Restaurant Review #200: Jaipur Cuisine of India, Westwood/West LA

Mattar Paneer

Though I have eaten at Jaipur many times, I have only had their food delivered (a much simpler option, given their chaotic location--not that this is a unique problem in LA). However, thanks to a $25 Restaurant.com certificate, I decided to dine in for a change. Unlike many of these certificates, which have restrictions on when you can eat, you can use a certificate to Jaipur seven days a week. The only conditions are that you need to dine in, spend $45 (before the certificate), and pay in cash. At most Indian restaurants, $45 will buy you plenty of food, and Jaipur is no exception. In addition to its reasonably priced menu for everyday patrons, the restaurant also offers budget-sensitive catering services for small and large events and can serve your needs whether you need a full buffet or just appetizers. Thanks to the certificate, for a mere $25, we enjoyed a small feast.


Chicken vindaloo

One of the benefits of dining in at Jaipur is that you get mint and tamarind chutneys, carrot and lemon pickles, and salty, delicately crunchy papadums to scoop them up with as soon as you sit down. Their mango pickles, which you can order for $3, are also an unforgettable treat. Everyone should try mango pickles at some point--even if you don't like them, you'll appreciate how intensely tangy and salty they are.

Jaipur is named after the owner's favorite Indian city, "the pink city," located in the Indian state of Rajastan. The restaurant opened in 1999 by an owner whose prior experience included being a chef and restaurant manager in Germany and Los Angeles for 15 years. The restaurant is on Pico Boulevard near Westwood, adjacent to the Westside Pavilion parking garage and Torafuku. Getting there after work during rush hour can be a nightmare, and parking can be too if you don't know that Jaipur has a valet option (for $4.50) or that you can park in the Westside Pavilion garage for free.

To get the most bang for our gift certificate buck, we skipped the appetizers and dove straight into the entrees. As a general rule, I don't like any of Jaipur's creamy dishes, like the chicken korma, chicken tikka masala, or navrattan korma--I find the sauce too heavy. By contrast, the chicken vindaloo, which has a spicy, tomato-based sauce, is one of Jaipur's best dishes, though it would be even better if the meat were free of gristly, fatty bits and cooked in smaller pieces that could absorb more of the sauce. I can never get enough of the sauce, especially since I like to scoop it up and eat it straight with some freshly-baked naan.


Aloo gobi

Smaller chunks of potato would also be effective in making a more flavorful aloo gobi, though this is the dish's only flaw. The cauliflower is cooked to melt-in-your-mouth perfection. The mattar paneer (lead photo) is also flavorful without being heavy, with squishy homemade cheese and tender bright green peas. I only wish this dish were spicy. With most of Jaipur's dishes, you'll have to request extra heat if you want to enjoy that tingling sensation on your lips. According to the owner, some of the dishes have been modified to better serve the tastes of Angelenos. Such a statement might make you think that the flavors were watered down or that Jaipur served bland, "healthy" Indian food like Pradeep's or Dhaba in Santa Monica, but, lack of spiciness aside, I think Jaipur serves some of the most flavorful Indian food on the Westside.


Gulab jamun

Jaipur's desserts are homemade and taste like it. My favorites are the rashmalai, a sweet dessert cheese in a milky sauce, and warm, syrupy gulab jamun, which you're almost certainly had if you've ever been to an Indian buffet.



The dining room is almost uncomfortably small and quiet--you can clearly hear other people's conversations across the room, no matter how quietly they're speaking. White tablecloths and linen napkins go a long way towards creating an elegant space despite the lack of room and standard issue restaurant chairs. Cheery yellow paint, an open ceiling, and a wall of windowed doors looking out to Pico help create an illusion of airiness. The partially open kitchen sends the wonderful aroma of curries and lamb kebabs to whet your appetite. The service was just okay--I like unobtrusive service, but when I can't order when I'm ready, it's a little too unobtrusive.

It may not be perfect, but Jaipur is still one of my favorite restaurants. The only thing that really irks me about Jaipur is that they charge $3 extra for rice. Shouldn't rice be included, like it is at Chinese restaurants? I blame the low-carb trend for turning rice into a nonstandard item, but I guess when the entrees are only $8-$12 each, I can't really complain.

Though I love getting a bargain and the restaurant smells incredible, after my experience dining in at Jaipur, I think I'd still prefer to enjoy their food in the comfort of my living room, free from the hassles of parking and traffic. Even full-price and with a delivery fee tacked on, the food is still very much worth it.

Jaipur Cuisine of India
10916 West Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90064
(just west of Westside Pavilion)
310 470-4994
Lunch buffet daily
11AM - 2:30PM weekdays
11:30AM - 3PM weekends
Dinner daily
5PM - 10:30PM
Jaipur website

Restaurant Review #199: Darya Fine Persian Cuisine, West LA

From the outside, you'd never think Darya was anything special. It sits on a slightly seedy-looking stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard in West LA, just west of Bundy. Its storefront, along with those of most of its neighbors, is a bit dingy looking, and the drab yellowish light near the entrance doesn't help. Inside, however, you'll find high ornamental ceilings, crystal chandeliers, live Persian music, and some of the friendliest service in the city. In Los Angeles, you never can judge a book by its cover.


Dining room

Darya's menu offers a selection of hot and cold appetizers, soups, salads, stews, grilled meats, and vegetarian dishes. Entrees range from $12 to $23. To whet our appetites, we were served fresh complementary flatbread with butter and slivers of raw white onion. The bread is quite enjoyable plain or simply with butter, but if you like onions, the cool bite and tang they provide in contrast to the warm bread and rich, creamy butter makes the dish even better.


Imported Pickles (khiar-shor)

We also ordered the imported pickles, which didn't taste different enough from American pickles to get me excited about eating them. I wished I had chosen a different appetizer, like the kashkek bademjan, a dish of sauteed eggplant with yogurt, garlic, mint, onion, and whey.


Naderi Kabob

The entrees were much more satisfying. All of the grilled meat dishes, which make up the majority of the entrees, come with saffron-topped basmati rice, or for $1 extra, half rice and half Persian salad (romaine lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, parsley, onion, olive oil, and lime juice). Pictured above, the lamb shish kabob is described as "our finest filet of lamb marinated & skewered & charbroiled with onions, tomatoes, & green peppers."

The menu describes the naderi kabob entree (lead photo) as "the most delicious and juicy chunks of center cut of filet mignon marinated in Darya special sauce served with charbroiled tomato." The price seemed a little high to me since I had to rely on the rice to get full, but when you consider that a single uncooked kabob skewer at Whole Foods costs $9, $21 for a whole plate of food that I don't have to cook myself really isn't bad, and the meat in both entrees was very flavorful and properly cooked. If you're on a budget, visit Darya at lunchtime to save a few bucks.


Homemade cheesecake

For dessert, there are tried-and-true favorites like baklava and cheesecake, and more exotic (to some of us) items like Persian ice cream (flavored with rosewater, saffron, and pistachios), faloodeh, and makhloot. One of my favorite things about Persian restaurants is their ricotta cheesecake. Unlike New York-style cheesecake, which uses much more cream cheese and is therefore a lot heavier, a cheesecake made with ricotta is almost light and spongy.


Bamieh

For something new (to me), I tried the bamieh, made of flour, sugar, honey, and rosewater. This dessert both looked and tasted like a cross between donut holes and gulab jamun (a popular Indian dessert).

The restaurant was a little loud, even on a weeknight, because of both the live music and the number of patrons, but it wasn't too loud to carry on a conversation. The place was pretty full, but we were able to get a table right away with no reservation and no snooty attitude from the host. The service was prompt, courteous, and helpful, and our water glasses were never empty. Though the dining room has quite a few tables, they are all well-spaced to give diners privacy.

Perhaps the only drawback to eating at this restaurant is the parking. There are plenty of meters on the street, but they can be hard to come by at busy times of day.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience. Everything met or exceeded my expectations.

Darya Fine Persian Cuisine
12130 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
310-442-9000
Darya Menu
Darya Website

FYI: Darya has a sister restaurant in Tustin, but is not affiliated with any other restaurants that share its name.

Restaurant Review #195: Il Moro's Fall Harvest Menu, West LA

Salsiccia Casareccia in Umido con Polenta Fresca

Being invited to try Il Moro's Fall Harvest menu was a unique opportunity for me in that I have never previously had a comped meal at a restaurant which I am already familiar with. I was looking forward to seeing how my previous two experiences at Il Moro as an average diner would compare to my experience as someone who needed to be impressed. Since I already thought that Il Moro's service and food were nearly impeccable, I wasn't really expecting anything to be different on this visit except for the price.

Il Moro did not let me down. Truly the only difference between this visit and my previous visits was that the manager visited our table three times to share his thoughts on the food and the restaurant. He told us that Il Moro's menu is based on the cuisine of the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, a region well-known for its food, and that his chef insists on spending eight hours to make their ragu. He pointed out that the restaurant is popular despite being tucked away, not having much signage and not being in an area that receives any pedestrian traffic. You can come to Il Moro just to have a drink at the bar, you can come for their wine tastings on Tuesdays, you can come for a business meeting (they have a private room), or you can enjoy their outdoor patio. Clearly he has tried to create a restaurant that fulfills multiple needs, and I think he has succeeded.


Carpaccio di Manzo e Insalatina, Carciofi Croccanti in Odore di Aceto Balsamico

I always let my servers pick my wines at Il Moro because they always do an excellent job. This time I had a sauvignon blanc from Luretta to go with the first few courses. The wine was pleasantly fruity, but not too sweet.

Our first treat was a house-made, Italian style pork sausage stew with braised onions and tomato sauce served atop soft, buttery polenta (lead photo). I'd never had anything like it, and the flavors melded together flawlessly. The rosemary garnish was interesting because it added an aroma to the dish which was not part of the flavor--a good choice, I thought, since rosemary can be overwhelming. This dish would fit right in at Cube.

I've only had carpaccio a couple of times, at Orris and Lucques, and I have to say, Il Moro's version is the best I've tasted. Their paper-thin slices of raw beef fillet are topped with organic baby lettuce, sultry oven-roasted tomatoes, lemon dressing, shaved Parmesan cheese, and drops of 10-year-old balsamic vinegar from Modena. Naturally, I licked the plate clean.


Cappelletti in Brodo di Cappone con Fegatini

"Aaack, I ate chicken liver?" was what I thought when I got home and looked at the menu. I paid no attention to the menu at the restaurant because I just wanted to eat whatever the chef sentout. These fresh, handmade quadretti, or tiny squares of pasta, were filled with chicken liver and served in a tasty capon broth. To me, the pasta mainly just tasted salty, but the broth had a richness and complexity that definitely wasn't Campbell's.


Tortelloni di zucca al ragu

This attractive pumpkin bowl (can you imagine having to carve and embowl all of those pumpkins? Yikes!) held homemade tortelloni filled with pumpkin, amaretto cookies, fruit mustard, and parmesan cheese, sauteed with Bolognese sauce and a touch of cinnamon.

Since Giada di Laurentis is always tossing ameretto cookies into her dishes, I was excited to try this dish, which is extremely popular at Il Moro and only available for about three months every year. The cookies were thoroughly blended with the filling and did not provide any sort of crunch (which wouldn't have worked in this dish) but I thought the amaretto flavor was overwhelming and made the pasta filling overly sweet. It really needed a lot of the Bolognese sauce to balance out the sweetness. The sauce was delicious, but I think I'm more of a butternut-squash-filling-without-amaretto-cookies kind of gal. I'm a supertaster, though, so I think a lot of things are too sweet that other people enjoy.


Ravioli di Manzo Brasato e Spinaci al Burro Fuso, Risotto alla Vecchia Modena, and Maccheroni al Pettine al Ragu di Coniglio

At this point in the meal, the server brought me a red wine: Le Pietre, from Aldeghieri. I really don't know if I was drinking expensive wines or moderately priced wines, but I was quite impressed with both of them and with how well they paired with the food. (If you ever question whether your wine is a good match for your entree, just save a few sips for the dessert course and notice how terrible your formerly delicious wine tastes with your dessert.)

For this course, I ate a few things that I normally would not have touched. The risotto consisted of carnaroli rice with porcini mushrooms, slowly cooked chicken gizzards and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. Chicken gizzards, you ask with disdain? Truthfully, I didn't notice them at all because the mushrooms were the dominant flavor in the dish, yet somehow the overall flavor reminded me of movie theater popcorn.

The maccheroni consisted of homemade, rolled-tube ridged egg pasta sauteed in a lean rabbit ragu with fresh vegetables, white wine, and a light tomato sauce. The maccheroni looked like penne from a distance, but upon closer inspection, you could see that the tiny lines in the pasta ran horizontally instead of vertically and that each piece of pasta looked like it had been rolled individually.

The ravioli filled with fresh spinach and braised beef in Barolo wine in a golden butter sauce was one of the best dishes of the evening. I couldn't take apart the spices I tasted in the filling, but they almost reminded me of Indian food. I'm not sure how large a regular serving is, but I doubt I could have eaten more than a few pieces of this incredibly rich pasta. As it was, I was already too full to finish even three pieces, delicious though they were. Still, I would definitely order this ravioli if I went back.


Costiccine d'Agnello alla Senape

By the time we received the grilled baby rack of New Zealand lamb brushed with herbs in a mustard sauce, I was probably too full to really enjoy any more food. The lamb had a texture more like beef (normally I think lamb has a slightly crumbly texture) and I wasn't that keen on the sauce, which I thought was too salty (but my guest loved it). The dish was served with perfectly cooked asparagus sauteed in butter and garlic. While all of the dishes were attractively presented, this presentation was the most show-stopping one of the evening.


Chocolate tarte brule with fresh strawberry sauce

Coming from someone who doesn't get that excited about chocolate, this dessert was spectacular. Carmelizing the top of this chocolate mousse-like cake with a flourless chocolate crust was truly an epiphany. The sensation of the fork breaking through the delicately crunchy top followed by the flawless smoothness of the other two layers was great foreplay for the sumptuous flavors to follow.

On my previous visits to Il Moro I sat on the patio, but this time I sat indoors to have a different experience, take advantage of the better lighting for my photos, and because it was rather chilly outside (their patio is heated, though). Even though the restaurant was fairly full, it was never too noisy and there was plenty of space between our table and the neighboring tables. The kitchen is open, so occasionally an errant food aroma that doesn't quite go with what you're eating will waft over. The chairs were exceptionally comfortable.

While Il Moro's menu is not your typical "safe" Italian menu of lasagne, pizza, and spaghetti that most of middle America is used to, it does have enough "normal" dishes for the average person. However, it also has many upscale or unusual dishes that you aren't likely to find at most Italian restaurants, even in a city as culinarily diverse as Los Angeles. The menu is not always easy to understand, but the servers are friendly and will be happy to explain any dish to you. Il Moro was and still is one of my favorite restaurants, and I highly recommend it.

Il Moro
11400 Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90064
310.575.3530
Il Moro Website (with menu)

Foodie Universe's previous Il Moro review

Restaurant Review #181: El Super Taco, West LA

Al pastor tacos

El Super Taco occupies the former Mama Voula's space on Santa Monica Blvd. at Brockton. Unfortunately, the peaceful pastel color scheme of the former restaurant doesn't really go with tacos, so the walls have been redone in red, orange, and purple. The restaurant is still small and quiet, with diners focused on the flatscreen TV showing futbol games in Spanish. The restaurant is notably clean and the salsa bar offers four salsas ranging from a mild, creamy green to a hotter than hot orange. Unfortunately, the basic red leaves something to be desired in terms of both smokiness and spiciness.

So does the food: the al pastor tacos were both the smallest and greasiest tacos I've ever eaten. If you want the standard raw white onion and cilantro topping for your tacos, make sure to pick it up at the salsa bar, because El Super Taco garnishes their tacos with a heap of sauteed onions. The meat was of average to below average quality.


Super burrito

The super burrito was fairly flavorless despite a plethora of ingredients: rice, beans, onions, cilantro, lettuce, tomato, cheese, sour cream, and meat. I ordered asada (marinated, roasted beef), and was pretty disappointed--the meat was scant, and most pieces were fatty or gristly. Yet for some reason, this place is Zagat rated.

The horchata was some of the best I've had, and the service was friendly and took care to get the order right. The food was ready fast, and how many Mexican places do you know of that deliver? Even though the food was subpar, I might eat here again if I had a Mexican craving and didn't want to leave the house. Maybe I'll have better luck with the chicken torta.

The menu is short: tacos, burritos, and tortas, with a chicken tamale and a quesadilla thrown in for good measure. Tacos are $1, tortas are $4-5, and burritos are $5-6. All offer a wide variety of meat options.

El Super Taco
11923 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
Map
310-312-6260 & 310-268-0610
Hours: 10:00am to Midnight daily
Delivery 10:00am to 9:00pm with $10 min.

Related Posts:
El Taco Llama (Van Nuys)
Tacos Por Favor (Santa Monica)
Taqueria Emanuel (Van Nuys)

Tags: Tacos Los Angeles Mexican Restaurant