Corazon y Miel (Bell, CA)

I don't venture out to East LA much, but there are a few great restaurants there worth traveling to. One of them is Corazon y Miel. This is an unusual restaurant to find in Bell, as it serves a more modern/non traditional Latin American food and craft cocktails to boot.

For appetizers you'd find things like marinated chicken hearts or Bacon wrapped dates with whipped cotija cheese, mustard seed cider ($5)

One of my favorites was the Wild Boar Chilaquiles (guajillo, roasted carrot crema, queso casera, fried egg, $14)

I love chilaquiles to begin with but the wild boar in the bold guajillo sauce and the runny egg just made it even better.

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Single Origin Hot Chocolates and Desserts at LA Burdick (Cambridge, MA)

Even though I'm not sure who decides on these national food holidays, since it's National Hot Chocolate Day, I thought I'd write about Boston's most popular hot chocolate spot, LA Burdick near Harvard Square in Cambridge.

Other than their house signature hot dark chocolate, I also like LA Burdick because they serve single source/ single origin hot chocolates! When I went they had two different ones from Grenada and Ecuador.

I tried the Ecuador one, described to have "notes of black tea, cinnamon and earthy flavors ... robust ... with a very long finish". It was quite intense but I loved it, although I still had a hard time deciding if I liked the signature one better.

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Learn Mixology Master Method, Skip Fake Bartending Courses

So, I'll admit straight off the bat, I've attended one of those bartending courses. I didn't know much back then. The course taught me dozens of old recipes that I had to memorize and how to free pour. They used colored water, though, and I never got to taste what I "made". In the end I knew all kinds of party drinks and shooter recipes, just not what they tasted like.

Two of the top bartenders in LA, Joseph Brooke and Martin Cole, set out to change all that and create a school that would teach to-be bartenders how to make real drinks and train you the basics correctly (including developing your palate), because it's harder to beat out bad habits once you've picked them up.

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