THE BESTIA, JERRY ...

If you like poking around in the edgelands of Los Angeles (and I do) then it’s hard to think of a better-located restaurant than Bestia, on 7^th Place, in the southern part of downtown, surrounded by decaying, graffiti-scarred warehouses, and the restaurant itself is housed in what appears to be a gorgeously distressed industrial hulk.  However, the customized black Ferrari parked outside clues you in to the fact that this is, of course, one of the coolest spots in LA.  I also think it’s the loudest restaurant I’ve ever been in, though I can think of one or two competitors.

The executive chef is Ori Menashe, and his wife Genevieve does the desserts.  The menu is usually described as Italian rustic, and for my money the best things to be eaten there are the salumi, many kinds of cured meats, made onsite, which look like this:

The Loved One was more impressed by the grilled chicken hearts on a stick and the lamb neck ravioli (that black stuff on top is dehydrated olives):

There was some amazing drink to be had too, not just a cocktail list but a “Julian Cox cocktail program.”  You bet!  I went for the White Negroni: gin and “kina l’avion d’or” with a grapefruit twist.  Of course I hadn’t got a clue what “kina l’avion d’or” was but it turns out to be white wine infused with Cinchona bark, orange peel, wormwood and other spices; so somewhere between a vermouth and absinthe.  No complaints about that.  

And it came with the best ice cube I’ve ever seen; a single, huge, rough lump of ice that looked like it had been hacked off an iceberg.

But you know the very best thing we were served?  We’d scarcely placed our order when a plate of sliced meat looking much like this was delivered to the table:

It didn’t look like anything we’d ordered and so we asked the waitress what it was, and she looked at it closely, brooded for a moment or two, and then said, “Ah, that’s your complimentary 35 day dry aged New York strip carpaccio.”  I still don’t know whether it was delivered to the table by mistake and the restaurant is just too classy to take it back and give it to somebody else, or whether they just really loved us.  Either way – free meat - a triumph!

DINING WITH THE DEAD

Do you know those interviews where they ask people which great historical figures or fictional characters they’d like to have dinner with, and people always say something noble and uplifting – Charles Darwin or Ophelia or Joan of Arc or whoever?  Well, of course you do.

But equally, you and I know it would never work that way.  You never get to have dinner with the perfect companions.  There’s always somebody there who hogs the conversation or says nothing at all or gets drunk or refuses to eat the food. It’s a bit like those records you’re supposed to select for Desert Island Discs, when you know perfectly well that if you were shipwrecked on a desert island you’d be guaranteed to end up with a bunch of records you couldn’t stand.

Barbara Streisand in the NYT went for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Edward Hopper, Gustav Klimt and Fanny Brice.  One major issue here is that even though you might have fascinating things you want to say to Gustav Klimt (that's him above), the chances are he'd have nothing whatsoever to say to you, even if you were Barbra Streisand.  I note that she doesn’t include Henry Kissinger among her selected guests, but maybe once you've done it you cross them off the list.

Anyway, I just found this devastatingly wonderful picture of Marilyn Monroe being kissed by Carson McCullers, while Isak Dinesen drinks and looks on.  I can hardly believe I never saw it before.

Who wouldn’t want to be sitting at that table?  On the other hand, whoever you were, I suspect you'd feel massively out of place, that the three women in question not only would have nothing to say to you, but they’d probably call security to have you removed.   I'll bet Arthur Miller didn't exactly feel at home there.

Maybe it’d be better just to be a fly on the wall, or possibly a waiter or busboy.  Which raises another question: which characters from history or literature would you want to clean up after?  

BLOOD, SAND AND NORMAN MAILER

It seems I had an “adventure in fun” the other night (see above).  I went to the happy hour at the Dresden, here in Los Feliz, and drank a couple of very generous Blood and Sand cocktails.  It is one of the Dresden’s (as they say) signature drinks, and there used to be some debate about whether or not they invented it. 

All the evidence suggests they couldn’t have.  The cocktail was apparently invented in celebration of the Valentino movie of the same name, released in 1922, (and it remains the only Valentino movie I have ever seen), and the recipe first appeared in print in the 1930 edition of the Savoy Cocktail Book, and since the Dresden didn’t open till 1954 … well, you get the idea.  On the other hand the Dresden have made it their own. Recipes and quantities vary a little but Scotch, cherry brandy, sweet vermouth 
and orange juice are always involved.  Most recipes suggest serving it strained in a coup glass, thus:

But the Dresden serves theirs over crushed ice, which I prefer, and here’s one I drank earlier:

The Loved One arrived as I was halfway through my second Blood and Sand, and demanded to know “What’s that girly drink you’ve got there?”  Yes, she knows how to wound, and if I' been going to defend myself (and I didn’t because I was too proud) I’d have said that it looks a good deal more girly than it tastes.

So anyway, the very next day I was reading the London Review of Books, and there’s (a frankly rather annoying, narcissistic – but maybe it’s a literary pose) article by Andrew O’Hagan about his various encounters with Norman Mailer.  He meets him in a restaurant “Norman knew everybody in the place and he asked for a kind of vodka punch.  He always drank horrible drinks: at one point, back at his house, he asked me to make him a rum and grapefruit and another time he asked for a red wine and orange juice.”

I guess that red wine and orange juice would have looked a bit bloody and sandy, and I suppose it’s vaguely on the way to being Sangria, but as it stands, I’m with O’Hagan in thinking it probably tasted horribly bad.

I'd have thought that people used to drink a lot more wine cocktails than they do now, but I found a website named drinksmixer.com, that lists well over two hundred wine cocktails (quite a few of them involving champagne of course), but 42 of them featuring red wine.  One caught my attention because of the name - Diablo’s Blood: I thought that too might look bloody and sandy, but no, it’s made with (wait for it)  equal quantities of chilled red wine and Coca Cola.  Lord, lord.

We know that tough guys, per the title of Norman Mailer’s novel, don’t dance, and I’m pretty sure they don’t consume girly cocktails. Mailer was tough enough in certain ways, so I guess at least one tough guy drank red wine and orange juice, but red wine and coke – no, just no.     (But see comments below!)

WHY THE SANDWICH IS A LOT LIKE SEX IN CERTAIN RESPECTS, AND WHY IT ISN’T IN CERTAIN OTHERS.

 

I recently came across the nifty schematic, above, in praise of the sandwich, and specifically in praise of its food-engineering qualities.  It’s from a website named Doghousediaries.com, which clearly has its heart in absolutely the right place.

However, being burdened with the mind that I have, and believing that food appetites and sexual appetites are often very similar, I began to wonder whether this “engineering” might apply to sex as well as to the sandwich.  So let’s take it one proposition at a time.

Limitlessness: ingredients limited only by your imagination, contents of your fridge.

Well yes, sex is indeed limited only by your imagination, and the contents of the fridge may become involved – hey, I’ve seen 9½ Weeks, but there are many other possibilities too, things that may come from the pantry, the garden, the sex shop, as well as the fridge.

Beauty: utilizes open-air plan exposing rainbow of ingredients.

Yes, sure, beauty (in some form) is usually involved in sex.  The open air may be involved too.  I’m not sure about “rainbow ingredients” – is this a reference to food dye?  Body Painting?  Interracial love? Maybe the rainbow is only metaphorical – in which case I suppose it does apply equally to both sex and sandwiches.

Compartmentalization: has a number of distinct surfaces to place sauces and keep them separate. 

Well indeed yes, the human body certainly has distinct surfaces – and it has folds and cervices and indeed orifices too.   “Sauces” (either a metaphor or a euphemism) can be kept separate, though in many cases it’s fun to mix them all together.

Options: infinite starting angles. 

Hell yes!

Variety: can be made in countless configurations, shapes, and sizes. 

Isn’t this really the same as “options”?  But in any case, once again, Hell yes.

Usability: designed for comfortable one-handed operation.

Well OK, but only up to a point.  Certain sexual practices can be done comfortably with just one hand, but really good sex demands a bit more commitment and physical involvement than that.  Generally it’s best to use both hands, and the mouth, in fact pretty much everything you’ve got.

Expandability: addition bread layers increase capacity and add structural support.    

We’re imaging some kind of orgy, some kind of clustering free for all here, yes?  More is often merrier (within reason obviously, and depending on who constitutes the “more”) and this may add structural support, but if the capacity increases too much you’re all quite likely to end up in a heap on the floor.  That is probably more fun in the case of sex than in the case of the sandwich.

Consistency: every bite contains every ingredient (if properly made).

You know I’m not even sure this really applies even to the sandwich.  Certain sandwiches (and I wouldn’t say they were improperly made) enable you to nibble on a bit of that, then on a bit of this, every bite may contain a new taste, a new texture, a new sensation; which certainly sounds sexy to me.

Versatility: almost exactly the same eating experience whether upside down or right-side up.  Take that pizza. 

Well versatility is good, obviously.  But is there really a “right way up” when it comes to sex?  Sometimes it’s good to be on top, sometimes it’s good to be underneath, sometimes it’s good to be sandwiched in the middle.  All these experiences may be equally good, but I wouldn’t say they’re exactly the same, nor would we want them to be.

Magic: gets even more delicious when cut in half. 

No, sorry, I can’t see this.  I don’t want to come across as a prude or a square but I honestly can’t imagine any sexual experience that’s better when anything whatsoever gets cut in half.  Others no doubt feel differently, but they are clearly perverts.

Of course sex is not only like a sandwich.  It’s also in certain respects like (and in certain other respects not like) a stew, a smorgasbord, a curry, a box of chocolates, a Christmas pudding.  I’ll let you work out these resemblances for yourself.