Sor Tino- Brentwood

BruinLawyer, GameBoy, and I went with two of my friends from high school- N. and M. (interesting moniker forthcoming) up to LA to go to the LA Film Festival. Short Program 2 had little interesting food-wise, and was pretty, well, crappy in general. The last short, about black lesbian teenagers, was a bit, um, graphic, but there was scene at the end where they're eating ice cream, and it made me hungry for some. Luckily, GameBoy felt the same way, and at the next film, which was at the brand-spanking-new Landmark theaters at the Westside Pavillion, he went to the concession stand and returned with some Pinkberry! Ok, it wasn't even ice cream, and, by some standards, not even really frozen yogurt, but it was my first Pinkberry, and it was good. Not so delicious that I would wait in line like some people, but good for movies, definitely. After "The Paper Will Be Blue," which, by the way, was a pretty good Romanian film about the end of the Cold War, we went to Sor Tino in Brentwood.

We parked on the rooftop parking lot, and made our way down to the restaurant, which was crowded with well-dressed middle aged types on the patio celebrating something. BruinLawyer was immediately intrigued by the women in their cleavage-baring outfits, but soon lost interest once he acertained their age. GameBoy spotted the burrata and carpaccio and immediately insisted we order them. BruinLawyer is allergic to cheese (I'm so glad I didn't inherit this Asian gene!), so we also ordered calamari as a final appetizer. Even better, it turned out that N. and M. weren't so hot on the burrata, so GameBoy and I got the lion's share of that. The burrata itself was creamy and yummy as usual. However, since it's not quite tomato season yet, it was atop some rather mediocre slices of tomato, which detracted from the experience. While it was much more buratta than Fraiche, GameBoy and I agreed that we preferred Fraiche's version, since they used better tomatoes and aged balsalmic vinegar, which really made the difference. The carpaccio was good, but GameBoy complained that it was less than he expected. I'm not sure if he gets that it's supposed to be very thinly sliced and that it's supposed to be a small amount. Sigh. I was so busy eating those two dishes that I didn't get a chance to eat any calamari, but judging from the empty plate, BruinLawyer, N., and M. really enjoyed it.

GameBoy got a spinach salad with chicken for dinner, but the rest of us went for the pastas, which are all homemade. M. got the risotto, which must have been good, because he ate it all rather quickly. N. got the penne with tomato sauce, which was okay, but it's really something hard to mess up. BruinLawyer and I got the wild boar ragu, which was yummy, as usual. However, I'm not sure if BruinLawyer liked his quite as much, and he said something about how he didn't see how wild boar tasted that much different than regular pork. GameBoys salad was only so-so, with the chicken all dry. So, in total, an okay meal, but not spectacular. Still, in LA, not a bad meal for $30 each or so.

The real bummer was that I had about half of my pasta left over, which I intended to take for lunch the next day. However, when I opened the container at work, I was sad to see only a tiny scoop of N.'s penne. Somehow the boxes must have gotten mixed up. So sad.

Date of Visit: 6/24/07

Sor Tino
Brentwood, CA