FOOD: Farewell to PYT

The inevitable downside of LA’s hot dynamic restaurant scene is that restaurants, even good ones, will close. On Thursday, we ate a farewell meal on the last night of service at PYT, Chef Josef Centeno’s restaurant that lead the charge on the wave of vegetable-forward cuisine in LA. When Jonathan Gold compiled a list of the top 10 dishes of 2016, nearly half of them were vegetables, and one of them was Centeno’s roasted turnip, roasted for hours in a salt casing wrapped in a hoja santa leaf. I never got to try the turnip, as they had moved on to other delicious vegetables in their changing seasonal menu. I was hoping they might have brought it back for their last hurrah, but no luck. What we enjoyed instead was very fine consolation. We started an amuse bouche of oro blanco segments in a puddle of charred shallot oil, sprinkled with dukkah, singing on our tongues with various notes of sweet, acid, and umami. Here, even the cocktails showcase vegetables. Our table sampled the Beet It (beet, bourbon, kombucha, lemon, sugar), the Cara Cara Crush (rye whiskey, raspberry, orange juice, ginger), and a Celery Margarita (tequila, celery, lime, agave). We began with a kanpachi crudo (the only animal protein in our meal) in a bright carrot-turmeric aguachile that I wanted to soak up every drop of. For salads, we had a zucchini “noodle” slaw with chimichurri spice, pomegranate, and lemon, and roasted baby beets with chicory greens in a buttermilk-oregano vinaigrette that added a novel tang to the sweet beets. Then came the main part of the meal – all vegetables. Grilled cauliflower and romesco were made earthier by a truffle cream, punctuated by yuzu zest. Charred Brussels sprouts were bathed in brown butter vinaigrette and coriander leaves, with a sweet acid punch from satsuma mandarin segments. Green piri-piri rice, its herbaceousness reinforced with fresh herbs, came with bok choy and an over-easy egg for richness. And a crispy eggplant was battered in cornmeal (gluten-free!) and mozzarella, served in a tangy-sweet tomato-plum sauce. Anyone who thinks you can’t make a full hearty meal of vegetables hasn’t eaten here. For dessert, we enjoyed a rich thick peanut budino in a salty caramel cream with candied pepitas and coconut.

We’re sad that that would be our last meal at this innovative and delicious venue, but are glad for the impact it has had on LA’s food scene. Chef Centeno still has at least three other restaurants within a stone’s throw of this one (someday perhaps the corner of 4th and Main St will be named Josef Centeno Square), and he has said that his best vegetable-forward dishes may migrate to Orsa & Winston, his more upscale tasting menu restaurant. The chef said the closure was not due to the business going down, but to getting a great offer on the space. Rumors are that the people behind Lock and Key (a Koreatown speakeasy) and Nightshade (new pan-Asian spot in the Arts District) plan to open something here. The dynamism of our food scene means things keep changing, so we’ll be eager to see what comes next.