Review: At Otoño in Highland Park, modern Spanish cooking with an L.A. twist
LA TimesRestaurant Critic By the time the negra fideuà makes its appearance on your table at Otoño, you’ll have already worked through a few plates of tapas — triangles of Manchego cheese smeared with Asturian honey, tiny bowls of paprika-dusted Marcona almonds, plates layered with lustrous, paper-thin slices of jamón ibérico. This is the sort of modern Spanish cooking that Montaño became known for at Ración, the much-loved Basque-inspired restaurant in Old Town Pasadena that she operated for five years with former partner Loretta Peng. Otoño’s conservas selection includes hard-to-find, small-production seafood from Spain’s Atlantic coast: creamy slips of squid preserved in olive oil, salty baby sardines, unctuous hunks of tuna belly. Even better are the house-made conservas, especially the conserva de pulpo, Spanish octopus cured in a vibrant, lightly spicy New Mexico red chile sauce, a nod to Montaño’s native home state.
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