Royal/T for Light Lunch, Art, and Maids - but No Sweets

Royal/T in Culver City is known for its servers' maid uniforms, inspired by maid cafes in Akihabara in Japan, and the use of its space for art exhibits.The maid uniforms themselves are much tamer compared to maid cafes in Akiba with their dark brown and white color scheme. And no, they don't call you "Master" here.
As far as their brunch offerings go, you'll find light fares such as salads, sandwiches, rice bowls and "baked eggs" (more on that in a bit).

The tea selection is fairly interesting featuring "modern brews" on top of classics like sencha and darjeeling. Tea selection was fairly small though. It seems that most of their "modern brews" is supposed to be better iced, so I asked for a yuzu sencha iced. Pretty solid, but not particularly memorable for me. The yuzu flavor was not as strong as I would've liked and the tea itself was slightly overbrewed.

I decided to just have a simple salad: Shrimp with Asparagus, Avocado, and Tomatoes ($10)
Their prices are pretty reasonable, the ingredients used are good. The shrimps were good, and the salad overall is pretty good, although the combination didn't work 100% for me. Regardless it was enjoyable.

My friend also got some sort of egg scramble with tofu, served with salad.

Their baked egg dish was interesting and actually pretty good. It's literally baked.
I only had a bite of this but I think I'll get it next time - with something more than tomatoes though. There were only 2 slices of tomatoes in it, but the baked egg itself was good.

For a supposed "tea" place, Royal/T unfortunately has a very limited selection sweets and pastries - besides croissants at the bar area, they had three items on the dessert menu. Their online menu certainly boasts much more, but they were nowhere to be found that day.
I decided to try the chocolate banana bread.
The bread was good, but not enough to satisfy my cravings for sweets. It was pretty light and not that sweet, and I have no idea what whipped cream was doing next to a bread.
I tried ordering their brownies, but they were out so I had to settle for the lemon tart.
The lemon tart was good- the whipped cream was entirely decorational and superfluous. But again ... not quite enough for my cravings. But that was all that they had as far as desserts go - such a shame!
I headed to Boule and splurged afterwards.

I didn't get the afternoon tea set this time but now I'm not sure if it will even be worth it. No scones? No pastries? What's the point?? I would still go to Royal/T because their simple food is good enough and the space is cool, but until they fix this lack of sweets problem I won't be there too often.


Royal/T
8910 Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232
(310) 559-6300
www.royal-t.org

Quick Soup/Salad Lunch at Clementine's

Clementine is a small neighbourhood place on Ensley, just off of Santa Monica (more or less right across from the Century City mall). They typically feature ingredients from local farmer's market.

Clementine's is simple lunch fare: salads, sandwiches, and soups. Their cold deli case usually features a wide variety of specialty salads and more. This time around we got some edamame with king salmon, caprese, and chicken soba noodles. A plate of 3 items like this is $11.95.
All were fresh - refreshing and quite delicious, even the soba noodles that I was originally skeptical of (I'm skeptical of Soba from a non-Japanese place).

They also have made-to-order salads. Can't remember what I ordered that time (that day's special), but it had shrimps and white beans
The ingredients used were all great, although I'm still not sure about the combination with the beans.

My favorite part of Clementine's is actually all the soups, which you can buy frozen by the pints! You can also eat it there, or get a sandwich/soup combination.
Their egg salad sandwich was delicious. I got a pint of frozen chicken tortilla soup to go - made for a few delicious lunches throughout the week!

Clementine
1751 Ensley Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90024
(310) 552-1080
www.clementineonline.com

Grace's OpenTable Appetite Stimulus

Among OpenTable's restaurant lineup for its Appetite Stimulus Plan, Grace is one of the few ones I was excited about and last night I managed to try it out with Mattatouille and his girlfriend.

Besides the 2 choices for each of the three courses, Grace also offered other courses for $6-8 supplemental charge, but we all stuck with the $35 three-course choices.

The first choice for the appetizer was the Fall Squash Soup with duck confit and pistachios.
A delicious and rich soup! The duck confit went very well with the sweetness of the squash soup itself and the pistachios provide a nice crunchy texture along with the smoothness of the soup. Everyone on the table loved it.

The other appetizer choice was House Cured Salmon with roasted beets, heirloom tomatoes, and horseradish creme fraiche.
I thought the presentation was gorgeous - I felt bad destroying it but you gotta do what you gotta do. This again was a hit - the salmon was delicious, and the sweet beets and tomatoes combination worked very well.

Instead of the sand dabs that the website mentioned, the first entree choice was actually Petrole Sole. The preparation and accompaniments are still the same with potato gnocchi, hazelnuts, haricots verts, and sage brown butter.
I only had a bit of this and thought it was solid. The fish wasn't particularly flavorful but Mattatouille seemed to love the brown butter. I loved the potato gnocchi which were very tender.

I had the oven roasted Leg of Colorado Lamb with Byaldi confit and olive infused lamb jus.
The Byaldi confit reminded me of the dish from the movie Ratatouille :) (doesn't it? doesn't it?) (oops, not Rattatouille ... It's all Mattatouille's fault)
The confit may be our favorite part of the dish. The lamb was flavorful but somewhat on the tougher side. Still good, just harder to eat - if only they had given us steak knives.

For dessert the choices were the Apple Upside Down Bread Pudding with buttermilk ice cream, apple cider syrup, cranberries, and brown sugar walnuts
A great dessert. The cranberries didn't add anything for me and I think it even distracted from the rest of the dish, but after putting that aside, I liked everything else.

The other dessert choice was Boca Negra Cake Affogato, which is a dark chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream, brandied orange slice, then soaked in espresso.
Very rich! The cake itself was amazingly dense. Delicious but take small bites, it really gets to you! You'll need some hot tea or black coffee to cut it later.

The other thing I love about this restaurant is the small touches they put into their wares. The container for the honey that comes with their tea is a great example:
What a cute bee-shaped honey container! I want to take it home ...

Just like its DineLA menu, Grace's Open Table Appetite Stimulus was a hit for me. I'm glad they continue to participate in these prix-fixe weeks and continue to deliver a solid, worthwhile menu that people can really appreciate (unlike some other restaurants we talked about last night *cough*).

GRACE
7360 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036-2501
(323) 934-4400
gracerestaurant.com