I continue to envy my friends in NYC who are currently looking forward to another spectacular winter restaurant week. I don’t necessarily envy them the *winter* part, but that’s another topic.
Los Angeles is giving restaurant week another go, as will I. There do seem to be a few more appealing choices this year, such as Gordon Ramsay at the London. $28 for a three-course lunch, which is almost identical to the $44 dinner - I’ve already got my reservation!
Yes, food has called me back to the blog. Specifically, in Arcadia.
Apparently, their offerings were named best dumplings in the country by R.W. Apple, and we all know that Apple’s word is God. So off we went, guided by friends Chris and Anna.
The original location is still open, with a new addition next door, which is where we ate. Prepare to wait for your dumplings, but you can peruse the menu and check off your choices in advance to save a bit of time.
After we were finally seated, a server with a walkie-talkie system took our order, relaying our picks via radio to the kitchen from the table. About 3 minutes later we had our first dish, and they kept coming in rapid succession: pork, fish, and spinach pork dumplings, some chicken soup, and rice cake with red bean for dessert. Yum! And worth the trek.
Yes, yes, it is I, back from Blog purgatory. My apologies to you, my 3 fans, for the great lapse.
To get things going again, I thought I’d offer up this juicy bit of mass consumption:
“The Walker Brothers” (a.k.a. Alonso, Jeffrey, and Aaron) held a fundraiser last week for their upcoming Avon 3-Day Walk for breast cancer (you can donate to the cause here), and what a fundraiser it was! Charity Bingo at Hamburger Mary’s, with celebrity caller Kevin Smith, and a slew of nifty prize packages that Alonso et al got donated. Cindy graciously agreed to accompany me, and we arrived early to snag a table and get a bite before the fun and games started. For some reason, I had to go and order the chicken pot pie. And, yes, everyone who walked by our table stopped and stared or laughed hysterically.
Anyway, the evening was a huge success even though Cindy and I had dud Bingo cards and almost-oh-so-close-just-two-more-spaces-damn-someone-else-called-bingo was the mantra of the night, but I’m not bitter. The boys raised a big ol’ chunk of change, and I managed to give away about a 1/3 of my pot pie to Dave, who took pity on me.
I had a bunch of bananas leftover from craft services on our recent How Do I Say This? shoot (all about Mexican wrestlers and revealed crushes … intrigued? I should hope so!), and had a sudden craving for banana nut bread. Not particularly interested by the recipe in my Better Homes & Garden standard, given the amounts of shortening it used, I went to Epicurious.com to see what was on offer. I stumbled on their recipe for Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips and Walnuts. Damn. I did not take a picture because I ate it too fast. Now I am trying not to let myself make more, as I would be fifty pounds heavier before the month is out.
One note: I took some of the suggestions from the Epicurious comments section, and cut down the sugar to about 2/3 the amount specified in the recipe. I also just mixed the chocolate chips into the batter rather than layering them, and it worked perfectly.
Johanna was down visiting last weekend, and I managed to escape my cave a few times to meet up with her and Tina…even though three old high school friends can be a potentially dangerous combination for those around us.
We had dinner at Ita-Cho one night, one of my personal favorites. They’ve snazzed the place up a bit, putting in a new sushi bar along the kitchen area and adding a separate sushi menu for table service, but thank goodness the rest of the menu is the same. I think I would weep openly for a good long while if they ever messed with the fried chicken and eggplant.
Seriously. You can get raw fish anywhere, but that homemade mayonnaise? (Not that you really want to go crazy with the fish anymore, given that recent New York Times article on mercury levels in sushi-grade tuna … not a surprise, but a frightening reminder).
I also introduced them to Pho-Siam Thai Spa, one of my absolute favorite places in LA. For $40, you get kneaded, stretched, walked on, twisted, and generally reduced to wet noodle status within minutes (while while wearing cotton Thai pants, so you don’t feel so exposed while your leg is being prodded up over your head). All in a very pleasant setting, far from the Chinatown massage places I used to go to in NY, with some mismatched curtains separating you from the next customer. The three of us slowly rolled out after our sessions, and went to the Casbah Cafe at Sunset Junction for some tea. “Escape from Thesis Binder” doesn’t get much better than that.
I’m jonesing a bit for Restaurant Week in New York, which is coming up soon…the winter one in particular always had such a spectacular list of participating restaurants. But I learned the other day that Los Angeles is getting its own Restaurant Week this year, sponsored by LA Inc and AmEx’s dineLA site. It will run January 27 - February 1, and February 3 - February 8.
The list of restaurants isn’t exactly overwhelming, but it’s a start. Depending on the place, lunch is $15/$22 and dinner is $25/$34, exactly what a good starving student needs to get her over the hump of mid-quarter angst (especially when such favorites as Angeli Caffe are among the $15/$25 options!).
My brother and his lovely wife Mel were in LA this weekend to visit some friends, so they stopped by for breakfast on their way home yesterday. They brought their dog Titus, who, as previously mentioned, is awesome (and who now is officially Robo Titus…that little yellow tag on his collar means he’s had a locater chip implanted between his shoulder blades. Sweet!)
I tried to get Titus to eat the annoying yappy dogs that live next door to me and never shut up, but he was more interested in leftovers from Clementine, where we dined al fresco (particularly in the pastrami sandwich Mark ordered). I can’t say that I blame him. That pastrami looked spectacular. Not that my granola/yogurt/banana breakfast bowl was bad, but it’s hard to compete with pastrami, gooey melted cheese, and sauerkraut.
I made the best risotto last night.
I had wandered into Westwood Village to escape the mounds of work piling up at home, and caught the tail end of the Farmers Market. Having just bought some Arborio rice the other day, I was craving risotto and so went a little nuts on the produce.
On the phone, Leslie graciously reminded me of the ingredient proportions since my recipe binder recently was lost in shipping (sniff, sniff). I went with diced garlic and onion softened in olive oil and (secondly) 3/4 cup of dry white wine, followed by 1 cup of rice with 3 cups of chicken stock slowly added in. About half-way through, I cooked a slew of veggies (zucchini, asparagus, and baby grape tomatoes) in olive oil and meyer-lemon-flavored grape seed oil in a side skillet before adding them to the rice. Then I added squash blossoms for the remaining 5 or 10 minutes in the pan.
Topped it all off with parmesan cheese. Mmmmmmm………
In case you missed it, Jonathan Gold’s pick of LA’s essential 99 restaurants is in this week’s LA Weekly. The beau, not being from these parts, keeps picking places to try off the list way the frack out in, like, San Bernardino. Um, I’m sure those fish tacos really are to die for, but …
The beau was in town, and we finally got to try Pizzeria Mozza, the new(ish) restaurant from Nancy Silverton, Mario Batali, and Joseph Bastianich. We were joined by the lovely Margy and Robert, who are always down for a good meal. Lucky for us they are also long-time friends of Nancy’s, and I finally got to meet her after hearing so much about her all these years.
We tag-teamed the ordering so as to get a wide sampling of the menu. We started with chicken liver bruschetta, an artichoke, corn on the cob, and broccoflower, all spectacular. I have no idea how they prepared the corn, but Margy’s guess was in the pizza oven, which would explain its awesome crispiness (the being drenched in butter part certainly didn’t hurt either). And I’ve never been one for chicken liver, but this one was hard to refuse.
Next we moved on to the main dishes. We got three pizzas (Salami Piccante, Mozzarella & Hot Chilies; Squash Blossoms with Burrata & Tomato; and a special Pizzette with Fresh Peas) and the regular Tuesday special, crisp duck leg over lentils and saba. Each pizza was spectacular in its own way, but if I had to pick a favorite I’d go with the hot chilies. It was such a unique flavor, not overpowering at all.
And, please, if you go, save room for dessert. The Butterscotch Budino was to…die…for. Seriously. There’s a recipe for it in last week’s New York Times (accompanying a profile on Nancy and the restaurant). I am afraid to even attempt it, because I know mine will pale in comparison.
Thank goodness reservations are so hard to come by or I would gain fifty pounds and be broke within the month.