I have friends that fly across country to dine with me!! (or at Upstairs2)

So one of my bridesmaids and dearest friends left me a few months ago to make it big in .... DC?  Actually she's there working as an executive assistant at law firm there and apparently having a blast.  And trying to convince me to move there.  Yeah we'll see about that.  Well thankfully for me, her long time boyfriend is still rooted into San Diego and when she comes to visit him, I'm just a short trip up the 5!  So after 3 hours of driving Lindsay was ready for some catching up and good food.  So I made reservations at Upstairs2 which was doing DineLA with an amazing menu!

Just to let you know we did a VERY good job of taking pictures before we ate (for the most part.)  So Upstairs2 is literally ON the onramp onto the 405 from Pico Blvd.  To stress this point I should tell you that to get into the parking lot to this restaurant we had to get into the line for the on ramp and then at the very last second make a quick left up a different ramp to roof top parking.  Which really wasn't fun since it was pouring down rain!  Anyhow, its located on top of a place called The Wine House which looks like a bevmo but only carries wine!  And theyre all organized by country and grape type and body?  I dunno.  This is not a wine blog.  I know NOTHING about wine.  But it was still pretty cool!

Anyway so onto dinner!  We had 6:15 reservations because I could only get 6:15 or 9:00 and nine was just too late.  When we walked in it was crazy, low lighting, linens, sparkling preset wine glasses.  It was an actual fine dining restaurant...off the side of the freeway.  Such a diamond in the rough!! So we sat down and the waiter, Hamilton, informed us that they are mainly a small plate, tapas, restaurant and all of their tapas are arranged on the menu by which wine they pair with the best.  He also recommended you order two to three plates per person.  Then he quickly turned to the dineLA menu and said it is a wonderful choice and proceeded to tell us how much he loved each thing on the menu.  Yay!  For an additional twenty dollars you could add a wine pairing of three 2.5 oz pours.  We decided to get a bottle of 2005 K Vintners Viognier for the table instead (32 dollars for a bottle (25.4 ozs) for two people or 40 for six 2.5 oz pours (15 oz) for two people.)  We also decided to split everything we ordered, we each ate half of our respective plates then switched.  Best decision ever!

Here was our selections:
Appetizers: 1. Lobster Bisque 2. Duck Confit Raviolli
Entrees: 1. Tazmanian Trout 2. Pappardelle Pasta
Dessert: 1. Peanut Brittle Snowball 2. Chocolate Raspberry Torte

Appetizers:  So first of all they lost our dinner ticket, but we were chit chatting and eatting the bread and oil (rosemary olive oil) and it really hadn't been that long, but the waiter still came out and apologized and said the food would be here shortly.  When it came, it was fabulous!  I got the bisque first and it was totally different from any other bisque, it wasn't creamy.  It was still super rich and had nice chunks of Maine lobster in it, but it was almost like a manhattan bisque instead of a New England bisque.  I was really sad when it was time to switch plates.  The duck confit was great.  Lindsay pointed out how duck is very under utilized protien and I agreed.  The way it was prepared almost made it taste like an asian dish, but the tomato in the sauce brought it back.  After we scarfed them down we used our bread to soup up the rest of the broth and bisque.  (Just as a note these aren't the best pictures because yet again we dove in before photographing!)

Also what was nice was they sent out these little barbecue chicken bites from the chef.  I think it was because they lost our dinner ticket.  Those were very nice little bites. 

Entrees:  I got the trout first and I should let you know that trout is one of my favorite fishes ever.  My dad used to go fishing a lot and caught rainbow trout and I have to tell you I absolutely love it.  And thankfully I loved this too!  It was confusing at first because normally white trout had very pink hue making it look like salmon, but it tasted like trout.  It was paired with creamy black rice (which we think was cooked in coconut milk) and chinease broccoli.  The broccoli was fine, I ate it because it was there, but it was drastically outshined by the fish and rice.  The rice was amazingly creamy and rich and the menu claims it was cooked in a ginger carrot saute but I didnt taste it.  Not that thats a bad thing because I really loved this dish.  Then switching time came again and the pasta came to my side.  The bowl had those thick pappardelle noodles, two large shrimp and two normal sized scallops.  The bad news was the broth was a little thin and was missing something.  Don't get me wrong it was good, and I really enjoyed it, but it was sort of one note.  I think what happened was they thought the saffron broth was enough to hold its own but unfortuantely it needed something of a stronger flavor.  The seafood on the otherhand were cooked perfectly.  When done correctly its hard to screw up a scallop, theyre just good.  Again we cleared our plates with the bread.

Dessert.  So I started with peanut brittle ball, and dove straight in.  It was a perfect little ball of vanilla bean ice cream, rolled in crushed peanut brittle and then set on a plate covered in caramel sauce.  1st bite: Wow this is really good!  2nd bite: Okay somethings not right here.  My throat started to burn and in my head I'm thinking "Great I've finally found something I'm allergic to."  What I quickly realized is that they had put chili powder in the caramel sauce.  It was crazy, you couldn't taste the flavor of the chili powder at all but then you would feel this heat at the back of your throat, it was crazy!  Then we switched.  Chocolate torte.  Meh.  With Raspberry sauce.  Meh.

My favorites: Lobster bisque, trout and caramel ball
Lindsays Favorite: duck raviolli, trout and caramel ball

All in all.  5 points.  Will be coming back!  Absolutely fabulous!  You should come here!