Relentless Brewing Brings Sour Beers, Pub Grub and Eagle Rock's First Distillery

Relentless Brewing as a brewery has been open in Temecula for a few years now, and they're known for their sour beers. Now, they've opened a pub in Eagle Rock and completed it with a distillery. The spirits are still in the works (with vodka coming out earliest, of course), but in the meantime the locals are already coming for the beers and casual food.

Relentless Brewing in Eagle Rock offers more than just their own beers, they carry a pretty extensive lineup from other craft breweries from California. I ended up trying their own Farm of the Rising Sun, a farmhouse ale.


The kitchen serves up pub grub, from appetizers to salads and burgers / sandwiches.
We started with (a large portion of) Smokey Poutine (french fries topped with a smokey bacon beef and beer gravy, white cheddar cheese curds, crispy bacon, pickled jalapenos and chives - $10)

I liked the fries here, the seasoning and texture reminds me of curly fries.

Tasting Hakkaisan Sake at Faith and Flower

A while back I went to a dinner at Faith and Flower hosted by Hakkaisan sake to try their lineup. Hakkaisan is a brewery in Niigata Prefecture, at the bottom of Mount Hakkaisan, a sacred mountain with a name that means "eight peaked mountain".

We started with the Hakkaisan "AWA" sparkling sake. Awa means "bubbles" in Japanese, and the sparkling sake here is produced using secondary fermentation in the bottle, similar to the traditional champagne method. It's a very clean tasting sparkling sake, with just a touch of sweetness.


For the Awa, they paired with a silken tofu mousse, fresh wasabi and miyoga ginger, bonito dashi

We loved the texture of this tofu mousse.

Mister O's Should Be on Your Studio City Rotation

Since moving to Woodland Hills, I get excited when I get to check out restaurants in the San Fernando Valley. A few months ago I went to try out Mister O's, a sort-of-new place in Studio City (it opened in August 2018).

Chef Mario Alberto is doing some good things in the kitchen here. I started with some beautifully plated Yellowtail crudo with fried yucca, pretty lady melon, Anaheim chile oil, apricot, hemp seed ($18)


The cocktails from Rafael Barba are also worth trying. The San Fernando Valley still doesn't have that many good cocktail bars but Mister O's is a strong contender. I'm not normally a big vodka cocktail drinker, but I thoroughly enjoyed Silly Rabbit (Reyka vodka, yellow chartreuse, carrot, ginger, orgeat, lemon, bitters, $15)