A plush booth at The Tar Pit
TRY THIS RECIPE: Start with famous local chef Mark Peel (Campanile), add a jigger of mixology from New York bar owner Audrey Saunders (Pegu Club), then muddle them together in a lounge space that’s a classy throwback to 1930s supper clubs. What you get is The Tar Pit.
You’ll notice lots of things when you walk in the door—the dark marble-topped bar, the ornate glass chandeliers, the live band playing old standards on a small side stage and the Art Deco partitions separating the plush booths. Peel says the Golden Age of Hollywood design was inspired by the screwball comedy My Man Godfrey starring Carole Lombard. “There’s a club all the characters go to at the end of the movie called The Dump, and we based The Tar Pit on that,” chuckles Peel.
That lighthearted sense of nostalgia is evident in Peel’s menu, with dishes such as pickled deviled eggs sprinkled with Smithfield ham, crab cakes with preserved lemon remoulade and duck sliders with orange gastrique. Steak Diane gets updated with green peppercorns and cognac in the Madeira sauce, while cornichons and fried capers modernize the shrimp Louis.
Then there are new versions of the old-fashioned cocktails your grandparents would have ordered at their first USO dance, including a Gin-Gin Mule with mint, lime, simple syrup and house-made ginger beer and the politically incorrect Old Cuban—basically a mojito made with aged rum and Angostura bitters finished off with Champagne.
Now if we could just get FDR back in office. 609 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, 323-965-1300; tarpitbar.com
