Filed under: Food, Santa Monica | Tags: angry, cocktail, dessert, pizza, Riva, Santa Monica, torta della nonna
Santa Monica is tough. Just tough. There are not nearly enough good, decent, wholesome under $20 places here. It makes me mad. Every time something new opens up, I get super excited and think that maybe this is it! … but then each time (looking at you, Bar Pinxto), I leave sorely disappointed. Sore. Ly.
Riva just opened on 3rd and Wilshire. This is from the makers of Fraiche in Culver City, which I have heard great, great things about, but have not gotten around to going just yet. Early reports indicated that Riva’s pizzas were “phenomenal” to quote one Chowhounder who I will never trust again. (Edit: Someone on Chowhound points out that they can’t find this post. Me neither. I don’t know where it went, but I swear this is what I read.) Other reports kind of alluded to the entrees on the menu – whole organic chicken, quail, lamb, etc. I figured those would be really expensive, but if the pizzas were under $20 and good, then it might be worth it. More than one person said that the cocktails were great. So, in an ideal world, I was hoping for The Hungry Cat’s cocktails plus Mozza’s pizza, all under one roof. Too much to ask! Stupid.
Second day in its soft opening, and the front room was full of people in business outfits and ties and their hanger-on girlfriends/trophy wives in the highest of heels and the longest of hair extensions. This made me sad for those people.
We were led to the back area, as were another couple a few minutes later. They were pretty angry about this and insisted that they be given a new table in the main dining room so that everyone could see his tight pants and long boots and her tight pants and long boots. Us, we were pretty happy to get away from the scene.
Everything is expensive. Cocktails at $10-12; crudo and appetizers at $9-15; pizzas $13-17ish; entrees in the high 20s, low 30s, like a bad day on the East Coast. We were here for a cocktail and a pizza.
Cocktails – disappointingly, typical fancy-bar flavors. We ordered something with elderflower. This was $12.
This was not worth it. Our first reaction was, So small! But really, there is a lot of alcohol in here, so it’s not a total rip-off. It was probably the right amount for how it tasted – any more and it would have been an oversaturation of spirits and sweetness (from the elderflower, which was interesting in it of itself) (but not that interesting, you could just use lavender to get that same effect). That said, it was good, but not great, and certainly not outstanding. And for those of you who say, Oh, that’s just what a cocktail costs in this city – fine, true, but this doesn’t mean the bar gets a license to cop out. You pay $12 for your mediocre cocktails, I’m getting another pizza for this price.
Filed under: Dog friendly, Food | Tags: Amandine, croissants, Dog friendly
After college, we traipsed around Europe. The first, and last, place in our too-many-places-visited-for-the-time-we-spent-we-should-have-planned-it-better-and-included-germany, dammit-tour was Paris. When we started in Paris, we were trying to save all of our monies in anticipation of the rest of the trip. When we ended in Paris, we had no monies as result of the rest of our trip, especially London, those expensive English bastards.
The one thing we could afford were croissants. Every place we went, we had croissants. Not only were they super cheap, they also were one of our Top 5 Best Things We Ate during that trip (the Top 1 Worst Thing We Ate being 2 quarter-sized samosas in Interlaken for $10). So flaky, so buttery, so soft like a pillow stuffed with clouds, the chocolate so genuinely not pumped through a hole in the bottom, but actually layered in there like the croissant was born with this swirl in its middle. We packed chocolate croissants on our bus trip to a field in the middle of nowhere to catch a Ryanair flight to Rome. Those chocolate croissants were so good that we both forced ourselves to keep it down while the plane landed – no small feat given that the pilot landed the plane the way I would land a plane, which is, with absolutely no experience.
Until Amandine, I hadn’t found a place that comes even close to the croissants in Paris. Oh, Amandine.
Filed under: Food | Tags: Ben and Jerry's, election, free food, ice cream, vote, voting
Important. Free Ben and Jerry’s on Election Day!!
“Come to participating scoop shops on November 4th from 5-8pm, show us you voted and you’ll get a free scoop of ice cream. Show us your ‘I Voted’ sticker, a photo of you in front of your polling station, do the ‘I Voted dance’ or just tell us you voted.”
Don’t do be a bad citizen as I am at certain local museums and steal a sticker to pretend like you paid the admission. Also, what is the ‘I Voted’ dance? And just as a heads up, there are certain California laws and regulations on photographing at a polling place. Best to be outside that 100-foot range, unless you spot an attempt to stop a person’s right to vote or really, really feel like showing you can Stick It to the Man by taking a photo within 99 feet of the polling place.
Filed under: Food, Miscellaneous dog tales | Tags: corn, Lombardi Ranch, pumpkin patch, pumpkins
Around the first of October, my girlfriend pulls a Linus and gets super excited about pumpkins. There’s a makeshift pumpkin patch on Wilshire somewhere; there’s another in the parking lot of an Albertsons’ in Culver City. We had plans to drop by and pick up one or two gourds, but then I heard about the pumpkin patch over at Lombardi Ranch in Saugus. Done deal – if you’ve got the time and the gas, why not skip urban patching and go for the real deal? Turns out the neighbors were more than enthusastic about pumpkin patching, too – he cancelled his football (he’s English, so he really meant “soccer”) game, she cleared the day and went to bed early the night before. A bright Saturday, we and the dogs headed out to the warm winds of the valley.
Lombardi Ranch is out in Saugus, more or less a 45 minute drive from the westside. We stopped at In-N-Out on the way over. Good thing, because there wasn’t a whole lot of food there.
Filed under: Downtown LA, Food | Tags: Black Kids, bleu cheese fries, burger, hellman, Mayan, Pete's, The Virgins
Dear lord, what is with all these shows I go to in which I find less than 21 year olds also waiting at the will-call window? For example, the Black Kids concert at the Mayan on Wednesday night. There were two separate entrances – one for people over 21, and another for people under 21. I haven’t seen separate entrances like this since the last time I went to a tranny bar/club in San Francisco, and the separate lines were for pre- and post-op. It was supposed to be a joke, but everyone lined up accordingly. It’s amazing, the power of lines.
Anyway, the show and the food.
The best part of the Black Kids show was The Virgins, my new almost-favorite band. Hey, they’re great!
The worst part of the show as the fact that it didn’t start till 9, and with 2 openers, the Black Kids didn’t come on till 11. There has to be a rule that 1) if you’re a small band – i.e., Not Madonna – and even Madonna comes out before 10:30 – you need to start your set earlier than 11. There really is no need for a 30-40 minute gap between bands; and 2) weekday shows should start earlier than 9. I guess I am old. I guess Madonna’s old. I guess that is why I have to go to through the over-21 entrance and kids the age of my youngest sister are still wide awake and hopping at midnight.
The worstest part of the show was the $7.00 cans of beers and no source of tap water except in the bathroom. Seven dollars. Cans. of Beer. Cans. Of Heineken, Corona. To be fair to the Mayan, there were bottles of Bud. To be fair to drinkers everywhere, Bud is something you don’t drink if you have the choice between not drinking and drinking. Really, Mayan? You could do better. That is insane. We did get a free cup of ice though. Whoop.
We actually skipped out of the Black Kids’ set about 2 songs in — I was tired and hungry, she didn’t like the band so much, at all. What to do next? What’s open at 11:30 downtown? Oh, I know – Pete’s.
A upside view from the bar:
Filed under: Clicker training, Food, Miscellaneous dog tales | Tags: Craft, lagotto romagnolo, Mushrooms, proofing, truffles, white truffles
I generally do not like mushrooms or truffles. For those who, for whatever reasons previously discussed, think I’m vegetarian and/or vegan, this is a Big Deal, because, along with garlic, mushrooms are supposed to be a vegetarian staple. (Aside: my neighbor is vegetarian and hates garlic. So weird.).
The only times in recent memory where I did actually like a mushroom dish was once at Il Pastaio and another time at Craft. The first, at Il Pastaio, had black truffles in this pasta dish that I don’t remember too well, only that they didn’t taste like fungi, tasted just like tofu masquerading as sausage, in the best way possible. The second time was at Craft, where I was lucky enough to go to, thanks to my mentor convincing the CFO that it was worth it. He was a vegetarian, so of course ordered a side of assorted mushrooms. Those mushrooms also didn’t taste like mushrooms; tasted like delicate candy flowers. They were delicious. I almost couldn’t believe they were mushrooms.
Fall brings a number of things to us, like apples and pumpkins. To certain foodies with monies, it means white truffles. It means certain peoples in my office somehow have white truffles shipped to them the second they were forested from the Italian plains of Alba. It means those certain peoples come into my office offering me a smell and possibly, a taste.
This caused a little bit of an ethical dilemma. You see, white truffles are outrageously expensive. Outrageously. Even Costco, America’s ode to bulk, sells them for the price of a large television – 2 ounces for $550 (but you get a free truffle slicer!!). A Hong Kong man bought 1.5 pounds of the stuff for $330,000 last year. Providence estimates that these shrooms cost $2,000 – 2,500 per pound, depending on the season. They, and other fancified fancy restaurants across town like La Cachette and La Botte, probably will soon offer white truffle dishes for upwards of $[very expensive].
And the privileged take these things seriously — recall this extensive Chowhound uproar on the mystery of the suspiciously early appearance of the white truffle at Craft.
So, who am I, one who doesn’t like nor appreciate the mushroom family, to take a taste? Well, given that just a tiny lick of this stuff probably is itself worth at least $100, I would be a fool not to. And so I did.
And? It smelled wonderful, like the way clean dirt would smell after a proper rain. Taste-wise, it was good, very mushroomy, very meaty, very dirt-y (as in, earth-y). Not earthshattering, however. Didn’t change my life for the better, like the first time I had an honest-to-God-fresh-from-the-hen’s-butt farm fresh egg. Didn’t change my life for the worse, like the time I went to Crustacean. I continue to dislike mushrooms.
These things are supposed to taste simply di-vine simply shaved raw atop of eggs, pasta, anything. Maybe if I had its flavors permeate throughout a dish, I would have thought more spectactularly of it. As it is, though, I would pass and save my hundreds of dollars on more plebian pleasures, like eggs without shaved white truffles.
More interesting to me is how these things are harvested.
Filed under: Food, Hollywood | Tags: cocktail, David Lentz, Hungry Cat, seafood, Suzanne Goin
One of my favoritest restaurants in this city, but also one of the most overpriced for what you get (except for the cocktails — those are worth every penny plus tip), which causes all sorts of internal dialogues and cost/benefit analysis before I decide to go. Also, they are a little tad on the pretentious side – one time, I was there with my best friend and the waiter explained that the special of the night were Maine? New Hampshire? the Hamptons? shrimp that were Fed Ex’ed overnight to the restaurant. Really? Fed Ex’ed overnight?? … Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for Fed Ex to deliver my brief to an administrative law judge in Baltimore. Thanks, Fed Ex.
This is why, as much as I love it, I don’t go as often as I would like. If the price point was a few bucks cheaper, then I would go every month.
As it is, then, I generally go only if I really want a good drink before or after the Arclight or if there is a good excuse to go – i.e., the girlfriend’s birthday. On this sacred occasion, I asked her where she wanted to go. She contemplated the other Suzanne Goin-related enterprises, Lucques and AOC, then considered Joe’s in Venice, then Sizzler’s, then Nook off of Barrington, and then finally settled on The Hungry Cat. How her thought process went from Lucques to Sizzler and back to the Hungry Cat, I really don’t know.
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