Republique is a timeless restaurant in a Gothic building that features modern french cuisine cooked by Chefs Walter and Margarita Manzke. It is located in Los Angeles and has been on my bookmarks list for a LONG time. The special thing about Republique is the little history of the building that it is located in. The building is originally a Charlie Chaplin office in 1929, which was transformed into La Brea Bakery and Campanile later on. Now, this artisanal restaurant features a bar, bakery, cafe and bistro all at once. Here, you can surely enjoy a traditional yet contemporary meal of French cuisine while dining at comfortable communal tables while enjoying the grand historical story of the building you sit at.
Each person starts off with a clean, crisp plate with a small artisanal cup of stilled water. Our waiter brings in a bouquet of crispy bread sticks for us to pick out of. These were crunchy and crispy in savory garlic.
Thanks to the restaurant’s sommelier, we were able to make two fine picks of white and red wine to accompany our meal tonight.
To the left we have our bottle of white: 2013. Michel Autran. Les enfers tranquilles vouvray. This bottle of wine comes from the vineyard Les Enfers. It is a calming wine that fills your tastebuds of riped apples, some spices and light minerals and perfumes.
To the right we have our bottle of red: 2013. Jean David. Cotes du Rhone. This bottle of sophisticated wine requires a “ten-minute warm up” and its taste is composed of sweet red flowers, cranberries, red currants, pastry spices and fresh mission figs.
From our hors d’oeuvres, we started off with the sweet potato beignets made out of medjool dates, singapore curry, yogurt and lime. This was a delicious, soft potato ball to eat! It was beautifully placed on a small pool of creamy yogurt sauce that was refreshingly cool compared to the warm temperature of the beignets.
(Excuse for the dim lighting. The restaurant had the romantic ambiance thing going on and we didn’t want to disrupt our nearby tables with our bright phone lights).
Our second hors d’oeuvres was the long-awaited (by me) ‘eggs on toast.’ This was essentially soft scrambled eggs and santa barbara uni on toast! The uni was soft and tasted like the sea. The eggs were very soft and velvety on a crispy, crunchy toast.
These escargots en croute are made of garlic and parsley and they are soooo cute! The small cups are hot to touch and house the fragile escargot while drenched in a soup of butter and garlic. The soft, puffy bread on top was a cute little mushroom hat to eat; very soft and velvet-y like a croissant.
To be on the healthier side, here is the grilled octopus salad served with wild arugula, arnett farms citrus, cabbage, santa barbara pistachios, chile and lime.
The charcuterie board includes 5 chef-selected cheeses, duck liver mousse, pates, terrines and dry cures. The taller slice to the right at the end is mine selected especially: ‘acapella’ – goat cheese from Soyoung Scanlan’s Andante Dairy in Petaluma, CA. This was my favorite cheese! It was very soft and creamy made from goat’s milk. To give the ash round texture and look, ash was added during salting to give the French classic look.
The other cheeses include:
‘Pastoral’ goat cheese from Soyoung Scanlan’s Andante Dairy in Petaluma, CA
‘Bayley Hazen Blue’ cow cheese from Jasper Hill Farm, Vermont.
‘Dorset’ cow cheese from Consider Bardwell Farm, Vermont.
Challerhocker cow cheese from Switzerland.
This was my favorite dish of the night: spinach cavatelli pasta made of morel, black trumpet & porcini mushrooms and wild ramps. The texture of the pasta is very dense and chewy, which is interesting compared to all other pastas. The sauce was light and creamy abundant in mushroom taste.
My second favorite dish is the saffron mezze maniche made with marin sun farms lamb ragout, rapini and parmesan. This was a very savory and tasty dish. The lamb was cooked to tender, soft and sweet. The pasta was cooked perfectly to al dente.
This is Mary’s organic roasted chicken cooked in fregola, smoked eggplant, grilled asparagus, cherry tomatoes, green olives and chermoula. The chicken was very savory and juicy even to its white breast meats! Served with plenty of greens that everyone enjoyed!
The red wine-braised beef short rib was served with braised greens, bacon, baby carrots, and roasted fingerling potatoes. The short rib was extremely soft, tender and flaky to fork’s touch. The sauce was savory and sweet at the same time.
Thank you to all my friends who were able to make it out this past weekend to celebrate my birthday with me! I truly appreciate and feel loved this whole week by family, friends and boyfriend. I am truly blessed that everything worked out and we were able to celebrate it at Republique of all places too! Here we have Susiecakes red velvet cake served on a tiered platter. THIS CAKE IS TO DIE FOR. Extremely sweet, but all worth the sweet tooth headache. The red velvet cake itself was very moist, very velvet-y. The cream cheese frosting and cream was VERY sweet, creamy and decadently sweet. It was just delicious! Everyone enjoyed the cake and we finished the entire thing for 8 people! Yikes! That is a lot of diabetes for us that night!
And happy birthday to me! Thank you, thank you, thank you guys for coming!! It was such a fun birthday dinner to enjoy with good friends over decadent foods and delicious wine. <3
