Drago Centro on South Flower Street in downtown LA offers a wide variety of dishes a la carte, but for larger parties, they also offer a “tasting menu” which is a four course dinner for $60 with optional wine pairing for $35 a person. I would recommend not doing the wine pairing and ordering off the menu so you can order the kind of wine you prefer regardless of what is on offer.
Their regular menu includes a dover sole papillote, shellfish served with baby vegetables, salmon with a garlic risotto cake and baby beets, braised veal osso buco with a potato puree and fava beans, truffle crusted jidori chicken breast, mushrooms, and haricot vert la bistecca.
They also have a duck breast, espresso cavatelli, swiss chard and a cherry gastric, and if you’re really hungry, a bone-in ribeye for two, served with a truffle potato terrine, vegetables, and topped off with a brown butter fonduta.
Since we were a large group, we went for the tasting pre-fixe menu, which started off with a smoked salmon, baby fennel, and celery root panna cotta.
This was followed by a Trio di pasta selection on a narrow long plate: garganelli, pork sausage, parmesan and fennel seeds, secondly, a strozzapreti served with onions, pork jowl and tomato sauce, and lastly, a butternut squash agnolotti served with brown butter and sage. Of the three, the butternut squash pasta was clearly the winner.
They recommended a luciano sandrone dolcetto alba to go with this course. For a main course, they served a roasted venison loin with butternut squash, sunchokes and swiss chard. Here they recommended a ciacci piccolomini d’aragona, fabius, syrah toscana (2006).
They finished off the evening with a flourless chocolate cake served with basil gelato and candied almonds.
Do we give it a 2 thumbs up? Frankly, it was hit or miss. People in our group had mixed feelings about the dessert – I loved the basil flavor and the creative forces that decided to mix it with a gelato but not everyone did. The pasta didn’t blow anyone away although most people really liked the butternut squash even if they weren’t pasta fans.
The venison was tender and well presented but the preparation wasn’t all that original even though it was certainly above average. A la carte can get pricey so from a cost perspective, this may be the way to go if you like everything on offer (and can eat everything on the menu), but I’d still recommend ordering your own wine and staying away from the mixed drinks – it doesn’t seem to be their strength but they do have a decent wine list.
Renee Blodgett is the founder of We Blog the World. The site combines the magic of an online culture and travel magazine with a global blog network and has contributors from every continent in the world. Having lived in 10 countries and explored nearly 80, she is an avid traveler, and a lover, observer and participant in cultural diversity.
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