Jonathan Gold Reviews Plan Check

While Plan Check on Sawtelle offers a mixed menu of hits and misses, Jonathan Gold is especially intrigued by the restaurant's modernized burger:

But if you were looking for the garagiste version of a modernist hamburger, a burger as re-imagined by a gear head working alone in his kitchen instead of by a team of technicians in a lab, you might want to investigate Plan Check ... The Plan Check burger has been carefully engineered to resemble the great bar burgers of your youth, in the way that a designer at Ford might try to capture everything you love about a 1968 Mustang in an ultramodern car. For an extra buck, you can get it embellished with smoked blue cheese and sugary pig candy; for an extra two, with crisp rashers of bacon and a sunny-side-up fried egg. But you don't need to. The Plan Check burger is what you would have wanted to have waiting for you after you got off Monsanto's old Adventure Thru Inner Space ride at Disneyland.

But Plan Check isn't quite a replica of a great burger bar — it is a great burger bar, once you get used to the idea of relinquishing control.

Other plates fall short like the "flabbyish" oysters, the melon ball and mozzarella salad with "flavorless" prosciutto dust, and tasteless vegetable chips. Here, burgers are the way to go. [LAT]

[Photo: Elizabeth Daniels]

B-Rod is highly impressed by Chad Colby's Salumi Bar at Mozza's Scuola di Pizza: "... the huge selection of cured meats and terrines stands head and shoulders above anything else in this town on that now-ubiquitous 'charcuterie' section of the menu ...the salamis are dense but also melting, imbued with ingredients like intensely aromatic fennel pollen, or the bright, biting, almost fruity Tellicherry pepper, which comes from India. Pancetta comes wrapped around breadsticks, looking like meaty, twirly candy — it's an attractive presentation, but the pancetta is best enjoyed without the distracting crunch of the breadsticks." [LAW]

The Elsewhere: Eat: LA hits Bar Covell, Eating: LA visits Sqirl on Virgil, Gastronomy dines at Bánh Xèo Quán, kevinEats at Spago, Refined Palate picks Milo & Olive, Taste Terminal samples Pineapple Express, and Potatomato tries Palsaik Samgyupsal Korean BBQ.

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Plan Check

1800 Sawtelle Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90025 310 288 6500 Visit Website

Plan Check

1800 Sawtelle Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA