Netflix opens Bites, its restaurant in Los Angeles – 7/4/2023 – Tourism

There’s no dramatic dry ice strewn across the floor here, as in the Iron Chef reality set, nor mysterious menus in the form of poems, as in Dominique Crenn’s episode of Chef’s Table. The judges disappeared, the waiters appeared.

I’m not in my pajamas in front of the TV, I’m sitting at an outdoor table tasting Crenn’s roasted cabbage with smoked cream. I smell Rodney Scott’s roast pork (from Chef’s Table: BBQ) and wait for my LP O’Brien-created cocktail (from Drink Masters).

Bites is Netflix’s first restaurant, which opened on Friday (30) in a Los Angeles hotel.

The menu brings together creations by eight chefs from the streaming platform’s programs, such as the French Crenn, the only woman in the US with three Michelin stars thanks to her Atelier Crenn, in San Francisco. Others are barbecue master Rodney Scott, pastry chef Nadiya Hussain and pizza maker Ann Kim.

The chefs left their recipes in charge of a team led by Australian Curtis Stone, star of Iron Chef, owner of two restaurants in Los Angeles and two Michelin stars. He said that arriving at a cohesive menu, as each chef has a different style of cuisine, was one of the challenges of the new restaurant, but not the only one.

“Getting information from the chefs, when they want to control everything, was another tricky part”, says Stone to the report. “But we got over that problem and everyone came here to try their dishes and were happy with what we’re doing. It was kind of liberating.”

“Now we just need to figure out how to do that for 300 guests a night,” he continued, laughing.

Outside the restaurant, striking Hollywood screenwriters passed out angry flyers against Netflix. Inside, the atmosphere was sunny, protected by umbrellas and decorated with paintings of the chefs portrayed.

In a way, sitting there waiting for food, I feel like a guest judge on a TV show. And in my imaginary Iron Chef, Crenn would lose points with his main course, cabbage accompanied by sauerkraut with mustard pickle seeds.

But maybe it was naive to think that Michelin stars would turn a bland vegetable into a dish worthy of R$ 140 (US$ 29).

I also order wood-fired rack of lamb with yogurt sauce, signed by Stone himself. The meat is perfect and melts in your mouth. Stone would earn all my points.

His main course, and the most expensive item on the menu at R$311 (US$65), is a crab curry with caviar lime, prepared in the final episode of Iron Chef: In Search of a Legend. The judges drooled.

Stone says that he discovered lemon caviar with an Australian aboriginal (the fruit has an elongated shape and flavored balls that look like caviar). “A lot of people asked me about this dish after the show, but it doesn’t have much to do with my restaurants. So I thought it would go down really well here,” she explained.

He says he’s done what he can to bring to Los Angeles what he calls the “authentic taste” of select chefs, including transporting one of Rodney Scott’s massive grills, famous for his whole-hog barbecues.

Stone sent an employee to Charleston, South Carolina, to learn Scott’s techniques and drive back with the equipment, some 4,000 km away. The space for the barbecue takes up two parking spaces at the Los Angeles hotel.

With Ann Kim’s pizzas (from Chef’s Table: Pizza), the team also had a little extra help. An American who was born in Korea, she owns four pizzerias in Minneapolis, where she mixes ingredients from her homeland. The chef came to Los Angeles to teach the Bites team how to make her pasta and left a batch of kimchi and pickles ready to start work.

Its most popular pizza, the Lady Zaza, features kimchi, tomato sauce and pork. Interestingly, the mixture is pleasing, perhaps because the strong kimchi flavor almost disappears when it comes out of the oven. The first bite is kind of sweet, and the bits of pork really stand out.

Follow it all with the cocktail Everything But the Cat Alley, by mixologist LP O’Brien, winner of the Drink Masters program. I don’t miss the rum in the drink, which is more like a delicious milky coconut smoothie. The drink comes with a bag attached to the edge of the glass by a clip, with a fried banana inside. It’s the perfect late-afternoon snack.

When it comes to dessert, I try to avoid another mistake like the cabbage one. The menu features a version of the Mandou Bem program, in which French chef Jacques Torres challenges amateurs to recreate famous cakes. Here at Bites, the waiter brings the ingredients (white chocolate mousse, cotton candy, passion fruit candy), and the customer assembles the dish: a little cigar straw.

I avoid this option, aware of my lack of culinary talents, and choose the other program, that is, the other chef on the dessert menu, the British Nadiya Hussain. Its honey cake with very thin layers and lightly salted hazelnuts is another high point of the meal.

I’ve never seen your Netflix shows, Nadiya Bakes and Nadiya’s Time to Eat, but I will as soon as I’m back in my pajamas, on the couch in front of the TV. Before that comes the somewhat nostalgic account, inside a red envelope from the old Netflix, when the company sent DVDs in the mail.

Bites is a temporary restaurant, although the closing date has not been disclosed. Reservations are fully booked until September, but it is possible to try a live table.