Week in Reviews: Animal

There's no doubt Jonathan Gold thoroughly gets and enjoys Animal, "the house restaurant of the Dude District," even with the noise, no modifications-menu and all: "But the operating principle at Animal is neither the aggressive clams-in-ham philosophy of so much avant-garde cooking nor the Rabelaisian head-to-tail approach, but pleasure: a simple, howlingly good plate of crisp, assertively salted hominy; a bubbling crock of melted cheese spiked with a few slips of thinly sliced chorizo; a summer salad of tomatoes, roasted beets and feta that is probably one of their catering favorites; a plain bowl of Persian mulberries in the weeks of the year that it would be criminal to modify the pure, musky taste of the fruit." And unlike his counterpart at the LAT, there can never be too much bacon. [LAW]