Somerville, Leftovers Included

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I’m writing this from the road, almost three weeks after the night itself. The date was September 12. After that I did a run, came home for about a week, and now I’m back out, and when I think about Somerville, the first thing that comes to mind is the leftovers. They were astronomical.

It was a first date, and she suggested Six Seven Five Lounge in Inglewood. I looked it up, and there was nothing open until around 10:30 at night. I didn’t want to be out that late, though I don’t know if she cared. I’d been wanting to try the restaurant Issa Rae is a partner in, so I found a table there and booked it.

Getting dressed was its own problem. I live on the road, so the only clothes I can get to are the ones I carry, and everything else is in storage. I didn’t have time to make it to storage before the date. So I ironed my shirt, ironed my pants, got clean, put on some cologne, and thought I was ready: a white Vans T-shirt with a purple logo, a pair of Eddie Bauer tech pants, the new kind that look like jeans without being jeans, and gray Adidas Sambas. Then Somerville texted me “Upscale Casual,” plus a $10 dessert plating fee, $40 corkage, and a 90-minute clock. I expected 71Above. I expected WP24. I expected Mastro’s. I was clean and I looked OK, but I didn’t know if I was upscale casual, and I was very nervous about it.

Somerville sits on Slauson in View Park, and I know that part of town well. What I hate is what’s happening to restaurant parking in Los Angeles. I lived the good life in Vegas for ten months, trotting around hotels, and I loved valet there. Here, when all I want is to get to dinner, I love it a lot less, and more of the new places sit right on the main drag. Lucia puts its valet stand out front on Fairfax. Linden, on Sunset in Hollywood, runs valet at night, and street parking out front is scarce. BOBO Thai opened in Silver Lake in August with no lot at all, so you’re circling side streets. At Somerville I pulled up to the valet and handed over my keys. When dinner was over and we came back outside, my car was in the exact same spot. I paid twenty dollars for nobody to move it. Valet has its place. I’m not sure this is it.

Once we walked in and I watched people come through, it all panned out. I was clean and ironed, and that was all it took. The maître d’ sat us at the bar first, which is one of my favorite things about fine dining. Most places leave you standing in a waiting area where nobody talks to anybody, but at the bar the conversation starts on its own, and the vibe starts before the table. She ordered the D.W., pungent with lime and Hennessy, and it came in a coupe with an orchid on top, under the beaded gold chandelier hanging over the bar. I had a Crown & Hops 8 Trill Pils.

Getting into the table was the annoying part. I’m a larger person, and getting seated was weird and funky. Once I was in, the room settled around us, moody, dark brown and cream, with wood-paneled walls, cream curtains, and a palm in the corner. We were on a dark blue banquette, and the other tables had cane-back chairs. A live band played mostly typical R&B hits and covers, and if they played an original, I didn’t notice it.

My read on the room is that it was reaching for something it didn’t grab. Lucia feels intentional, and Somerville felt a little clumsy. That’s a comparison, but it’s the one I keep making. The text had set me up for something very different, and the room I’d been nervous about turned out to be loungey and mixed.

She came back from the ladies’ room with a report. There were hooks for her purse, a speaker carrying the band, and a little lock on the door like the one at home. She called it homey, clean, neat, and cozy.

We went family style, and the fried chicken and caviar sliders came first, the chicken hanging off the bun on every side. My first bite was tart, from a bread-and-butter pickle with a slight hint of vinegar. The caviar sat in the crème fraîche in little black beads, and I could see it, but I couldn’t taste it. Caviar is salty, and that salt wasn’t there. The chicken was meh chicken. The bread was the star, super toasted and crispy, with a tough softness, and I never found out if they bake it. At another table, a couple ordered the Parker House rolls for $15. They looked like the dinner rolls I’m used to getting for free. I didn’t order them, so I can’t tell you if they were good, or if they were worth $15 over the free bread most restaurants bring you.

She picked the salmon, which came in a tomato broth with cherry tomatoes, peppers, and basil leaves laid on top. It was good, and hot sauce took it to another level, though everything around it seemed out of place. I picked the collard green lasagna, which came in a little cast-iron skillet, browned on top and dusted with red pepper flakes. It was delicious and earthy, and the cheese added a savvy layer.

For sides she picked the mac and cheese and I picked the corn. The menu listed it as buttered corn with pickled fresno chiles and espelette, and when I read that, it reminded me of elote. I love street corn. I love the elote man who comes through the neighborhood in the morning or the afternoon honking his horn, and I love going out there and getting a nice little bit of corn from a guy with a pot on his bicycle. Whether or not that was the intention, it felt like a nod to LA street food and culture, and it turned out to be exceptional, my favorite thing on the table.

She liked the mac and cheese. For me it was kind of lackluster, but I’m a hard critic of restaurant mac and cheese. Black folks have a claim on it, and nobody beats what Auntie does in the kitchen with seventeen thousand cheeses. It was good. It just wasn’t the cookout.

Once we’d tasted everything, we sat there a while, nibbling and talking. We went back and forth about what we liked about the restaurant and what we didn’t, and mostly we just enjoyed each other’s company. Somewhere in there the itis crept up on me, and I got sleepy as shit. She and the waitress talked me into a caffeinated tea, since I didn’t want coffee. She got two scoops of banana gelato, and I had some, though I wasn’t that interested. I woke up enough to drive, and we chatted and hung out a while longer. It was a really good first date. I enjoyed myself, and so did she. We’ve kept talking since.

Four days after our date, federal prosecutors alleged that the owner of Six Seven Five had used more than $1 million in homeless housing money to open and run the place. When the news came out, we were glad we didn’t go.

The morning after the date, around ten, I had the leftovers for a late breakfast and ran the leftover test, the one I wrote up with Kyle Schulley at Roadhouse LA all those years ago. I’d taken home a little corn, a very small piece of salmon, and a lot of the lasagna, and I paired the lasagna with leftover catfish from Family Fish Market in Carson. Chef’s kiss, literally. The greens reminded me of real lasagna, with a texture that read as pasta even though it’s a vegetable. The salmon’s seasonings had settled in and run through the little piece that was left. The corn was sweet with hints of tartness, maybe from the lemon we’d drizzled on the salmon.

The corn had been my favorite thing at the table. By the next morning, the lasagna had passed it.

I paid $20 for somebody not to park my car, and I couldn’t taste the caviar on the caviar slider. But with a piece of catfish on the plate, that collard green lasagna was astronomical.

Maybe Somerville just needed a night in the refrigerator.