“I don’t have any aspirations to create a destination restaurant,” Jeremy Fox told us recently.

Old Soul, Fox’s temporary restaurant at Square One Dining in Silverlake, is meant to be a manifestation of that stance: a bare-bones prix fixe menu ($50), a borrowed space, a focus on flavor over aesthetics.

In spite of his admonition, Fox’s food is worth a trip. It is the natural offspring of the chef’s previous gigs at Manresa, one of California’s most established culinary destinations, and Ubuntu, also a stop on many itineraries before it closed.

On the night we visited Old Soul, the first dish was a stew of Rancho Gordo beans, kale and a poached egg--an opulent, herbaceous mainstay from his Ubuntu days. And morcilla (blood sausage), which one night was made into a hash studded with apples and horseradish cream, and another night placed on latkes, is a recipe Fox perfected at Manresa.

In some ways, Old Soul is the crystallization of Fox’s talent: Stripped of the tablecloths and the tweezer-applied garnishes, the experience is more intimate, more personal.

We loved the food at Old Soul so much, we were troubled by the venture’s impermanence--Fox has only committed to cooking at the space through the end of January. But he assures us that this run is the embryo of a future restaurant with a longer timeline.

We’ll be making the trip.

Old Soul, 4854 Fountain Ave., Little Armenia; 323-451-1767. Reservations are available Thu. through Sun., from Jan. 10 through 27.