Comme Ca will soon open for dinner, lunch and breakfast; world domination to follow shortly thereafter.

Comme Ca's frites, which were topped with aioli and served in a paper cone

Comme Ca (8479 Melrose Ave.) held its opening-night party Wednesday and did only one thing wrong: It didn't open today (as chef-owner David Myers once hoped).

And when it does, L.A.'s restaurant world will shift on its axis: Between Lucques, Bastide, Ago, Myers' own Sona and his wife Michelle's Boule(s), the city's food nexus will be at the corner of Melrose and La Cienega. (Drag out the hyperbole a little further and Melrose becomes even more powerful: the Mozzas, Providence, Lou, La Buca.)

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There was cheese everywhere you turned. That out-of-focus backdrop is the
slate chalkboard that lines the restaurant hallway's walls.

Eater LA, which was similarly smitten, has a nice photo of the menu itself. And the food was terrific - buttery steak tartare, briny oysters with mignonette, thin bacon tart with jammy caramelized onions. But the real charmer was the space itself. As a friend from Bon Appetit put it, "It's what Village Idiot wanted to be." Aesthetically, there's a definite affinity between the two with the black wood/white walls/hardwood floors, only Comme Ca is a little more formal with the tufted white leather banquette that lines a wall in the front room and the sense that you're dining in a gently converted home that was owned by an L.A.-loving Frenchman with very, very good taste.

Comme Ca should be open by the end of the month, initially for dinner only starting at 5 p.m., closing at 10:30 p.m. during the week and 11:30 p.m. on weekends. Shortly thereafter, lunch - and breakfast! - will follow. No phone number yet; reservations will also be available through Open Table.   

Comments

[MaxMillion]

Any idea when La Buca's expansion will be completed?

Every time you ask them it's "In a few weeks"...