Tasting Menu at Shunji (West LA)

Shunji is one of the hot recent restaurant openings, with Chef Shunji Nakao's serving his "contemporary" omakase in an inconspicuous stand-alone building on Pico Blvd. There are only a handful of tables and a few seats at the sushi bar, and the chef prepared most of the dishes personally (some get fired in the kitchen).

His printed menu looks like the standard Japanese restaurant, but we had read about his omakase (the omakase was not printed on the menu) and just asked for that.

As an amuse bouche, a small bowl of jelly with cucumber and vinegar sauce

Next is a plate of small bites of vegetables, ankimo topped with caviar, a ball of purple potato with blue cheese and persimmon, and sweet potato with feta and truffle

Unsure if we were supposed to eat these in a particular order, we moved in one direction and it moves from rich (ankimo) to the palate cleansing, crisp, unadorned vegetables to the creamy potatoes

The scallop sashimi, topped with arugula flower, was so fresh

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For the Downtown Beer and Wine Geeks: Buzz Wine Beer Shop

We know plenty of watering holes in Downtown LA, but where do downtowners go to buy beer and wine for their homes? Well, now they should all be going to Buzz, the new wine and beer shop on Spring Street.

Buzz is not only about the eclectic selection of wine and beer (a fairly large collection of beers at that), they also have a tasting room in the back where you can get flights, taste beers on tap, and attend special tastings.

I was invited to a tasting party there along with other media, wine distributors, and the wine producers. The tasting showcases some of the more interesting (some rare) wines they have at Buzz, like Eastern European wines from Blue Danube Wines, and La Clarine Farm wines from the Sierra Nevada foothills. Sierra what? It's apparently a region east of Sacramento - a growing wine region that had escaped my radar thus far.

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Anchor Bar (Buffalo, NY): Home of the Original Buffalo Wings

Anchor Bar may no longer be the best place to go for buffalo wings in Buffalo, NY, but it will forever be the place where the wings were first invented. Naturally it still draws plenty of tourists; it's after all fun to go to "the home of the original buffalo wings!"

The buffalo wings were said to have been invented by Teressa Bellissimo in 1964, when she served them to her son and his college friends late one night. Now, there's a 15-30 minute wait for a table. Photos of celebrities at Anchor Bar and articles fill the walls. Shot glasses and t shirts are available as souvenirs.

We got a "bucket" of 50 wings ($39) to share among 8 people. I was worried about the spiciness and we ended up ordering a "medium" which the waitress said had a good kick to it but wasn't too spicy. Well ... the "medium" was actually super mild ... even for me!

The skin on the wings were nice and crunchy, but we could barely taste the buffalo sauce. They were still good wings, but towards the end of the bucket, I decided to ask the waitress for extra hot sauce. It was much more flavorful with the hot sauce, but she charged us for it.

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