Bottega Louie

• Cuisine(s): Italian
  Hours: Sun, Sat 8am-11pm, Mon-Fri 6:30am-11pm
  Price: $$
• Payment Types: All Major Credit Cards
  Features: Takeout
  Serving: Dinner, Lunch, Snack Food
• Alcohol: Full bar
  Reservations: Accepted
  Parking: Garage, Lot Available, Street, Valet, Validation Available

Description

It's hard not to be dumbstruck by Bottega Louie, a majestic food hall in a former Brooks Brothers flagship, a slab of urban renovation that suggests less downtown Los Angeles than Rodeo Drive. The enormous, double-height room, big enough to swallow a basketball arena, whitewashed and gleaming, has been restored to its early-century glory and staffed under what appears to be the guidelines of a USC sorority full-employment act. (Physically at least, it dwarfs both Balducci's and Dean & DeLuca in New York.) One corner of the premises is occupied by a market selling high-end cheeses and a tiny selection of the produce you might have forgotten to pick up at the farmers market. A long bakery counter sells breads and croissants and pastries to the breakfast crowd; a bar, with seating exceeding that of most gastropubs, sells snacks and sandwiches to go with the beer and cocktails. And at the rear of the space is a full restaurant, a dining room with the feel of a brasserie but a mostly American-Italian menu structured a bit like the one at Pizzeria Mozza: lots of small dishes, like stuffed artichokes, fried calamari, clams oreganata, and a dish of mushy peas with prosciutto that could have come out of the kitchen of any trattoria in Rome; crisp-edged Neapolitan-style pizzas from the big wood-burning oven in the corner, and old-fashioned things like eggplant parmesan, sliced steak and seasonal black cod roasted in parchment. The cooking was a bit wobbly in the restaurant's early days, but I suspect the kitchen will find its groove: The chef is Sam Marvin, a Patina alum whose Melrose restaurant Modada was one of the most interesting openings of the mid-1990s in Los Angeles, and who guided the last few years of Le Dôme. Bottega Louie is the grand restaurant downtown deserves. See full review.