This is a very Californian Marea.
Calapa engineered a specifically Californian cuisine for Beverly Hills. “We use artisanal California products as much as we can,” he says. Rockfish, scallops, and sea urchins are sourced from Baja to Santa Barbara.
Seafood is a natural passion for Calapa, whose family ran a seafood business in Brownsville, Texas. “I’d watch these guys process hundreds of pounds of fish every day,” he says, and then gather for communal seafood meals on the loading dock. “That’s where I learned my first version of family meal,” he says. In L.A., the chef spent months working with Passerotti to develop relationships with local seafood and produce suppliers, creating a similar community.
While some longtime Marea New York dishes make appearances here (like the famed octopus fusilli), there are several new exclusive-to-L.A. dishes. The artichoke salad, for example, layers fresh shaved local artichokes (“I could never get such consistent artichokes in New York,” says Calapa) with rich hearts of palm, not-too-piquant Fresno chile, and bright lemon.
And Angelenos know avocados intimately, harvesting them from their own yards, but Marea’s half-avocado appetizer nixes the toast and turns the fruit into a creamy, elegant vessel for Santa Barbara spot prawn tartare, Fresno chiles, fennel, tarragon and chives, all topped with a fennel heart.
Dining and Cooking