We started out with the Charred octopus, lima beans, pistou, and bitter greens. The octopus was cooked nicely (not too chewy) and they gave you good size pieces in there so you could really taste the octopus. The pistou was delicious and added great garlic flavors to the dish. (Pistou is similar to a pesto but without the nuts.) It was a nice first dish because it was cold and surprisingly refreshing even though it had octopus in it.
Next we had the Heirloom tomatoes, stone fruit, pistachio, red onion, and celery blossom. This was a beautiful dish with all of the bright colors from the fruits, but it wasn't a standout because it was kind of one dimensional. It almost felt like a palette cleanser to lead us into the next dish.
Then we had the Shrimp & rabbit sausage spring roll, water spinach, and green curry which was very tasty. The sausage was clearly house made and the spring roll was fried perfectly. They were cute little mini spring rolls and they were sitting in two delicious sauces. One was the green curry sauce which was excellent and there was also an orange sauce on the plate as well that they didn't identify but that went very well with the dish. It almost looked like a duck sauce, although I'm going to guess it wasn't duck sauce from a bottle and instead one of their own concoctions. Credit goes to Mark on choosing this one.
Then there was the Kampachi tostada, herbs, fish sauce vinaigrette, and peanuts. What's interesting about this dish is that during my previous trips here I've had this same dish but it was originally made with Hamachi, a yellowtail fish, but I was curious as to why they decided to switch to Kampachi. I looked around online and found an interesting description of Kampachi that said,
"It's not genetically engineered in any way, just well bred. It's sashimi-grade and sustainably farmed without hormones or prophylactic antibiotics. It's richer in omega-3 than just about anything else in the ocean and has no detectable mercury. It melts on your tongue, holds up on the grill, and is so rich in oils that it'll fry in a pan without butter" ("Kona").
Okay, I'll stop nerding out over their fish choice because it still doesn't get me any closer to figure out why they chose to switch. So overall the dish was still so similar you couldn't tell a difference and we still thoroughly enjoyed it as it is always a favorite. Fish sauce vinaigrette probably doesn't sound that appealing to a lot of people, but it essentially just makes for a nice salty dressing to balance out the tostada portion and the smooth, clean flavor of the sashimi-grade fish.
Chase gets props for picking this next dish because it was definitely a winner for many reasons. It was the Duck breast, charred cabbage, liptauer, and mustard. First off, I have to admit I had no idea what liptauer was, so we Googled it and found out that it's a spicy cheese spread made with sheep's milk. It looked like pimento cheese in the pictures that we, but their version was a little thinner and the mustard kind of masked the cheese flavor for the most part. Nonetheless, they cut up the duck breast into bite size pieces, it was perfectly pink, and the fat was rendered to just the right consistency. It paired very well with the charred cabbage, which tasted more like melted cabbage it had such a great texture, and all came together beautifully. It was one of my favorite dishes of the night.
Another favorite came next, the Poutine, oxtail gravy, and cheddar. Poutine is traditional Canadian dish made from French fries topped with a brown gravy and cheese curds. Their version at Animal was surprisingly true to form but definitely elevated because the fries were cooked well, they used a high quality cheddar, and the oxtail gravy was so rich and creamy I wanted a whole other bowl of it to eat on its own. This would be excellent late night food.
Then came the bone marrow!!! Bone marrow, chimichurri, and caramelized onions to be exact and it was phenomenal as usual. It comes with two perfectly toasted pieces of Texas style toast and a spoon to scoop out every bit of marrow. Chimichurri is made with chopped parsley, other herbs, garlic, olive oil, and some kind of vinegar. The vinegar is key here because the acidity helps to cut the fattiness of the marrow and the toast rounds out the dish nicely. It was a great dish to split five ways because all you need is one perfect bite of it.
Our next to last dish was Mexican street corn, epazote, serrano, and parmesan. Epazote is a Mexican herb that I'm guessing was in the sauce because that sauce was amazing. It was similar to the spicy orange sauce you get on sushi sometimes and it was delicious. The corn was really sweet and tender so it was a nice twist to have a spicy sauce topped with thin slices of serrano peppers and then sprinkled with parmesan as well to play on the sweet and spicy flavors.
Last but certainly not least... the Barbeque pork belly sandwiches with slaw. They are out-of-this-world good and I want to bath in their bbq sauce. Pork belly has been the craze for a while now and I think some restaurants are taking that fact for granted by slapping some sub-par, chewy pork belly on any sandwich on the menu and people just buy it because it has pork belly in the name. Well Jon and Vinny definitely don't fall into that category because their pork belly is dynamite and I find myself craving it frequently. They also use a delicious brioche-type bun that they of course toast perfectly.
I don't know if they have one guy back there responsible for only toasting things perfectly, but if they do then he deserves a raise because he does a great job controlling that aspect of every dish with a toasted component on it and my hat goes off to him. Then let's not forget the slaw which tastes like a Southern grandma made it it's so perfect and the three simple yet complex components come together in creating my absolute favorite dish on the menu. So needless to say we got two orders of these.
After all this food we should have stopped there, but we couldn't resist trying two of the three desserts.
The first dessert was their famous Tres Leches cake with dulce de leche. It's been on the menu every time I've been here and it's what most people rave about when it comes to their dessert. The cake is a great spongy consistency and actually pretty cold which I didn't think I'd like but it's so delicious and the icing is light and fluffy and the perfect topping.
The second dessert was a Bacon chocolate crunch bar with salt & pepper ice cream. I'm a sucker for anything salty and sweet combined, especially when those two things happen to be bacon and chocolate. It doesn't get much better to me than that. The salt & pepper ice cream is definitely a head scratcher on its own, but I really like it with the crunch bar. Both desserts were a nice end to an epic meal.
The food was phenomenal and there's nothing like catching up with old friends; my idea of the perfect kind of night.
While Animal is meat-centric, they have a sister restaurant called Son of a Gun that's seafood-centric and I'm looking forward to my first visit there this Saturday! Family and friends back home in NC ask me all the time what my favorite thing about living in LA is and the first thing that comes to mind is the food. I've never lived in a city where there are so many dining options and I've loved being able to experience so many already, but I look forward to how many I have left to explore!
