The Other Critics

Gold Digs Bloody Clams and Waterloo & City; Kuh Confounded By District

Waterloo chef Brendan Collins
Waterloo chef Brendan Collins Photo: Waterloo & City

Jonathan Gold extols the virtues of “bloody clams” at La Cevicheria, a “sleepy place in the afternoon,” that will probably not get the chance to siesta today once the story gets devoured by all of those “Gold-inspired fanboys.” If you haven’t had Guatemalan ceviche, you might be missing “the best single seafood dish in midtown.” [L.A. Weekly]

Patrick Kuh can’t find cohesion at District, which he feels “might work better if there were a unifying approach to connect the dishes” and where “the menu is simply echoing trends.” Despite praise for a few dishes, he thinks “District exists in vagueness, an imperfect restaurant in a perfect shell.” [Los Angeles]

WP24, Wolfgang Puck’s “love letter to Asian cuisine,” is proof “that L.A.’s first superstar chef still has some juice,” S. Irene Virbila writes. She looooves the view and fills up on sometimes “astonishing” high-end dumplings, that divine square of suckling pig, and a tea-smoked quail, among an avalanche of dishes. Desserts are “out of sync” with the cuisine, while it’s astonishing that she doesn’t gripe about having to hear No Doubt and Another Brick in the Wall while eating, like we did. [L.A. Times]

Rivaling Red O on the red-hotness scale, Waterloo & City is “what Suzanne Goin’s Tavern is to Brentwood: the right restaurant in the right neighborhood at the right time,” writes Jonathan Gold, finding Brendan Collins’ beef shank “beautiful” and charcuterie “virtuosic.” The restaurant is “just what Culver City needed.” [L.A. Weekly]

You won’t find beef Wellington here, or anywhere else, reports Mr. Gold, but those British eats that the Marmite massive craves can be found at Atwater’s Tam O’Shanter, “a Disney version of a Scottish inn that in fact started its life as a drive-in restaurant.” [L.A. Weekly]

“If Sir Winston’s on the Queen Mary is the essence of old-style dining, then AVIA Kitchen is modernity incarnate,” writes Merrill Shindler, who finds it filling the void left by Suzanne Tracht’s departure from LBC. [Daily Breeze]

Gold Digs Bloody Clams and Waterloo & City; Kuh Confounded By District