Upcoming Events! October 15-25

October 15-18. Okay, so this is not in LA area, but the Tequila Expo is going on down in Tijuana, and I'm planning to check it out with a few bloggers led by Street Gourmet LA. The festivities start at 1 pm every day on Av. Revolucion.

Saturday, October 17. Stonefire Grill celebrates the grand opening of its Pasadena outpost by giving out FREE meal to those who make reservation to dine between 5 and 9 pm. While your meal is free, tips are being collected and donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, so please, please tip well! More details on the Yelp event page. Reservations are required and limited to parties of four; call Meredith McWade at 818-991-4054 ext. 0. 473 North Rosemead Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91107

Sunday, October 18. LA's very own San Antonio Winery is holding "Taste of Italy" and has prepared samplings of food from various regions of Italy (with the wine pairing of course). The tastings include regions you rarely hear of such as Antipasto of Umbrian smoked dried meats, mushrooms, cipolline, artichoke hearts and olives (Wine: Armaldo Caprai, Grecante 2007) and Grilled seafood pescatore kebabs from Liguria (wine: Luzano Verdicchio de Castello di Jesi, 2008). 10 dishes in all + dessert for $50 pp. 2-5 pm, 737 Lamar Street. Call (323) 330- 8771 for reservation.

Monday, October 19. Truffle Dinner at Minestraio Trattoria. To see the menu and details, see my previous post here.

Sunday, October 25. Los Angeles Magazine once again presents The Food Event.
Last year's Food Event was a great fun with cooking demos and contest between the top chefs in LA.
This year promises to do the same with cooking demonstrations from exciting chefs such as Ludo Lefebvre from the heavily missed Ludobites (come back soon, Ludo!), John Sedlar from Rivera, Suzanne Tracht from Jar, Andrew Kirschner from Wilshire, and David Myers from Sona and Comme Ca. There will of course be tons of food and wine samplings from Petrossian, Gordon Ramsay, Westside Tavern, Loteria Grill, and numerous wineries.
The event is held at a lovely outdoor setting at Saddlerock Ranch in Malibu Hills. 1-4 pm.
Tickets are $95 and benefit the American Heart Association and Kids Courage Foundation.

DineLA 2009: Spago. One of DineLA's Best Deals.

Just last week LAist released tips on how to get the most out of dineLA and one of their points is to not go for restaurant week menu offering dishes not originally on their regular menu.
At Spago, none of the dishes (minus desserts) offered are on the regular menu - you can get on-the-menu New York Steak for a hefty supplement of $35 though.

Does this mean Spago dineLA is not a deal?

Spago, one of the longest-standing LA's star eateries, the flagship of the Wolfgang Puck empire. Overhyped, you say? Let's not forget the Michelin stars this place got (before Michelin decided to abandon our city) and the fact that Nancy Silverton of La Brea Bakery and Mozza and Mozza hailed as a pastry chef from this place. Fact is, Spago got famous for a reason, and it managed to maintain that reason.
Not to mention they have one of the best patios in town.

Now, the deal. Let me see here. Burrata fig salad with jamon serrano and either poussin or kurobuta pork chop+dessert seems worthy of a $45 Spago meal to me.
If you actually look at their regular menu, you'd notice that their cheapest entree offered is $38. A $45 3-course Spago meal? That would be impossible without restaurant week!

Yeah, but they might give you crappy dishes, smaller portions, etc, so let's see what you actually ate.

Fig salad with burrata and jamon serrano.
Great figs, great burrata, great jamon. I am not sure about the combination of it all though. I certainly loved the burrata with the jamon and the greens, but not with the figs. I ended up eating the figs separately.

Kurobuta Pork Chop.
Smaller portion? I think not. This pork chop was so big I managed to take leftovers home. It was a very good pork chop, quite tender and moist, well seasoned. Great flavor and very complementary sauce and garnish.

Getting the supplements make dineLA much less of a deal.
A sweet corn agnolotti which runs for $19 on the regular menu is available for a $14 supplement.

Amazing agnolotti, though. I stole a couple of bites from PepsiMonster's plate and it was sooo good. It's definitely worth trying, although I'd rather get it as an extra order for $5 more :)

An order of New York Steak is $61 on the menu and available for a $35 supplement for DineLA.
A great steak, no doubt, but I was happy with my Kurobuta pork chop for much less money.

The desserts offered actually do come from the regular menu. I got the Apple Cider Upside Down Cake.

The cake had a great flavor but it was a bit too dry for my taste. I should've remembered these types of cakes are generally too dry for my palate. A lot of people seemed to like this though.

PepsiMonster got the Dobos, 12 layer chocolate and praline cake with nutella gelato.

I like his dessert much better, the chocolate buttercream layer was very smooth but you get just a teeny crunchiness. Great taste and texture.

We had a great meal overall. $45 for this 3-course meal (plus leftover for lunch, mind you)? I'll take it any day.

Spago
176 N Canon Dr
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
(310) 385-0880
http://www.wolfgangpuck.com/restaurants/fine-dining/3635

South Coast Plaza Food Extravaganza III: Pinot Provence & Pasta Demo at Pizzeria Ortica

After a night of food-ing around the South Coast Plaza mall, we spent Saturday morning and afternoon exploring the other side of SCP across the street.
We spent the night in a hotel room, courtesy of Westin South Coast Plaza, so breakfast was a simple trip down the elevator to Pinot Provence, a Patina Group restaurant, headed by Chef Lulu deRouen.

Pinot Provence is a lovely restaurant with this rustic old-world charm to it. I felt like I was at a French countryside mansion.
Us bloggers were then escorted into their private dining room area, where a white tablecloth setting was already prepared for us.
A continental breakfast was spread out for us to start our morning, including toasted bagels, lox and cream cheese, yogurt and granola, fruits, muffins, and croissants.
I served myself a plate of croissant and some lox, yogurt, granola, and fruits.

The warm croissant was nicely buttery and flakey. It's been a while since I had a good croissant. Since we only had continental breakfast, I can't say much else about the food at Pinot Provence. We did, however, have a nice and long conversation with the chef, Lulu deRouen, a pupil of Florent Marneau from Marche Moderne.

She's a very animated and outgoing person and we had a lot of fun listening to her stories about her time at the Culinary Olympics (in Germany, was it?), her take on the ethnic restaurants around Costa Mesa, and more. Having gotten to know her, it sure would be fun to try her cuisine next time.


Pinot Provence
686 Anton Blvd
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
(714) 444-5900




With food and coffee in our system, we were ready to learn about pasta from Pizzeria Ortica's executive chef Steve Samson and his sous chef Zack.
Among some of the things we learned about dough making and kneading: 1)you need more yolk when using US eggs because they're just not as good as the ones in Italy, 2) after kneading the dough you should let it sit for 20-30 minutes, and 3) if you're making spinach pasta, you can use more whole eggs instead of yolk and you can get by with less eggs in general!

And here's a step-by-step-in-photos on how to make ravioli:
We learned to make all kinds of pasta shapes including ravioli, garganelli, tortillo, agnolotti, pappardelle, tagliatelle, tortellini, etc. Can you tell which one is which?
Apparently our visit did not end there and soon we had a tasting of their pastas in front of us. Small bites, though, luckily :)

First up was the Pear & Pecorino tortilla with butter & sage.
This recipe was one of Zack's creation and was the favorite of every one else on my table. It's lightly sweet and buttery. The light sweetness is actually rather weird for me. It did grow on me, but unlike everyone else, my favorite turned out to be the Spinach Tagliatelle with Bolognese.
A simple classic that's well executed. The al dente pasta had a nice depth of flavor from the spinach and the bolognese is light and not overwhelming - a perfect complement.

The other pasta we had was the burrata ravioli with tomato & basil sauce.
A good ravioli, though compared to the other two pasta this one did not stand out.

We also had a margherita pizza.
The crust here is quite nice although very thin. The thinness reminded me of the pizza that Riva used to have - it makes it hard to hold up the pizza and eat it with your hands though, which I thought was part of the pizza-eating experience. Still, good chewy crust with good sauce and cheese here.

As we were leaving, we got a goodie bag containing a Pizzeria Ortica t-shirt, a small bottle of wine, and a bag of long white beans.

Pizzeria Ortica
650 Anton Blvd
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
(714) 445-4900
www.pizzeriaortica.com