241 Main Street
El Segundo, CA 90245
We recently were headed to LAX to catch a flight when I got an alert on my phone that our flight had been delayed for an hour and a half. Most of the time, this would have infuriated me, but I was starving, and this saved me from having some garbage fast food at the airport. We were pretty close to the airport, so I did a quick Yelp search of nearby restaurants and picked Jame Enoteca based on their Yelp reviews.
Jame Enoteca is the proud owner of a four-and-a-half star rating, with over 500 reviews. Established in 2018, Jame Enoteca is helmed by Jackson Kalb, who also runs Ospi in nearby Venice, and it was just announced that he and his wife are also opening an Italian seafood restaurant in Brentwood, which should open later this spring or summer. As if all that was not enough, he's also going to be a contestant on the latest season of Top Chef. In summary, he's a very busy fellow.
Maybe because it was a Thursday night, we got seated right away when we arrived at this cozy restaurant situated in a nondescript strip mall, just off of Main Street in El Segundo. We were seated on the patio in front of the restaurant. so I never did actually get a good look inside the restaurant while we were here, but from the pictures I've seen online, it looks pretty tiny, with tables squeezed together very closely. To remedy the covid times that we are all experiencing right now, they have erected a makeshift patio in the parking lot.
On their website, they call their cuisine Californian-Italian fare while using local, market-driven ingredients to create their dishes. The lunch menu at Jame Enoteca features starters, salads, sandwiches, and eight hand-rolled pasta offerings, while the dinner menu forgoes the sandwiches in favor of four larger plates and adds more in the way of starters and pasta options. Appetizers hover around the $16 price point, while pasta dishes will set you back right around $20, and mains go for $30 or more. Let's see if this was a much better alternative to the airport eating we would have done if our plane had not been delayed.
We've gotten Crispy Brussels Sprouts ($16) at plenty of restaurants, but I'm not sure we've ever gotten as many as we got on this evening at Jame Enoteca. This platter contained more than our fair share of these little cabbages. They were indeed very crispy as the menu promised, but they lacked a substantial amount of the schiafonni dressing, which would have helped bring these sprouts to life a bit more. Not bad, but with so many and not enough dressing, I became bored after eating my fifteenth sprout.
Entrees were up next, and Katie will start us off with her selection this evening, the Tagliatelle Al Ragu ($19). I also had my eye on this one, but I deferred to her. See, I can be a decent husband some of the time. The brief menu description calls this a Hollywood-style bolognese, and the reason for this might surprise you, as it did me. They add avocados to their bolognese, which gives it some added creaminess. You'd never know it by tasting it, but the result is one of the most comforting dishes we have had in a while. The ribbon pasta was fresh and was a great vehicle for this untraditional, but meaty ragu. After my bite of this, it's no wonder why this dish gets so much love online.
Since Katie took my number one pick, I decided to go with the Paccheri Rigati ($19 plus $5 for two meatballs). This pick was another winner. The large tubed pasta was nicely paired with spicy pork sausage, a lick-your-plate clean tomato-based sauce, and finished off with some fine pecorino. It popped with a bit of a kick from the sausage, but even if you are a wimp when it comes to heat, I think you could handle this one. The meatballs were kind of a letdown. They were very dense and needed to be seasoned a bit more. They were not awful, but I'd probably try the sausage the next time I was here.
Jame Enoteca has been called one of the best places to eat pasta in all of Los Angeles, and after this visit, I'd have to say it's right up there. If we lived closer, we would definitely have this spot in our heavy rotation of restaurants. I'd love to eat my way through the rest of their menu. The service was very cordial, and the food came out real quick. The price point was pretty modest, while the portion sizes are not going to overstuff you, but you definitely won't need to stop on the way home to get something else either. Jame Enoteca was an excellent alternative to the airport food we would have had to endure if our flight wasn't delayed. Probably one of the only times we will be thankful for a flight delay.
Out of five Hot Wheels cars, (because Mattel is based in El Segundo, and the best selling toy of all-time is their Hot Wheels brand), five being best to zero being worst, Jame Enoteca gets 3.5 Hot Wheel cars.
For more information about Jame Enoteca, head to their website by clicking here: https://www.eatjame.com/
Hope you could visit our best restaurant in manila in the future 🙂
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