Seasonal California Fare and House-milled Sourdough at Coin & Candor (Westlake Village, CA)

The Four Seasons hotel at Westlake Village redid their restaurant and recently opened Coin and Candor. It's a place that you'd likely find me going back to after work for dinner or drinks (on a bit of a splurge). Coin and Candor is a "California brasserie" with executive chef Jose Fernandez, a Barcelona native who's been with the Four Seasons since 2017 (and previously worked for The Peninsula hotels), and executive pastry chef Patrick Fahy, who was head pastry chef at The French Laundry.

The round bar at the center of the dining room looks like a great place to drink, but for my visit I opted to sit outside since it was a beautiful day.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the cocktail menu (sorry), but our cocktails were pretty good.

We started off with some house-milled red fife sourdough that they bake daily, served with organic Strauss creamery butter ($5)

So I didn't really know what the deal was with red fife sourdough, but I had to look it up after because I fell in love with this bread. If I could just come here and eat this bread, I would (I think I could, yes?). So anyway, red fife wheat was the first heritage wheat that was put on the Slow Food Ark of Taste, back in 2003. It was the industry standard in Canada back in the late 19th century. Apparently it pretty much disappeared after the Great Depression but artisan bakers are starting to use it more and more now. Anyway, this bread that's milled in-house and baked fresh daily is amazing.

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Delicious Little Tokyo Showcases the Neighborhood on July 19-20

This coming weekend on July 19-20, Go Little Tokyo will be showcasing the food and drink offerings (and beyond) of the neighborhood with Delicious Little Tokyo. There will be a variety of special workshops, demos, and tastings at different Little Tokyo businesses over the two days. Some of the events include:

A takoyaki making demo with Takoyaki Tanota, taking place on the Japanese Village Food Stage and is free to attend.

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Cocktails and Izakaya Fare at HATCH Yakitori + Bar (Downtown LA)

I recently visited HATCH Yakitori + Bar, which is located inside the new retail and restaurant space in downtown LA, The Bloc. In addition to checking out this restaurant for the first time, it was also my first time visiting The Bloc, which is a pretty cool open-air plaza with more restaurants coming. The Bloc has pretty cheap parking up to 3 hours with validation, which is really nice for downtown! For 3 hours parking is $4 with validation. The parking alone would entice me to go back to HATCH, but let's get on with the food.

HATCH obviously serves yakitori, but they also have other izakaya style food and a seasonal specials menu. They had a seared wagyu nigiri special which I just had to get.

They seared it tableside and it was so good, our favorite of the night, for sure.

Among the other specials that was another luxurious item: Alaskan king crab legs!

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