Letter of Recommendation Los Angeles
An Ode to Kismet — and the Joy of Revisiting Restaurants
We’re in that weird stretch of annual weather in Los Angeles. Despite living here for more than a decade, the one-two punch of May Gray and June Gloom still bewilders my internal seasonal clock. Seeking to escape my springtime funk led me right to Kismet’s door — one I, admittedly, hadn’t knocked on in a while.
A brief refresher: Chef-owners and friends Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson – the Sara(h)s, as they’re commonly known – opened Kismet in January 2017, after decamping to L.A. from New York. Their arrival was much-hyped, and they more than lived up to the heady expectations: Kismet was an instant hit with critics and diners alike. It’s since grown to become both a vanguard of L.A.’s dining scene, and one of the country’s most respected restaurants.
During the 2010s, Kismet and well-regarded restaurants like it, such as Botanica here in L.A., Galit in Chicago, and Wildair in New York, marked the ascension of the millennial chef-restaurateur, ushering in a new generation of culinary torchbearers. The Sara(h)s met the moment of how and what we like to eat – veggie-forward, bold and bright flavors, shareable plates – and still influence it to this day. As evidence, Kismet has become more wide-reaching and accessible than ever before. Its popular fast-casual rotisserie spinoff recently opened a fourth location in Pasadena, and its eponymous cookbook hit shelves (including my own) – last year. Sure, you can bring the Kismet brand home, but as I was reminded recently, its flagship dining room on Hollywood Boulevard should remain firmly in your orbit.
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“Kismet, despite all the change over the years, is still the heart of the whole operation,” Kramer wrote to me. “It always will be.”
Why hadn’t I been to Kismet in a while? The answer I keep landing on is that I’ve taken the restaurant for granted. Kismet is such a mainstay in my mind that I regularly recommend it to out-of-towners. I’m sending people there, but haven’t been in a long minute. That’s illogical. Most embarrassingly, I’m guilty of over-indexing new (or new-to-me) restaurants, and not always to great success or satisfaction, either. Instead, I need to spend more time seeing what’s new at established restaurants I already love. Also, I know better. I’ve helped build and run restaurants. I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that the sustaining life force of any restaurant is patronage.
So, with all of this, there was only action to take: I booked a table at Kismet.
A huge part of what makes Kismet work is, of course, the food. We humans seem to have this need to categorize stuff. For those purposes, Kismet’s menu has been classified as “Mediterranean Califronian,” but there’s more than that happening.
“(Mediterranean Californian) feels like the easiest boilerplate way to describe our food, which isn’t wrong, but truthfully, we’ve always struggled to describe our cooking in a single sentence. It has a lot of familiar elements but it doesn’t fit neatly into one description,” Kramer said.
“Yes, Californian because we’re here in L.A. and we cook with seasonal produce, and because ‘Californian’ is also, like us, so many things…We’ve never wanted to represent anything or anyone beyond ourselves and our particular and shared culinary backgrounds. Most of all we’ve just always wanted it to be seen as bright and punchy, surprising and subtle, shareable, and delicious. And, there’s no denying, we love our vegetables.”
[Kismet has] grown to become both a vanguard of L.A.’s dining scene, and one of the country’s most respected restaurants.
Adjectives rather than provenance are the best way to describe Kismet’s menu. To Kramer’s descriptors, I’d also add clean, balanced, consistent, soulful, and perfectly unfussy, though you know it’s been deeply considered (and maybe even fussed over).
The Sara(h)s have a knack for bringing together many components on a plate without making it feel like a muddled mess. This is Tinseltown, so perhaps it’s best to say they’re talented at creating ensembles.
Take, for example, the white sweet potatoes, which isn’t something you’d typically expect as a main course. The perplexity persists when the dish hits the table, because it looks like a lot of things haphazardly thrown together. Roasted Japanese sweet potato is dressed in a black mustard seed, Aleppo pepper, toasted peanut-brown butter and grapefruit glaze, huddled beneath roasted peanuts and grapefruit wedges, and topped with a tangle of fresh herbs. The sum of these seemingly disparate parts harmonize together beautifully, yet each individual ingredient still stands on its own – a difficult task to nail consistently, yet Kismet always does.
The little gem lettuce is a salad in which you can truly taste the nutty-sweetness of each individual leaf, the vegetal sweetness of each slice of sugar snap pea, and the toasted butteriness of each pistachio. The crunchiness, juiciness, and slight melon flavors are forwardly bright in Kismet’s cucumber, and the rosewater in the accompanying labneh is appropriately subtle. The richness of a soft egg yolk is gracefully cut by the tart currants and the nutty toasted pepitas in the crispy rice tahdig.
I’m an omnivore with a heavy carnivore lean, though the Sara(h)s could almost make me go full vegetarian. With the exception of the flaky phyllo pies filled with lemony chicken and pine nuts, I almost always stick to just the veggies when I visit Kismet. The malawach flaky bread, a buttery Yemeni flatbread that’s fantastic on its own, is even better when the marinated feta with spice-roast tomatoes and grapefruit is spread across it.
Another thing I had forgotten since my last visit, and was pleasantly surprised to rediscover? The vibe, which always feels like a dinner party. It’s good, convivial fun here. Kismet’s crew welcomes you warmly like you’re a neighbor who’s popping in for a hang. The service is easy and relaxed, but on point and knowledgeable. The music is this handpicked hodgepodge of the hosts’ eclectic tastes, ranging from old school soul and R&B to Depeche Mode. It works. You sit down and grab your own plates, napkins and silverware from the stacks in the middle of your table like you would at a friend’s potluck. The food arrives as a collection of plates for you to partake in and pass. You end up grazing on a sprawling collection of dishes as you share in the important, vital business of camaraderie and conversation. This will include, in true dinner party fashion, communing with the tables next to you.
It seemed only natural to offer sample bites to the two strangers at a neighboring table who were eyeballing our sweet potatoes and tahdig. This led to us all chatting about how welcoming the dining room felt on what was an otherwise blah night. Like us, they too hadn’t been to Kismet in a while, and also couldn’t come up with any reason for their absence. As our dinner wrapped, and we got up to leave, the other couple was several forkfuls deep into their own orders of potatoes and crispy rice. As I put on my jacket, the guy looked up at me, smiled as a new friend would, and said, “See you back here again soon?”
“Sounds like a good idea,” I replied. And I really meant it, too.
Khuong Phan is a former newspaper reporter turned hospitality industry professional who’s been in the employ of a variety of chefs, restaurants, and hotels over the years.
