Salt's Cure Valentine's Day

We went to Salt's Cure, one of our favorite restaurants last night.  They do a lot of curing and pickling, and the food is fun.  We went there for the first time a few months ago with our friends Jim and Norm who were in town from Seattle on a food tour/rampage of Los Angeles.  I miscalculated and made breakfast tacos at 10am, not realizing that we had 2 food stops planned that day before our big food tour finale dinner at Angelini Osteria at 7pm.  Jim had read about the charcuterie case at Salt's Cure, so we figured we could just get something to go. We showed up on a very rainy Sunday late morning with very full bellies.  The place had a 45 minute wait and we were told that the charcuterie case was closed until February.  As we stood outside under the eave trying to figure out what to do in LA on a rainy day besides eat, the hostess came out several times to tell us what was sold out.  We explained that we weren't really even hungry, we probably weren't going to stay, and we were just trying to figure out what to do in LA in the rain.  Somehow we were still there after 45 minutes, and the hostess implored us to come inside and at least have a beer.  Even though they were about to close and out of almost everything, chef/owners Zachary Walters and Christopher Phelps offered to figure out something for us to eat.  And they did.  And it was incredible and interesting and involved cured pork.  We've loved them ever since (postscript: Because of our second breakfast, we were forced to play Just Dance on the Wii for 4 hours to prepare the way for Angelini.  It worked, and we ate like champs)

Last night we sat at the bar, and they brought house rolls with sage butter.  We ordered the pickle plate, which came with house-made sauerkraut, pickled onions, pickled black radish, a half-hard half-soft pretzel and a honey mustard sauce (it's not too soon, the 90s started 20 years ago, and that shit tastes good).  Next up were the grilled oysters, yum.  I hadn't eaten oysters in awhile that weren't raw or fried.  Next we had beef medallions in a red wine sauce.  They were perfectly rare and melted like butter in our mouths.  We bravely ordered the charred treviso radicchio.  It was good, but very very bitter.  I could handle a few bites, but Matt really liked it.  We didn't order dessert, but they brought over chocolate truffles with cardamom on account of it being Valentine's Day and their 6 month anniversary.  We left very full and very happy.   

salt's cure

the honey

the board

pickled onions

what was left of the truffles