and his younger relatives tried to give their elders a break from cooking duties during the traditional two weeks of mourning before the funeral. The only problem, as he wrote of the family members from his generation and younger: “It’s not like we had much experience in confronting death with food.” And so, to feed the 100 or so people who turned up each night during the mourning period for his grandmother, they ate everything from homemade birria de res and a big order from Burritos La Palma to “croissant sandwiches from Costco, Albertson’s fried chicken, Little Caesar’s pizza and leftover fried rice from Panda Express.” And when 300 instead of the expected 200 showed up for the funeral reception? Well, you’ll have to read his story for the solution they found.
Tacos built on charisma
This week, restaurant critic Bill Addison reviews Villa’s Tacos, which has gone from a weekly pop-up to a storefront location serving the food that, as Addison writes, helped Victor Villa win L.A. Taco’s annual Taco Madness competition two years running. That means meat-filled tacos dressed with onion, cilantro and guacamole; double cheese-ringed mulitas; and vegan tacos with “satisfying texture contrasts: half-pureed black beans smeared over a tortilla and scattered with cactus salad or potatoes crunching like home fries, or pebbly, pineapple-sweetened soy chorizo matched with the spuds.” Of course, there’s also Villa’s famous queso taco: “What Villa’s style epitomizes is the L.A. dreamer, the go-getter,” says Addison. “His queso taco — large and lavish with its finishing layers of cotija, squiggled-on crema and dolloped guacamole — is deftly engineered chaos. It’s a taco built on charisma.”
When samosas go viral
You may have seen Kulwant “Kimi” Sanghu and her son Manu Sanghu on “Good Morning America,” “Access Hollywood” or “The Jennifer Hudson Show,” sharing their story of how, as Jean Trinh writes, “Launching Cali Tardka as a licensed home restaurant helped them bounce back from the brink of homelessness. ... Customers now travel from as far as San Diego and Las Vegas to try their battered and fried masala fish and chicken tikka masala burritos wrapped in naan bread.” The family has served celebrities such as Rashida Jones, Russell Peters and Mario Lopez. Now, Trinh reports, it looks as if they may be able to open a formal restaurant born out of their home business in 2025. Meanwhile, Trinh talks naan, samosas and the role KRTH-FM (101.1) radio host Greg Simms played in the day their business went viral.
Food Bowl: Things are getting hot
Tickets are already sold out for two key L.A. Times Food Bowl events celebrating Restaurant of the Year Holbox, and 2023’s Gold Award winner, Jenee Kim of Park’s BBQ. But there are many more events in the monthlong festival sponsored by City National Bank, including a launch party on Sept. 6 featuring Singapore’s Michelin-starred chef Malcolm Lee, three special dinners curated in partnership with Outstanding in the Field and our weekend-long Night Market Sept. 22-24 with chefs from all over Los Angeles and beyond.
One of those chefs will be Kim Prince of Hotville Chicken and the Dulanville food truck she runs with Greg Dulan of Dulan’s on Crenshaw. She came into the Times Test Kitchen recently to show us one of the dishes she’s going to make at Night Market: Nashville hot shrimp. Watch the video, one of several in our chef series “The Kitchen,” and find out why brown sugar, buttermilk and eggs should never go in Nashville hot chicken.
Also ...
- In Stephanie Breijo‘s restaurant news column, we find out about Atla, the new L.A. place from Mexico’s Enrique Olvera (Pujol, Cosme, Damian). “We felt that Atla would make sense in Venice,” Olvera said. “It’s not too formal. ... It’s a concept that can be a little bit of everything for everyone.” Marisol Corona, who led the kitchen at New York’s Atla, will be the chef here in Venice. Breijo also has details about the new plant-based West African restaurant Ubuntu on Melrose from Shenarri Freeman; Nick Fisher‘s new organic ice cream shop Fluffy McCloud’s on Sunset; Smorgasbar, the new twice-weekly bar from Smorgasburg in the Row DTLA complex curated by Fernando Lopez of I Love Micheladas and Guelaguetza fame; “breakfast burrito specialist” Wake and Late in Pasadena; and a new Gardena location of Taiwanese dumpling chain Bafang Dumpling. Plus, if you’re going to a concert at the Ford Theater in Hollywood, look for Bodega at the Ford, “which serves dishes from Long Beach pizzeria Speak Cheezy, Venezuelan pop-up the Arepa Stand and sustainability-focused, modern American Silver Lake spot Forage.”
- With Taylor Swift and soon Beyoncé performing at SoFi Stadium, assistant food editor Danielle Dorsey, with assists from Stephanie Breijo, Daniel Hernandez and Jenn Harris, updated our guide to the best places to drink — from coffee to cocktail bars — near the home of the Rams and the Chargers.
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