DineLA 2010 Quickie: Fogo de Chao

When I saw Fogo de Chao on the Restaurant Week list and their price point, I was immediately interested. I had never been there but I knew that their lunch regularly costs $34.50 and dinner $56.50. And that doesn't even include dessert. During dineLA Restaurant Week, weekday lunches cost $28 and dinners cost $44, both include a choice of dessert (although not all choices are available).

I thought this was a really good deal and I had been wanting to check out this place for years now. Since the meat selection is the same for lunch or dinner, I scheduled a lunch with Wandering Chopsticks here.


I had the same problem I always have on buffet lines: I get everything. The veggies were fresh - I was impressed considering it was a "buffet".

Fresh spinach, big and sweet asparagus, juicy tomatoes to go with your burrata. Nothing outstanding, but definitely meets the standards.

Their pão de queijo were warm, big, and nicely cheesy. These were much better than what you may get at a random chain store in Brazil (especially if you're at the airport ...).
I could eat a lot of these, if only I didn't need to make room for meat.
Flip your card to the green side and the men will come bearing skewers of various meats to your tableside.

Fogo de Chao offers a variety of cuts and meats - 15 to be exact. Besides your typical sirloin, rib eye, beef ribs, pork ribs, they also have bacon wrapped pork and chicken, etc etc. For more details, you should check the dine LA's Fogo menu here.

Among our favorites were the picanha (prime sirloin flavored with sea salt and garlic) and the lamb chops.
Not that I've gone for all-you-can-eat Brazilian bbq that much before, but this is definitely one of the best I've had. Just make sure you ask for it to be cooked the way you like it - that's medium rare for me. I couldn't eat that much so towards the end I ended up sticking to just my two favorite cuts above.

With the meats came three sides: mashed potatoes, fried polenta, and plaintains.
This is the one place where WC noticed the difference between restaurant week and a regular experience - we got all our sides, but she said that usually they refill your sides when you get low or run out. Not these 2 weeks, apparently.

Today's selection of desserts were only the papaya cream or the key lime pie. WC got the key lime pie.
The key lime pie was actually pretty nice - rich and tart.

I got the papaya cream, which is papaya pureed with vanilla ice cream, topped with creme de cassis.
Yeah, okay, so it's a pretty simple dessert, and it tastes exactly as it's described: papaya pureed with vanilla ice cream, but I liked it since I like papaya and rarely gets it in the US.

To recap the deal: Lunch $34.50+dessert $10 = $28 during dine LA week, you do the math. Even if the service isn't as good, I'll live with it for the savings.


Fogo de Chao
133 N La Cienega Blvd
Beverly Hills, CA 90211
(310) 289-7755
www.fogodechao.com

DineLA 2010 Quickie: Dinner at K-Zo

Dine LA dinner at K-Zo in Culver City is $44 for 3 courses and the choices seemed pretty good. When I saw the regular menu though, I noticed they have 5 courses for $58 any day, so whether or not the $44 is a special deal or not gets a double take.

The appetizer options are 1) Rokuten Mori (a selection of 6 appetizers), 2) Seafood salad, or 3) Bouillabaise.

The Rokuten Mori gives you a sampling of a variety of cold seafood appetizers including crab sunomono, oysters, yellow tail sashimi, ankimo, etc. All of them were well prepared with fresh ingredients. The bouillabaise was pretty good, but it doesn't compare to the one I had at Bond St.

For the entrees we had a choice between: 1) a plate of nigiri sushi + popcorn shrimp and asparagus roll, 2) grilled rib-eye steak, or 3) braised Chilean sea bass.Having a plate of sushi means you're not getting each piece fresh from the hands of the itamae, but nonetheless they were still good with fresh pieces of fish - although they are mostly your standard orders.

The Chilean sea bass was well prepared and tender. The mashed "purple potato" and steamed bok choy were good accompaniments and filled you up.

For dessert, we ordered the apple "tatan" (hey, that's how they spelled it :P).
The apple tatin was pretty nicely caramelized - although the strawberry accompaniment seemed an afterthought and deterred from the sweetness of the apples.

I ordered the purple sweet potato parfait because it seemed most interesting.
This was a very enjoyable dessert - like a sweet potato zanzai - with red bean, mochi balls, and vanilla ice cream. The "sauce" was made with Okinawa purple sweet potato. I would definitely get this one again, especially since this was one of the more unique desserts they offer.

Overall the K-Zo dineLA meal was good and satisfying (although the portions are smaller than many other restaurants), but as I mentioned, since they normally have a 5 course meal for $58, I probably wouldn't hurry here if you only have limited opportunities to do dineLA.

K-Zo
9240 Culver Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232
(310) 202-8890

Grub: Top Chef Betty Fraser's Cozy Home

Top chef contestant Betty Fraser and grub gal pal Denise deCarlo outfitted a 1920's duplex in Hollywood into the home of their cozy restaurant, Grub. Their brunch service has gotten plenty of positive feedback and even won Citysearch's Best Brunch award.

They recently started their dinner service and wanted to get more word out, and since we met during The Food Event, Chef Betty invited me and a friend over to try out their dinner on the house.

Going to Grub felt like going to a friend's house during the holidays. From the patio seating to the warm interior decorated with christmas lights and a motley selection of artwork, Grub's feel is casual at its best.
Even though it was pouring outside, Grub had a steady trickle of customers who are obviously neighborhood locals. Not surprised, a charming place like this would be a neighborhood destination for sure.

Instead of bread, Grub serves a basket of vegetable sticks and pretzels with dip - a fun change.
Grub has a pretty cheap drink menu with $4.25 sangrias and lemon basil champagne cocktail that sounds absolutely delicious, but I decided not to indulge that night and went with a blueberry lemonade instead. They give you a big glass of this really refreshing drink for $2.50.

Per our waiter's recommendation, for appetizer we got "Our Famous Spicy Lemon Hummus" ($6.25)
I wasn't expecting to get hummus here, but this really was quite good. The hummus was full of flavor it was hard for me to stop eating it.

Grub has a pretty big dinner menu with a lot of 'green' and salad choices and sandwiches, but this night I went with their California Crab Cake ($16.95)
The crabcake was unexpectedly spicy! I ended up not eating most of it since I couldn't really handle the spice (me=weaksauce), luckily the greens helped keep the spiciness at bay. The highlight of this dish for me was actually the creamed corn - also spiced up. A bit of spice, plus the sweetness of the corn all molded together in cream was so good. (Disclaimer: I'm a total corn lover)

I did think the crabcake's portion was small especially compared to the steak. My friend ordered the Drunken Steak ($21.95)
Marinated in Stone Pale Ale and cooked to medium rare, this steak was super tender. It was a little bland for me to just eat the meat though, but the mushroom onion pan sauce took care of that.

We were stuffed but I've been eyeing their dessert menu. Their smallest item thought 1/4 of their Big-Ass ice cream cookie sandwich, so they split that for us.
Here's 1/8 of a Big-Ass Ice Cream Cookie sandwich:
Still pretty big and definitely pushed me over the edge! But talk about indulging, there's nothing better than chewy chocolate cookies and ice cream.

Grub also offers a big selection of sandwiches and burgers and a variety of their famous mac-n-cheese which I want to try next time.
And I definitely can't wait to try their award winning brunch.

Grub
911 Seward St
Los Angeles, CA 90038
(323) 461-3663
www.grub-la.com