Ticket Giveaway! LA Weekly The Essentials, Feb 20

LA Weekly's annual food event of the year is coming! The Essentials is returning on February 20 to California Market Center in downtown LA, featuring more than 40 restaurants. Curated by LA Weekly's food critic Besha Rodell, you can expect LA's top restaurants at this event. Among them are: Animal, AOC, Broken Spanish, Bestia, Connie and Ted's, ink, Jitlada, even Kiriko Sushi. Been wanting to try Curtis Stone's Maude and can't get in? Don't want to make the trek to SGV for Szechuan Impression? Come here instead. 

The VIP tickets are already sold out, but there are still general admission tickets available for $70 per person which includes unlimited samples of food, beer, wine, and cocktails starting at 6pm. Part of the proceeds go to benefit Food Forward.

Lucky you, though, LA Weekly is generous enough to give away a pair of tickets through my blog!

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Bar Toscana, Brentwood's Hidden Italian Gem

Bar Toscana is the cocktail bar next door to longtime Brentwood favorite, Toscana. The Italian trattoria has been in business for 26 years. In the competitive culinary world of Los Angeles, that means they must be doing something right!

For their cocktails at Bar Toscana, they have brought William Perbellini who came from Italy to head the bar program here.

Perbellini's cocktail menu ranges from the classics to the seasonal, like this Costa Esmeralda (cognac, Grand Marnier, grapes, and sage)

I love grapes as a cocktail ingredient, and here it is paired with a grape-based spirit.

Barrel aged negroni with Plymouth gin, campari, and sweet vermouth

This was an unusually good negroni, expertly made and even smoother thanks to the barrel aging.

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Max and Leo's Coal-Fired Pizza, Now Open in Fenway (Boston, MA)

Max and Leo's is a highly rated coal-fired pizza join in Newton, and lucky for us they've just opened up shop in the Game On! space in Fenway.

This is such a great place to grab a bite and a drink before or after a game at Fenway. I really enjoyed the thin crust! We tried a white pizza with mushroom, sausage, and caramelized onion.

Wings are also a good appetizer to share. They're not deep fried and the meat was tender and juicy. The favorite (if you can take the heat) seems to be the Honey Hot Habanero wings ($10.50)

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