It’s not easy to categorize the food that comes out of the kitchen of Animal, the must-visit Los Angeles restaurant co-owned by chefs Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook, and that’s the way the chefs like it.
“Sometimes chefs box themselves in by saying ‘I do X,’ or ‘I do Y,’” Dotolo tells me from a table in the front of the restaurant early on a February morning. “Years later they’re saying, ‘I wish I could use soy sauce.’”
Dotolo and Shook use soy sauce. They produce dishes as disparate as bone marrow with chimichurri, lamb neck with daikon and black vinegar jus, and rabbit loin spring rolls. Their menu is strewn with ingredients from all over the world—chili, lime, mint, anchovies, buttermilk, sumac, vadouvan—and it’s all there to help them achieve a very specific goal. “We want to make something that tastes good,” says Shook.
With all of these ingredients at their disposal, it’s possible that Dotolo and Shook might produce food that’s muddled or overwrought. But they avoid this by applying a specific set of values to their idiosyncratic brand of cuisine.
Dotolo explains: “I like to find a balance of things that might seem odd or interesting wrapped back into something that’s accessible.”
Shook adds, “It’s not about the wow factor. It’s translating what we love into something customers will love.”
That’s a great formula not just for restaurant cooking but also for cooking at home. Oftentimes, we who are food lovers try to foist uncommon or intimidating ingredients on our guests, only to have them politely spit their food into their napkins. The trick is to fuse challenging ingredients with elements that are comforting and familiar.
Look, for example, at the salad that Shook and Dotolo make with lettuces from the Santa Monica farmer’s market. Those lettuces—with names like “freckle lettuce,” “lola rosa,” “black seed simpson,” and “red perilla”—are a far cry from iceberg and romaine. But Dotolo and Shook don’t dress these eclectic lettuces with exotic cheeses and oils you can barely pronounce, let alone eat. Instead, they make a dressing with sour cream and Meyer lemon juice and toss that with the lettuces, feta cheese, pita chips, beets (both raw and cooked), and avocado. The end result, piled up on the plate, looks like an iconic California salad that partied all night in Vegas. And the taste—which is both bold and refreshing—reflects that too.
Though it may seem like anything goes in the kitchen of Animal (where stocks and braises and pig ears simmer away), there’s a method to the madness. With their P’tit Basque—a gratin of onions and leeks cooked in wine with thinly sliced chorizo and huge hunks of P’tit Basque cheese that gets blasted under the broiler and comes out bubbling and brown (so much so that Dotolo calls it “a decapitated French onion soup”)—the flavors make sense, thanks to the acidity of the wine, the meatiness of the chorizo, and the creaminess of the cheese.
As for their ribs, which are slicked with a house-made balsamic barbecue sauce and blasted under the broiler (“There’s so much sugar in that sauce,” says Dotolo, “you can burn the shit out of them”), words fail. They’re just that good—maybe the best I’ve ever had.
And that’s pretty much the point at Animal, where the food has definition without having limitations. By pulling from all of the world’s great cuisines, Dotolo and Shook have created a cuisine that’s entirely their own. They stick to their guns but care about their audience. The results—with crowds lining up night after night—speak for themselves.
“A mango in California isn’t as good as a mango in Florida, so why would we use them?”
—Vinny Dotolo
Serves 2 to 4
You can hear the collective “ooooooh” as you set this bubbling cauldron of melted cheese down on the table. Meet P’tit Basque, the most popular appetizer you’re ever going to serve—and for good reason. Take all the things you love about French onion soup—the deeply caramelized onions, the gooey brown cheese—add chorizo, and subtract the actual soup and you’ll have a good idea of what this dish is about. Serve with grilled bread rubbed with garlic.
Olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 leek, cleaned* and chopped
1 cup dry white wine
⅓ cup thinly sliced Spanish chorizo (from 1 medium-size link)
One big chunk of P’tit Basque cheese*, broken into pieces (about a 1-inch-thick ring of cheese 6 inches in diameter)
A few thick slices of sourdough bread
1 clove garlic
Set two sauté pans over medium heat and add enough olive oil to coat the bottoms. When they’re hot, add the onion to one and the leek to the other. Lower the heat slightly and allow both to cook. The onion should cook low and slow for 45 minutes, or until deep golden brown, like the onions in a French onion soup. The leeks should cook just until translucent (about 10 minutes); then add the wine. Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer, and keep cooking until all the wine has evaporated and the leeks are “sec,” which is a fancy way of saying “dry.” When both the onions and leeks are ready, set them aside.
Preheat the oven to 450°F. Spoon a layer of the onions into a gratin dish* and top with a layer of the leeks. Lay the sliced chorizo on top and then finish by covering everything evenly with the pieces of cheese. Bake until the cheese is melted and slightly brown on top, 3 to 5 minutes.
While that’s baking, grill the bread on a grill or in a grill pan. You can also use the broiler; you want the bread toasty and golden brown. When it gets there, remove it from the heat and rub it all over with the garlic clove. Start at the edge to help break the clove up a little; then rub the clove across and drizzle with olive oil.
Carefully remove the gratin from the oven and serve right away with the bread. It’s best when it’s bubbly and gooey and hot.
Serves 2 to 4
A battle of good versus evil is waged on the plate when you serve up this salad, which gets its name from all the “funky” lettuces from the Santa Monica farmer’s market Dotolo used when he made this with me at Animal (Vulcan lettuce, red oak, deer tongue, gem). The good comes from all the wholesome elements—the lettuce, the beets, the avocado—and the evil comes from all the naughty, fatty elements (sour cream, feta cheese, fried pita chips). What you wind up with is a big pile of colorful stuff, covered in white, and if evil wins out (as it often does), it’s decadent enough to convert even the most ardent salad-hater.
FOR THE DRESSING
1 shallot, minced
½ cup fresh Meyer lemon juice (or regular lemon juice will do)
1 cup sour cream
½ tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon sumac (see Resources), optional
FOR THE BEETS
2 cooked red beets*, cut into bite-size chunks
2 cooked golden beets*, cut into bite-size chunks
1 raw candy-striped beet, peeled and shaved on a mandoline
1 raw golden beet, peeled and shaved on a mandoline
8 or 9 big leaves of lettuce from the farmer’s market (freckle lettuce, lola rosa, black seed simpson, red perilla) or an equal amount of romaine or escarole
Kosher salt
½ pound French feta
1 avocado, sliced*
Pita chips* (optional)
1 tablespoon minced chives
To make the dressing, whisk together all of the ingredients. Taste and adjust the seasoning.
Place the cooked beets, the shaved beets, all of the lettuce, and a pinch of salt in a large bowl and toss well. Add a few spoonfuls of dressing, crumble in the feta, drop in the avocado, and continue to toss until everything is coated (the best tool for this is your hands).
To serve, pull out the larger pieces of lettuce and lay them on a plate. Spoon on some of the beets and lay in some of the pita chips, if using, and avocado, sprinkling the avocado with a little salt when you do. Continue building the salad with lettuce, beets, avocado, and pita chips, until you’ve used everything up. Spoon on some more dressing and top everything with minced chives.
Serves 4
I love a recipe like this, in which one familiar item (balsamic vinegar) combines with something else very familiar (in this case, the elements of a homemade barbecue sauce) to form something entirely new. The end result, which gets slathered all over spareribs that have been slow-roasted in the oven and baked at a high temperature until the two entities combine, makes for a sticky, tangy, unforgettable take on good old-fashioned ribs. If you’re feeding a crowd, the oven is your best bet for that final step; if you have the time, though, try broiling the ribs with the glaze on top. The rib and the glaze fuse together and, if you take it far enough (just before it turns black), you get a crispy, sweet, and succulent rib that’ll be your new standard from now on.
FOR THE RIBS
2 racks spareribs*
Kosher salt
4 to 6 sprigs of fresh thyme
FOR THE GLAZE
2½ cups balsamic vinegar (don’t waste your best balsamic here)
½ cup honey
2 cups ketchup
1 can beer (preferably dry)
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 red onion, diced
½ cup dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon molasses
¼ cup grainy mustard
1 or 2 teaspoons Tabasco (depending on how spicy you like it)
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
½ cup water
Preheat the oven to 250°F and place each rack of ribs on a square of aluminum foil. Sprinkle the ribs generously with salt, add a few sprigs of thyme to each, and then wrap well. Place the rib packets on a cookie sheet and bake for 3 to 4 hours, until the ribs are extremely tender. Allow the ribs to cool slightly in their packets before opening.
To make the glaze, combine all of the ingredients in a large pot on medium-low heat. Allow to simmer, stirring every so often, for a few hours, until the sauce is nice and thick*. Set aside.
To bring the ribs and glaze together, do the following. Turn on the broiler (if you don’t have a broiler, get the oven up to 450°F). Cut the rib racks into individual ribs, place them on a foil-lined cookie sheet or broiler tray, and brush them aggressively with the glaze. Pop them under the broiler and watch them carefully: all that sugar makes them burn very easily! You want the glaze to fuse with the ribs; it takes 3 to 4 minutes. If you’re cooking the ribs in the oven, do so just until the glaze begins to bubble, 4 to 5 minutes. Serve the ribs hot with lots of napkins—trust me, you’ll need them.
