Just a few weeks back, The Must lent a hand in stopping a complete food venture strike out. Last Thursday, March 19th, the opening weekend of BoHo, Sam Shishiri and his staff at BoHo came thru CLUTCH ala ichiro:

We were already 3 down after striking out @ the $1 Luckyfish event, having 2 lousy burger @ Umami. (Write up to come.) and walking over to NY BBQ to only find nothing left in their smokers… After being teased and hungry for 3 hours, we were all ready to settle down and chow. Last hope was BoHo. Nothing on the interwebz gave indication as to the quality / taste of the actual menu to debut that nite. All the cool bloggers sampled pizzettes during preview nite. 3 of us went deep, mulled over the menu 3x and started with a St Bernardus tripel on tap. How much do I love Belgians on tap? Seriously? First Barbarella, now BoHo. You had me at waffles.

The chef is/was from Oinksters. To this very moment I ponder if this is a good/bad thing. But what we had that nite? was not Oinksters. If it is, someone drinking that Belgian woulda upped and walked at the end of the pint.

First plate: fried oyster slider ala po-boys. Huge hit at 11pm. Perfectly fried, lightly seasoned, great bun-to-grease to protein ratio. Like Britney, everyone secretly screamed, “just gimme me more”, yet had to save the final morsel for an arrival guest. Dudette: next time, fuck you, I’m eating your share.

Second: onion soup. We were just talkin about French onion soup on the way to the resto. A certain gent was complaining about his inability to find a “decent” French onion soup in LA. Not a personal hunt for me but it’s easy to appreciate his cause. After 2 bites, this certain gent was content and proclaimed it one of the “better” – cuz I don’t do “B”est – of LA. We second, and third his opinion.

Next: baked fennel, roasted shallots, bacon, gruyere cheese. We weren’t tasting thin slices of Oscar Meyer bacon. These were rustic. They were chewy and not overly smoky. If they were drenched in liquid smoke, this dish would’ve had a huge problem. The fennel shared the bill with shallots. Roasted shallots and baked fennel aren’t what you’d think of as a tasting starter. For everyone at the table, this dish just worked. No one cared BoHo uses seasonal farmers market ingredients at 11:30pm…

Next: roasted Jidori chicken. it’s hard to seriously butcher Jidori post-mortem. This was fine. The French onion soup lover loved this as well. He was just in a loving dandy mood. The white breasts were a bit fake implants tough, but… tis only 1 man’s opinion. The best things on the plate were the greens. Errr.. the reds (carrots).

Finally: the downer, the dessert. Yes, the dessert was the downer. The fault was not purely this dessert, but the previous glorious meal we had at Church & State. We cleared the dessert menu @ C&S and loved most of it. The French onion soup lover sat and waited for 2 hours just to taste Frenchy desserts. No, he’s not a Francophile. The mofo just prefers things high on the brix scale. This apple crisp was a total bomb for me. Not BOMBDIGGITY bomb sort of way, but think: undercooked apples, unthickened cream filling, not very crispy pastry top, etc. It was evocative of an nucleared apple salad sweetened with half and half. Yumm-o this, Rachel Ray.

BoHo
At the Arclight