Rustic Canyon

Anybody who has a problem with this place, clearly didn't have the experience we just did last night. Or maybe they just suck. (That's the reviewer, not Rustic Canyon which kicks some quite serious ass). My friends Eric and Kumi suggested we go there, and I'm glad they did.

First of all, and I say first, because this is my greatest love, they have a SERIOUS wine list, with tons of fairly priced wines, so if you don't get a bottle for the table, you're missing out. We started with an '05 single vineyard Premier Cru Red Burg from Maranges for $55! (Click on the photo above for a closer look at Maranges and the particular vineyard, "La Fussiere", it's up in the dark red part, which are the p-cru vineyards) That's less than $15 a glass! You could easily drop that on any range of so-so Cali crap at ANY place in Santa Monica, so to be able to find what we did, and '05 no less, I consider that a nice score.

We sat at the bar with any extremely attentive, knowledgeable, and friendly guy whose name I've forgotten, but he did a great job. And when I had some overly wine geeky questions for him, rather than bullshit me, he got somebody who could answer my questions. MORE points for the team.
Onto the food: We had :

Crispy Polenta which was really pretty fuckin awesome. I got it because of the other raves here on yelp, and YUP, dopeness. Beautiful mushrooms and a sunny side up egg with some grated parmigiano-reggiano. Order this.

Kumi wanted:

The burger which I was going to pass on because, there are so many good burgers in LA, and I didn't want my new crush to fail to stack up, but no, the burger rocked too. I won't go as far as Eric and Kumi who feel it was the best burger they've had in LA, only because I can't splash all over EVERYTHING this place does, I mean, Damn, I already gave them five stars...

Next, we had:

The Chicken, which was, yeah, I'm going to say it, the best Chicken I've had while here in LA, maybe rivaled only by the prep I had in NYC at Gramercy Tavern. It was juicy and flavorful, really bursting with excellence, and cooked JUST RIGHT. Like secretly cooked just right, with a magic meat thermometer that tells you, pull it out now, cause it's not done yet, but I know you chef, and the extra 45 seconds you'll take to finish chopping will make this just regular done, and I want it awesome, so come over here right now, and get this bird out! It's true, they have magic meat thermometers at this place.

Finally, we had the Lamb Meat Balls, which, were the weakest link, being, MERELY (and notice how I stress MERELY) very good. Not the heights of awesome that the rest of the meal was, but not enough to detract. A little bit of Imperfection that heightened the love of everything else- like the faintest whisper of yellow green in the bruises on a stripper's leg at Jumbo's Clown Room. Somehow, you can infer she slipped while dancing on the roof of some unwilling taxi in last week's Lakers' riot. Those heels are slippery, who could fail to treat that little imperfection with a bit of understanding? Not me, I tell you, not me...