Upscale STREET Food

Although STREET wasn't on my hit list of must-try restaurants, it recently piqued my interest when I read Jonathon Gold's upbeat LAWeekly review of this hip West Hollywood restaurant. Described as an upscale take on international street food, STREET restaurant is the creation of Susan Feniger, who is part owner of the highly successful Border Grill in Santa Monica and in Las Vegas. Feniger also starred in a PBS cooking show, "Too Hot Tamales", during the mid-90s alongside her friend and chef Mary Sue, who is the other part-owner of the aforementioned Border Grill. The two of them have been cooking together for over two decades and continue to run Border Grill and also Ciudad in downtown Los Angeles, and more recently have opened a food truck serving Border Grill fare in the streets of Los Angeles. As you can see, STREET has some serious culinary firepower behind it and thus my expectations were quite high.

I made a reservation for last Friday night, and despite the heavy post-work traffic along Olympic boulevard, we arrived well on time and actually scored the best possible parking spot one could obtain while dining at STREET: directly in front of the restaurant with no meters or parking restrictions. (Yes the parking gods have been very good to us lately!) We step through the doors and the hostess leads us to our table within the enclosed dining room. Fonda ponders sitting outside under a heat lamp--as it was somewhat cold inside for her--and asks the hostess if we could move to the patio table with a heat lamp. At first Fonda is told the patio is "full" and I could sense disappointment in her, so I gave the hostess a little extra and kind nudging and minutes later we're led to a wonderful two-top directly under a heat lamp, secluded behind a palm tree. Yes, ask nicely, and good things will come to you.

The patio is quite scenic with its bright red walls, central fire pit, and manicured palm trees. It's also dimly lit; in fact most of the light came from the fire pit and from the tea lights on each table. Romantic indeed. I saw several tables with small flashlights to help illuminate the menus.

We start with our drinks orders and of course you probably already know that I ordered a Manhattan:


This one's made with Sazerac rye, and overall it's a a good drink, but needed a bit more rye to make it memorable (read: stronger). I actually enjoyed a tastier and much more potent Manhattan--with Knob Creek--the night before at an Irish bar in Santa Monica; it was also half the price! Fonda orders a glass of Pinot Noir, which was served in a small glass jug for pouring. Nice touch.

Our food arrives and first up is a plate of Chinese sesame cakes with house-made red bean paste:


Warm, soft cake with toasted sesame surrounds a very fragrant red bean paste; the combined flavor is excellent with wonderful texture and freshness.

Mung bean pancake with glazed pork belly and hot mustard sauce:


This is chef Feniger's take on a traditional Korean dish and she pulls it off very nicely. The dough is lightly fried and the pork belly is perfectly cooked and seasoned. A bit tough to cut for sharing, so of course I let Fonda have at it with her precision knife skills. Without the mustard sauce this pancake might have been somewhat lackluster, but instead the flavors and textures are heightened by the mildy-intense sauce.

Another dish arrives, Kaya toast with coconut jam, served alongside a fried egg with soy sauce drizzled over it:


An authentic Singaporean treat, the Kaya toast resembles something that I'd probably eat for breakfast, but here I am eating this at around 8pm on a Friday night in West Hollywood, under a heat lamp. The toast with jam is delicious as is, but with a drenching in the egg yolk and soy sauce, the toast becomes a mouthful of sweet and savory flavors. It's delicious and something you should definitely order if you ever visit STREET. I can see myself making this at home as a brunch item; the preparation and ingredients are relatively simple, yet the taste and textures are so satisfying.

Here we have the Singapore Chile crab and shrimp, with a chile and ketchup sauce:


It's served with thick slices of toasted bread, baby corn, baby shelled coconuts, sausage, and Okinawa sweet potatoes. This is actually the only item we ordered from the entree menu as the rest of night's dishes were appetizers; I'll point out that ordering mostly from a restaurant's appetizer selection helps keep the cost in check and yet affords you with trying more tastes. With this entree, the shrimp and crab were fresh and perfectly cooked. The sweet and spicy sauce was intense and had a nice consistency that paired equally well with the veggies and with the toasted bread. The added sausage was a nice touch, and with the sauce it made for an interesting sausage-shrimp jambalaya effect.

Along with the Chile crab came the New Jerusalem Bread Salad with Jerusalem artichokes, Persian cucumber, tomatoes, feta, and chunks of cumin-toasted olive bread:


Fonda took a few bites and made it clear that she was no fan of this bread salad, leaving the rest for me to enjoy, and enjoy I did. There's a fair amount of textures happening in this dish and somehow they all play nicely together. The olive bread went well with the strong flavors of the artichokes and feta. My only complaint was with the dressing--it was simply too pungent and overpowered some of the freshness of the greens and vegetables.

Our last savory dish arrives and it's a small plate of Vietnamese corn with bits of glazed pork belly:


It was only $6 so I wasn't expecting a substantial amount of pork belly. The corn was fresh and nicely cooked with some charred areas, however, the bits of pork belly were minuscule both in size and in portion and ultimately became lost in a sea of yellow corn. We didn't finish this because we were saving room for the next course, a dessert offering of espresso jelly and chocolate ganache:


The ganache was wonderful and came topped with halva cream; the jelly however was a letdown as it was practically flavorless and much harder than a typical jelly should be. One or two bites of this was all it took for me to mark "Fail" on the scorecard for this dessert. I had also ordered the Turkish donuts but they never made an appearance, either on our table or on the bill.

Total price for our STREET dinner was about $110 before tip and I felt like this was fair price given the quality of food and the level of service provided. Our dishes arrived quickly after each order was placed, and our waiter checked on us from time to time, yet was never intrusive. We enjoyed sitting in the heated patio away from the bustling scene in the main dining room, despite the fact that we had to hold the candles near the menus to see any text. All in all, I'm glad to have tried STREET and I recommend you try it if you're in the area, if only for the Kaya toast and the Chile crab.








STREET
742 N. Highland Ave.
Hollywood CA