LA Road Trip!

We convinced my mum to replace her 2002 Nissan Frontier with a shiny, silver Prius. If you know how techonologically-resistant she is, you'll know this was a huge feat. My mum has been anti-technology for decades, holding on to her VHS and cassette tapes as long as she could. Last year we introduced her to the world of texting, yet she is still hesitant to give up her Motorola Razr for an iPhone. She's adopted YouTube and watching Korean dramas online, but does so on a 7-year old Dell desktop.

It took a few weeks but we convinced her that she needed the Prius for its mpg benefits... but now she's too scared to drive it! (Took a good 20 minutes for the salesman to explain how to put the car in park, and turn off the car with the smart key system) So instead, my sisters and I took it for a spin around town. The goal: how many food spots can we hit up on the way to Yona's apartment?

Pizzeria Mozza

I rarely get the chance to eat dinner up in LA but on this uncommon weeknight Max and I left work early for a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. I thought it would be nice to share a pizza and some wine at the outdoor venue so we headed to Pizzeria Mozza for some to go. We arrived so early that the normally 45+ minute-wait was only 10 minutes for the bar so we decided to eat there.

And oh-em-gee I wasn't sure what I was expecting but the food there definitely blew my expectations out of the water!

The first dish we had was the grilled corn. The outside was slightly caramelized and crunchy and the butter carried so much flavor. I have to say this was the best corn I ever had in my life and I've had some pretty good corn.

The next dish was more interesting in promise. The Bone marrow al forno was served with some toasted bread and natural salts and herbs for taste. I was a little greasy but it was a lot of fun to prepare.

The pizza itself was probably the least impressive part of our meal (though it was supposed to be the center point). We ordered two and although they were good, they weren't spectacular.

Overall, Pizzeria Mozza was a fitting dinner before Mozart under the stars. =)

Front Page Jamaican Grille

A bunch of us from work headed up to Manchester today for a spicy Jamaican lunch. I haven't had lunch outside the office in a while, let alone with co-workers, so I thought this was a good way to break up the work day and try some new food. Front Page Jamaican Grille is in a little nondescript strip mall on Manchester Blvd.



And it was AMAZING. I had the jerk oxtail which was served with rice and fried plantains and a side of vegetables. She also gave us a sample of the homemade ginger beer which was a little too strong for me so I opted for the fresh watermelon juice. We all shared a reggae chicken wings appetizer which was way too spicy for me. I loved the home-cooking atmosphere of the place and the owner's wife who served us was very laid back and friendly. She even gave us some bread pudding and rum cake to finish off our meal. Needless to say I was stuffed after eating every last bite of food on my plate.

And now my cube neighbor Phil is playing spa music from his cubicle and it is slowly putting me into a deep food coma...

West LA Outing

Today was my first "LA" outing since we moved out of LA. I have to say -- didn't feel much different from when we were living in LA, but I did notice traffic and inconsiderate parallel-parkers a lot more today than I did before.

First stop was Century City mall to pick up some towels I bought on presale about a month ago. They are the super, softest towels you can ever imagine. To save an additional 15% off, I prepaid for them during the Bloomingdale's presale and haven't been back since to pick them up.

After spending hours at the mall (unintentional; bringing a puppy that stops all foot traffic really slows you down in a mall) we headed to the Barrington Dog Park to kill time before picking up Aai from her work. This was Cora's first time at the dog park and she did pretty well! We went into the small dog area only and woke Cora from a nap to let her play. At first she was a little groggy and reluctant to play with the other dogs. After walking around for 10 minutes she started being more interested in the other dogs, quickly learning to sniff butts.

When it was clear she wasn't going to go potty, we headed out towards Santa Monica to pick up Aai at her work, Bergamot Station.



This was my first time in the paper store and I have to say I was taken aback at the variety of traditional/hand-made Japanese papers. There were so many different kinds, colors, textures and more. I was most intrigued by the natural papers made out of thinly sliced fruit.

After Joanna closed up the register, we headed to Fritto Misto in Santa Monica for a quick dinner. I had the jumbo ravioli for the first time -- prosciutto ravioli in a garlic cream sauce tossed with sundried tomatoes, caramelized onions and bacon. Max had the garlic shrimp black and white pasta (as good as I remembered it!) and Aai had the plain jain spaghettini in marinara sauce. This place never disappoints!

We saved just enough room for the creamy Tiramisu -- I'd say the best I've had in Southern California! (My fave ever is Steps of Rome in San Francisco)

Leftover Leftovers for Lunch

After I got back from our trip, I wanted to clean out the fridge so I took all of the leftover vegetables we had and made a casserole. This is my super-special casserole of potatoes, broccoli, mushrooms, spam and cheese inspired by Marcela's Potatoes au Gratin recipe.



I am now eating the leftovers from that leftover meal for lunch at work. That's considered saving money, right? :)

An Old Favorite

We started the day and trip up the California coast at one of my favorite sushi places, Cho Cho San! I haven't been there in so long -- it was nice to see familiar faces behind the sushi bar. Driving up I also realized that in the 10+ times I've been there, I've never been during the day!

Good thing about lunch -- we were seated right away. We had a spicy tuna hand roll, spicy tuna rice krispy, Ken's special roll and a pink lady. We wanted to keep it light since we'd be eating at various pit stops on the way to San Francisco. It was the perfect lunch.

Best Clam Chowder Ever

We spent so much time in Camarillo finding the perfect suit for Max at the Barney's outlet that we were still on the road around dinnertime. We were approaching San Luis Obispo so I asked Marcela for a restaurant recommendation since she used to visit Mason in SLO so often during college. Since it was Valentine's Day night, we didn't want to go someplace too busy and she recommended the clam chowder at Splash Cafe.

The cafe itself was very low key. It was a casual cafe/bakery known for their chocolate and chowder. We both had the clam chowder in a bowl and it was AMAZING. The soup was flavored just perfectly with fresh clams and potatoes and no bitter or clammy aftertaste at all. My favorite part was the carved out bread which was toasted with garlic butter -- so crispy and soft at the same time.

This is going to be a hard craving to fill in the future as the only two locations are in San Luis Obispo and Pismo Beach.

Edit: Just found out that select Costco stores sell their clam chowder... will definitely look for it the next time we go to Costco!

With BBQ Sauce

It's like I've joined some human race to see how much weight I can gain in one month. I've grown accustomed to our gargantuan dinners followed up by late-night dessert (or Taco Bell!) runs. This is not good. At this rate, I'll be 140lbs by springtime.

Anyways I had a non-stop day at work today so I barely had time to eat lunch. Coupled with my sickly inappetite during the daytime, I could barely finish my chicken+vegetable soup for lunch so by 5pm I was STARVING. I am slightly hypoglycemic... or at least I like to believe that is the reason for my dizzy spells and headaches when I'm hungry and not something like I'm a hungry fat kid, but anyways when 5pm rolled around today I was starving and visions of sushi and BBQ started dancing in my head.

As soon as a hush puppy creeped through my mind, there was no stopping it. We had to have dinner at Mr. Cecil's BBQ Ribs on Pico. Max had never been there and I thought tonight might be a good night to overeat.



I tried to be sensible -- we went with 1 full rack of baby back ribs and a 1/2 rack of beef ribs. On the side we had cole slaw, beans (with bacon) and a double order of hush puppies. It was the most silent dinner we've had in a while. Max was literally eating the beef ribs in disbelief -- I don't think he's ever had beef ribs as tender, juicy or flavorful.

We weren't the only ones with a feast. We brought a large beef rib bone back for Lulu and she had her way with it for a good 20 minutes.



Until it made her throw up. =/

Xooro: Premium Spanish Fritters

Tipped off by Los Angeles Magazine's top 20 LA bakeries, we decided to try Xooro in Santa Monica. The idea of a premium churro filled with various fillings including Nutella and adorned with different types of chocolate toppings seemed promising.

Unfortunately, Xooro fell short, literally. Each churro was about 5" long and instead of the hot, crispy fresh churros the web site promised, the ones we got were stale and reheated. I got an original with Nutella filling and Max got the Jordans which had Nutella filling and white chocolate on the outside. The Nutella mixed with the traditional sugar/cinnamon outside was a weird combination I could not get used to. It reminded me of the Mexican hot chocolate I had at Leonidas right before Christmas. Max's was drenched in chocolate sauce and was way too rich and sweet. At $4 a pop, we thought it was an interesting experience to try once but we probably won't be going back.

DineLA - Valentino

Last Friday I had my first Restaurant Week/DineLA experience at Valentino in West LA. I have always heard good things about Valentino and it is a 1-star Michelin rated restaurant so we thought this would be a good occasion for a Friday night date.



My first impression of the place was that it looked like a night club. I had no idea this restaurant existed on Pico. Once you pull into the driveway, past the wall, you get the grandiose feeling of a Vegas restaurant.

The place was packed. It seemed that the restaurant put out extra tables to accommodate DineLA patrons and they even filled the bar with two-tops -- not my choice of seating for dinner. We waited for about 10 minutes to get a table in the "dining room" and we were seated in the corner of an over-populated room off to the side.

The DineLA is a fixed price, 3-course menu. For $44 each, I had:
Le Crespelle - Ducking and Tomato Ragu Filled Crespelle, Mostarda di
Branzino Con Carciofi - Grilled Sea Bass, Artichoke Sauce
Sicilian Cannoli

And Max had:
Tortini Funghi
Vitello All 'Uccelletto - Ligurian Style Veal Casserole
Chocolate, Walnut and Espresso Mousse

We paired our dinners with a glass of wine each. (Max had the house Chianti and I had a house Pinot Noir, Mark West) The meal itself was pretty good -- I especially liked my duckling crepe appetizer, though my entree was pretty average for sea bass. I'd have to say the experience might have been a little bit rushed and "generic" because the restaurant was so crowded. It took a while for our waiter to finally make it to our table to take our order. The waiter (or was it the sommelier?) seemed displeased to offer any type of wine recommendations. I felt like we were bothering the wait staff whenever we asked for anything -- not what you would expect in this type of ambiance.

All in all, DineLA *is* a great way to try out new restaurants, as long as you keep a few things in mind. Remember the rest of LA is testing these restaurants too, so you will encounter overworked wait staff with impatience for new diners. Also remember that the kitchen is repeatedly cooking the same dishes over and over again that night so the extra care you get when you perform varied tasks vs. repeating an onerous task will be missing.

Quality Seafood

On Saturday we finally made it to Redondo Beach for our crab fest/Yona's bday celebration. We waited for Vina to drive up from San Diego in the morning so didn't leave West LA until 1pm. The traffic was a little painful to get through but as soon as we saw the water we were getting pretty excited.



We decided to try out a new place called Quality Seafood. Well, the place itself is over 40 years old, it was just new to us since we normally go to Captain Kidd's for fresh crab.



The market/eating area was situated at the end of the dock and was a lot larger than I expected. There were so many seafood choices spread out into 4-5 stations. We all split up to make the best use of our time: Max went for the crab, I was in charge of clams, Vina went straight to the uni and Yona and Aai bought cooked food.


There were so many choices of clams I just asked the guy to recommend me some. We ended up with little neck or long neck or something or the other and it only took 5 minutes to steam. They were so good! So plump, fresh and I love the wine sauce they used.


I'm not sure if Vina was delighted or shocked to find that they, indeed, would be serving us live/fresh uni. Here she is peering into the uni tank choosing her lunch targets.


I was surprised to find that they are a little purple in color and really don't move all too much. (Which is probably a good thing -- didn't want to get sick BEFORE the meal)


The two victims Vina picked out went immediately to the chopping board. The guy pounded on the poor sea urchin a few times, cut out and ripped off it's "face" then drained a clear, red liquid. It was pretty gross.


But the end result was pretty tasty...




It was kind of weird scraping the sides for the sea urchin meat. I felt like I could have done better with chopsticks, and that it would have tasted more "normal". It was sweet and mushy but wasn't as thick and rich as other premium uni I've had. It was still really good and definitely fresh.


Max was in charge of picking the oysters... there were at least 12 different kinds and they all looked the same to me. We ended up letting the master oyster shucker choose our platter.




We ended up with 5 different types: Fanny Bay, Sunset, Hamma Hamma, Blue Point and Kumamoto. (I think) The larger ones were tastier than the smaller ones but they were tough to swallow. I think the oysters would have tasted much better if they served better condiments with it -- we were stuck with lemon, ketchup, horseradish and Tapatio and that mixture overwhelmed the oysters.


There were a lot of different types of crabs. Pictured here are the Santa Barbara crabs. In addition to these, there were local crabs, live blue crabs (most expensive per pound), spider crabs (these were huge!) and dungeness crab which is what Max ended up choosing. We each got a 2-pounder, they were huge!




The crab was so good, undoubtedly the best steamed crab I've ever had. They were sweet, juicy and had large chunks of meat falling out of everywhere. Even though I didn't get my original request of finding female crabs with lots of eggs, these were oozing with goodness and I found myself licking my fingers throughout the entire meal.


Aai was so excited to be taking a picture of all the food. =)


After a solid half-hour of eating nonstop, these two were still going at it, picking apart the last of the crab legs. Well, at least Max was. Aai was downing her beer. :(


We left quite a scene when we were done. Pictured here is solely Vina's carnage... oysters, what's left of her crab and her uni.


All in all it was a great meal. The weather was perfect for a walk on the pier, the seafood was fresh and tasty and we somehow made it back to West LA at exactly 4PM, in time to pick up Lulu from the groomer.