From the palette to the palate, food meets art at Ray’s & Stark Bar at LACMA
Food is art. And at Ray's and Stark Bar, the restaurant at LACMA, art is food. Inspired by the museum where Ray's is located, Chef Fernando Darin has created an internationally inspired menu using local seasonal ingredients. But it is the plating that takes it from food to art.
Chef Fernando Darin was born to an Italian family in a region of Brazil with Portuguese and African influences. He recently arrived to Ray's and Stark Bar after working for Eric Greenspan, Michael Voltaggio and most recently for Patina at the Hollywood Bowl and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Previous to cooking, he was a musician and artist for fourteen years. It is his global upbringing and artistic background that influence his food and drive his creativity.
We started with the tuna tartare with avocado, oroblanco citrus fruit and taro chips and I was immediately transported to the realm of food as art. The presentation was like a beautiful art piece of art, balancing of color and dimension. The flavors are fresh and the oroblanca citrus brightens up the dish.
27 June, 2016
Located on La Brea Boulevard, just south of Melrose in the space formerly known as Cube, Pizza Romana is owned by Alex Palermo. For those who loved the menu at Cube, rest assured that while Palermo changed the concept, those dishes are still on the menu. In addition, they put a large wood fired pizza oven in the center of the restaurant.
Alex Palermo grew up in Wisconsin, the son of a Roman father and American mother, and spent his vacations in Italy. He then attended college in Southern California. Having spent some time working at the La Jolla Pasta Company during summers and having visited Italy, he understood that homemade pasta is something that comes from "home". During his senior year in college, he took an entrepreneurial course. As Contadini was the only "fresh pasta" on the market at the time, he used his summer experience as an idea. He got a pasta machine from another company in San Diego and set it up at a friend's dad's restaurant in Santa Monica. He would work from 11pm to 4am making restaurant quality pasta for retail. Divine Pasta Company was born. His first client was Gelson's Market in 1992 and it grew from there where it can be found at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and Costco today.
CITY OF GOLD is a tasty documentary on Jonathon Gold, the first food critic ever to win a Pulitzer Prize. It satisfies cravings on all five senses. Laura Gabbert’s feature-length film expertly succeeds in sharing Gold’s favorite hard-to-find, tiny mom-and-pop restaurants in L.A.’s deepest ethnic neighborhoods. She mixes cinematic tools like a chef mixes fine ingredients to create a perfect dish. Close-ups of succulent food combinations sizzle and take us into the heat. Sounds of the street pop and mingle under lively sequences of the city in action underscored by a diverse original score by Bobby Johnson. The camera rides right alongside Jonathon in his green pick-up truck as he traverses scrappy roads to get us to his favorite far-flung discoveries. Slo-mo aerials glide over snarled L.A. freeway traffic lanes at twilight, turning rear lights into mesmerizing red rivers below. We get a peek into the authentic Los Angeles that has taken him years to lovingly, painstakingly uncover with his passionate palate.