10 Best L.A. Restaurants That Closed in 2012: An Elegy in 10 Parts
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| Anne Fishbein |
| Angeli Caffe's book |
For 27 years, Evan Kleiman's Angeli Caffe was one of the best places to eat in this town, a cozy neighborhood restaurant for which all of L.A. was the neighborhood. When Kleiman closed her doors in January, lines stretched down Melrose as regulars queued up for a last taste of Kleiman's pizza and pasta and gnocchi. It was, perhaps, the moment when the recession came home for many foodists, a signal that nothing is immune in uncertain times. Sure, you can listen to Kleiman every Saturday on the radio, where she's the longtime host of KCRW's Good Food, but listening to her talk about food is hardly the same thing as being able to dine on her plates of eggplant fritters. 7274 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles.
1. Campanile:
A. Scattergood Campanile
Ever since 1989, when then-married chefs Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton opened it together, Campanile was L.A.'s signature restaurant, a locus of California cooking in a building that looked like Hitchcock might have filmed there. There was the stunning food, market-driven before most chefs went to farmers markets, and remarkable pastries. There was wine and Silverton's bread and regulars who gathered in the courtyard to eat by the tiled fountain. By the time Peel closed Campanile, just after Halloween, seemingly half of the best chefs in this town had trained in the restaurant's kitchens, either on the line with Peel or, longer ago, in the pastry kitchen with Silverton. The shutter marked the end of an era of Los Angeles cooking. 624 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles.
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