Food: October 2009 Archives

BLACK WIDOW By Duggan McDonnell, Cantina, San Francisco 1 1/2 ounces Tequila Don Julio Blanco 1 ounce fresh lime juice 1 teaspoon agave nectar 3 blackberries 4 basil leaves Ice cubes Muddle 2 blackberries and 3 basil leaves in a Boston shaker. Add Tequila Don Julio Blanco, fresh lime juice, agave nectar and ice into shaker. Shake well Strain contents into stemless martini glass over ice. Garnish with a blackberry and basil leaf on a toothpick.

       

In addition to the Berlin Wall display, the building 5900 Wilshire Building across from LACMA opened another art exhibit today. Canstruction L.A. shows off works of art built from canned food by local architects, engineers, and designers. The free exhibit closes November 15th (Hours: Monday-Sunday 8 a.m.-6 p.m.) and that's when all those cans get donated to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. Over the past three years, the event, previously housed in Sherman Oaks and then Santa Monica, has donated over 157,000 cans. As a visitor to the exhibit, you are encouraged to bring canned donations.

When I moved to Los Angeles from Back East, I immediately heard of two magical destinations for which East Coasters darned not speak: Costa Rica and Hawaii. Apparently they’re too far from Back East, but not Out Here.

One menu option at Susan Feniger's STREET offers diners a half size of any salad and street bite plate. This Mix & Match plate has Saigon Chicken Salad with long beans, celery leaf, carrots, cucumber, tomato with chopped peanut, chile, and soy lime dressing next to Kaya Toast (from Singapore) made from toasted bread and coconut jam served with a soft fried egg drizzled in soy and white pepper.

The November issue of Pasadena Magazine has a cover star who, until recently, was more of a behind the scenes kind of guy, despite the often cocky swagger and 'tude. It's Chef Michael Voltaggio, who took over Chef de Cuisine duties this summer for The Dining Room, the swanky old-school restaurant at the Langham that's been turned upside down by Voltaggio's cheeky and innovative style of cuisine. LAist was lucky enough to be invited to sample Voltaggio's fare just days before the current season of Top Chef debuted on Bravo; on the show you'll see Voltaggio battling it out for honors with none other than his big brother Bryan.

I bought a massive hunk of fresh mozzarella cheese one weekend with visions of homemade margarita pizza swirling in my brain. I had a simple pizza dough recipe ready to go, but every evening when I got home from work, suddenly messing with yeast seemed like more than I could handle. Sure there were premade ones I could buy, but none were in my fridge, and by Thursday I'd had my fill of caprese salad. I stood in the kitchen hungry, grouchy and really not wanting to lay down 20 bucks for delivery.

                            

This past Sunday, Los Angeles Magazine hosted their 3rd Annual Food Event, held on a hot and blustery afternoon at Saddlerock Ranch, a winery tucked into the hills of Mulholland Hwy in Malibu. The rustic landscape was criss-crossed by narrow, bumpy roads that heightened the excitement as we drove onto the property, with slivers of dappled hillsides, vineyards, and pens holding exotic--and less exotic--animals came into view on the way to the clearing where the tents and tables were set up.

              

Sunday October 18, San Antonio Winery held their last wine festival of the season. The winery's Taste Of Italy paired regional Italian Foods with the wines of Italy. Italians are starting to incorporate recently learned California wine making styles. But it’s important to note that their wines are still generally dry, high in acid and need to be paired with food to show their best attributes

          

It's no surprise that the Grilled Cheese Truck's debut last night drew hundreds of people who braved the windy weather and long wait. After all, it's grilled cheese, America's ooey gooey classic comfort food. Add to that Los Angeles' recent and growing obsession with gourmet food trucks hitting the streets and you've got the perfect recipe.

       

The Taste of Soul 2009 was hot, hot, hot. And that’s even before you start talking about feasting on the hot links and Cajun-spiced fare. The festival of food and music that turns Crenshaw Boulevard into a state fair kind of ambience happened during last Saturday's steamy afternoon.

                     

High-class imbibers were out in force for Whisky Live at the Santa Monica Civic Center last Monday. Whisky Live is an international tasting and sampling event, taking place "from London to Tokyo, Paris to Glasgow". Billed as “Southern California’s Finest Whisky Experience,” attendees had the opportunity to sample the wares of twenty-seven companies, some familiar (Glenlivet, Dewar's, Macallan), some (such as Japanese manufactureres Hibiki and Yamazaki) not even available on American shelves yet.

             

In 1979, Celestino Drago arrived in Los Angeles for a visit. Thirty years later he owns several restaurants that serve some of the most authentic Italian food in the United States. With Chef Drago's love for fresh ingredients, the dishes he creates have both traditional and innovative elements.

Downtown LA’s Grand Central Market is a Recession Obsession institution. If you’ve never been, grab a crisp five dollar bill, and you’ll purchase a great meal. Grab a crisp ten dollar bill and you’ll find that nirvana known as Food Coma.

              

Ports O' Call restaurant, which is in Ports O' Call Village in San Pedro, has an immediate strike against it. It is a common belief that restaurants with views always suck (cough Castaway cough). Even if in this case it is just a view of oil drums and tankers. Then to really make a seasoned diner nervous, they have weddings there. Like all the time. Sometimes two at a time. Would you like the pistachio-crusted chicken or the poached salmon with dill sauce? Stop running! It's OK. Come back. They have cake.

Former Top Chef contender Fabio Viviani has left his Moorpark restaurant and moved quickly into a new spot, Firenze Osteria. The eatery has taken over the North Hollywood space formerly occupied by Barsac Brasserie, and underwent a quick turnaround to transform the restaurant. Now in a "soft-open" phase, Firenze Osteria is set to officially open this Saturday, with a public (with RSVP) cocktail reception, and the phone line is up and accepting reservations starting at 7:45 p.m.

Like sunny skies and Ugg boots, the current trend of gourmet food trucks remains in perpetual motion here in Los Angeles. Just a couple of weeks ago the Grilled Cheese Truck got people salivating with their cheesy "Pre-Melt" event held at the Farmer's Kitchen adjoining the Hollywood Farmers' Market in preparation for their roll out, and this week has seen the official on-four-wheels debut of both Downtown Dog (hot dogs) and the Flying Pig Truck ("Asian Fusion with French Technique").

Cafe Midi serves an impressive list of omelettes with everything from smoked chicken to roasted fennel. This creation with tomato, basil, merguez sausage, goat cheese, cumin, and caramelized onion is full of flavor and hearty.

LA Beer Week started October 15th and promises a veritable cornucopia of local beer bars, brewpubs, breweries, beer, cuisine, tasting, events and demos in both LA and Orange County. Celebrate local beer culture at one of many events being held at the great beer establishments of the Southland. LA Beer Week is encouraging individual pubs and breweries to promote their own events through October 24th.

Thanks to a tip from reader Carter, LAist has learned that the highly anticipated eatery (sans bakery) from Thomas Keller just received its liquor license, as seen on the website for the Alcoholic Beverage Control here. In related news, Alex Weil, the former sommelier at Pizzeria Mozza, is poised to take over the wine program at Bouchon Beverly Hills. The restaurant itself appears to be on track to open in mid-November, and signage is already up.

It looks like he got his point across, at least in our most recent meal there.

              

If you overdid it last night, head over to Rush Street in Culver City for their new brunch menu. If you are looking for the hair of the dog, they have you covered with a bottomless mimosa, a make-your-own Bloody Mary bar and anything else you can imagine. The sunny patio is perfect for early risers, and the cool dim interior is perfect for those looking to escape the heat or a hangover. High ceilings and a loft area make the room both spacious and cozy.

When is a week not a week? when it's two weeks. Err, make that three weeks. dineLA Restaurant Week is being extended Oct.18-23! The list of participating restaurants has also been reconfigured. It is much more readable now, and you are able to see which restaurants are offering lunch without having to click on their page.

       

Sometimes near the corner of Arlington Boulevard and Martin Luther King Jr, Boulevard you’ll see them huddled outside in the dim of the fluorescent light. They aren’t there to smoke a cigarette and it’s not an Alcoholicos Anonimos meeting. Soul food tacos are the objects they desire.

       

Pinot Bistro on Ventura Boulevard has seen may chefs come and go, some of them spectacular and some of them so-so. Previous chefs include such notable names as Octavio Becerra, Miki Zivkovic and of course, Joachim Spichal himself. Even Suzanne Goin has worked in the kitchen. We were excited to see what the latest chef, Hugo Veltman, has been cooking up and jumped at the invitation to try their dineLA menu.

       

Tucked up in a remote corner of the Santa Clarita Valley is something quite unusual. A large swath of near-high desert land is home to 35 gibbons (a newborn is expected to make it 36 this weekend) from 15 difference species.

       

Santa Monica’s Pourtal Wine Bar and Playboy.com’s Imbiber Dan Dunn have teamed up to present The Imbiber’s Ultimate Playboy Fantasy Wine Tour. A flight of eight wines has been inspired by eight of Playboys classic Playmates. At the October 6th launch party, winosseurs sipped, swirled, and mingled with Dan and his Playboy ‘mates’. Pourtal showed the lineup on their high tech Enomatic Machines. The wines remain available by the taste, glass or bottle at Pourtal through the end of October.

It’s been raining cats and dogs in Los Angeles. Don’t believe me? Consult your nearest social network where you'll see such pathetic updates as:

“It’s raining. Who’s got a bunker?” “Rain rain go away, else I’ll slit my writs today.”

Continue reading "Recession Obsession: Rainy Day Ramen"

       

Chef Neal Fraser of Grace and BLD believes the art of cooking needs daily cultivation. Even if he has 10 restaurants, he will always be exactly where he wants to be - in the kitchen. As an LA native he has “a personal vendetta” to elevate LA into the echelon of the best restaurant cities in the world. With the development of a new Grace like fine dining restaurant downtown that will grow at least a third of the produce on site, and a new BLD slated to open in Pasadena early next year, Chef Fraser shows no signs of leaving the kitchen. LAist caught up with the busy chef at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market (as he bought green beans for his daughter) to provide details about moving Grace to downtown, the struggle of when to pull a dish from the menu and how he is inspired by Wonderbread.

              

On Saturday October 3rd, celebrated chefs and vintners/spirit-makers from all over the nation gathered on the backlot of Universal Studios here in Los Angeles to showcase their best bites and sips as part of the popular 27th annual American Wine and Food Festival (AWFF), hosted by Wolfgang Puck and Barbara Lazaroff. The event is a big draw for food and wine lovers of all calibers, and offers an astonishing quantity of quality eats and drinks for the ticket price; although the pricetag is hefty ($300 advance, $350 at the door), the event is not merely a showcase for food and wine, but rather a wildly successful fundraiser for Meals on Wheels.

       

It was Sunday night when a friend of LAist texted us an invite to a small ad hoc fundraiser at Handmade Galleries in Sherman Oaks. "Come by," he wrote, "vegan sri lanka food." Having enjoyed Tara's Himalayan Cuisine on Venice Boulevard in the past, this opportunity for a new food couldn't be passed.

         

So, a coupla chicks walk into Ivan Kane's Cafe Wa s to check out their dineLA dinner...

             

Chef Stefan Richter, known for his commitment to his meticulous yet simply prepared food, has a big personality. On Top Chef he was the smack-talking half of team Europe with Fabio Viviani. Later this month Viviani will open Firenze Osteria in North Hollywood. In August, Richter opened Stefan's L.A. Farm at the Lantana Center in Santa Monica. The restaurant is drawing large lunch crowds for the salads and burgers (more than one diner has declared it "better than Father's Office") and for dinner and drinks in a relaxed atmosphere.

Have you ever gone to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, walked around for hours and then afterwards, go out for dinner, you know, to get sushi? If so, maybe you used the aquarium's handy wallet-sized Seatfood Watch pocket guide.

       

Sometimes it's really nice to take a vacation all by yourself and treat yourself to a nice meal. Dining downtown at Zucca, with its high ceilings, Venetian paintings and chandeliers gives you that feeling of pampering yourself, if only for an hour. The dineLA menu at Zucca is nothing if not hearty. LAist was invited to try out their lunch menu yesterday and the blustery weathery made the soup and pasta options especially appealing.

                            

Saturday night Union Station's grand ticket hall was the very grand location of Jonathan Gold's Cocktail Party to benefit Zócalo. People were giddy as they were photographed at the entry, feeling like they had the fabled golden ticket. The lighting was dim in the gorgeous art deco hall, but the room was not overly crowded. Still, the auditorium chairs set up in the middle of the room did cause some "excuse me" "pardon me"s.

      

It's always a little curious when you arrive at one of the many eateries participating in dineLA's popular restaurant week and they don't hand you the dineLA menu. As a diner there to check out a spot you've maybe never been to before this means things can get off to a rocky start when right out of the gate you have to wonder if you were mistaken, or if the dineLA crowd is really all that welcome where you are. (Baffling, right? After all, restaurants choose to participate, so why not pimp it?) You know that "new kid" feeling? Yeah, that's the one.

           

Walking into Nick and Stef's in downtown Los Angeles, your first impression is that it would be the perfect place for a business lunch, should you ever need to have a business lunch. The decor is unobtrusive and simple, but it is pristine. There is not a spot on a napkin, a mark on the banquette or a glass out of place. Service is charming and impeccable, bordering on the obsequious.

       

We have salad bars and make-your-own sundae bars, even burger bars. It's about time somebody applied this idea to liquor! On weekends Rush Street in Culver City is offering a make-your-own Bloody Mary bar. They fill your glass with Ketel One vodka. You can ask for a different brand, although nobody has yet. Then the bartender meets you at the end of the bar.

       

Consider it the "Little Restaurant that Could" in the heart of Hollywood: It's been well over a year since we first started prematurely salivating about a storefront near Sunset and Vine. With the weekly taunting of the abundant, crowded, and colorful Hollywood Farmers' Market not helping matters, the cheerful yellow eatery whose name evokes the core connection between the farm and the dining table, has been "coming soon" for a long, long time.

This week was a bleak one for those who love "see food"--as in the words and images of the 60-year-old magazine Gourmet, which will serve up its last meal in the November issue following a death notice from publisher Conde Nast.

It's finally here! Tomorrow Union Station will be the site of "Jonathan Gold's Union Station Cocktail Party", which makes the name just perfect. The event is a benefit for Zócalo, "a non-profit organization that builds community by broadening access to civic discourse". Here is the third and final interview in our series with Jonathan Gold:

              

Mark Peel has been hosting his famous Monday Night Dinners at Campanile for over ten years. Served family-style, everyone eats the same meal. Not only is the serving style homey, but the dishes are typical home-cooked comfort food, raised just one notch higher by Peel's deft hand. The co-author of New Classic Family Dinners, Martha Rose Shulman shadowed the chef in the kitchen, measuring the ingredients as he cooked. The recipes didn't need too much fussing with, as most of them originated in the home kitchen.

     

Our first taste of DineLA week(s) was really a matter of practicality. It was lunchtime in Pasadena. What was convenient? The menu at Cafe Bizou was varied, appealing and reasonable. We arrived just as they were opening and the first impression was not good. It was an empty FrancoDenny's with a disorganized staff.

This Saturday sees the much-anticipated benefit for Zócalo, "Jonathan Gold's Union Station Cocktail Party". Participating restaurants like Rivera and Providence, along with Cedd Moses' signature cocktail pairings makes for an exciting event. Here is part two of our three-part interview with Jonathan Gold:

On Monday nights, Campanile has been serving the super-popular "Family Dinner", a three-course meal served family style. The dinners highlight Mark Peel's take on comfort foods. Someone finally got him to publish a cookbook of Monday night recipes and co-authored the book with him.

Rarely has an event caused as much buzz as the upcoming benefit for Zócalo. And who can resist? The restaurants are hand-picked by Jonathan Gold, LA's patron saint of good eats. Just check out a few of the participants -- Rivera! Perrier Jouet! Church & State! Providence! All this and one of the most beautiful locations in Los Angeles, art deco landmark Union Station. It definitely makes for a night to remember. How much would you pay? But wait!

           

Friday evening Morton's in Burbank hosted a tasting of Piper-Heidsiek champagne and Vosges chocolates. The evening started with generous pourings of Piper Sonoma Brut and hearty appetizers including Smoked Salmon Wedges, Broiled Sea Scallops and Petite Filet Mignon Sandwiches.

dineLA's second 2009 Restaurant Week got underway yesterday, and runs through the 9th, and from the 11th-16th. To see a list of the restaurants, prices, and menus, click here.

Last fall we talked with Samantha Page and Camilla Yates, whose delectable Sweet Square dessert bars were available by order for fans of hand-held treats that don't involve the word "cupcake." If you didn't have the chance or occasion to order up a batch of their squares, you might find yourself somewhere in the city where you can bite into one of their bars.

      

A Recession Obsession is, 1) a meal so great that it sticks in your mind long after digestion's end, and, 2) plays nice with your sensitive wallet. Is there a better place than Los Angeles to eat a wide variety of amazing food that so happens to be inexpensive? Probably not. We're as lucky as we are well fed. We last obsessed over Delicious Pig Butt and Frozen Yogurt 3.0. Today, we obsess...