Well DineLA's best dumplings list equated The Church Key's Pierogies with the likes of Shanghai Dumpling House and Wang Xing Ji, and like an idiot I believed them. I was suspicious of anything on Sunset Blvd, but at least I wanted to believe that they would be anything other than these dry, hard, pockets of mealy potato with barely-there Gouda drowning in copious globs of apricot mucus.
The Church Key is named after a bottle opener, and you better be prepared to use it. The secret is to empty as many bottles as you can before you eat. Their cocktails are the only thing they competently make, and after about five of those, your gag reflex should be adequately suppressed to eat the food.
The Canadian Bacon Sticks sound pretty fancy, but they're just deep-fried, over-breaded sticks of grocery-store ham...The ham that comes from a can because even the deli serves better stuff.
The Ahi Tuna Tartare does taste like top-quality tuna in smooth, flawless cubes. So fresh I could have sworn it was served in its natural habitat...also because it was drowning in a sea of salt. The menu says that it was made with other flavors and spices, but thanks to all that salt, there was no way to tell.
The Dungeness Crab Stuffed Crepes were served in a similar fashion, the crepes somewhat soggy from the crab that had gotten cold. I'm not sure what took so long considering we were seated right next to the kitchen, but at that point, it would have been nice if the dim sum cart came with a microwave.
Drowning seems to be a theme here, and I imagine the restaurant is headed for a fate similar to the Fire Roasted Shishito Peppers, which were submerged in a murky soy sauce mud. The Slider wasn't wet, but I made a better one at home.
I've shied away from LA fine dining because it often disappoints me, and this overpriced, 104-dollar meal (before tax and tip!) at The Church Key may have turned me off entirely. What I ate there was easily the worst meal I've had in all of LA, and possibly the worst meal of my life.
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