Palate Food + Wine

This little restaurant/wine bar is smack dab in the middle of a row of car dealerships. You drive down the street and wonder, there's a restaurant, here? And then there it is. The chef, Octavio Becerra (that's his arm, to the right), has the coolest tattoo-it's a knife, full size! We were a group of six, and one of the party knew the chef. The wait service was excellent. Our server was clearly a foodie. It's a nice thing to find in LA. We started with a plate of cured meats and little pickled things. I skipped the pickled things (yuck) but the cured meats were nice. The restaurant makes their own butter and cures some of the meat in-house. For main courses, our server suggested we could order up a bunch of stuff and share, so that's what we did. The menu features seasonal produce and so changes pretty frequently, to match the available veggies. We had a spring pea soup which was amazingly good. A ravioli dish was very tasty. Main courses were a duck, pork belly, beef cheeks and scallops. Everything was exceptionally well done. The pork belly wasn't quite as good as some I've had but the duck was perfectly done. To finish, we had a cheese plate with a nice variety. My favourite was a triple creme brie like cheese. Wines were suggested to go with all of this, starting with a nice Prosecco, proceeding to a wonderfully smooth white Burgundy and finishing with a mellow red Burgundy. This was a terrific way to share good food and drink, and leave feeling completely satisfied yet not overly stuffed or drunk.