Vinny Dotolo & Jon Shook

Chefs, Animal and Son of a Gun
Los Angeles, California

It’s not easy to categorize the food that comes out of the kitchen

of Animal, the must-visit Los Angeles restaurant co-owned by

chefs Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook, and that’s the way the chefs

like it.

“Sometimes chefs box themselves in by saying ‘I do X,’ or ‘I

do Y,’” Dotolo tells me from a table in the front of the restaurant

early on a February morning. “Years later they’re saying, ‘I wish I

could use soy sauce.’”

Dotolo and Shook use soy sauce. They produce dishes as

disparate as bone marrow with chimichurri, lamb neck with daikon

and black vinegar jus, and rabbit loin spring rolls. Their menu is

strewn with ingredients from all over the world—chili, lime, mint,

anchovies, buttermilk, sumac, vadouvan—and it’s all there to help

them achieve a very specific goal. “We want to make something

that tastes good,” says Shook.

With all of these ingredients at their disposal, it’s possible that

Dotolo and Shook might produce food that’s muddled or

overwrought. But they avoid this by applying a specific set of

values to their idiosyncratic brand of cuisine.

Dotolo explains: “I like to find a balance of things that might