Jaunted

At first glance, our hopes of sitting down anywhere looked grim. The bar counter was full and so were the small low tables in the front. And due to a random cold spell, the restaurant was not serving outside. Then the hostess spied an empty bar table in the back of the bar section just before the main dining room.

We snapped up the table even though there was a huge wooden partition blocking our view of the main dining room. And despite that it was located behind a server's station. 'Course, that made it easy to flag down any staff.

We started off with a Pinot Grigio, which is our favorite white wine ever. There isn't a Pinot Grigio that we haven't liked. Until now. The one on the Craft menu, Borgo Madellena, was pretty bad. Nonetheless, our waitress (who we'd met before) recommend a Sauvignon Blanc, Saracina, and we went with that for the rest of the night no problemo.

The menu is enormous both in size and offering. There were 23 main course to choose from. We started off with the baked pecorino cheese, honey and roated cashews ($12) from the lounge menu. (Since we were sitting in the lounge, we could choose from both menus.) This dish was sumptuous and it came with bits of toasted bread for spreading. We moved onto the arugula and parmesan salad ($14) which was a huge serving that we had boxed for later.

Then we split the diver scallops ($31) and the roasted chicken ($32) with a side of jersualem artichokes ($11) with our friend. We don't ever eat seafood but we'll make an exception at these types of restaurants. And the diver scallops were totally worth it. The chicken was good, not outstanding but pleasant enough although skimpy on the promised vegetables.

Finally for dessert we sampled the conchord grape sorbet, caramel gelato and get this--olive oil gelato ($10 for three). The olive oil gelato was creamy and tasted mostly like vanilla with a hint of olive oil.

Overall, we liked this place. The food was delicious and the staff was incredibly friendly. We actually made conversation with the hostess.

It's in a random location behind the monstrous new CAA talent agency building in Century City, and it seems to be in a wind tunnel as it's incredibly windy over there. But if you're looking for a hot restaurant without the Hollywood scene (no ditzy aspiring actresses found here), then Craft is more than worth a stop.

Related Stories:
· Craft Los Angeles [Official Site]
· Party Dispatch:: Mandarin Oriental's Summer Cocktails [HotelChatter]