Description
Try the “polenta board,” chef Lauren “Lulu” De Rouen’s signature dish. The rustic presentation of the cornmeal mush—creamy and faintly sweet but bland if you eat it without the shredded meat gravy—is kind of a revelation, an idea so rudimentarily perfect in what it communicates you'll wish every Italian restaurant did it. But then CUCINA enoteca is an Italian restaurant unlike any OC has ever seen. Owner Tracy Borkum has a theater background and three other restaurants in San Diego with the same kind of shabby-chic aesthetic as this place, her first venture north. Everything inside feels as though it’s a patchwork quilt of found items, bought on a whim, cobbled together from disparate places but converging to make sense of the nonsensical. There are wooden shoe molds that dangle from strings, a hallway papered with vintage Italian movie posters and discovered-from-the-flea-market pieces that fly against the beigeness of its landlord, the Irvine Co. Nearly everything you see is for sale. The woven metal seats can be yours for $425. Even the polenta boards can be bought for $15.
