Is Animal the most influential restaurant in Los Angeles?

I was driven to Animal, the much-acclaimed Hollywood restaurant, for a few different reasons. The most compelling reason, for me in particular, had been an interview I had recently read with the restaurants two chefs, the self-proclaimed “Two Dudes” Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo. When asked to name their two favorite ingredients, both responded “Salt” and “Fois Gras” respectively, without hesitation or qualification. For anyone that knows my very particular food tastes, this was a dream, bordering on romantic, match for me. It was as if I had just asked a blind date what her two greatest interests were, and she had just gleefully responded “The New York Jets and Woody Allen films.”

Still, beyond my basic and enduring interest in finding a good meal, I went to Animal to find out if it lived up to the grand proclamation made by Food critic Jonathon Gold, the Godfather of Los Angeles food, who had boldly named Animal “the most influential restaurant in all of Los Angeles.” Ultimately, I found this type of grand gesture, which I originally considered another example of a critic over-using hyperbole, as in fact, being something of an understatement. Animal as a concept, the food and the emphasis, transcends just Los Angeles, and is a statement about American food culture as a whole. If you are looking for the future of American cuisine, one need not look farther than this small, unmarked restaurant on Fairfax.

Shook and Dotolo have created something of a fusion, a middle ground of bold flavors and sloppy presentation that works at an almost artistic level. Along with their closest contemporary, David Chang and his Momofuku dynasty on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, they seem to relish their place in between intricate preperation and the simplicity of their ingredients, using a modest, guerrilla budget and approach to cooking, to test lines, going back and forth between the two.  Ultimately, they have found a way to combine the two greatest European gastronomical movements of the past twenty years, Fergus Henderson’s “Nose to Tail” style, peasant cuts of meat, reinvented simply but flavorfully at his St. John restaurant in a bare warehouse of London, together with Ferran Adria’s philosophy of molecular gastronomy, using science to intricately combine numerous ingredients and flavors in a way that works, but just barely. They are able to make this unlikely marriage work by dousing it in pure Americana, filtering both through the “little boy” junk and fast food that has an unquestioned place in the legacy of American cuisine post- World War II. At Animal, bar food and fast food, the pastime of Los Angeles cuisine, such as Buffalo wings and sliders are refined using ingredients like pigtails and pork belly. It is a strange and complex reinterpretation of our simplest and most classic dishes. As they say themselves: “we are not reinventing the wheel, just offering our interpretation.”

It bears mentioning that both the Animal guys, as well as Chang, fancy themselves to be something of the punk rockers in the food world, and their restaurants play into that image. The décor at Animal is almost non-existent, the walls barren and white, and the menu, which claims to change every day but as a dining companion told me rarely does, is printed on a measly sheet of printer paper. The requisite rock-n-roll plays aloud on repeat, intending seemingly to provide a statement rather than a comfortable dining experience. They represent a whole new generation of modern chefs, wearing jeans and a tee shirt rather than a white coat, with much of their fame derived from television appearances, a new standard of publicity for any new age restaurateur. Even their cookbook, “Two Dudes, One Pan,” is emblematic of their existence as the poster boys for post-modern new media, a subtle reference to the famed, and excessively crude, viral video.

Just as their fame and style is a product of the new media “food punk” culture, their food is as well. Their style of cooking is respective of tradition, but also reminds us that they come from the generation of kids whose eyes were glued to their television and “Game Boy” rather than reading or eating vegetables. Their unquestioned food ADD both helps and hurts them. They say Animal, despite its success and innovativeness, is merely “25%” what they actually want to do. Likewise, their food combines a lot of ingredients, and sometimes can feel sloppy and “unfocused,” as one (older*) reviewer for the Los Angeles Times once lamented. In multiple interviews, they seemingly long for a larger array of advanced tools and instruments in their kitchen that would allow them to veer even farther and farther off the beaten path, a goal that may ultimately be dangerous. It is no coincidence, then, that the two chefs met when they were the only two students who couldn’t control their laughter at a lecture on the “rules of culinary school.”

Still, during my meal there, I experienced in full effect their commitment to taking things that are challenging, and make them accessible. They literally smother their version Fois Gras, a staple of haute French cuisine, in elements of the most basic American breakfast, biscuits and sausage gravy. While they lack the tools to go all out in the style of Adria and his scientific cooking, their goal is clearly to aim towards anything strange and surprising, the creating flavors and textures from unusual ingredients that cannot be done in a common kitchen. Their style indicates an utter resentment for the Julia Child movement toward cooking styles made easy at home. Not every home kitchen can make a chicken liver mousse, and I am almost certain that fewer can concoct bacon chocolate bars. They realize that they could make a stellar and successful burger, yet they choose not too because following an easy trend would guilt them.

In my opinion, this is the future of an American food scene that at the moment is quite splintered. On one side, there are the smaller restaurants, with minimal, simple ingredients, emphasizing local produce, a product of the post-boom world and a response to the excessive mega restaurants that came to symbolize the excess of the early 2000s (any enormous pan-Asian restaurant, with multiple versions of tuna tartar on their menu, serves as an easy example). On the other, there are the high-end restaurants, using techniques we only get to see on Top Chef or Iron Chef, that charge a fortune for their incredibly varied and detailed yet distant approach to food (Grant Achatz Alinea restaurant in Chicago, considered by many as the best in the country, serves as a prime example of this) that have a devoted following but simply do not feel practical to the average, non-foodie consumer. Animal, while probably closer to the Alinea model, draws influence from both, as well as the techniques of Europe, and creates a food that is comfortable to eat while intellectually challenging to figure out or replicate. Shook and Dotolo then might be considered the Scorsese or Tarantino of food, film directors who both led independent revolutions in their own artistic mediums: using smaller budgets and a Hollywood distribution system to filter through styles from Europe or Hong Kong using a uniquely American lens. Animal is nothing short of the quintessential post-modern restaurant going forward. One can conclude, then, that it is certainly not the last restaurant of its kind.