Pop-up restaurant Netflix Bites delivers on its name. It really does bite.
It takes Rodney Scott and his crew around 12 hours to slowly smoke a pig over hickory and oak.
In the ways of whole hog barbecuing he learned growing up in Hemingway, S.C. — stemming from a regional tradition centered in the eastern Carolinas and sometimes neighboring states — the animal will be mopped in a peppered vinegar sauce during its low, slow transformation in the pit. When finished, the team cleaves meat from various sections together, incorporating bits of skin that have an almost glassy crackle. The union of textures define the style, and the soaked-in chile heat and cidery acid slash through the porky, smoky-sweet richness.
Enter the Netflix pop-up
An interpretation of Scott’s barbecue is on the menu at the Neflix Bites pop-restaurant, housed for its scheduled three-month run on the grounds of the Short Stories hotel on South Fairfax Avenue. The pop-up was conceived as a way for diners to experience dishes identified with or beloved by marquee chefs featured on the streaming service’s food-related shows. As with TV programming, the event even has a tagline: “Watching is good. Eating is better.”
But I’m not persuaded by this production.
The dish inspired by Scott reads “pulled whole hog with collards, ribs.” Since winning the James Beard Foundation award for Best Chef: Southeast in 2018, Scott has become more of a public figure — including a gorgeously shot episode of “Chef’s Table: BBQ” on Netflix devoted to him — and he and his backers have been in expansion mode. He oversees restaurants in Charleston, S.C., Atlanta and two locations in Alabama. His repertoire, to satisfy a widening audience, has duly expanded. Ribs are now indeed an option on his menus alongside the must-try whole hog.
When my $46 barbecue plate arrives at Neflix Bites, it contains two stacks of ribs, no whole-hog meat.
“Oh,” says a server. “I think there was a problem with the smoker? We’re out of pulled pork tonight.”
These dry, mealy, flavorless ribs taste nothing like Scott’s barbecue, which I relished at least half a dozen times in my former lives as an Atlanta-based food writer and as Eater’s national critic, traveling constantly for five years before moving to Los Angeles. The chew of the collards brings to mind oil cloth.
Fine. So maybe it’s a bad night for barbecue?
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Nope, most everything else disappoints too
Next up: a pizza dotted with yellow Sungold tomatoes, meant to be made in the style of chef Ann Kim. It has none of the generosity of ingredients and complexity to the dough that I’ve experienced at Kim’s restaurant Young Joni in Minneapolis. Additions of Pecorino Romano, garlic and honey? I mostly taste the blanket of mozzarella.
A vegetarian main of charred cabbage slathered with smoked crème fraîche and punctuated with sauerkraut reveals none of the cerebral, poetic sensibilities I remember from the cooking of Dominique Crenn, to whom the idea is attributed, at her San Francisco restaurants.
I’ve never had any desserts made directly by the hands of cookbook author and “Great British Bakeoff” favorite Nadiya Hussain, but I know her recipe for Russian honey cake with salted hazelnuts. The sour cream in the frosting is crucial. The version re-created at Neflix Bites jolts with icing sweetened to the extremes of a children’s birthday party circa 1976.
The cooking comes off as flat and uninspired. Prices for entrees range from $29 to $65; considering the execution, the cost registers as exorbitant. Given the marketing gloss around the endeavor, the whole thing feels cynical.
To be clear, I don’t fault the associated chefs, who have their own businesses to operate and can’t possibly take up residence for three months to monitor how this food attached to their names and reputations is being prepared. To run the kitchen, Netflix partnered with Curtis Stone Events, headed by the veteran of culinary competition shows who has two restaurants in Los Angeles, tasting menu-centric Maude and Gwen, a steakhouse. I’d certainly rather eat at either of those places than return to Neflix Bites.
The food roundly disappointed; meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy, a straightforward notion of comfort by way of Andrew Zimmern’s grandmother, showed most favorably. But some brighter patches shone through. The staff was as upbeat as they were professional. The dining areas are psychedelic circuses, full of blaring colors and tight tables. Servers maneuvered with grace. Drinks leaned fun: star bartender Kate Gerwin devised variations on a gin and tonic to be concocted tableside from a cart. One dyed midnight blue from butterfly pea flower tasted, in the best sense, like a boozy snow cone.
Beyond opining over the pop-up’s culinary successes and failures, there is the climate in which it operates to consider. A historic strike by the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA continues with no resolution in sight. A linchpin of the walkout centers on compensation in an era when the entertainment industry has been reshaped by tech-oriented companies like Netflix.
“Silicon Valley’s invasion of Hollywood brought with it science fictional notions of growth for the industry, a penchant for secrecy and unaccountability and the expectation that it could get away with treating workers like robots or invisible code,” wrote Brian Merchant, The Times’ technology columnist, this week.
The unions aren’t encouraging consumers to boycott films or stop watching television, but do those of us who feel solidarity with striking Hollywood creatives need to be further lining the pockets of Netflix by patronizing its restaurant experiment?
A word of advice if you’re looking to cancel your reservation: Do it seven days in advance or you’ll be charged $25 per person. With so many exceptional options in Los Angeles for barbecue, pizza, pastries and worlds more, I’d suggest planning ahead … to dine elsewhere.
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Also ...
— One recommendation off the top of my head: Colette in Pasadena, a Cantonese restaurant I reviewed this week. I have some pretty specific thoughts on which dishes to order.
— Stephanie Breijo has the details on Michelin’s latest ratings for California. The L.A. area received one whole new star. The guide’s Bib Gourmand selections, which Stephanie wrote about last week, includes four new “good value” designations in the L.A. region.
— Stephanie also reports on the return of groundbreaking restaurant Locol, which will operate in its original Watts location as a nonprofit.
— Speaking of pop-ups, Jenn Harris points the way to a pair of them you can feel very good patronizing, featuring shawarma and Vietnamese garlic butter wings.
— Camyrn Brewer illuminates a new bill being introduced in California’s legislature intended to make it easier for communities statewide to host events like farmers markets, flea markets and — this is especially exciting — night markets.
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