Mole and Margaritas: Loteria Grill

I finally tried the somewhat-new Loteria! Grill in Hollywood about a week ago. A completely different ambiance than its predecessor at the Farmer's Market, this Hollywood outpost has high ceilings and a nice looking bar.

The salsa and tortilla chips at Loteria are amazing, but as some have noticed, they're pretty stingy about it. A small portion for the 4 of us, we chowed it down in 5 minutes. We flagged down 4 waiters to ask for more, but their 'yes' never materialized into more chips and salsa. Finally we managed to flag down a busboy who graciously actually brought us more!

Tacos aren't cheap at $3.50 a piece if you want meat. I ordered two cochinita pibil tacos (slow roasted pork)

No rice or beans were given - just two tacos at $3.50 each. The tacos were great, thought. The cochinita pibil was very flavorful, with a light spiciness. The meat was very tender.

For drinks I ordered a mango margarita (I believe this was $11).

A delicious margarita although the mango flavor was not that prominent. The only problem - bcs I ordered this the server didn't bother bringing me water ...
Loteria definitely has service issues :(

One friend ordered the chicken mole enchilada ($12).

I tried a bite of this and absolutely, absolutely loved the mole sauce! The enchilada is also a better deal with more food, and rice and beans. Next time I will get this instead of tacos..

As I said, I absolutely loved the sweet and smooth mole that I ordered another taco - this time chicken mole (I just wanted more of that mole sauce!)

The mole taco was great, and did the job of satisfying my craving.

A couple friends ordered the Michelada for a drink ($9), which is basically a bloody mary mix with cerveza.


We all really liked the food at Loteria, and I will definitely come back another time, if only for that mole. Again, though, service can be much improved ...

Loteria! Grill
6627 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90028
(323) 465-2500
http://www.loteriagrill.com/loteriahollywood

Great Chefs of LA. Great Food, Great Fun.

This year's Annual Great Chefs of Los Angeles was held in the CBS Studio Center. Tents were set up outdoors among the bungalows of the studio. It was such a nice day to walk around outdoors sampling food while gawking over the chefs like celebrities (I wasn't the only one, I swear!)

Food and drinks were everywhere. Andrew's Cheese Shop was offering five different cheeses with bread and quince paste.


As far as drinks go, besides the numerous wineries, Sauza offered up margaritas, Courvoisier Cognac and Starbucks liqueurs, and Absolut LA was also there.
Non-alcoholic offerings from Izze sodas, Steaz for organic tea, water from Pellegrino and Acqua Panna, and POM pomegranate juice were also available. Dehydration was definitely not a problem here :)

Among the tastings there were (clockwise) cochinita pibil from Ciudad Catering, Ahi tuna (which will later be topped with caviar!) from Mark Kearney Group, a caramel apple with white chocolate from Melissa's World Variety Produce, kabocha squash agnolotti from BLVD 16.


Josie was also there serving some amazing gruyere quiche!

For La Terza, Chef Gino Angelini brought over his slicer and served up some prosciutto and salami parmiggiano!


The Dragos were also there. Yes, all four of them, and many of their different restaurants have their own booth. I think they probably took up half of the booths ;)

The Drago restaurant served wild boar with soft polenta and fig sauce (left). It was a bit cold already but we loved the combination! If only it was a bit warmer it might've been our favorite of the day. Another of the Drago restaurants (Tanino?) served smoked scallops with pomegratanes.

Other highlights from the events are the Pork Belly from Animal (the Two Dudes were there serving) and pork rib grilled cheese sandwich from 8 oz.

Both were delicious! The 8 oz sandwich is definitely going to bring me there for a real visit!

8 oz also had their bartender, Ryan, there, serving up some Pomegranate Sidecar and Orange Ginger cocktail! Strong and yummy.

Neal Fraser was there manning his booth for Grace and giving out dungeness crab salad with shiso on these cute little plastic spoons.

I got seconds, and also got a picture with Neal (to distract him from me grabbing a second spoon!)

Fraiche had an amazing chocolate dessert that the girl there didn't really tell us the name of - but it was great and despite my bad first experience there during a company dinner, I may now give it a second try.

Indulging in food and drinks aside, let's not forget that this event is a fundraiser for the National Kidney Foundation of SoCal. The restaurants and sponsors not only have donated the food and drinks, they also donated some great items for both the silent and live auction!

I bid on the dinner for 4 at Grace and BLD but, alas, did not win :(
I also debated on a basket of Sauza, Plymouth, Cruzan rum, and Courvoiser but then wasn't sure if that was such a good idea after all :P At least not for my liver. And brain.

Some highlights of the live auction: A dinner for 20 cooked by chef Gino Angelini went for $5000. To top it off, a lady who originally lost this auction asked if he would do a second one for $5000 too! Gino said yes, and there you have it. Two dinners for 20 at your home for $5000 each! Go NKFSC!
4 people will get to spend 8 hours in the kitchen of Animal with Jon and Vinny, ending with a dinner and "all the wine you care to drink" (in the TwoDudes' own words) went for $1250.
A day with Chef Govind Armstrong from picking the produce all the way to dinner at Table 8 went for $1750.

One of these days I'll start making real money and can actually bid on these things ... Til then I will offer my small support on the silent auction items! Oh, and eat all the good food.

I Want Me Tamales

This past weekend was the 4th Annual International Tamale Festival, held right by MacArthur Park/Mama's Hot Tamales in LA. The event was free and street parking wasn't too bad around the park.

The festival offered, besides tamales of course, various Mexican eats like Tortas, Platanos, and drinks like horchata and aguas frescas. I was obviously there for the tamales though. I had hopes for a blue corn tamale, but that didn't happen so I just got what I could.
Mama's International Tamales had some of the most interesting and varied offerings there. Pictured below are the beef adobo and the chicken mole tamales.Both were great! I really liked the beef adobo a lot, although it was pretty spicy. Drank 1/2 bottle of water but it was worth it. The chicken mole was not spicy at all but was also very good. I thought it was really messy as a tamale, but the taste of the corn tamale + mole sauce definitely worked.

Another interesting vendor was the White Girl Tamale Maker (aka La Guera Tamalera), which boasts authentic VeraCruz style (I don't know what that would be like, so I can't attest to that). Sounds weird? It also happens to be the only organic offering and also had very interesting sweet tamales creation.

Pictured below we had the chicken with green chile (left), and on the right was the fig-nana and also the ginger peach tamales.
The chicken w/ green chile was delicious and it might actually be my favorite of the day. Maybe. With a tastier corn, the tamale was also not that spicy, which suits me just fine since it was still very flavorful. The fig-nana and peach tamales were very sweet. They were tasty, but funny thing is that eating the peach tamale reminds me basically of peach cobbler of sorts.
These organic tamales were $5 each, compared to $3 tamales from everywhere else.

Overall a great lunch on a Saturday evening, followed by a short walk through the park (to the car). Will definitely return next year!

http://www.eastlosangeles.net/tamalefestival/