Roy Choi's Commissary at The Line Hotel (Koreatown)

First of all, the new Commissary is beautiful. Situated in a green house complete with hanging pots of greenery next to the pool at The Line Hotel in Koreatown, diners can enjoy the LA sunshine all year long. You already kind of feel like you're on vacation when you step in.

The menu at Commissary can be a tad confusing at first. You get two pieces of paper. One is the picture menu that shows you the price and main ingredients. The little numbers lead you to the second piece, the "cheat sheet" which tells you how it's prepared ("grilled") and what sauces go on that dish ("lemon, green sauce" - for example).

Now, the setting is a green house, and there are a lot of vegetable and produce-focused items, but it's not a vegetarian restaurant. There are a number of vegetable-focused and vegetarian dishes, though.

There's grilled corn with red sauce, chili, garlic, onion

This is Roy Choi after all, so don't expect bland vegetable dishes. Just like the things he's known for, these are full of spices and flavors.

The original cocktails were created with the help of Matthew Biancaniello, although he won't be behind the bar. Served in deli cups, you'll find cocktails made with seasonal produce and unusual ingredients like pisco, white peach and anise hyssop; or mojito with zebra tomatoes.

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Coppa (Boston, MA)

Among the Boston restaurant that my LA friends recommended to me was Ken Oringer and Jamie Bissonnette's Coppa. Chef Jamie Bissonnette won the James Beard award for Best Chef in the Northeast region this year. I was pretty excited to try this place and it didn't disappoint.

Coppa was smaller and more casual than I had expected; a cozy enoteca in the South End with reasonable prices.

I started with the Sea urchin panino with lonza and mustard seeds

Even though the uni flavor wasn't that strong here, I loved it nonetheless since it worked nicely with the lonza (cured pork tenderloin, also known as lomo) sandwiched between thin, crunchy bread.

This was followed up by the Beef heart pastrami crostini

It did not taste as offal-y or gamy as I had expected, but it was tender and flavorful.

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Seasons and Transitions: Kaiseki Dinner at Ishikawa (Tokyo, Japan)

When I had an overnight layover in Tokyo, I asked drtomostyle to take me to have kaiseki, the traditional multi-course Japanese dinner. We headed to the 3 Michelin-starred Ishikawa in Kagurazaka, along with two of her friends.

We started with a course of pike eel. This was the last of the season of pike eel, which requires a lot of knife skills to prepare. The delicate eel was served with a pickled plum sauce (a classic pairing for pike eel), shiso, wood ear mushroom, and wasabi. 

It's a wonderful start that really increases our anticipation. 

The next dish marks the transitions of the seasons. There are deep fried ayu (river fish) which at the time of the meal was at the end of its season. It was served with an ingredient just beginning its season: ginkgo. They're all served atop of daikon radish jelly.

In other words, this was probably about the only time each year where you can have both ingredients together, and Ishikawa pairs them beautifully.

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