Recently, my wife and I were invited to the restaurant Rivera in downtown L.A. for a good friend's birthday. Frankly, I had never heard of it, but that's not really unusual. We're not exactly foodies, concentrating our activities mainly on paying for things like groceries and braces. Anyway, we don't get to eat out as much as we used to and rarely at dimly lit restaurants that tout Modern Latin Cuisine in Los Angeles (unless you count that Taco Bell I recently went to that had the power outage.)
Honestly, I generally don't go to restaurants that have a Philosophy. Now, don't confuse Philosophy with attitude, even though I've found that if a restaurant has a Philosophy link on its website, it generally follows that attitude might just tag along for the culinary ride. And considering that it's situated in the newly tony South Park section of Downtown L.A., I was doubly wary.
So, with a bit of trepidation, I took the metro and walked down the few blocks it took to get to Rivera, remembering the good old days when the tumbleweeds rolled by in this section of town at night and you generally ran, not walked to your destination and the only Modern Latin Cuisine around was found on a roach coach.
When I walked in, it was no surprise that it was:
A: Dimly lit.
B: Was filled with many people. At least I think it was. It was kind of hard to see.
C: Had a spectacular interior and lighting scheme that obviously had been designed by a person with macular degeneration.
Generally, it looked like a a pretty classy joint. I immediately felt a bit uncomfortable. Now, this is not entirely the fault of the restaurant. You are talking to a guy, who in his THIRTIES, went to a fine rooftop restaurant in downtown L.A. where they brought me sorbet to cleanse my palette before the next course and I promptly told the waiter that I hadn't ordered any ice cream, thank you and he could take it back NOW.
I had never actually seen a waiter shiver like that before.
Anyway, our party was seated in the Sangre Dining Room which was small and comfortable and surrounded by, what looked like backlit golden glass bricks filled with liquid. One of our party, of course, asked what that was all about. Turns out, we were surrounded by bottles of tequila. But, not just any tequila, it was tequila that had been distilled from an agave farm personally hand-picked by the chef down in Mexico, who bought it to make his own exclusive brand of tequila. So, how much per shot? Oh, no, you don't get to touch this stuff on the wall unless you are a member of their exclusive Signature Tequila Club, where you get a lock and key for your two bottles of tequila and can come in and unlock it when you choose.
Now, I don't want to judge. I'm guessing that to some joining the Signature Tequila Club and getting two bottles for a mere $2,500 is a bargain, but I keep thinking that for that amount I could buy 1,250 bottles of Two Buck Chuck and stay pretty wasted for close to three years (okay, maybe six months). When you break it down, it's only $1,250 per bottle, which is only three times as much as I paid for my first car. But, I mean seriously, for that kind of dough I had better be conversing with a naked Che Guevara riding a unicorn after a couple shots. Hell, I'd better be naked and doing Che Guevara on a unicorn after a couple of shots of tequila that precious.
Anyway, I ordered a beer.
Also, what I really liked as we pored through the various treats was that you could call a phone number on the bottom of the menu, where you could get an explanation from the head chef, John Rivera Sedlar as to what your appetizer or entree was all about. After actually calling, we were frankly disappointed that it was a recording and didn't connect directly with the chef, who we pictured sweatily working in the kitchen and yelling at line chefs while being interrupted by constant phone calls inquiring about the caracoles (No, you fool. Snails do NOT taste like chicken!)
Overall, the appetizers were tasty and small, but I kind of got the hint after learning about the tequila that we weren't in The Cheesecake Factory anymore, Toto. So, alas, there were to be no giant onion blossoms tonight.
The entrees, once again were tasty and small. However, before we dug into them, the waiter had to go around and explain to each and every one of us exactly what the origin of our dish was and how it was made (I'm assuming that they have little faith that anybody actually bothers to call the dial-a-chef number at the bottom of the menu.) They had also stenciled sayings on our plates using ground cumin. I wish I could tell you what my saying was, but between trying to process that and the extended dissertation of my entree, my brain had turned to gazpacho blanco and all memory of that five minutes has been wiped as clean as Jason Bourne starring in Memento.
I had the pollo breast, which had obviously been hand-picked by the chef from a farm in Mexico that specializes in tasty, moist, midget chickens. My wife had a dish with duck in it that she claimed was delicious. I could not verify said claim because she finished it before I could rudely snatch any of it off of her plate.
Overall, things had gone fairly well, but as the evening wore on, the waiters seemed to lose interest in us and the service started to become a bit spotty. They were especially annoyed because we had the audacity to bring our own cake and have them put a candle in it and then cut it afterwards. They disappeared for ever longer periods of time, most likely spitting on our cake and cutting it with tetanus-laden, rusty knives. It also probably didn't help that they had automatically included a 20% tip (for a party of seven, mind you), so they really didn't have much incentive to give a flying conquistador whether we were happy or not.
I don't know how much the meal came to, because the wife of the birthday boy paid for the entire dinner, for which I am eternally grateful and will thank her until the end of time. I'm pretty sure it came to more than fifty bucks.
Overall, Rivera was pretty much what I expected. Beautiful interior, pricey food, small portions and $1,250 bottles of tequila.
And not one unicorn in sight.
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