Artistically prepared food made from international ingredients is all well and good, but offer them at an "approachable price," and we'll follow you anywhere, even from the Westside to Little Tokyo.

Lazy Ox Canteen is the new, much-anticipated downtown small plates dining spot from the founder of Sushi Roku, and Chef Josef Centeno, who spent his formative years training at such famous restaurants as Daniel and La Cote Basque in New York, and L.A.'s Meson G and Opus.

The catchphrase here is "ingredient-driven inventiveness" that draws on culinary cultures as disparate as French, Mexican, Japanese, Mediterranean and Catalan. That's why you'll find plates like khlii, a Moroccan-style beef jerky served in delicate strands over fried egg and salsa verde; and chicken livers your Jewish bubbe would have made, but spiced up with whole-grain mustard and decidedly unkosher guanciale. There's pappardelle with braised oxtail and pickled red onion garnished with parsley salad, blistered shishito peppers with coriander, and brick-roasted morcilla (blood sausage) with licorice pear, black garlic and charred tomatillo, among scores of other kaleidoscopic dishes.

Don't limit yourself to the regular menu when there are fabulous choices among the blackboard specials that might include dishes like sea snails in butter and lemon. And be sure to try desserts like the sumptuous rice pudding brûlée with pineapple Szechuan dipping sauce. There's also a happy hour until 7pm that includes a small menu of $5 plates, plus a couple wines by the glass for $3.

This is definitely a menu where you'll have to ask the meaning of certain words, but the wait staff is fully schooled to tutor you, and will also have a strong opinion about which wine or beer from the equally international (but quite affordable) list will go best with your meal choices.

You can watch it all being prepared at the open kitchen in the back corner, but chances are your eye will be drawn to the enormous low-watt bulbs strung from the ceiling, the patches of Astroturf that line the walls at odd intervals between the salvaged-wood paneling, or perhaps the hefty ox yolk looming over the hallway to the bathroom.
Lazy Ox Canteen
241 South San Pedro St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 626-5299
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