Home > Los Angeles Restaurants > Restaurant Review > First impressions: Bashan

Craigslist may be the ideal place to nab a used fridge, a roommate and “French lessons” (note the exaggerated use of finger scare quotes). But a restaurant? Apparently chef/owner Nadav Bashan found the listing for his namesake Bashan Restaurant on the virtual bulletin board. The Montrose storefront previously housed the beloved Bistro Verdu, which had moved on in search of a larger space.

The restaurant sits beautifully, if somewhat uncomfortably, on Verdugo Road. It’s perhaps too avant-garde for sleepy Montrose—the interior has concrete floors, white lamps that look like plastic pompons and three sparse branches as the sole wall decoration. Chef Bashan’s culinary background also seems outside the scope of the suburban foothills: He served stints as executive chef at Michael’s and sous at Providence. But such credentials also mean that Bashan certainly has the chops to woo a destination crowd.

High-minded proteins like crispy veal sweetbreads and seared chicken breast with confit of leg set the tone of the tight, contemporary American menu, but the kitchen truly excels in highlighting the best produce from the farmers’ markets. Heirloom tomatoes stand out in a salad of burrata and crisp pickled shallots with drizzles of balsamic and tomato “H2O.” Sweet corn ravioli is paired surprisingly, and deliciously, with shishito peppers. Both dishes arrive on oversized geometric plates which, though artful in presentation, are not very practical—we have the errant corn kernels and tomato drips to prove the challenge of reaching across the vast plates.

My dining companion orders the trout, which comes out extremely rare. Not expecting to eat sushi, we send the fish back to the kitchen. It returns on the favorable side of cooked, though the shrunken bacon and shimeji mushrooms hint that the entire plate was probably shoved into the oven. And while the New York steak is properly rare, the minimalist dish proves too pedestrian to be the most expensive menu item.

Chocolate chip bread pudding is disappointingly rubbery, and a broken freezer turns the ice cream into a crème anglaise. Certainly there are finer points that need smoothing out at Bashan. But there’s an appealing simplicity and warmth in the family-run business—wife Romy serves as general manager. Bashan—both chef and restaurant—is certain to find its way; we’ll have to see if the clientele would find the way to Montrose.

Food: Farmers’ market-driven California/French with avant-garde style.

Scene: Fine dining in an intimate and casual room. The crowd skews more mature and local with a smattering of not-from-Montrose adventurers.

Insider tip: Though the small space is filling up on weekends, you’ll practically have the place to yourself on weeknights.

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