Pâté en croûte is a classic French charcuterie presentation that dates back to the Middle Ages. When done well, the confluence of textures is a marvelous paradox, with a meat filling that cooks to just the right suppleness, surrounded by a well baked, flaky crust.
The best pâté en croûte in Los Angeles is at Electric Bleu, a French restaurant in Mar Vista run by husband-and-wife team Craig Hopson and Mai Sakai. It’s named for “Electric Blue,” the 1987 No. 1 hit by the Australian band Ice House. And for the ultramarine blue that French artist Yves Klein patented in 1960. A big shard of concrete in this specific shade juts from the restaurant’s round, corner facade.
From a seat at the chef’s counter on a recent evening, I watched as a cook prepared a slice of the pâté en croûte. The pastry clung to a thin layer of aspic that enveloped a filing of pork shoulder and fat, bacon, chicken liver, veal sweetbreads, and button, shiitake and wood ear mushrooms. Flat on the plate, it looked like a pane of stained glass in shades of pork, poultry and beef. A rugged landscape of protein and mushrooms.
It was a textbook perfect presentation of the dish, with the port- and brandy-marinated filling splendacious with fat and the pungent, nearly metallic tang of offal.
Its appearance on the menu might signal a serious French bistro, but Hopson, who grew up with aspirations of becoming a professional surfer in Perth, Australia, applies a more laid-back approach to his dining room. He spent most of his cooking career in rigorous French kitchens in Europe and the U.S., but when it came time to run his own place, he and Sakai envisioned an intimate, unfussy restaurant.
Electric Bleu is French food caressed with California seasonality and the occasional pop of Aussie nostalgia. It’s dimly lighted and fancy enough for a date, ambitious enough for aspiring gourmands to add to their L.A. bucket lists, and priced reasonably enough to encourage young couples to become regulars.
When the restaurant opened last fall, Hopson offered an a la carte menu alongside a four-course “let us cook for you” option. It has since transitioned to a la carte and a five-course tasting menu priced at $79, making it one of the most accessible tasting menus in the entire city. And you don’t need to sit at the counter to order it, or require the participation of your entire party.
“The overall concept of the place is to be fun, and if there’s too many rules, it’s not fun anymore,” said Hopson on a recent call.
For Women’s History Month in March, the second course of the tasting menu featured a crudo from chef Sydney Dalal. It was a brilliantly balanced plate of sweet, plump prawns splayed over a buttermilk emulsion with slivers of pickled Fresno chiles and bits of charred tangerine.
It’s not often that you see a head chef single out a dish from someone else in the kitchen, and in such an overt manner. Hopson plans to continue the practice with the rest of the staff.
“I can see from what’s going on right now in kitchens culturally that we are at a point of reckoning,” said Sakai. “We don’t have to have the scary hush of the kitchen, and we want our chefs and cooks to have their own personality and also shine.”
Toward the end of a recent tasting menu dinner at the counter, I watched a young chef attempt to form a quenelle of ice cream. He accomplished a sort of rounded scoop. Not terrible, but far from correct. A more senior chef spied the lump of ice cream and offered to help demonstrate how to form the perfect egg-like oval.
With the recent allegations surrounding Noma and its $1,500 a head Los Angeles residency, I marveled at the real discipline and finesse in every course of Hopson’s tasting menu. No yelling, punching or stabbing required.
The duck I had that evening was cooked beautifully, with seared crispy skin accompanied by a sweet and sour date poached in citrus and tamarind, alongside a green olive tapenade. For dessert, there was a bowl of chocolate mousse, light as air but like velvet on the spoon, sprinkled with crunchy cake crumbles and toasted slivered almonds.
The a la carte menu is where Hopson delves into more classic French dishes, with a steak au poivre built around a robust, beefy hunk of hanger steak that could put your favorite steakhouse out of business. His pepper sauce is more jus than cream, but plenty rich, with an avalanche of cognac and veal stock and plenty of both black and green peppercorns. It should require an order of Electric fries to sop up the extra sauce.
Hopson cuts, washes, steams, fries, freezes then refries his Kennebec potatoes for an ultra crisp and fluffy bite. They’re coated in what the chef calls “electric salt,” modeled after the fry seasoning he ate as a kid at a fast food restaurant in Australia. It’s a highly addictive mix that includes chicken powder, vinegar powder and Cayenne pepper. Your table will be licking their fingers.
Hopson’s signature roast chicken is the dish he says anchors the menu. I am sorry to say that the two times I ordered it, the chicken was less than stellar. Too dry one evening and too salty on another. The big boulders of potato however, tucked underneath and alongside the chicken, were saturated in drippings and took on a wonderful custard-like texture you could eat with a spoon.
More seasonal, playful touches reveal themselves in dishes like the California sea bass with kumquats or kalamansi and poached squash tinged with coconut and curry. The dish was originally conceived to feature a surplus of kalamansi from the couple’s Inglewood yard.
At various points in the evening, you’re likely to hear a French accent or two in the dining room or on the patio, and more than likely it will come from manager and wine guru Benjamin Phan, who weaves his way through tables carrying numerous bottles in each hand.
If you’re curious about the 2022 Chateauneuf-du-Pape blanc, or the 2021 Jurancon Sec, he’ll offer a taste of both, even if they aren’t offered by the glass. Phan is quick to plunge his Coravin fast-pour needle into a cork to pour a taste, without allowing oxygen to enter the bottle. There’s a $69 lineup of pairings to accompany the tasting menu if you’re so inclined. But Phan is happy to have a conversation about anything on the primarily French list. And he’s happy to bring the bottles to the table, Coravin needle in hand.
Electric Bleu is a testament to the reality that food can be technically precise and expertly executed, without the pretension and toxicity so often associated with fine dining kitchens. Here, the price for excellence is one I’ll gladly pay, over and over again.
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