What Jonathan Gold is into: ERB’s buttermilk biscuits and bourbon

Have you been to ERB? You really should go to ERB. Because it is the beer garden Los Angeles has always needed, a modest expanse of lawn furniture and twinkling lights deep in the Arts District. Chris Ojeda’s cocktails are just on the modest side of creative, the wine list is excellent, and the snacks are from Matt Molina, a former Mozza chef with an actual James Beard Award to his name.

Why would Molina leave the ambitious Mozza kitchen to cook burgers and hamachi tostadas at a bar? Maybe he needed a break from duck al mattone and calf’s brain ravioli; maybe he likes the kind of environment where it’s OK to duck out of the kitchen between orders and kvetch about the Lakers on the patio. I have no idea.

Anyway, among the smoky taquitos and barbecued chicken thighs on the bar menu, you will find buttermilk biscuits, which seems a bit like a non sequitur. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen biscuits at a tavern unless they happened to have a sliver of country ham sandwiched between them. Bar food is supposed to be salty and greasy, powering you through your next foaming glass of IPA. Biscuits are breakfast food, a bit of wholesomeness mediating between fried eggs and a splosh of blueberry jam.

But Molina’s biscuits are excellent: tall, crisp and just a little tart. If I’m guessing correctly, they are a variant on the Nancy Silverton recipe that Ruth Reichl published in her cookbook last year, which is to say that they are not just expertly folded, they contain more than twice as much butter than the ones you made last year from “Joy of Cooking.” It’s not health food. And what you get from Molina’s generous hand is an almost supernatural flakiness — the biscuits separate into a series of steamy, crunchy-edged leaves, each one ready to dab with a bit of whipped maple butter.

Buttermilk biscuits with maple butter turn out to be pretty much a perfect pairing for bourbon, of which ERB turns out to have one of the biggest selections in L.A., including all the Pappy, Stagg and Elijah Craig limited whatever that could possibly haunt a hedge-fund guy’s dreams. Me, I’ll stick with ERB’s own “Joe C.”-selected single-barrel Weller Antique, which is as close to sweet, sweet Pappy as anyone in my tax bracket can possibly aspire to.

ERB, 1936 E 7th St., Los Angeles, (213) 335-6166, erbla.com.

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