Factory kitchen

Los Angeles, November 24, 2013— 

One last restaurant down here before we head back north tomorrow. We'd seen two plays, and the second — a reading, actually, not a fully produced play — was called Alimento: a History of Food. Five actors and a clarinetist read, dramatically, a script culled from Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat's book A history of food (1992), a book I can't imagine why we do not own and I have not read. We'd had no lunch — it had been a complicated day, with breakfast in a good bakery across town, and then a trip to the Hollywood Farmer's Market — and by the end of the second play, nearly nine o'clock, we were ready to eat.

We'd booked at a new-to-us restaurant in the trendy factory district downtown, and there we split a nice salad involving fennel, frisée, arugula, and parsley, with thin slices of what struck me as Cara Cala oranges, and Taggia olives, and a lemon vinaigrette flavored with chili flakes. I then went on to the "porchetta" you see above: but a typical Italian porchetta it was not, though the fragrance was reminiscent of Roman roast pork at its best. 

Instead, this was — as the menu made clear — a slice of rolled-up pork belly, roasted with garlic and lots of thyme, and served with glazed red onion, carrot, fennel,, and celery. It was fragrant and delicious and extremely fat, and I loved it. With it I had ordered a plate of glazed cipolline which came in agrodolce, a sweet-sour thickened sauce any Chinese restaurant would envy. (Come to think of it, I bet this is a dish Marco Polo brought back from Cathay, along with the famous spaghetti.)

Dessert: panna cotta, with a streusel-like topping of caramelized very thin almond slices. All in all, a very pleasant place, not too lond (but of course it was late on a Sunday night), with interesting menu items and a fine wine list.

Arneis, Pio Cesare (Piemonte), 2012; Maggiorina, Le Piane (Piemonte), 2011

• The Factory Kitchen, 1300 Factory Place, Los Angeles; (213) 996-6000