August is Garlic Fair at Chaya Venice (with Garlic Cocktails!)

For the 19th year running, Chaya Venice is holding their month-long Garlic Fair with garlic-laden menu and now, even garlic cocktails. They've held several different festivals throughout the restaurant's long history, but the Garlic Fair has proved consistently most popular. As a fellow garlic lover, I can totally see why! The garlic menu is available throughout August and here are what you can expect:

Bagna cauda with grilled bread ($8)

I mean, for true garlic lovers, what can be better? Grilled bread with warm, spreadable garlic! What more would you need?

Well, there are more! Note that some of the dishes I show below are only tasting sizes, not the full portion. There's Escargot with garlic herb lemon butter ($24)

Housemade chicken gyoza with garlic ponzu sauce, pan fried or steamed ($16 for 3 - half of one shown below)

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Giveaway! Tickets to K-Pop Concert at K-CON

Any Kpop fans out there? If you are, you're in luck! I'm giving away two tickets to the K-Pop Concert during this weekend's K-CON. K-CON? Yes, it's a convention of "all things Hallyu" including K-pop, K-drama stars, Korean cooking demos, even a workshop teaching you how to play Korean drinking games! (see full program). As you might know, I watch a lot of J and K-dramas and even made a list of the food-related dramas!

This concert is going to be held on Saturday, 7-9:30 pm and features K-pop stars and bands including B1A4, IU (I know her from watching Dream High and You're the Best Lee Soon Shin), G-Dragon, Teen Top, and Vixx. The event will be at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. 

"B1A4 in Nov 1, 2013" by 와사비콘텐츠 - http://wasabcon.tistory.com/588. Licensed under CC-BY-2.0-kr via Wikimedia Commons.

This giveaway is sponsored by Bibigo, whose food truck will be on site serving bulgogi bibimbap, Korean fried chicken, and more!

Since the contest is this weekend, this will be a quick giveaway! Enter by midnight on Thursday and you must check your emails Friday morning since I have to provide the winner's name by Friday afternoon! To enter, follow the instructions in the widget below:
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Awesome Affordable Sushi at Sushi Nozomi (Torrance, CA)

It's easy to spend over $100 on a sushi omakase, and while some of them are certainly worth the money, you can't do that too often. Instead, most of us frequent the mid-tier, affordable sushi joints - some of which provide really good value for the money. The best value for sushi omakase may well be Sushi Nozomi down in Torrance. The "chef's choice" or omakase is only $38 for 10 pieces of sushi plus a negi-toro roll and we're talking fresh fish, some of which are pretty hard to find in town!

Each omakase starts with a bowl of miso soup.

When I visited, the omakase included a piece of Halibut fin, topped with yuzu

Blue nose. This fish looks similar to a bass or grouper, leaner than the former but fattier than the latter.

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