Smoke Oil Salt

Our verdict

Sunday paella dinners at Smoke Oil Salt drew consistent critical attention from the Los Angeles Times, which is a reasonable measure of credibility on a Melrose Avenue strip where Spanish restaurants rarely move beyond generic tapas formats. Chef Perfecto Rocher, a third-generation paella practitioner from Valencia, brought a Catalan and Valencian framework to the menu rather than the catch-all Iberian approach common in Los Angeles at the time. The four-course Sunday paella dinner was priced at $45 per person, placing it well within reach while signaling that the kitchen took the format seriously enough to structure an entire evening around it. The menu read more like a regional Spanish wine-bar program than a standard tapas list. Dishes such as Valencian tripe stew, espencat de moixama, seafood salpicón in horchata, and Iberico pork with smoked green onions reflected a specific geographic sensibility. Tapas ran $4 to $17, sharing plates $10 to $18, and main dishes $24 to $35, a pricing structure that kept the room accessible without sacrificing ambition. The two-room space occupied the address long associated with Evan Kleiman's Angeli Caffe, a location with its own weight in the city's dining history. Smoke Oil Salt operated as a collaboration between Rocher and a group that included Adam Fleischman and Lee Weinberg, which gave it a more deliberate commercial foundation than many chef-driven Spanish concepts in Los Angeles. The wine program aligned with the food's regional focus, and the overall format leaned toward shared plates over individual plating, which suited the Catalan and Valencian cooking style the kitchen was drawing from. The restaurant has since closed.