Description
Like so many other restaurants on the Westside, the food at the wine bar Rustic Canyon owes less to the standard bistro playbook than it does to the kind of cooking that French guys don't consider cooking at all: basically a compendium of what happens to be on the farmers market A-list that week collated with artisanal cheeses, sustainable meats, and lovingly handcrafted pastas. As cynics might say, that's not cooking, that's shopping. On the other hand, it is also more or less the strategy followed by places like Lucques and Chez Panisse at the moment. And when executed by a chef as skilled as Rustic Canyon's Evan Funke, whose goat cheese tortellone with fresh mint, duck breast with cherries, and sliced sunchokes sautéed with garlic are so fine, it seems like the only possible way to eat - his roasted root vegetable shepherd's pie couldn't have been better if it were made with hare or blood sausage rather than roasted turnips and parsnips, and I don't think I have a higher compliment I can pay. Zoe Nathan is the hot young pastry chef in town at the moment, and when you taste her rustic tarts or hot doughnut spheres with stone-ground hot chocolate you will understand why.
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