First impressions: Church & State

(Credit: Shane Redsar)

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With all the election-year ruckus over the place of religion in politics, it’s refreshing to be able to bring up the topic of church and state and not get called a partisan pooper. Whether you lean red or blue, everyone can agree on the culinary merits of the red, white and blue—on the French flag, that is. Steven Arroyo’s new Church & State, occupying the ground floor of Downtown’s Biscuit Company Lofts, jumps on the French brasserie bandwagon (touche Comme Ca, Anisette and the Hall at Palihouse).

Like Arroyo’s other ventures—Cobras & Matadors, Sgt. Recruiter, and Malo—Church & State is committed to its theme in every detail. Red walls, brick floors, subway tiles, smoky mirrors and string lights overhead conjure the Fifth Arrondissement. Lovers and groups of loft dwellers sit elbow-to-elbow at the unnecessarily close wood tables. (A server topples a water glass at our table, then our neighbor’s table, because there’s not enough space to squeeze between them.) The menu reprises the greatest hits of French brasserie fare: fruits de mer, onion soup, cassoulet, steak frites. This union of decor and menu feels reassuring and familiar—it’s the Arroyo way.

Certain things in life should remain separated. Oil and water. Paris and Nicole. And, well, church and state. But what about kitchen and dining room? The open kitchen at Church & State is perhaps the most open we’ve ever seen. Without so much as a glass partition or other architectural element dividing the two, the kitchen smells waft right into the dining room. The smoke from the wood-burning oven does tease the appetite for one of the grilled pissaladieres (a sort of French pizza) with onion, bacon and crème fraiche. But is that really what you want to smell while you’re savoring your tarte Tatin? Not so much.

Nevertheless, the aromas from the kitchen motivate us to get meaty. We start with the pork sausage hors d’oeuvre, a perfectly charred saucisse flavored with garlic and red wine and served over dainty, creamy lentils and pickled cranberries. The combination is lick-the-plate-clean delicious. We move on to the steak frites, a tender cut of hanger steak served with crisp, chunky fries. The bacon-wrapped trout is paparazzi-worthy: a whole fish, head and all, stuffed with spinach and pine nuts and encased in smoky bacon.  Aside from the overdone side of haricots vert, there are no missteps, and everything we order is under $25.

The street scene unfolding outside the floor-to-ceiling glass doors and windows makes us want to linger and people-watch, so we ante up for the chocolate soufflé with coffee crème brulee sauce, which takes 16 minutes to prepare. While waiting, we glimpse the comings and goings across the street at Royal Claytons English Pub, housed on the first floor of the Toy Factory Lofts, and the foot traffic, which is surprisingly robust for 11 p.m. on a Thursday. The pair of side-by-side converted factory dwellings makes for a little Downtown-revival utopia scrubbed clean of any skid-row-like elements. The soufflé could be a serving of utopia in a dish, but the undersized dessert comes out as more of a dense pudding than an airy pastry. Still, the intense chocolate flavor makes it hard to stop eating.

As we’re polishing off the meal, Arroyo himself—salt-and-pepper beard, Indiana Jones hat, skeleton tattoo and all—suddenly appears tableside, as if he’s been hiding behind the pillar next to us all evening. It’s a little scary, actually (or maybe it’s just that skeleton tattoo).  “How is it?” he asks about our dessert. We reassure him that the flavor is out of this world. Church & State is proof positive that as far as the hippest corners of the L.A. dining map go, Arroyo has indeed spread his gospel everywhere.

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