Baroo - Los Angeles

It's a chilly late evening in the Arts District, with waning lights from surrounding restaurants and galleries as they tuck in for the night. Among them Baroo remains abuzz with mood lighting and a hushed but lively atmosphere. It's 8:45 PM on a Tuesday but there isn't an empty seat in the house. 

A single tasting menu keeps it simple, and all you have to decide is whether you want a drink pairing and/or the supplemental beef. It's the kind of menu where I have to google 75% of the ingredients, and every item is enchanting. 

The nonalcoholic pairing is hand-crafted kombucha, and I think it's even better than booze because of its uniqueness. We start with a glass of "rose" (like the wine), a kombucha that smells like the real thing but finishes sweeter with a little mulberry tang. 

It pairs with the starter snacks, a small bowl of squash soup, sweetness supplemented with a darker, foamy tea. It's topped with a seedy, puffy crisp to add some texture and earth. 

The other bit is a bread base, like mochi with crispy edges. The chewy texture is perfection paired with a nutty hint of gouda and uplifting berry sour. 

A single seared Scallop is spectacular in a leafy green liquid with seaweed and rice puffs. Use your spoon to scoop up every drop - it finishes with a surprising hint of horseradish, and my delight turns to obsession. 

A sweeter quince kombucha accompanies the Ssam, a beautiful spread of leaves encasing a wedge of sole. The fish is buttery flakes, and the skin is a seaweed crisp. The leaves are aromatic, much like shiso, with a slightly citrus lift. 

The next kombucha is barley-based, savory with shiso and sweet potato notes. 

It accompanies a melt-in-your-mouth black Cod, with a lightly pickled radish and crispy fried green papaya. The sauce is sweet and savory, with buttermilk to make it rich.

A beet kombucha resembles red wine, made to complement the meats. 

The Pork Collar is impossibly tender, in a savory red jjigae sauce. The show-stealer is the creamy dollop of white kimchi that adds even more flavor than the sauce.

A small supplement gets you Beef Short Rib, the tenderest you'll ever eat. Same sides, but you get a burdock jus that tastes a bit like a sweet soy. A delicious dish but not much of a standout compared to the creativity of everything else on this menu. 

I thought I couldn't be more blown away, but I was wrong. The final savory course is absolutely the best rice bowl in the world and possibly the best dish I've ever eaten. Every grain of rice is dotted with bits of aromatic mountain greens. A pickled paste of perilla leaves with lotus and sunchoke are fragrant from fermentation and a dollop of XO sauce brings on a fishy umani that makes every other flavor explode. It's all topped with fine-shredded crisps of the most amazing seaweed. 

A sweet kombucha with passion fruit, mugwort, and pine nut accompanies the Melon panna cotta. The creamy classic occupies one side, sharing with a smooth ice cream on the other. The topping is a bitter sorrel bingsu that almost mimics matcha. 

I looked forward to trying the new Baroo, but I did have my doubts. I wasn't sure how those mom-and-pop rice bowls would translate into fine dining, and I never could have guessed they'd do it all so well. The food is fancier, but it still conveys the warmth and comfort of their hole-in-the-wall, open-counter, grab-your-drinks-from-the-fridge. Their flavors are complex and multidimensional but the concepts are clean and pure with an unmistakable air of sophistication that doesn't diminish their authenticity. Forget all the Michelins, Baroo just might be my new favorite restaurant in LA. 

Baroo - Los Angeles

It's rare that food can be such a masterpiece. Rarer still is food like this that comes from an unmarked strip-mall stall. Of all the chefs I've tried, I can count the ones that rival Baroo on a single hand. But those chefs, there is not a single one that hasn't achieved international fame and acclaim; not a single one of them hides out in this humble, single-room, twenty-seater where Kwang Uh soldiers on. 

Everything is different at Baroo. With all the variations on a theme I've seen, all the unusual, the bizarre, the good, the bad, the original, the inexplicable; I've seen nothing like Baroo. Heralded as a "fermentation lab" by LA Weekly and the LA Times, Baroo does deliver mason jars of curiosities but also so much more.

A trip to Baroo cannot be completed without a dish of pickles, however, and the feisty Red Onion with a dash of rose smooths out the vinegar sting, and the Cabbage with pineapple jus crunches in a matter so satisfying, borne on a wave of tropical tang.

Fermentation is preserver of food, but it is also an incubator of thirst. I swore I'd never give into the Kombucha cult, but water will never quench my curiosity. How to describe kombucha? The fermentation resembles harsh carbonation, initially a hint of sweet, ending acidic and almost metallic. An acquired taste, for sure, but one acquired readily, with surprisingly little resistance. The Elderflower is a fragrant melody, staccato and sophisticated. The Lemon Verbena is cold and refreshing, the pickle juice from a jar of lemon peel.

Ordering isn't easy at Baroo. The chalkboard menu is thoroughly descriptive, but I have no way to anticipate what anything will taste like, no inkling of what each order holds. 

The Asian Fever is chosen for its name. Long grains of Amira basmati rice form a textured base for this dish, spiced up with a "southeast asian inspired house mix" that coats each pan-seared grain equally, individually. The bite bites back as a lighter lemongrass sinks into sake lees while coconut foam floats on air. There's a hint of citrus lime, and a crispy shrimp chip adds an unexpected element of ocean.

Handmade pasta gets a fist-pumping "yes", and Baroo's Ragu Style is not a choice - it's a must. The spicy oxtail "faux ragu" is dense and so rich you can feel it sink down clear into your toes. Tendon puff is a lighter, equally savory twist on a traditional pork rind. the tomato and gremolata is the Mediterranean essence while gochujang throws in with parmigiano reggiano for an epic east-meets-west.

We choose the Noorook for its name, a red wonder is what came. A heaven of grains formed by Jobs tears, farro, and kamut ferry a sweet beet creme. Kombu dashi adds a dash of attitude, and toasted seeds are plucked up by onion pickles and fingerlime for a dish so grounded you could imagine eating it straight from the earth.

The Karma Circulation. A rice-on-rice bowl sounds almost boring under a blackboard like Baroo's, but the rice bowl that rules all rice bowls is anything but. The KFChicken is the tenderest chicken this lifetime will see, breaded so flawlessly and seasoned so effortlessly I could have sworn it was born that way. Gochujang aioli seeps into the crevices created by rice and corn, and a soft-boiled egg in a bath of chili soy is an add-on option that transforms chicken-rice to a golden goose.

The Celeriac started as an afterthought. My dislike for the crude, all-encompassing, all-suppressing crudite was never a secret, but curiosity is an unrelenting master. The handmade pasta is absolutely perfect to no one's surprise, but the celery root in cloudy cream is absolutely captivating. The root vegetable version is earthier and more grounded than the fleeting after-school snack, and it pulls me deep into the dish, a celery-reverie that breaks only when the last bite is gone.

I don't know how to describe Baroo. It is so different, so unlike anything I've seen. The menu is diary into the brilliant mind of a chef like none other, a playground into a genius soul. Each dish hits deeply, and every bite hits hard. Yet the flavors have an air of whimsy, an element of rarely-forgotten fun. Each individual ingredient is placed with intention, and every flavor serves a certain purpose, a piece of a far more complex puzzle. I don't know if I'll ever piece it all together, but I sure will enjoy every minute I try.