The Knife

Gastropub: Shedding light on the meaning

Barenaked lightbulbs have become the beacon of choice for urban watering holes. That's The York above, a new gastropub in Highland Park. You'll also find the bulbs at 750ml, a new gastropub in South Pasadena and at The Village Idiot, a new gastropub on Melrose Avenue. To be determined: If "gastropub" is the 21st century synonym for "fern bar."

The York, 5018 York. Blvd. (323) 255-9675
750 ml, 966 Mission St., So. Pasadena. (626) 799-0711
The Village Idiot, 7383 Melrose Ave. (323) 655-3331

750 ml in South Pasadena: Bambi vs. Godzilla

Reviewing a restaurant too quickly used to be bad form. The logic goes like this: In its early days, a restaurant is something like a baby deer, uncertain on its feet. (Aww!) It needs time to become accustomed to its surroundings and grow into the strapping young buck that it will more closely resemble for the remainder of its life.

No, the tortured metaphors do not stop there. Because my point is that critics don't wait anymore, unless you count standing in line to blow young Bambi away. (There. I'm done.)

Case in point: 750 ml. The place hasn't been open a week (it opened last Saturday) and already bloggers at Eater LA, Rainy Days & Sundays and Chowhound, as well as the venerable Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly's Jonathan Gold, have all weighed in. (The verdicts: Some good food, a nice joint, but damn those are some small portions. Expensive, tiny portions and — hey, where’s the goddamn bread basket?) 

Furthermore, 750 ml is a wine bar (a what? breaking news!) in South Pasadena, a location that, for much of Los Angeles, exists only as a rumor and maybe not a very nice one. (They're wrong, of course. SoPas is charming as hell. It's also five minutes from my own Highland Park, a neighborhood largely regarded by Westsiders as a myth.)

So why the rush to judgment?