August is Garlic Galore at Chaya Venice

Garlic lovers, did you miss Gilroy Garlic Fest this year? If you did, you can still go a little garlic crazy at Chaya Venice this August, where they're offering special garlic dishes during their month-long Garlic Fair.

They have about ten garlic dishes, most of them not overly garlicky (except for the rib eye steak with 40-clove garlic sauce, or so our server told us. Mmm 40 garlic cloves ...)

After an amuse bouche of beets with orange and arugula, we started our garlic feast with Heirloom Tomato with Garlic Ice Cream and Fourme d’Ambert cheese ($13)

Overall good, but the heirloom tomatoes were overshadowed somewhat by the smaller, sweeter tomatoes. I liked the garlic ice cream with the tomatoes, but the possibly even stinkier blue cheese masks the garlic a bit.

Next: Grilled Shrimp, country bread ($12)

It's a simple dish, with crisp shrimp. After you finish the shrimp, soak the bread in the garlic butter.

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Savory (Malibu, CA)

In Malibu, there are the ocean-view restaurants that tourists go to, and then there are the locals’ hangouts. Savory seems to be the latter, tucked in the corner of a strip mall. The kitchen is headed by Bastide-alum Paul Shoemaker. That was enough to put Savory on my radar, but it took receiving a gift certificate as a present to make the drive (it's pretty far down on PCH, past Malibu Seafood and Pepperdine).

We had a reservation, but even after waiting 15 minutes our table wasn't ready. On the other hand, a couple with an earlier reservation who was 30 minutes late got seated. Punctuality is not rewarded in this town. Well, anyway, we got seats a bar and decided to have our dinner there.

We started with some housemade pasta, beef tongue, marinara sauce, parmesan cheese ($12)

We loved the pasta, and the thick cuts of very tender beef tongue - as tender as I remember them being in the beef tongue stew (semur lidah) I ate as a kid in Indonesia. I would definitely order this again.

Next was the Dungeness Crab Cake, remoulade, fine herbs ($17)

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Summertime Clambake at Rush Street (Culver City)

This summer, Rush Street in Culver City brings in a bit of New England with a special clambake menu, including a chowder, prime rib, a special summer-y cocktail, and of course the clambake itself.

I joined a recent media tasting, and started off our feast with a Roasted Corn and Crab Chowder in bread bowl ($7)

Forget clam chowder, sweet corn and crab in this creamy soup is the way to go. I loved this chowder, wished I didn't have to share!

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