The Italian restaurant Bestia is brought to you by the same husband-and-wife team that founded Bavel, another trendy spot that Charlie and I visited last year. If the owners’ dream was to open a pair of restaurants that would unfailingly inflate customers’ hopes until they actually tried the food, at which point they would feel a huge letdown, then, mission accomplished. It has taken Charlie and I this long to finally experience Bestia because of how difficult it is to cinch a reservation there; a testament to how successfully the hype has been in generating this mass illusion among LA foodies that this restaurant is worth it. On a Thursday evening in April, then Charlie and I arrived at Bestia, looking forward to another memorable dinner. Unlike me, who was trying Bestia for the first time, Charlie had already dined there multiple times in the past and apparently had enjoyed it enough to keep going back. He recommended the restaurant, as did my aesthetician. On this occasion, we were joined by another friend, and as the three of us ordered cocktails, I felt sanguine about the food I would soon enjoy. True, the cheap-looking, orange, plastic stools at the bar looked out of place in a restaurant with a high-end reputation (and prices), and the patrons were squeezed in more tightly than I would have liked, giving the place a noisy, rather gastropub-y vibe, but ignoring those red flags, I still held out hope that the food would taste amazing.
My cocktail, the orange-flavored “Search and Destroy,” was fairly good, if a tad too sweet. For our meal, the three of us shared a Caesar salad, two wood-fired pizzas, and a pasta entrée. Charlie also had the roasted bone marrow, which is a signature dish at Bestia, according to my aforementioned aesthetician. The presentation of the salad was attractive and it tasted fine, but of course, it’s virtually impossible to fuck up romaine lettuce and Parmigiano Reggiano. Of the two pizzas, one was so forgettable I literally can’t tell you what it was because I’ve forgotten. I think it had tomatoes on it? The pizzas on the Bestia menu are all about $28 each. Was this pizza, which may or may not have had tomatoes on it, better than a $20 Papa John’s pizza? Good question. For that matter, was it better than a $10 pizza I could buy in the frozen foods section of my local supermarket? Another thought-provoking question. The second pizza to arrive in front of us, the “Smoked Mozzarella and Taleggio,” had a more distinctive, “artisanal” flavor, unlikely to be recreated at a Papa John’s. We unanimously agreed that it was the best dish of the evening. While I can’t deny enjoying that smoky pizza, I also can’t imagine going back to a restaurant just for that item. Furthermore, I’m kind of over artisanal pizzas that seem to be most recognizable as such by their comparative lack of toppings. If anyone ever opens a high-end pizza restaurant that serves pies with tons of melted cheese, tomatoes, and other vegetables, please let me know.
It seems fitting that for a dining experience that could be entitled, Not Nearly as Good as All the Hype Suggested, or perhaps, more simply, Overrated, the culminating dish was, we all agreed, the biggest disappointment of all. This squid ink spaghetti with lobster sounded good in theory, but its execution failed to realize the potential in its concept. The pasta itself was so al dente it was almost crunchy. Even the addition of the lobster couldn’t make this a dish to enjoy. When we told each other, “No, you go ahead and have the rest of this pasta,” we weren’t being polite; we were really trying to dump an unwanted dish onto someone else.
Our evening at Bestia was intended to be more than just another of our regular “dinners of the month,” we were also there to celebrate Charlie’s recent promotion at his work (the friend he brought was a coworker who was also hired through Charlie’s help). In a weird parallel between our experience that evening and Charlie’s professional trajectory, both were highly anticipated events that quickly devolved into major letdowns.
