Campanile, Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton's Seminal Local and Seasonal Modern American at 624 S. La Brea Ave in Hancock Park - Closed

[Tweaked]

Campanile [Closed Nov 30, 2012] in LA cooks with fresh local ingredients without too much fuss - allowing the individual components to shine. Last night's dinner consisted of a frisee salad with crispy duck confit, pancetta, walnuts and saba, an entree of an incredibly tender niman ranch flat iron steak with wild mushroom-potato gratin and roasted shallots, and a dessert of almond and brown butter cake with armagnac prunes and crème fráiche - truly one of the best desserts I've had in the past year. One complaint however is that the wine prices seemed a bit steep - even by the glass, but I'm no expert on wine pricing.

Spent the weekend in LA with the gf's family for her sister's graduation and went to Campanile [Closed Nov 30, 2012] for graduation dinner.

Lovely space, the front of the restaurant is a glass enclosed courtyard...the second half of the courtyard area overlooks the kitchen pass through so you can peek into the kitchen. Vibe is casual elegent.

Food was solid to good. Started with a softshell crab which was good could have used a little acid to cut through the richness of the crab. Next had halibut over frisee with pancetta and fingerling potatoes, perfect cooked fish and overall a good dish. we shared three desserts, the dark chocolate semifreddo, banana cheesecake, and strawberry cobbler, again all were solid.

the style of cooking reminded me of Corduroy, but frankly the food at Corduroy is much better.

Overall a good meal, but wasn't blown away. A good restaurant to take a group that includes non-foodie types, will please a wide range of palettes and tastes...ie: when you have a large group of people going out for a graduation dinner!

[zoramargolis]

Coincidentally, we spent the weekend in LA for a graduation, and had brunch at Campanile [Closed Nov 30, 2012], which has become our traditional LA brunch spot. Their eggs benedict are really good -- the eggs taste really fresh and flavorful all by themselves. They use really good applewood smoked bacon instead of ham, and very thick english muffins. All of the baked items are delicious, since I believe they come from the original La Brea Bakery [Chain sold to Aryzta in 2001] next door. The space is lovely during the day, because the restaurant is set in the glass-covered courtyard of what was once Charlie Chaplin's home.

Actually that building was Charlie Chaplin's studio, not his home. Long before Campanile was there, it had been turned into an office building. When I was going to John Burroughs Junior High School, not far from there, my best friend's father's office was in that building. She and I would go there after school twice a week so that her dad could drive us to Hebrew school. It was a cool space to explore. The courtyard was open in those days.