Quick Soup/Salad Lunch at Clementine's

Clementine is a small neighbourhood place on Ensley, just off of Santa Monica (more or less right across from the Century City mall). They typically feature ingredients from local farmer's market.

Clementine's is simple lunch fare: salads, sandwiches, and soups. Their cold deli case usually features a wide variety of specialty salads and more. This time around we got some edamame with king salmon, caprese, and chicken soba noodles. A plate of 3 items like this is $11.95.
All were fresh - refreshing and quite delicious, even the soba noodles that I was originally skeptical of (I'm skeptical of Soba from a non-Japanese place).

They also have made-to-order salads. Can't remember what I ordered that time (that day's special), but it had shrimps and white beans
The ingredients used were all great, although I'm still not sure about the combination with the beans.

My favorite part of Clementine's is actually all the soups, which you can buy frozen by the pints! You can also eat it there, or get a sandwich/soup combination.
Their egg salad sandwich was delicious. I got a pint of frozen chicken tortilla soup to go - made for a few delicious lunches throughout the week!

Clementine
1751 Ensley Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90024
(310) 552-1080
www.clementineonline.com

Grace's OpenTable Appetite Stimulus

Among OpenTable's restaurant lineup for its Appetite Stimulus Plan, Grace is one of the few ones I was excited about and last night I managed to try it out with Mattatouille and his girlfriend.

Besides the 2 choices for each of the three courses, Grace also offered other courses for $6-8 supplemental charge, but we all stuck with the $35 three-course choices.

The first choice for the appetizer was the Fall Squash Soup with duck confit and pistachios.
A delicious and rich soup! The duck confit went very well with the sweetness of the squash soup itself and the pistachios provide a nice crunchy texture along with the smoothness of the soup. Everyone on the table loved it.

The other appetizer choice was House Cured Salmon with roasted beets, heirloom tomatoes, and horseradish creme fraiche.
I thought the presentation was gorgeous - I felt bad destroying it but you gotta do what you gotta do. This again was a hit - the salmon was delicious, and the sweet beets and tomatoes combination worked very well.

Instead of the sand dabs that the website mentioned, the first entree choice was actually Petrole Sole. The preparation and accompaniments are still the same with potato gnocchi, hazelnuts, haricots verts, and sage brown butter.
I only had a bit of this and thought it was solid. The fish wasn't particularly flavorful but Mattatouille seemed to love the brown butter. I loved the potato gnocchi which were very tender.

I had the oven roasted Leg of Colorado Lamb with Byaldi confit and olive infused lamb jus.
The Byaldi confit reminded me of the dish from the movie Ratatouille :) (doesn't it? doesn't it?) (oops, not Rattatouille ... It's all Mattatouille's fault)
The confit may be our favorite part of the dish. The lamb was flavorful but somewhat on the tougher side. Still good, just harder to eat - if only they had given us steak knives.

For dessert the choices were the Apple Upside Down Bread Pudding with buttermilk ice cream, apple cider syrup, cranberries, and brown sugar walnuts
A great dessert. The cranberries didn't add anything for me and I think it even distracted from the rest of the dish, but after putting that aside, I liked everything else.

The other dessert choice was Boca Negra Cake Affogato, which is a dark chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream, brandied orange slice, then soaked in espresso.
Very rich! The cake itself was amazingly dense. Delicious but take small bites, it really gets to you! You'll need some hot tea or black coffee to cut it later.

The other thing I love about this restaurant is the small touches they put into their wares. The container for the honey that comes with their tea is a great example:
What a cute bee-shaped honey container! I want to take it home ...

Just like its DineLA menu, Grace's Open Table Appetite Stimulus was a hit for me. I'm glad they continue to participate in these prix-fixe weeks and continue to deliver a solid, worthwhile menu that people can really appreciate (unlike some other restaurants we talked about last night *cough*).

GRACE
7360 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036-2501
(323) 934-4400
gracerestaurant.com

The Bazaar: Grand Opening

Tonight was the Grand Opening of Jose Andres' The Bazaar at the SLS Hotel. I was going to sleep but I bumped into KevinEats and Tangbro and decided to beat them to a post while they're still making their drive down to OC O:)
You guys will read their posts anyway with their 48-dish reviews ... I'm certainly going to read it.

The Bazaar is separated into different sections including the Patisserie, Bar Centro, private dining area Saam, a retail area Moss, and dining areas Rojos y Blancos.

My seating area features light colored wooden tables and leather couches, along with this light bar seating where guests can see their food being prepared.At 10 pm it wasn't crowded and I hope it won't get too crowded later on, as I've found that I adore this place!

Our waitress was very courteous and knowledgeable (enough) about the dishes and had some great recommendations.
The menu is divided into "Rojos" - more classic, Spanish tapas, and "Blancos" - more modern tapas, lighter, smaller dishes. We ended up ordering mostly from the "Blancos".

We started with some "Olives Ferran Adria"
These are olive juice capsules. Ferran Adria was Jose Andres' mentor and hence the name and influence. I did love the olive juice but these olive capsules were, well, expensive!

Moving on we had the Jamon Iberico with Pineapple and fennel sherry dressing
Delicious. The jamon iberico is of course amazing, and the thinly shaved pineapples somehow retain their juices and the combination was really great! Refreshing. Loved it.

Next we had the sauteed cauliflower couscous with vegetable harissa broth
The harissa broth was divine. This dish as a whole was just divine. Probably our favorite of the night and we'll be getting this over and over. Plus this one was one of the cheaper dish at $9.

Japanese baby peaches with yogurt and olive oil
To me this was more like a dessert but it was delicious. The yogurt was pretty rich and thick, but the combination with the slightly sour baby peaches were great.

The Bazaar also does something cute - since (so they claim) Spain is the best canned foods producer in the world, they serve "canned" seafoods - that's really made fresh daily.
We had the king crab with raspberry vinegar
Loved this one too. Fresh meaty king crabs went well with the raspberry.

Next we had Japanese eggplant with yogurt, soy caramel, and bonito flakes
The flavor combinations were good, but the eggplant was much firmer than what you'd normally get with miso eggplants and such. You might or might not like it.

The last dish was from the "Rojos" part of the menu and was the biggest one yet. This was the Rossejat de fideos: "Traditional paella-style pasta with monkfish, shrimp, in seafood broth".
The pasta was small angel hair pasta cut into small pieces. It was cooked so that some were crispy which I really liked. A simpler, heartier dish than the rest, but one that I felt we needed.

The dessert menu is similarly divided into Rojos and Blancos. There's no chocolate item though ... but hopefully the Patisserie which would be open later this week can satisfy that craving.
From the Rojos side we had Apples Carlota, bread pudding
Nice and simple. The ice cream was great on this, but I thought the apple bread pudding was a wee bit dry without it. Tasty, though.
From the Blancos we got the Beet Meringue with pistachio, pistachio foam cake
Beautiful presentation. The taste was ... interesting. The ice cream with the pistachio foam cake I liked. The pistachio sauce and the beet meringue had a bitter aftertaste which I can't quite get over ...

Overall a really great meal with great service and ambiance (hope it doesn't get too crowded later!). I'm loving this place so far.
This meal would've been $111 without tips originally - each dish was about 8-15$, average 12$. We got 50% off for today only since they had to reschedule us from last Monday (their original opening date). The 50% definitely made this meal that much more awesome, but I'll be back regardless :)

The Bazaar
465 S. La Cienega Boulevard
Beverly Hills, CA
310.246.5555
http://www.thebazaar.com/