Friday, December 19, 2008

Mondays after 10PM : Where to Eat?

Half of LA pretty much shuts down on Mondays, and the other half seems to shut down at 10 PM.

Here are a list of the places I've found (so far) that are open past 10 pm on Mondays - on the westside (ish)

1. The Bazaar
465 S. La Cienega Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA
310.246.5555
http://www.thebazaar.com/

Open until midnight.




2. Riva
312 Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica, CA
310.451.7482

Open until midnight.




3. Wakasan
1929 Westwood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90025
(310) 446-5241

Open until 11 pm.



4. XIV
8117 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90046
(323) 656-1414
http://www.sbe.com/xiv/

Open until 11 pm.


5. Gjelina
1429 Abbot Kinney Blvd.,Venice, CA 90291
(310) 450-1429


Open until midnight


6. BCD Tofu House
3575 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90010
(213) 382-6677
www.bcdtofu.com

Open 24 hours.

7. Loteria! Grill
6627 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90028
(323) 465-2500
http://www.loteriagrill.com/loteriahollywood

Open until 11 pm


8. Father's Office II
3229 Helms Ave.,
Los Angeles 90034
(310) 736-2224
http://fathersoffice.com

Kitchen open until 11 pm (bar until 1 am).


9. Simpang Asia
10433 National Blvd #2
Los Angeles, CA 9003

Open until midnight daily.




10. Cecconi's
8764 Melrose Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90069
(310) 432-2000
www.cecconiswesthollywood.com

Open until midnight M-W, 1 am Th-Sat, 11pm Sun.



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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Riva: Travi's New Baby

Jason Travi's (of Fraiche) new restaurant, Riva, sits near the Third Street Promenade and is open all-day, probably to accomodate the shoppers. In addition, though, they are also open until at least midnight every day, Mondays included. So there you go, one of my late Monday night dinners!

The restaurant was big but at late Monday night was fairly empty - 3 or 4 tables filled.

We started with some salmon belly crudo with homemade mustard
The salmon belly was smooth and delicious. I have to say I really, really enjoyed this dish. I didn't see it on the online menu afterwards and was pretty bummed :/ I definitely would've ordered it again if I see it!

Next we had the hachiya persimmon with speck ham and arugula
This was again another dish that would make me come back! The persimmon was sweet and ripe - some of the best persimmons I've ever had. They pair very well with the slight saltiness of the speck ham and the arugula provided a nice texture contrast. I think I would come back to Riva even if just for this dish (I'm very partial to persimmons though).

Since the portions thus far were fairly small, we also got the roasted quail with farro and fall squash and pistachio pesto
The quail was decent, but not the best I've ever had. Not as meaty or gamey as I normally like.
I'm also uncertain about the farro combination.

The other main thing Riva offers that Fraiche does not is pizza. The pizzas here are around $15 - not cheap and actually about the same price as Pizzeria Mozza. So how were they?

We had the pignoli pizza (pine nuts, tomato, smoked pancetta, reggiano)
I liked the thin crust and thought that the whole tomatoes were great. The sage leaves added a very nice aroma and flavor. Overall I enjoyed this pizza (although it's expensive).

We also had the eggplant parmesan pizza.
Literally an eggplant parmesan, baked on top of a pizza crust. Quite an interesting dish - hard to eat as a pizza though since the 'topping' was very heavy. This filled us up quite a bit and was pretty enjoyable.

For dessert we went with the sweet potato cheesecake.
An extremely rich cheesecake, especially so since it is sweet potato and also topped with melted marshmallows!
This was actually too rich for my taste - once the ice cream to cut it is gone I couldn't eat any more of it.

Overall I thought Riva was pretty good with a couple dishes that really highlighted the meal and that I would go back for (the salmon belly and the persimmons with ham!).

Riva
312 Wilshire Blvd
Santa Monica, CA
310.451.7482
http://rivarestaurant.wordpress.com

Riva on Urbanspoon

Friday, December 12, 2008

Whole Suckling Pigs and Foodbloggers at Ford's

Two whole suckling pigs and a bunch of foodbloggers.
I'm probably the last of the foodbloggers to write my report up, but at least most of you would've read it on everyone else's blog!

Sometime ago, right after all of us drooled over the Los Angeles Bizarre Foods episode where Andrew Zimmern eats suckling pig at Ford's Filling Station in Culver City, Fooddigger invited some of us foodbloggers for that very same meal at Ford's!!
LA&OC Foodie, iNOMthings, Teenage Glutster, Mattatouille, Matt from Diglounge, Food Destination, KevinEats and Tastespotting were all there, along with our hosts from Fooddigger.Link
Chef Ben Ford personally came bearing our platter of suckling porky goodness - head and all - which have been prepared for the past two days, just for us (feeling special!).
The platter consisted of different preparations including porchetta, confit of pork shoulder, pork loin, etc ...
(photo courtesy of Mattatouille)
The head is not there just to scare you - you're supposed to eat the cheeks which are supposed to be the best part of the pig :)

We also had a variety of side dishes including brussel sprouts with bacon and cavalo nero (kale):
Another side was the kabocha squash risotto:
The other side was roasted carrots with pomegranates.

I didn't think the sides worked too well with the main entree. Both the risotto and the brussel sprouts were pretty good individually, but very heavy, and so were the other vegetables. Too heavy to accompany an already-heavy suckling pig dinner! That was why my favorite were actually the pomegranate ...

Since we were eating whole suckling pigs, we of course had to have some offals (or close to it!).
One was the tongue salad with crispy pig's ears
This was one of the highlights of the meal for me. Loved the crispy pig's ears and the texture of the tongue. Having the salad was a nice refreshing change from all the ... well, pork.

As far as "offals" go we didn't stop there. We also had deep fried PIG'S EYES.
There were only 6 eyes (4 + a couple extra he took from other piggies), so we had to share .... All I can say was that the texture was ... interesting :)

For desserts each section of the table shared two desserts:
1. Hawaiian bread pudding with vanilla bean ice cream
Moist and refreshing - the sourness of the kumquats and the fruitiness of the bread pudding itself was great after this heavy meal!

2. Chocolate Walnut Torte
The chocolate torte is unfortunately a little dry. Despite my completely biased preference for chocolate, I have to say the hawaiian bread pudding wins hands down that night.

Somehow I ended up with half of the leftovers. The pork loin made for great lunch/dinner along with the pork confit sandwich :P
This was a very special treat, since chef Ford does not normally make this unless by special request, and we all had a blast! Dining with other foodbloggers is a completely different experience - thanks to Fooddigger for getting us together for this special


Ford's Filling Station

9531 Culver Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232
Phone: (310) 202-1470
http://www.fordsfillingstation.net/

Ford's Filling Station on Urbanspoon

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