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!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO BECCA!!

So in case you DON'T know already, today is my friend Becca's birthday.  She's turning the amazing age of 25 and I got to be the lucky person who got her all to myself for lunch.  How cool is that?  Well she's a much better foodie than I am and therefore has already been everywhere and already has her favorites.  So where does a foodie go for a casual yummy lunch on her 25 birthday?

Pizzeria Mozza!

Oh my gosh this place is too cute.  Its kinda small and very Italian rustic looking.  Obviously they specialize in pizza, and have a TON on the menu, but they also have a few classic Italian dishes if you're just not feeling pizza today.  But we were!  I was really excited because they had not one but TWO POTATO pizzas!  If you've never had a potato pizza before PLEASE do not knock it until you try it.  Keep in mind typically potato pizzas do not have marinara sauce but often a garlic or butter sauce to keep the cheese on.  Potato. Cheese. Butter.  Garlic. Amazing.

Well my pizza here at Pizzeria Mozza was better than your run of the mill potato pizza.  It was hearty comfort potato pizza, with bacon, onions, cheese and an egg in the middle.  How can you beat that?  So as I was staring at my pizza I kept thinking I had seen this somewhere before, and which my handy dandy interweb I figured it out.  The Best Thing I Ever Ate : Pizza.  There two pizzas on there 1. Yukon Gold Potato Pizza in NY, NY and 2. Bacon, Egg and Cheese Pizza at LittlDoms in Los Angeles.  MY pizza was BOTH of these pizza's put together.  So amazingly good!

Back to the story so my pizza was fabulous, Rebecca's Mushroom explosion (Funghi misti) was to die for.  It was covered in really rich and yummy mushrooms.  

Then it was dessert time, and we only ate half our pizzas but the dessert menu came anyways and everyone knows that I have a sweet tooth and so I got dessert.  And because I got dessert Becca was free to get dessert too.  I got the Meyer Lemon gelato Pie, and Becca got the butterscotch budino. 

Lets start with my dish the pie.  So I caught between the pie and the Caramel with marshmallow sauce and when I asked the server he said pie no question.  Pie it is!  So what I wasn't prepared for at first was there was a tangy bite in this pie.  The filling is gelato, very very lemony gelato.  Wonderful and then it looks like they reduced down some lemon juice with some sugar and drizzled it all over the plate which was the super tangy stuff.  That yellow stuff on top candied lemon rind which was actually really good.  Very Very Good Dessert.

Then came Becca's dessert and she's been here before and had decided on this amazing dessert before we had even arrived because she's had it before and knew it was amazing.  So basically it is a butterscotch pudding concoction with little rosemary pine nut cookies.  So what you don't realize about this tasty little treat is that there is a layer on top of the pudding.  A sea salty layer.  Its crazy!  Its Salty!  Its amazing!  I haven't had this new wave of savory-ish desserts but this fits the bill.  Super good butterscotch and then you get this hit of salty after taste.  Its really hard to describe I suppose you will just have to go there and try it now wont you?

Pizzeria Mozza: 5 points.  Hands Down.  Go There.  Now.

Ugo an Italian Wine Bar

Preface:  So I must confess I have a real problem with this whole blogging thing.  My problem being that everytime I go out and get tasty, blog worthy food, I forget to take a picture and so my friends for todays entry you will see a bunch of half eaten dishes.  My apologies.

Ugo an Italian Wine Bar
So last week my good friend Aaron and I came over to Ugo because we hadn't been here before.  For those of you who ALSO haven't been here let me fill you in.  The wine bar, on Cardiff Ave in Culver City, is a little tiny bar that has little circular islands of wine.  You go to main bar and give the bartender whatever amount of cash you would like to put on your new Ugo debit card.  You take that card, and hopefully the wine glass they handed you, to one of these islands and insert it into a designated slot.  Each bottle of wine has a digital display of a price above the bottle ranging from $0.78 to upwards of $10.  That quantity indicates the price per 1 oz pour, you put your glass under the spout and press the button.  Ta-da!  You have now done Ugo wine bar.  Keep in mind this is an Italian wine bar, so odds are you won't know any of these wines and will basically have to chose which wines to taste based on price and the short descriptions about each bottle.

On with the story so after ten dollars worth of 1oz pours and pizza we split we decided we would return next week for happy hour and split a bottle.  Ugo, for your information, happens to be within walking distance of my place ergo splitting a bottle isn't too risky.  When we came for our bottle I realized it was DineLA and of course ordered food as well!  After we ordered they brought us some sliced bread with little pour bottles of olive oil and balsamic.  Which was nice....except there was no where to pour the olive oil and balsamic except for our bread plates.  Independently we both attempted this maneuver but since they act like oh I dunno oil and water, when you pour them both in one small area of a larger plate, the balsamic literally slides out from under the oil and separates itself.  Annoying but we made due.  I ordered a trio of crustini for my appetizer, one eggplant, one mushroom and one caramelized onions and prosciutto (not picture...I ate them too fast.)  These were actually pretty good, not the most amazing thing ever created but the sweet caramelized onions with the salty prosciutto was to die for.  Too bad it was only two bits. 

For my entree I order a fried risotto cake with cheese in a marinara sauce. At least I remembered to take a picture this time.  So these were actually really good.  Aaron got the rack of lamb and personally I think I made the better choice.  They were basically risotto with seasonings that appear to be pan fried on top of this melty mozzarella cheese.  I ate all of it!  Unfortunately as I am writing this is has come to my attention that nothing even resembling this is on their menu online so you will have to go to Ugo and check it out for yourself.  I really liked this dish however my draw back was the size.  These little fried medallions are somewhere between the size of a golf ball and tennis ball.  A racquetball maybe!  Anyway, they're not very big, but thankfully we had a nice little basket of bread to help fill me up.

That was until dessert arrive.  Chocolate mousse cake, described as the perfect balance between mousse and cake.  And it was!!  It was large and it was really really good.   I like that it was 50/50 mousse and cake and very delicate.  I also like that it was topped with a thin wedge of chocolate on top cut the same shape as the cake.

All in all I would say 3.5 points.  It was pretty good, I didnt dislike anything, but nothing really stood out as "really good", let alone "I have to come back and have this again" I wont come back for the food food, but I will come back for wine and the happy hour specials.

***Side note the week before we shared the happy hour pizza which was a nice sized pizza with prosciutto, shaved parmesean and arugula.  VERY GOOD****

Larchmont Grill, oh how I love DineLA

Yes I understand that I said I had no money to go out and eat, and yes I understand that even if I did have a little bit of money Larchmont is not a $ it is a $$.  So I made a mistake.  Literally.  My dear friend Kara and I decided to out for dinner last night for dineLA and had decide on the ONE $ well reviewed Bld, unfortunately I was on the Larchmont website and made reservations there.  I know I'm an idiot, I reread the gchat conversation online and it clearly states:
Amanda: Lets go to bld
Kara: Okay, want me to make reservations?
Amanda: No no I can do it.

Apparently I can't.  Luckily in my head I thought we were going to Larchmont so I printed out the directions and just assumed this is where we were going until we arrive and Kara pointed out that we had decided on Bld.  Bah!  Oh well, we're here now, and for future reference Larchmont is VERY far away from my house, its off of Melrose past La Brea and the 10 was bad so we had to take surface streets.  Anyway enough back story, on to the food!

So to start it off Larchmont is adorable it looks like someones home that has been redone into a restaurant.  And not a restaurant with miss matched kitchen tables and silverware, everything was white linens and big comfy chairs.  We made reservation and the man seating us, Gary, was also the man who I had talked to on the phone.

So we sit down and the very first thing he says is that they were doing DineLa and that its a really good deal so we should look at that menu first, and that everything else is on the back of the menu a la carte.  I was so excited because too often I have been put off during dineLA when servers suggest NOT ordering the dineLA (hinting at us being cheap.)  If you don't want us ordering off the dineLA menu then WHY are you a part of dineLA?  Isn't it to showcase you're food in a cheap way so people fall in love with it and want to come back again?  Sorry for the rant but its something that really upsets me and always makes me feel awkward at the start of the evening.

So anyway, the bread was amazing.  It appeared to have been sliced, then toasted, but not toasted enough where you could see a color change but enough to where you had the slightest crunch when you bit into it. It also had this little dish of olive oil that had what I'm assuming it red pepper flakes, capers and some other tasty bits in the bottom. 

So I ordered the organic baby green salad, the pan seared white fish and the chocolate cake and Kara ordered the spinach salad, the braised lamb shank and the cobbler.  Yay six different bites!!

Our salads come out and although it was a very simple salad it was really good.  It had a creamy cucumber dressing which if I owned a bottle of it would be dancing on all of my salads.  It also had a hard boiled egg that was so cute and little I just gobbled it up.  Kara's spinach salad with blackberry dressing was really good too although it had a huge slice of shallot, which Kara loved, and I sort of avoided.

We also ordered wine.  Kara got really excited when she found that they had, by the glass, her favorite winery in Sonoma, Deerfield Ranch Winery Cab.  I on the other hand  was having fish and so I wanted a Chardonnay but there were three option and I do not have a favorite winery so I was at a loss.  So I told our dear friend Gary this, and he looks at me and says "Just wait a second and I think I know which one for you" disappears and returns with a bottle of Tom and Dave's Chardonnay for a little taste.  Actually it was really good, so I ordered a glass and was very happy!

The to make things more happy our food arrives.  My fish is COVERED in deep fried treats and Kara has a shank of lamb that I think Heath (my husband) would have a hard time finishing.  My fish was...good.  It tasted a lot like chicken.  The sear on it was crisp and I liked that but the flavor of the chicken fish was okay. Same with the ginger rice, I actually didn't get any flavor of ginger which was disappointing, but fine.  The fried green beans and shallot on top were of course the BEST.  Granted I am completely biased towards anything covered in batter and drop in a pot of boiling oil but these were actually really good, and when you got a bite of them with the fish and rice, it was really quite tasty.

Kara's on the other hand was a 180 from mine, it wasn't delicate, it had nothing fried and it sat a top a plate of mashed potatoes instead of rice.  It was good.  Can't go wrong with braised lamb shank.  It was however forgetable.  I have had this flavor profile before, I think I've even made it in my crockpot before.  It wasn't bad!!  I was good.  But not really good.  Or OMG thats amazing.  It was good (at least from the bite I had.) 

Then dessert, and man oh man do I like dessert.  To preface my chocolate cake decision I must inform you that earlier that afternoon I had to actively convinced myself NOT to bake a chocolate cake.  I don't really like chocolate cake.  I mean I like it, but I'm not gonna eat a whole cake, not even if its over a week or something I just do not enjoy chocolate that much.  But since I was craving it I decided I must order it.  And it was good.  It wasn't dry, it wasn't overly dark chocolate-y and it wasn't covered in a thick layer of frosting.  Nope, it was all actually pretty tasty.  But what was really tasty was when I took a bite with a little bit of the whipped cream.  I mean that whipped cream made the cake REALLY good.  So good, in fact I was tempted to ask for a little more because there just wasn't enough for the whole cake.  I restrained myself, but it really was super good.

Kara's cobbler I thought was awesome.  Granted it was covered in previously mentioned whipped cream and that could have been the reason I am partial to it, but I thought it was really good as well.  She disapprove of their choice of berries, and felt it should have been heavier in raspberry and lighter in strawberry (apparently there were big chunks of raspberry.)

All in all it was a pretty good meal.  Granted whenever I go to dinner with Kara its always fun because she is in fact one of my best friends in the entire world, but this was really fun.  I think I'll come back her with my husband and order the sweet potato Gnocchi with hazelnuts, sage and brown butter or the lobster macaroni and cheese.  They consider themselves one of the best kept secrets in LA and I would have to agree!

Over all I would have to say 4 points.  Based on food alone (not the wine, the service the atmosphere) 3.5

Happy Hour at Ciudad!!

So on Thursday it was my friend Rob's birthday so we decided it was time to go out after class for some drinks and dinner!  First we went to Yardhouse at LA live , which had a two hour wait!  Apparently there was a Los Angeles Kings and Buffalo Sabres game at the staples center and all the fans had decided to camp out at Yardhouse until the game started.  So we hopped in our car an drove up Figeroa looking for decent place to eat.  California Pizza Kitchen is good, but we were looking for drinks.  Morton's has drinks, and a dollar sign heavy price tag for said drinks not to mention dinner.  Then we roll up on Ciudad and I quickly googled it from my phone.  "Happy hour till 7, half priced drinks and 3 dollar tacos!"  and we were sold!

We sat in the bar at this cute little high boy tables.  There were only four of us so we attempted to squeeze us all around one, but the waiters noticed and very nicely offered us to put two tables together.   Score 1 point for Ciudad.

  The options for drinks were $4.50 for a house margarite, house mojito, house sangria or house ciapirinha (see the rest of the menu here).  Now we asked the waiter what the heck a Ciaperurbadjda (cause I couldn't pronounce it) was he said it was muddled limes with simple syrup, soda and a rum made from sugar cane or fire water.  Well that sounded tasty, except for I wasn't sure how sugar cane = fire water but I was willing to try it expecting something along the lines of a gimlet.  It was not a gimlet.  It was made with Cachaça and OMG was it fire water.  I took one sip expecting it to be a sweet drink only to find it was a very SPICY drink.  And one sip was enough for me.  Lose one point for Ciudad (from me, one of the girls I was with loved hers and drank the whole thing.)

When the waiters came around again and I told them I didnt enjoy the drink and they quickly replaced it with one of the tastiest sangrias I've ever had (regain the lost point).  We proceeded to order a number of tacos and at the last minute I changed my mind and ordered the empanadas. Best decision I had made all day!

I also got the potato taco (just in case happy hour empanadas were not large enough to fill my appetite) which apparently was deep fried (which we know I love) and had some sort of tasty orange colored cream sauce underneath. (1 more point)

But the best part of my meal was the empanadas.  Two little flaky puffs of awesomeness!  First they come out on a plate with one empanada in a bright green sauce and one in a tangy orange colored sauce (different from the potato taco sauce.)  Unfortunately I didnt realize they were two different empanadas and I wish I had because one was WAY better than the other (though they were both super good).  The one that was playing second fiddle was the wild mushroom ( which I love) and a chipotle (orange) cream sauce.  Still very tasty.  The star however (which I foolishy devoured not realizing it was the only one I had) was stuffed with a purree of spinach, pine nuts, raisins and manchego in an oh so yummy salsa verde.  My darn camera phone doesn't do the plate justice, since the colors of the sauces were so bright and the empanadas were a golden brown perfect.  It should also be noted that I have no tolerance for heat or spicy foods, these sauces however had the warm flavors without the heat!  I am totally coming back here and ordering this again and again and again!  (+1)

Also happy hour only runs until 7 so around 6:50 the waiter comes by and asks if we want to order another round.  We don;t have to drink it now, and they wont even bring it out until we ask, but if we thought we might want another round to order it now to get the half off prices.  I have NEVER had that happen before!  It was just so nice!  Obviously another round was ordered (the ciapirinha, interestingly was left off the second round.)  Another MASSIVE point!

All in all out of 5 possible points, I give Ciudad's happy hour menu and service and whopping 4 points!

(note: I know that I said I wouldn't judge a place based on the service, but I mean,  theses people were super nice!  We obviously were not high rollers and I thought that was just awesome!)

Time to get things started

So I wanted to start off with a bang, and to do so I wanted to talk about the amazing dinner I had at Alex.  My birthday was on the 14th so as any good 25 year old will tell you we were obligated to spend the MLK weekend in Las Vegas.  We got in on Friday so we could have a night by ourselves and not have to worry what our friends wanted to do.  That night we had gotten reservation for Alex at the Wynn.  If you haven't heard of Alex don't worry I hadn't either but when Joel Robuchon (three star Michelin and chef of the century) turned out to be a little two pricey we needed to fine a better alternative.  And did we ever?!  First of all Alex is a two start Michelin and a James Beard Foundation award winner for best American Chef - Southwest.  I was shocked that I had never heard of it.  Anyway, on to the food.  It was fabulous.  Best meal I've ever had.  The End.

Okay really we had the tasting menu, which by the time it ended had close to 11 courses.  It started off with canapés which everyone receives before the menu even comes.  Five little one to two bite diamonds that are to die for, our favorite was the tempura lobster (the one with the stick).  Personally I always enjoy crab over lobster, but if the lobster were always prepared like this I think I would quickly switch.  Now for the tasting menu:

Amuse bouche (little one to two bite course to prepare you for the meal): Prawn carpaccio which is a little 3 inch in diameter round of raw prawn meat, on top of another 3in round of parsnip and sandwiched in between is a little dollop of caviar all drizzled with a little olive oil salt and pepper.
First Course: Butter Poached lobster, black pasta, brussles sprouts, and sea urchin
Second Course: Seared Foie Gras in top of poached persimmons and apple compote
Third Course: Parmesan crusted dover sole, wild mushrooms, baby savoy cabbage with cabbage foam
Four Course: Flank waygu (Kobe) beef, parsnip custard with crispy marrow, arugula salad with shaved Parmesan
Pallet Cleanser: (a dish they serve that makes the transition from savory to sweet a little easier) Coconut panna cota with tropical fruit and dehydrated pineapple chip
Dessert: Vanilla Brioche on top of a brunoise (little tiny perfect cubes).  The brioche was topped with vanilla ice cream which was topped with a sugar decoration
Birthday Dessert:  Vanilla cake that said Happy Birthday
Petit Fours: 5 little one to two bite desserts like a mini apple pie, a pumpkin spiced cheesecake
More: Fresh baked, super warm Madeline’s
Even More: A little box of macaroons to take home.

 Easily the best meal I've ever had, I would recommend it to anyone I know, or don't know for that matter.  Butter poached lobster is the tastiest thing ever.  Let it be known that my husband has a problem with consistency, he doesn't like things that are creamy or smushy or sea urchiny, but the way it was prepared at Alex he ate EVERY bite of that dish.  We tried to rank which dishes we liked the best and couldn't agreed on an order or even a best dish.  Everything tasted amazing, I was really sad because I couldn't bare to eat my last bite of Waygu beef because I had failed to pace myself earlier in the meal.  For more pictures from the evening please click here.