1886 Bar Goes Tiki and Divey This Summer

Every season, 1886 does something different with their cocktail menu, and this summer they're turning into a tiki and dive bar complete with fun tiki decorations (complete with the bartender Peter Lloyd-Jones wearing a Hawaiian shirt!)

Per usual, their menu is divided into four sections. The first features fun interpretations of classic tiki cocktails.
The Strawberry Pina Colada on Fire is an ode to the recently closed Bahooka. There's also the classic Zombie, and the one thing I still haven't tried is the Scorpion Bowl for 4, since they were still waiting for the bowl to come in.

The next section is the dive bar drinks they labeled "Dirty Pretty Things", including a "molecular" approach to shots. There's a Mojito Jello Shot made with Flor de Cana rum. Ever had a pickleback? That's a shot of whisky with a chaser of pickle juice. Here, the pickleback is pickle brine from Langer's Deli enclosed in a sphere inside a shot of Powers Irish whisky.

On a similar line, there's also a sangrita sphere served in a shot of tequila.

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Decorating Cakes with Duff Goldman for LA Food & Wine

The LA Food and Wine Festival brings back a series of food events over four days on August 22-25, from Italian festival with Giada De Laurentiis, Asian Night Market with Iron Chef Morimoto, lunches at restaurants around town, to the Lexus Grand Tasting on the last day.

The last event of the series is a cooking demo with Duff Goldman. As a preview for the festival, I got to go to Duff's Cake Mix on Melrose to decorate a cake. Duff Goldman was also in attendance. Before getting down to decorating we mingled with some wine and Chef Eric Greenspan's grilled cheese sandwiches. 
We started with a white cake, just like a white canvas for painting.

The theme was California cuisine so we decided to make a "kale salad" and started rolling out the green fondant. I used a leaf mold to make the "kale", made red fondant balls for cherry tomatoes. We made sliced carrots and avocadoes, copying LA OC Foodie and Shop Eat Sleep's cake of avocado, sushi, and taco.
Voila! Our kale salad cake!

The other attendees' cakes were pretty impressive.

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Supermarket Superstar Hits Lifetime TV With Creative Food

I'm a bit late but there's a new food competition: Supermarket Superstar on Lifetime TV! Have you started watching it?
Basically these are for folks who want to get their food products on supermarket shelves nationwide and each week has a theme (desserts, spreads, etc). They had a preview of the actual food that would be on the show a few weeks back, and I was impressed by the creativity of many of them! The show is now set for Thursdays at 10:30pm.

Each episode has a theme, like "snacks" or "sauces" or "baked goods". Here's what you should watch for (and what I'm rooting for):
Chimales from Dominic Lau, the guy behind Don Chow Taco Truck

Just like Don Chow, the concept is Mexican food meets Chinese. These are tamales spiced with Chinese five spice and stuffed with Kung Pao Chicken (complete with peanut toppings).

Fried chicken bao from Ben Vancleave, set for the episode of Snacks.

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