High Steaks | La Boucherie Los Angeles Downtown Intercontinental, CA

Sophie Gayot Dirk Smits David Wolfskill | La Boucherie Los Angeles

Chef David Wolfskill with Dirk Smits, GAYOT's Wine & Spirits Editor, and Sophie Gayot

By Sophie Gayot

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Los Angeles, CA, December 2022

• GAYOT’s Rating: 15/20
• Cuisine: French / Steakhouse / Seafood
• Open: Dinner Wed.-Thurs. 5:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 5:30 p.m.-10 p.m., Sun. 5:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
• La Boucherie is on GAYOT’s:
– 2022 Restaurant Awards, Memorable Dinners of 2022
– Best 10 Restaurants with a View in the U.S.A.
– Best LA Best Décor Restaurants
– Best LA Business Dining Restaurants
– Best LA Downtown Romantic Restaurants
– Best LA Sexy Restaurants
– Best LA Steakhouse Restaurants
– Best LA View Restaurants
– Best LA Wine List Restaurants.

> Scroll down the food photo gallery for the wine list and décor photos.

By a few feet, there is a debate whether La Boucherie is the highest restaurant in Los Angeles or not. In any case, it is elevated enough to offer magnificent 180-degree sprawling views of the City of Angels, from behind downtown stretching to the Pacific via the South Bay. The night light show is glittering, but the best time to arrive is forty-five minutes before the sun majestically glides over to illuminate the other side of the ocean. None of us can stay indifferent in front of this daily performance from Mother Nature.

After a fast ride to floor seventy-one via two elevators, through rather cold corridors, you will be happy to enter into the glamorous and fancy décor of La Boucherie. You should ask to be taken on a tour to see the private room if it is not occupied, the private booths, the demo kitchen and très upscale communal table, without forgetting what I call the “wine tunnel.” It contains some of the 1,300 labels available to pair with your dinner, with some treasures such as a 1982 Château Lafite-Rothschild priced at $16,695.

There is caviar, charcuterie & cheese boards, and a seafood tower as high as the building, though I would recommend items in which chef David Wolfskill actually inputs his culinary experience — after all, the second part of his last name is “skill,” some of which he acquired during seventeen years in Spain. You should lean toward the Dry-Aged Prime Beef Tartare, accompanied by a roasted bone marrow panna cotta; and the Jumbo Lump Crab Cake, Kataifi-wrapped, served with roasted piquillo pepper coulis and tzatziki sauce. I now realize I did not try the Classic French Onion Soup and the Lobster Bisque — that should be a good excuse to return. The Baby Beets & Citrus Salad was colorful and paired with a Riesling. The Grilled Colossal Blue Prawn is a punchy indulgence in the products of the sea. If you order the Loup de Mer, it will be an oven-roasted whole Mediterranean sea bass. But the veritable objective to pay a visit to La Boucherie (“butcher shop” in français) should be for its meats, listed on the menu under “Butcher’s Table.” The choices are ample with the presence of A5 Wagyu Striploin. While the sauces are separate (at cost), various salts and mustards, including two homemade, are here for seasoning. Choose from the palette of ten different knives to enhance your carnivore experience. La Boucherie Mac ‘n’ Cheese or Black Truffle Potato au Gratin? Why choose? If you want the end of the evening to be a fiery one, order the Cherry Jubilee, flambéed tableside with Kirschwasser. For a smooth finish, select the Not Cheesecake, a Wolfskill creation, prepared with tofu cream kept in shape with vegan gelatin, layered on a vegan crumble.

> Sophie‘s likes (on top of what you’ve just read):
• The back lighted menu, for once you can actually read it without a flashlight, and the electronic iPad wine list, a good tool to peruse the sophisticated options to fill up your Lalique glass;
• THE view combined with the cuisine of chef Wolfskill placed La Boucherie on GAYOT’s Best 10 Restaurants with a View in the U.S.A.