Tasty Recipes from Recipe Wizards

Michel Nischan is a chef, best-selling cookbook author and tireless promoter of fresh local produce. But he’s also well aware that his favorite foods remain too pricey for many low-income shoppers.

So the New England chef co-founded the Wholesome Wave Foundation, which funds programs in 18 states (including California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland and Virginia) to double the value of food stamp dollars at local farmers markets.

Nischan also is aiming for changes in the next farm bill that would build double value into 5 percent of food stamp dollars used to purchase fresh produce in stores too. The USDA says it’s working on a test pilot to see if this kind of incentive would, indeed, spur more fruit and vegetable purchases among low-income shoppers.

In between his policy wonking and cooking at Dressing Room restaurant in Westport, Conn., the husband and father of five somehow finds time to write cookbooks. His latest is “Sustainably Delicious: Making the World a Better Place, One Recipe at a Time” and it’s full of exquisite photography and simple recipes for meat loaf, sweet pea soup, smothered pork chops, kale with pork belly, and watermelon and arugula salad. In between recipes, Nischan guides home cooks with tips on sustainable shopping and cooking as well as finding the tastiest ingredients.

Nischan argues that taste and health make a natural pair, writing, “Where there is flavor, there are nutrients, and where there are nutrients, there is health.”

We chatted with the chef about the book and his projects.

Q: So how did this book fit into your chef and advocacy work?

A: Dressing Room and the book are geared more toward those who can afford a $35 book and white-tablecloth restaurants that serve local sustainable foods. That’s because those foods are not subsidized at all, and that may not change. So I do the Wholesome Wave work because it actually has the chance of making these kinds of ingredients available to everybody.

Q: Do you keep your recipes simple and flexible for a reason?

A: I love for people to be able to start with the recipe and then experiment. It keeps them close to the cooking process and then lets them discover innovations of their own.

Q: In addition to fresh local produce, I notice you use a lot of whole grains in your recipes.

A: I love whole grains – like barley, farro and grano – because you just boil them in salted water until they are the texture you like, and then you can follow the identical recipe for flavoring them with whatever’s in season. And it’s a way to keep those extremely healthy complex carbohydrates in your diet on a regular basis. Plus, things like farro and barley are so hard for pests to deal with, they need almost no pesticides. …

You’ve got to try black barley. It holds on to its husk and by the time the husk opens up it’s still creamy. You get it from Indianharvest.com in Minnesota. It’s wonderful. You’ll freak out.

SWEET PEA SOUP

Prep: 10 minutesCook: 25 minutesMakes: 6 servings

Adapted from “Sustainably Delicious: Making the World a Better Place, One Recipe at a Time,” by Michel Nischan

1/2 pound Yukon Gold potatoes

2 tablespoons grapeseed oil

1 cup diced onion

4 cups shelled sweet peas (about 4 pounds in the pod)

6 cups vegetable stock, preferably homemade

2 to 3 tablespoons thinly sliced mint or Thai basil

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Freshly ground pepper

3 to 4 tablespoons softened unsalted butter

1. Cover the potatoes with a generous amount of water in a saucepan. Heat to a boil over medium high heat. Reduce the heat to medium; simmer briskly until the potatoes are tender but not mushy, 20 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat the oil and onion in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook until the onions caramelize lightly, 8-10 minutes. Add the peas; cook until just cooked through, 5-6 minutes. (If using frozen peas, heat them just until hot.) Transfer the onion and peas to a chilled baking sheet. Place them in the freezer until the peas are cold, 8-10 minutes.

3. Heat the stock to a simmer in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the onion, peas and potatoes; heat to a simmer until heated through. Process in a blender in batches until very smooth. Or use an immersion blender to puree the soup directly in the saucepan.)

4. Return the soup to the pot; add the mint or basil. Season with the salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the butter. Serve; garnish with additional mint or basil leaves.

Nutrition information:

Per serving: 223 calories, 43 percent of calories from fat, 10 g fat, 4 g saturated fat, 15 mg cholesterol, 24 g carbohydrates, 7 g protein, 304 mg sodium, 5 g fiber

You might have to sit down for this.

Chef Mario Batali, known for downing a case of wine and putting away 20 to 30 dishes in a single meal without needing much help from dining companions, now eats less than you do on some nights.

The celebrity chef whose motto was “wretched excess is just barely enough,” said he was horrified at how fat he looked on television and started eating better.

Batali is promoting his latest cookbook, “Molto Gusto,” with pizza, pasta, antipasti, salads and gelato recipes. It also features lots of vegetable dishes, indicative of how the new Mario eats.

He is finalizing deals on two new cooking shows, one with him cooking in Sicily and the other in Brooklyn. And he is about to open Eataly in New York City, a 50,000- plus square foot food emporium.

We caught up with him before he landed in Seattle.

Q: So I hear you’ve lost some weight.

A: Thirty-five to 40 pounds. I weigh about 235 1/8now.3/8 I was big.

Q: What’s a typical Mario eating day?

A: I eat half of whatever they put in front of me in restaurants. I eat a lot more vegetables. I exercise a lot more. I try not to eat after 9:30.

Q: Your appetite was legendary. Are those gluttony days over?

A: Eating as a pleasure is still a part of my life. Eating as a sport has faded away.

Q: This cookbook is different from your seven other cookbooks. Lots of veggie dishes, lots of 30-minute-or-less recipes.

A: This is how Italians eat on a weekday when they want to eat something that is delicious, healthy and not so hard to make. And in fact, there is no fresh pasta 1/8recipe3/8 in the book. It is all dried pasta.

Q: What is the next big thing? The next pork belly?

A: The next big thing will be vegetables.

Q: Because of the eat-local mantra?

A: Exactly. I think the next big thing in people’s mind is actually eating with a point of view, eating with an ideology. It is all the things that we should be thinking about but we never had to because we are in the richest country in the world of all time. Now thinking maybe about spending a bit more for an heirloom varietal. Or a specific type of grown thing 1/8that is3/8 completely fertilizer-free. Or eating your meat that has no hormones or antibiotics.

So I hear you pull $100,000 to appear at food festivals and events.

A: When a casino calls or a big shot hotel calls, they offer the money and you say yes or no. … I think it’s fabulous. I don’t understand it. But I don’t care. (He laughs.)

BLACK KALE WITH RICOTTA

Serves 6

1 1/2 pounds of cavolo nero (also called lacinato or Tuscan kale) or regular kale

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

6 garlic cloves, thickly sliced

1 red finger chile or serrano chile, thinly sliced

Maldon or other flaky sea salt

3/4 cup fresh ricotta

Trim kale, removing the tough stems and ribs, and coarsely chop it.

Combine 2 tablespoons of the oil, the garlic, and chile in a large pot, add the kale, and saute over medium-high heat for about five minutes, until it is beginning to wilt.

Season with salt, add 3/4 cup water, cover, and cook until the kale is tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Drain and let cool slightly.

Meanwhile, put the ricotta in a small bowl and whisk in the remaining 1/4 cup oil. If necessary, whisk in up to 2 tablespoons of warm water to loosen the consistency.

Spread ricotta on a serving plate, spoon the kale over it and serve.

“Molto Gusto,” by Mario Batali (Harper Collins, $29.99)

WINE OF THE WEEK

2008 Domaine Ricard “Les Trois Chenes” Touraine Blanc

Not every white wine is meant to be an aperitif, and certainly not this lively Sauvignon Blanc from Domaine Ricard in Touraine, a lesser-known appellation in the Loire Valley of France. This wine needs food to shine, and when it gets it, it becomes the most charming of dinner partners. Made from biodynamically grown grapes, the 2008 “Les Trois Chenes” – the three oaks – is intense and minerally, with notes of lime zest, tangerine and stone. For the money, it’s a great little wine to have on hand for the summer. An outstanding bargain from the Loire Valley.

Drink it with steamed shellfish, Asian-accented fish dishes, fish in sauce and chicken dishes. It could even go nicely with pork belly or a pork stir-fry.

Region: Touraine, France

Price: About $15

Style: Crisp and minerally

What it goes with: shellfish, Asian fish dishes, chicken

It’s a different kind of cooking class Sasha Kanno and a half-dozen other students are taking this sunny Saturday morning in Long Beach. Standing around a portable worktable wheeled into a darkened nightclub, they are watching intently as Paul Buchanan, chef of Primal Alchemy catering company, goes to work. In front of him is a whole pig. It’s the size of a large dog and, after being cleaned and shaved, almost startlingly naked-looking. When Buchanan reaches for the hacksaw, rather than recoil, the students crowd in closer.

Though the scene may sound more reminiscent of a Hollywood slasher movie than Rachael Ray, there’s nothing macabre about it. This is no Halloween gross-out stunt. This class is just the tip of a very porky iceberg.

In part, it’s the latest step in the ever-advancing search for connection to where our food comes from.

“I’m all about a direct connection from farm to table and I want to take the next step into meat,” says Kanno, the tattooed, 33-year-old director of Long Beach’s Wrigley Community Garden.

“Some friends and I are trying to find a way we could bring in local meat. And if we do end up sharing a pig, we’re going to need to know how to break it down. “

At the same time, restaurant menus all over Southern California are featuring pig parts that were once considered untouchable. Of course, pork belly is everywhere; it has practically replaced foie gras on upscale menus. And there are Thomas Keller’s famous trotters on the menu at Bouchon in Beverly Hills. Downtown, you can find pig ears braised and then fried at both Church & State and at Lazy Ox. In the South Bay, Remi Lauvand sold out a whole pig menu at Manhattan Beach’s Cafe Pierre.

It’s not just the pros who are getting in on the game. Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s “Charcuterie,” a do-it-yourself guide to making sausages and cured meats from scratch at home, has sold 60,000 copies.

The piggy passion has shown up in surprising places. On StyleForum, a men’s clothing website more familiar with debating the finer details of Savile Row bespoke suits, there is a long thread devoted to homemade sausage. Inspired, one member started his own copiously illustrated thread devoted to his recent vacation in the Dordogne region of France, spent helping out at a farmhouse pig slaughter and butchery.

What the heck is going on?

There is no single answer. Instead, there is a confluence of several strands that has elevated the pig back to its rightful place atop the food chain.

In the first place, of course, there is sheer deliciousness. Pork offers a variety of tastes and textures that no other animal can match. That for so long we have concentrated on only one cut (the loin – the most expensive and least flavorful part of the pig, by the way) has been a shame.

Then there are cooks like Kanno and their search for connection. For the pros, there’s also a pride in craft – working the whole pig, making the most of the so-called lesser cuts, takes real hands-on cooking.

There’s even a spiritual aspect to it. One of the tenets of nose-to-tail eating is that if you are going to kill an animal for food, you have a responsibility not to waste a single scrap.

And, of course, there’s a bit of marketing as well. Nothing pleases a certain kind of modern transgressive diner as much as seeing an obscure pig part or piece of offal on a menu. There’s a certain go-for-the-gusto bohemian quality to it. It is to today’s restaurant customer what copious amounts of garlic was to a previous generation.

“A good menu needs to have things everybody will enjoy, but it also needs to have one or two things that are kind of controversial, things everybody will talk about even if nobody much will eat them,” says Walter Manzke, until last week chef at Church & State.

Manzke says he’s been offering dishes like that since he started working for Joachim Splichal at Patina, back in the mid-1990s. “The difference is, people are actually ordering them now,” he says. “It’s about starting a conversation. Pig ears are a perfect example of that. It’s not something anybody is going to say ‘Oh, it tastes OK’ about. They are either absolutely disgusted by it, or absolutely in love with it. I think that’s great.”

Ruhlman says it was chefs who have led the way with his “Charcuterie” book, but that many others have followed. Even he is a bit astonished at its success.

“No one thought this book was going to do very well, given the state of cooking in this country,” he says. “I mean, let’s face it: Here’s a book devoted to animal fat and salt. Some of the recipes take days and even months to prepare, and if you don’t do it right, they can kill you. How are you going to sell that kind of book?

“But it took off. It’s been a big cookbook among guys and chefs. I was lucky in that it came out at a time when chefs were starting to return in a big way to their craft. And there’s no more craft-intensive area of cooking than charcuterie, so they really embraced it.”

Indeed, there’s a lot of hard-core sausage-making and meat-curing going on out there. Chad Colby, the chef at Mozza2Go, recently sent friends an e-mail with a string of pictures detailing his experiments breaking down a pig at the restaurant, including an absolutely lovely looking dish of lentils with zampone (an Italian sausage made from a whole stuffed pig’s foot).

Though finding whole pigs to cut up yourself still takes a bit of work, Southern California is a terrific place to explore the wide world of pig parts, thanks to the wealth of Asian and Latino groceries.

You can find just about any cut of pork you might want, from nose (stewed, it becomes deliciously gelatinous) to tails (braised, breadcrumbed and roasted, it’s profoundly porky) and anything in between. Even better, rather than paying $9 or $10 a pound for that dry, bland chop, almost all of these more interesting cuts are priced at $3 a pound or less.

Probably the surest first step would be to try pork belly, simply because there is no one who doesn’t like it. (If someone still seems a little squeamish, try the old trick of telling them it’s “fresh bacon.”)

Ever since “Charcuterie” came out, I’ve been tempted by a confit of pork belly based on a recipe by chef Jim Drohman.

Just think about it: little chunks of meltingly tender spiced pork belly stored in its own fat that you can pull from the fridge whenever you’re ready. Just a little browning in the skillet to crisp the surface and a tart green salad to cut the richness and you’re good to go.

The only problem was that Ruhlman’s recipe calls for 2 pounds of lard and oddly enough, given the number of other pork products available, I have yet to find a source for good lard. Not to worry, Ruhlman told me, the fat doesn’t make that much of a difference, use olive oil. I did, and he was right. And my refrigerator is now stocked.

That went so well, I decided to try something a little more out there. I really liked the pig ear salad that Church & State used to serve, so I talked the procedure out of Manzke. It’s simple, really: Braise the pig ears until they’re tender, chill them until they’re firm, and then slice them as thin as you can. Finish by tossing them into a skillet with nearly crisped bacon (Pig ears have great texture – kind of soft and a little chewy with a crisp center – but their flavor is subtle.)

In Manzke’s salad, the pig ears and bacon are served with frisee and poached eggs. I wanted to focus more on the texture of the ears, so I paired them with crisp, slightly bitter celery cut in matchsticks and dressed it with a tart, shallot-spiked vinaigrette before topping it with toasted walnuts.

It’s a terrific dish and even better, it leaves you with a really unctuous pork broth left over from braising the ears that will be perfect for cooking beans. Can you imagine a big pot of white beans cooked in a hearty pork broth and studded with chunks of crisped confit and little slivers of chewy ear?

On the other hand, in “The River Cottage Cookbook,” the British chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall serves pig ears two ways: searing the whole pig ear in a cast-iron skillet and serving it like a steak, and rolling thinly sliced ears in mustard and bread crumbs and baking until they crisp.

Let’s face it, the pig is one generous animal, and we’ve only begun to explore its possibilities.

CELERY SALAD WITH PIG EAR, BACON AND WALNUTS

Total time: 1 hour, plus braising and chilling times

Servings: 6

Note: Pig ears can be found at Chinese and select general Asian markets. This recipe makes more pig ears than is needed for the salad; they store well covered tightly and frozen.

Braised pig ears

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup diced carrots

1 cup diced celery

2 cups diced onion

3 cloves garlic, chopped

2 pounds pig ears (about 4)

Salt

3 cups water

1 cup dry white wine

1. Warm the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat and cook the carrots, celery and onion until soft, 8 to 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 3 minutes.

2. While the vegetables are cooking, scrub the pig ears clean and cut away any knobby bits of cartilage so they will lay flat.

3. Place the pig ears in a single layer on top of the vegetables (they may overlap). Season with salt and add the water and dry white wine. Bring to a simmer, reduce the heat to low, cover and cook until the ears are very tender, about 3 1/2 hours.

4. Carefully remove the ears from the broth, place them on a parchment paper-lined plate, cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, at least 2 hours. Save the flavorful broth for cooking beans. Once braised pig ears have been chilled, they can be tightly wrapped in plastic and frozen until ready to use.

Celery salad assembly

3 strips thick-sliced bacon

1 braised pig ear

Vegetable oil

1 bunch celery

1 shallot, minced

1/4 cup sherry vinegar

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons chopped parsley

1/4 cup chopped toasted walnuts

1. Cut the bacon crosswise into thin strips and cook in a skillet over medium heat. Cut the pig ear into similarly sized strips (cut the ear lengthwise into halves or thirds, then slice crosswise into thin strips). When the bacon is almost done, about 10 minutes, add the pig ear and cook, stirring frequently, until the bacon has finished browning, about 3 more minutes. Use a slotted spoon to remove the bacon and pig ear slices to a medium bowl, draining well and reserving the fat.

2. Carefully decant the fat from the skillet into a measuring cup, leaving the solids behind. Add enough oil to make one-half cup. Add the shallot, sherry vinegar, salt and parsley and whisk to combine.

3. Cut the celery into 1 1/2- to 2-inch matchsticks and place them in a large mixing bowl. Whisk the vinaigrette again to mix well and pour about 3 tablespoons of it over the celery – just enough to moisten the celery without drowning it. Arrange the celery in a low mound on a serving platter.

4. Add the bacon and pig ear to the mixing bowl and add an additional 2 to 3 teaspoons of dressing, again, just enough to moisten. Scatter the bacon and pig ear over the celery. Scatter chopped walnuts over top and serve. This salad will hold at room temperature for about an hour without wilting.

Each serving: 214 calories; 12 grams protein; 3 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram fiber; 18 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 36 mg. cholesterol; 1 gram sugar; 338 mg. sodium.

PORK BELLY CONFITED IN OLIVE OIL

Total time: About 3 hours

Servings: Makes about 1 quart, enough for 18 to 20 servings

Note: Adapted from a recipe by Jim Drohman in “Charcuterie” by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn.

3 to 4 pounds pork belly

10 grams black peppercorns (about 3 1/4 teaspoons)

3 grams ground cinnamon (about 1 teaspoon)

1 gram whole cloves (about 10)

1/2 gram whole allspice (about 6)

2 bay leaves

1 ounce salt (about 4 teaspoons)

5 sprigs thyme

3 cups dry white wine

3 to 4 cups olive oil

1. Use a sharp knife to peel the skin from the pork belly: Cut a corner free, then grab it firmly and pull away, cutting with the knife while keeping the sharp edge of the blade against the tough skin. When the skin has been removed, cut the pork belly into roughly 3-by-1-inch pieces.

2. In a spice grinder or coffee mill, grind the peppercorns, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, bay leaves and salt to a powder. Sprinkle the mixture over the meat, add the thyme and mix well. Add the wine and mix again. Cover tightly and refrigerate overnight.

3. The next day, heat the oven to 250 degrees. Remove the pork pieces from the marinade and pat them dry with a paper towel. Place them in a Dutch oven in as close to an even level as possible. Cover completely with olive oil. Bring to a slow bubble on top of the stove over medium heat, then transfer to the oven and let it cook, uncovered, until the meat is quite tender, about 2 1/2 hours.

4. Remove from the oven and let the meat cool in the fat. When the meat is cool, transfer it to storage containers and pour the fat over top, seal tightly and refrigerate. The meat should be completely submerged. (The confit can be used immediately, but it’s better if it’s refrigerated for 24 hours.)

5. To cook, remove the meat from the container along with a little of the fat. Fry over medium-high heat, turning to brown all sides. When the meat is well browned and heated through, serve immediately.

Each of 20 servings: 605 calories; 7 grams protein; 0 carbohydrates; 0 fiber; 64 grams fat; 18 grams saturated fat; 57 mg. cholesterol; 0 sugar; 81 mg. sodium.

A friend passed along a story about her daughter, Gayle, visiting a tapas restaurant in Seville, Spain, where she and some friends are on a study-abroad program.

One of the little dishes they ordered was huevas, which they thought was a misspelling of huevos, which means eggs in proper Spanish.

(Eggs are a popular tapas item, although they’re usually served as a tortilla – which, to American eyes, is a frittata, not a bread. It does get confusing.)

Anyway, the huevas came and the girls began eating. The eggs tasted like fish.

“As the small pieces crumbled in my mouth,” Gayle wrote to her mom, “I thought, ‘This is really a strange dish.’” Only after everyone had eaten some did one of the girls suggest the huevas might have been fish eggs.

When the waiter said, “No, no, not fish eggs,” they were quite relieved – until he added, “Fish ovaries!”

The Spanish dictionaries I checked say huevas does mean roe or fish eggs, but the waiter might have been using a more colloquial definition.

Either way, the girls didn’t get what they thought they were ordering.

When it comes to food, that’s rarely a good thing.

If there’s a lesson in their story – other than not ordering eggs in bars – it’s that asking questions when you’re not sure about the menu is always the best policy.

Restaurants are constantly bringing diners new ingredients, new techniques and new versions of familiar dishes. At the same time, menus are using more and more foreign food words without a hint of their meaning. And there’s virtually no way to keep up with it all unless you’re a Food Network or food magazine addict.

Yet, for fear of looking unsophisticated, many diners are reluctant to ask the server to describe an unfamiliar ingredient or explain how a dish is prepared.

They’re afraid they’re the only one at the table who has never tasted pork belly or sunchokes or dinosaur kale. They think everyone else knows what confit and gremolata and gastrique are.

Here’s the secret: Nine out of 10 people don’t. And furthermore, that’s just fine.

Asking questions about the menu is not only fun and empowering, it’s your best defense against a meal you won’t enjoy.

If you aren’t familiar with aioli, for example, asking your waiter to describe it will save your sandwich from ruin if you hate mayonnaise.

Learning that pork belly is a chunk of unsliced bacon that’s cooked gently for hours in oil or broth should tell you to expect a very fatty, rich piece of meat.

And learning that huevas are fish ovaries would let you order something – anything – else.

When I woke up the next morning, I really thought it had all been a dream. The goth mime sniffing our wine bottle, his cohorts in white porcelain masks circling the table. The gentleman in his 50s who strode in late with three women in his wake and sat next to us at the long communal table, a crude slab of hard wood that looked as if it had just come from the sawmill. One woman celebrating her birthday with sticky toffee pudding, while on the other side, a beauty in a skull T-shirt smooched a guy with an innocent-looking face but heavily illustrated arms.

Just another night at the Gorbals. It’s weird and fun and a little rough around the edges, but definitely from the heart. Prices are on the low side, portions small. But everything has real flavor.

I’d gone with friends for dinner. But as we approached 5th and Spring streets-blocks before, really-we saw hundreds and hundreds of people walking. Walking! Downtown! At night! Music pumped from the entrance to an aristocratic-looking building. Parking attendants waving fluorescent wands herded cars into parking lots, while a trio of food trucks dispensed tacos and pork belly sandwiches to a hungry throng and workers at a sidewalk table gave out free canvas bags touting the 2010 census.

Sure, it was the regular Downtown Art Walk, but who knew even that could bring out crowds like this?

We hadn’t been able to get a reservation because the Gorbals takes them only for parties of six or more, so we decided to take the four empty spaces at the communal table. The restaurant had been mostly full other times I’d gone and gotten busier as the night wore on. If you arrive at 6, say, I imagine you can get a spot, but you might be eating all by your lonesome.

But know this before you go: The Gorbals is a peculiar, very personal restaurant from a chef with a point of view. He’s Ilan Hall, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in New York and the pastry program at the school’s Napa Valley campus who has worked for Tom Colicchio at Craft and for Mario Batali at his Spanish tapas place, Casa Mono, both in New York.

His own way

He’s best known, though, as the kid who won the second season of “Top Chef.” But Hall seems to be a very different breed from more recent winners. Here’s a cook who builds dishes from the flavor up. These are not intellectual exercises. Some of his food may challenge the limits of diners’ palates, and it probably won’t impress those looking for another notch in their foodie belt, but the Gorbals is fresh and fun.

Choosing that name – for the neighborhood in Glasgow where Hall’s Scottish and Israeli parents, both of Eastern European descent, grew up – may not have been Hall’s smartest move. But at least there’s some honest feeling behind it.

And though it’s often referred to as a Scottish-Jewish restaurant, the Gorbals is much more than that. Call it global immigrant cuisine. I’m only guessing here, but it’s probably the kind of food he’d cook for friends in a garage band. Other than the small-plates concept, it doesn’t have much to do with the current trends in restaurant cooking.

Hall strikes me as a guy cooking the food that he likes. And what he likes is pretty eclectic. He’s got offal. He’s got plenty of bacon in his dishes too, but nowhere near Animal quantities (and when he does use bacon, it makes sense, as in his fluffy matzo balls wrapped in bacon; the combination is fantastic, though in no way kosher). And if Hall ever went head to head with renegade French chef Ludo Lefebvre, he probably wouldn’t score many points for polish or technique, but he just might win for overall satisfaction. His food isn’t pretty, but it certainly has flavor.

“Here you are, darling,” says our server, setting down a dish that combines languorous charred octopus tentacles with sauteed chicken gizzards. It’s unconventional, funky-and tasty with a squirt of lemon. There’s his version of the Momofuku pork belly bun too, this one on slightly sweet dinner rolls that mimic the texture and taste of Chinese bao, with rich braised oxtail inside. And I love the split marrow bone served with a pile of sauteed oyster mushrooms, fresh walnuts and a splash of vinegar.

Butternut squash latkes instead of the traditional potato-two to an order, served steaming, with enough chestnut cream to slather on two dozen of the tasty pancakes. His vegetable dishes, in fact, all tend to be unusual. You won’t see any Beverly Hills chopped salad here. Offerings are more along the lines of braised purple cabbage with caraway seeds and walnuts or a salad of Persian cucumbers with rice wine vinegar and sesame.

And that offal? The dishes are just as out of the ordinary. One night there’s tripe, cut the size and shape of French fries and fried to a deep crunch, served with an aioli for dipping. It’s surprising and good, enjoyed by even the offal-intimidated at the table. Another of Hall’s signature items is GLT, basically a BLT with fried chicken skin, or gribenes (that’s the G), substituted for the bacon. Mmm, crisp chicken skin. On skinny slices of rye bread, it looks like something your grandmother would put together for lunch.

Yes, the menu sometimes includes haggis, that much-maligned, heady mix of various organ meats and oatmeal cooked in a sheep or calf’s stomach. Here, it’s homemade and appears as a delicious stuffing in slices of chicken Balmoral, which is served with clapshot. Say what? It’s a homey mash of potatoes and turnips, perfect for the rainy weather.

BUDGET DESIGN

As we taste our way through half a dozen dishes, candles flicker in my peripheral vision. The Gorbals space is makeshift and rude, put together obviously with very little money. A white door is grubby. Waiters dash in and out of a flap of black curtain. Customers at the bar sit on upended wooden crates. Beverly Hills it isn’t. In fact, I doubt you’ll see a designer logo in the place. This is hand-knit muffler, hoodie and leather jacket territory.

With no presence on the street except for a white flag emblazoned with the name, the restaurant feels something like an old-time speak-easy. In the Alexandria Hotel lobby, black-and-white photos of former star-studded banquets try to give the place a thin scrim of glamour. In actuality, it looks a little sad sack, the once famous Palm Court at one end of the lobby locked, a leasing office in the hallway where the down and out sometimes wander. And with no valet parking out front, you’ll have to hoof it from one of two parking garages on the block.

The wine list is quite minimal at the moment, about 20 wines by the glass or bottle, starting at $9 and $28, respectively, and including Chalone Pinot Noir, Goodnight Pinot Grigio or Chamisal Stainless Chardonnay. The beer selection is fairly standard: Anchor Steam, Sierra Nevada and the like, which I suspect is more due to lack of funds than policy. However, if you enjoy Scotch, Hall’s got a sweet little list of single malts, including a 16-year-old Lagavulin or a 14-year-old Clynelish, both $10.

For sweets, go with the sticky toffee pudding, which is more cake than pudding, served with espresso ice cream and a touch of Maldon salt.

But don’t expect the mime troupe every night. They were members of the Wandering Marionettes who perform upstairs in the hotel on the weekends drumming up business. Never mind. There’s plenty of entertainment and soul at this new downtown spot, even without them. And 5-inch Balenciaga heels not required.

LOCATION

Inside the Alexandria Hotel, 501 S. Spring St., downtown Los Angeles; (213) 488-3408; www.thegorbalsla.com.

PRICE

Savory small plates, $7 to $15; sweets, $7. Corkage, $15.

DETAILS

Open for lunch 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday to Friday and for dinner 6 p.m. to midnight Monday to Wednesday and 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. Thursday to Saturday. Full bar. Parking in lots just to the south on the same block. Sunday brunch is served 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.