How the Tsubaki team is blending French with Japanese at downtown’s newest bistro

Japanese-French bistro Camélia, now open in the Arts District, serves dishes such as farmers-market crudités served raw, pickled and fried with carrot vinaigrette and aioli. “I’ve worked in Japanese kitchens, I’ve worked at French kitchens, and I grew up eating a lot of food that was French-Japanese — or Italian-Japanese — and it’s kind of my interpretation of the two cuisines.” Camélia’s raw bar serves otoro and uni with tare, shiso and fresh wasabi on house-made milk bread. “It was sort of like, ‘Oh, I’ll probably never open a restaurant ever again,’ but there was something fun about fantasizing, like, ‘Oh, if we ever were to do this again, what would we want to do?’ a bunch of ideas, but kept coming back to this idea of a French-Japanese restaurant.” When they learned the former home of Church & State and Caboco was available, they were daunted by its size, larger than their Echo Park spaces, but emboldened by its history. They closed Baja Cali three weeks before Carnal’s opening, quickly flipping the space with darker tones and a more formal setting: black walls, new black marble counter seating that overlooks the open kitchen, and three dozen seats at dining tables under husks of hanging dried corn, a nod to the importance of maiz in Oaxacan cuisine and its use in nearly every dish on the menu of Carnal. Piknik is open daily from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. 751 Echo Park Ave., Los Angeles, piknikla.com Tartine Some of L.A.’s best bread and pastries now can be found at the border of Santa Monica and Venice with a new location of Tartine.