Bottega Louie L.A. Review

Hello loves. I am back with a restaurant review. We celebrated a dear friend's birthday on Saturday night in Downtown L.A. The heart, 7th and Grand to be exact. I love this part of the city of Angels. Bottega Louie was the choice. It's apparently the place to be at (and has been for some time, just been out of the L.A. loop lately). We knew it was a popular restaurant so we were prepared to wait a long time to be seated...45 minutes they told us. Not bad I thought, I could really take in the feel of the restaurant as we wait, plus...I am a people watcher anyway. I am really loving everything about the restaurant; the colors, the structure, the brightness of the place, with lots of chocolates and other sweets in beautiful pastel boxes at store front, the overall ambience. I am excited to be here and eager to taste the food I heard so much about.

Well an hour passes and at this point I am getting tired of staring at the macaron trees, not to mention starting to get very hungry...grouchy hungry. We ask the hostess "what's the dealio?" she apologized and said it would be 15 to 20 more minutes tops. Well how about another 45 minutes!?! Ok, fine. I can handle this, not a big deal. I'm not a brat when it comes to waiting, I consider myself to be quite patient but they really tested me on this one.

But, here is what really got to me (that may just possibly keep me from going back). Not sure if it was only this night, or this is typical, but I noticed a smell that I couldn't ignore. It was the smell of cooking oils that came from the seemingly unventilated open kitchen that permeated the dining area. It was such an overwhelming smell. My hair and clothes were stinky, my nose hurt and my eyes burned. I'd like to give it the benefit of the doubt that maybe, just maybe since it was a busy night, they were having a "bad grease night." I kid you not, driving home all we talked about was how horrible our hair and clothes smelled.

Anyway, now on to the good stuff. The stuff that made my belly smile. In all my stinky an tired self glory, I was pleasantly surprised by the table service and how quick our food arrived. Thumbs up to the Eggplant Parmesan, the King Salmon, and the Chicken Carciofi. The food and service together just might make the funk in my hair worth it.

Okay, enough mumbo jumbo...on to the photos.

Enjoy.

Obsessed with the colors and the beautiful pastel boxes

Beautifully created desserts

More pretties

And I absolutely loved the marble and French detailed counters. Oh my, the counters!!!

Truffle galore...

and Macaron galore. Looks like the red is quite popular.

Love the bar area...more beautiful counters.

Ah, yes. The open kitchen. I love the look of it. It was like watching one of those "Master Chef" reality shows live. But, there was that smell.

Eggplant Parmesan. This was sooo delicious.

King Salmon

Chicken Carciofi

The chocolate soufflé was to die for.

Happy Birthday my dear friend Erica, love you girl.

All in all, it's a great location, convenient parking, delicious food, the crowd was loud, long wait, pesky oils. It's very L.A. Gotta love it.

XoXo,

Iris

All photos by me