The Birthplace of Key Lime Pie? (Key West, Florida)

Happy Pi Day! In honor of this day, I'm sharing about my visit to Key Lime Pie Factory. This small shop in Key West, FL is said to be the birthplace of the key lime pie. But, a lot of other places also claim to be "the original" and Epicurious had a nice story about the history of key lime pie (and how key limes were wiped out by a hurricane and most of the local limes are now Persian limes ....)

Dating back to ... 1856? Wow, that's a long time ago.

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A Breakfast Tour of Downtown LA's Grand Central Market

Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles is one of the most exciting food destinations lately, with tons of new vendors opening up shop. I was recently invited to a breakfast tour of some of these vendors, new and old. Since it's breakfast, we of course started with G&B Coffee.

Not only do they have amazing coffee and cappuccino (with almond milk!), you can also get Donut Snob's amazing donuts here.

Our next stop was Sticky Rice.

What we had for breakfast was actually a snack that they will have in the afternoons, Kanom Krok. They have a special pan to make these delicious little coconut custard cakes.

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Amaya (La Jolla, CA)

It's been almost a year since Amaya opened their La Jolla location (the first is at The Grand Del Mar). 

The fancy interior may seemed old school and stuffy, but the servers were very friendly and courteous, and the young female wine director walked us through a fun pairing throughout dinner.

Bread Bowl

The menu is quite promising, with a nice variety of seafood (lobster pot pie!) and game meats. We started dinner with an amuse of lobster bisque.

We ordered the half dozen chilled oysters, served with a carrot and ginger granita on top, which complemented the oysters very well. These were paired with an Alto Adige Chardonnay.

She told us that Chablis and oysters is a textural, while this Chardonnay is similar to Chablis but crisp. It brings out notes of apples and oranges.

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