Sona's New Bar Menu: Hang Out at the Bar, Try the Food, Don't Break the Bank

Amy Scattergood

Ready plates in Sona's kitchen

Sona, David Myers' flagship restaurant on La Cienega, is not the sort of restaurant where one goes bargain-hunting. If one wants to try Myers' food in a more relaxed setting, there is comme Ça, Myers' bistro just up the street, or Pizzeria Ortica, his pizza joint a meatball's throw away from South Coast Plaza's glitzy shopping palace. But starting this week, Sona is offering a bar menu, and with it a chance to try some spectacular food at, yes, a relative bargain.

Well, a bar menu of sorts: do not enter Sona's pale and quiet refuge expecting to order Buffalo wings with a hot-sauce emulsion at the sleek dimly-lit bar, just off the restaurant's main dining room. Instead Myers, Sona chef de cuisine Kuniko Yagi and pastry chef Ramon Perez have designed a smaller menu from which it is possible order either the full-size dishes or slightly smaller dishes--at half the price.

This allows you to try the Kasuzuke duck with smoked eggplant puree and gingered Japanese mushrooms, or the harissa-sake marinated cod with wilted baby tatsoy and Israeli couscous, without blowing your week's food budget. And doing so at the bar, before the alchemist's laboratory of vials and bottles artfully mixed by the cheerful Utah-born bartender, can be a lot more fun anyway. Fried lemon meringue pie with confit of lemons, mint and popcorn ice cream? For $6? Absolutely.

Amy Scattergood

Sona's lobster risotto with kaffir lime

Sona: 401 North La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles; (310) 659-7708.