Jonathan Gold Reviews Red Hill in Echo Park

Jonathan Gold is intrigued by seven-month-old Red Hill in Echo Park, a crafty farm-to-table joint from Jason Michaud and Trevor Rocco:

Red Hill is the latest step in the Brooklynization of Echo Park, a modern restaurant to go with the vintage clothing stores and well-frequented boutiques ... Michaud and Rocco are bringing quinoa salad, crunchy roast duck with roast grapes and pickled cherries, and beets with farro to an area better known for pupusas and sopa de siete mares.

The restaurant's energy is bound up in the same kind of contradictions, between wholesome, farmers-market-oriented vegetarian (but not vegan) cooking and gently transgressive dishes with meat; between heirloom carrots in a brown-butter vinaigrette and crisp, fluffy beignets glazed with melting slices of lardo and tossed with pickled mustard seeds that pop between your teeth. Whether you are on Team Kale Salad or Team Venison Meatball, whether you fancy flatbread with eggplant and fontina or roast chicken with dandelion greens, the kitchen is on your side.

[Photo: Elizabeth Daniels]

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