The restaurant announced its closure on May 13 in an Instagram post, thanking guests for their support over the past decade-plus. Chef Michael Cimarusti of three-Michelin-starred Providence opened Connie & Ted's in 2013 with co-owners Donato Poto and Crisi Echiverri. Inspired by Cimarusti's Rhode Island roots and his grandparents, Connie and Ted, the restaurant sprang onto the scene with lobster rolls, oysters Rockefeller, and an expansive raw bar.
Breads of many shapes sit in a row on the front counter at three-week-old Kouzeh Bakery, on display behind glass. My eye goes first to a thin disc propped up on a wooden stand. From several feet away, its sandy color and moonscape surface bring to mind a 13th century copper astrolabe that I fixated on at the also-just-opened David Geffen Galleries at LACMA less than a mile away.
For the last five years Kelsey Sachi Lee sold seafood to some of the city's top restaurants. Now she's opening her orders to the public with weekly Instagram drops - and handing off poke from the back of her car. Lee still sources fish for some of the city's most prominent chefs, such as Ari Kolender of Found Oyster and Queen's Raw Bar & Grill, but with her new, online-only venture, Dover Sole Market, she's offering weekend ahi poke pickups in parking lots in Koreatown and Sherman Oaks in an ode to her upbringing on Oahu.
Inside the gaping maw: blocks of tongue-red pastrami, rubbed with chaimen (a fenugreek-forward spice rub, also flecked with cumin, garlic and chiles) used to season jerky-adjacent, air-dried Armenian basturma, cured for two weeks and then smoked for 12 hours. The result, beyond beefy intensity, is several textures at once: flaky, taut, buttery.
Katz's deli exemplifies how pastrami took over New York City, but the offering from Langer's is certainly no slouch either. Both sandwiches are piled high with meat that has been expertly cured and sliced fresh and thick.
The pastry clung to a thin layer of aspic that enveloped a filling of pork shoulder and fat, bacon, chicken liver, veal sweetbreads, and button, shiitake and wood ear mushrooms.