On Friday night, Miguelito and I rode our bikes around Silver Lake Reservoir for an early dinner at Reservoir, the two-month-old eatery that opened in the spot previously occupied by Netty's. I had never joined the artists, politicos and other Eastside denizens who had filled Netty's tables while it was in business for more than 20 years. Because it took so long for Reservoir to be renovated, it was able to secure a liquor license by the time it opened its doors on March 5. (It took an additional few weeks to receive a separate permit for using heat lamps on the patio.) For tonight's dinner, Miguelito and I clinked glasses of d'Albarino and Pinot Noir to celebrate his snaring a Web-based flash game in the Batman franchise for his Australian animation clients. Our festive night, not to mention our bike helmet hair, was captured by a photographer who was snapping pictures for an upcoming restaurant review to run in The Los Angeles Times.
We passed on the evening's special salad of heirloom tomatoes with Burrata cheese. Instead, we wanted to warm ourselves up on the chilly patio with the sauteed wild mushrooms tossed over greens with shavings of Parmesan.
Our advantageous location on the patio let us people-watch. This hipster was slouching his way across the street, perhaps to Domenico Ristorante, which transplanted Michelangelo's (now on Rowena Avenue) as the neighborhood Italian joint.
Reservoir's schtick is that its menu lists featured dishes (a.k.a. entrees) along with setups (appetizers in regular food argot). If you order one of the featured dishes, then you can pick any one of the five setups to be paired with your meal. Our waitress told us that the setups were devised to complement any entree, whether it be the black cod or the pan-seared marinated tofu or the $32 14-ounce rib eye. After determining that the scallops were seared in olive oil, I opted for the accompaniment of roasted baby carrots, brown-butter-cauliflower puree, braised leeks and black garlic.
Miguelito went with the black cod plated with the braised Tuscan kale, fingerling potatoes, baby yams and roasted heirloom tomatoes.
The two little black dots on my plate were the black garlic cloves. I had never seen those before. Soft, mushy and perfectly spreadable, the garlic tasted as if it had been steeped for days in Balsamic vinegar.
The dessert menu enticed us with its chocolate lava cake and Guinness ice cream, and warm tarte tatin and horchata ice cream, among other sweets. Even though Miguelito and I could have easily burned off the calories from dessert on our bike ride home, we remembered that we had a red velvet cupcake from Auntie Em's waiting for us in our refrigerator. To celebrate a new cartoon job, you need a cartoon dessert.
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