The Menu: Christopher Kostow Guest Chef Dinner at Melisse

On Sunday June 27, Chef Christopher Kostow from The Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa Valley will be preparing a special five course meal (+dessert) at Melisse, kicking their Summer Guest Chef Series.

Here's the menu Chef Kostow has prepared:

First Course
Foie Gras in Black Bread
Dark Chocolate, Apricot, Bacon

Second Course
Santa Barbara Spot Prawn, Hokkaido Scallop and Cuttlefish
Windrose Farm Tomatoes, Uni-Apple Emulsion

Third Course
California Halibut with Serrano "Skin"
Molten Corn, Porcini, Borage

Fourth Course
Liberty Duck Breast and Confit Leg
Murray's Lulu Berries, Japanese Turnips, Jus d' Epice

Fifth Course
Veal Breast "Vitello Tonnato"
Hamachi Collar Mayo, Pickled Cucumber, Sorrel

Dessert
Peach, Peach, Peach

The dinner is $150 per person (tax and gratuity not included)
A portion of the proceeds will be donated to The Special Olympics.

For reservation please call 310-395-0881 or visit OpenTable.

Sneak Peek of Debbie Lee's Ahn-Joo Truck: Korean Pub Grub, Minus the Pub.

Seeing Chef Debbie Lee's Korean-Soul food on America's Next Food Network Star was intriguing. So far I haven't gotten the chance to try it, but now Chef Debbie Lee just launched a food truck touting "Korean Pub Grub" and a soon-to-open restaurant.

Starting tonight, the Ahn Joo truck will be at the LA Film Fest serving filmgoers who don't feel like patronizing the LA Live establishments.

Two days ago Chef Lee held a sneak peek for their truck, Ahn-Joo, for some bloggers (and random passersby) near their office in Hollywood.

She was on hand taking care of customers, and at least in the early days you can probably count on finding her inside the truck.

Ahn-Joo will also be selling some Korean sodas, like the grape coco palm and aloe vera.

All the robata skewers are $3 for an order of 2-pieces. Here's the Salmon, Scallion, Korean miso honey.
I also tried the chicken skewers and both were good with moist and tender pieces of chicken/fish and good flavors. They're also easy to eat on your feet.

Korean Fried Chicken (garlic glaze): $7 for 3 LEGS! By the time I got there, there was one piece left from a previous order, so I just grabbed that one.
Yes, I love that she gives all legs. Dark meat FTW. Moist, tender, and flavorful with crisped skin glazed with a sweet sauce (although I could use more garlic flavor personally), like a proper korean fried chicken should be. Minus the heat of a spicy sauce. And the beer.

The most notably different dish was the Korean Nachos ($7). These are fried rice cakes with smoky chile queso, soy braised pork, and kimchee salsa.
Sorry that it got mutilated before I took a picture of it.
A fun use of the chewy ddukbokki here as "nachos". A lot of bold and heavy flavors going on, making it a tasty bite and both a good drunken/hungover food.

Mama Lee's Meatloaf ($7) is made with ground rib-eye, soy onion demi, and topped with crispy shiitake.
The meatloaf was very moist, and her use of rib-eye meat gave it quite a nice flavor.
I would've liked something to go with it though, or perhaps less sauce as it was a little salty for me. I liked the crispy shiitake because it provided a much needed textural contrast to the tender and moist meatloaf - while I liked the meatloaf itself quite a bit, I needed to balance the texture if I were to eat 2 pieces of it. Personally I'd like to see more of the crispy shiitake here, or some carrots perhaps?

There are only two desserts on the menu right now: Grilled Nutella Bhang which looked like nutella toast (didn't try it) and Fuji Apple Eggroll with ginger mascarpone. Both are $5 per order.
Still warm and crispy, I enjoyed this dessert although it was a little hard dipping it into the ginger mascarpone - since we were sharing and I didn't want to double dip. Also, I could barely taste the ginger in that mascarpone. Being a ginger lover: more ginger, please.

I also got to take home the Spicy chilled buckwheat noodles with fuji apples and korean veggies ($5). This was a nicely portioned buckwheat noodles with spicy gochujang sauce and sliced hardboiled eggs, fuji apples, carrots, pickled onions, and cucumbers. Perfect for the summer, really.

I felt that I got a glimpse of Chef Debbie's Korean soul fusion, though I'm still waiting for my chance to try that galbi pot pie. Of course, the truck was meant to be "Korean Pub Grub" so I shouldn't be complaining that most of the dishes I tried leaned strongly Korean instead of the fusion that I was curious about. Some of the items are fairly priced but a couple I felt were a bit more than I would expect from, well, a truck. The food we tried was quite good, but since I did feel a glass of cold beer would go well with some of them, I'll be looking forward to the restaurant.

Ahn-Joo
@AhnJooLA
http://www.ahnjoo.com/

Afternoon Tea at the InterContinental Hotel (Century City)

Afternoon tea is a luxury, not just in paying for it but also taking the time in the middle of the day and is pretty much an extra meal between lunch and dinner. But if you can afford that luxury of time, it's certainly a great way to spend your afternoon with friends, relax, and pamper yourself.

In England everyone might take afternoon tea all the time, but here it is more the home of many a bridal shower and girls getting together exchanging Christmas presents. For these events, then, atmosphere, ambiance, and appearance are all the more important. Afternoon tea at the InterContinental Hotel in Century City provides just that.
Set either in a lovely and quiet side room facing the courtyard, or weather permitting, on the courtyard itself.
The china that they're using for the afternoon tea has been used at the hotel since its first inception.

There are two ways to enjoy your afternoon tea here at Park Grill. You can either order the afternoon tea set for $21.50, or order individual items a la carte to create your own tea set.

For the set, your choice of tea includes some with fancy names that unfortunately gave me little clue as to what they are: Lady Grey, Prince of Wales, Decaf Earl Grey, Organic Dragon Lily Flowering Tea.
If you were to order a la carte, the regular loose leaf teas are $6, while the "flowering teas" are $8. For this media event, we got our choice of any of their teas, all lined up on a white linen covered cart. I got one of the "flowering teas", the Jasmine Lover, which is served in a clear glass pot so you can see it bloom.
Bloomed into quite a pretty orange flower, didn't it? It tasted pretty good too.

Petite Tea Sandwiches:

Other savories are priced at $2-2.50 individually and include:
Grilled Vegetable Wrap
Smoked Salmon with Dill Cream on Pumpernickel, Curried Egg Salad on Wheat, Crab Salad on a Savory Herb Scone

Mini quiches, served warm.

Scone/bread ($2 each if you order a la carte) selections include:
Scones with Clotted Cream and Preserves, Lemon Cake, Zucchini Bread.
The scones are fine though I liked the buttery scones at Gordon Ramsay better. My British friend told me scones are supposed to be kinda bland though. That's what the clotted cream and the preserves are for!

The sweets don't stop there. You also get a choice of Crepe Suzette, Mango Jubilee, Banana Foster ($7 each a la carte)

For the tasting we actually got to try both the crepe suzette and banana foster, both of which are prepared tableside.
Both are topped with some chocolate chips, which everyone seemed to like. I thought it was too sweet for the crepe though it did work well with the bananas.

Petit fours to end. There was only a piece of each to share with everyone, so I only tried the macaron, which was good.

Oh, one more thing. We got a tour of the hotel at the end and they apparently have a helipad! Due to some ... circumstance that I can no longer remember, I ended up watching bits of an episode of this season's The Bachelorette, where she and the date cross over to another building on a high wire from ...
Looks familiar?


If you're organizing something for your girlfriends, this is the place to get some "ooh"s and "aah"s from the blooming tea to the tableside crepe suzette/ banana foster. Everyone likes a show.

Park Grill at The InterContinental Hotel
2151 Ave Of The Stars
Los Angeles, CA 90067
(310) 284-6530