Tag Archives: West Coast

Pop Up Restaurant Anyone?

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Earlier this week I came across a post on Eater LA about a Pop-Up restaurant this weekend only on Abbot Kinney.  Two chefs, one from Joe’s Restaurant and one from Axe (pronounced Ah-shay), were taking over some place called Capri for the weekend and hosting a $65, eight course tasting menu.  I forwarded it on to Brad.  Sounded like our kinda thing.

I sort of forgot about it because Brad never read the article and basically just said, “Yeah, ok.  Sure.”  We both had off Friday.  We love Abbott Kinney.  We love new restaurants.  We would probably end up going.  Sure.

And then Wednesday, as we were cranking what was probably an illegal U-turn on Electric Avenue (yep, that’s a real street name and every time we drive on it I sing the song) trying to find parking for our favorite coffee shop Intelligentsia, a black SUV pulled up next to us and rolled down the window.

Kris Tominaga, who Brad knows from Joe’s Restaurant, leaned out of the car and handed Brad a flyer.  We were obviously blocking traffic in so many directions, so we just exchanged a quick hello and “of course we’ll be there” before waiving our apologies to other angry drivers, completing our illegal maneuver and parking.  But the flyer put two and two together.  Kris was the chef from Joe’s who was hosting this pop-up this weekend, Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.  One example of how sometimes illegal U-turns have beautiful endings.

We called and made a reservation while waiting in line at Intelligentsia (because there is ALWAYS a line – this is part of the Intelligentsia experience), and checked out the menu. And then I rubbed it in that I was one step ahead of Brad in something having to do with restaurants for once.  Boo-ya.

**Brad didn’t care.  He still knew both the chefs AND the guy who answered the phone to take the reservations, so he is still exponentially cooler than me.  And always will be.  Damn.**

 

So yesterday, Brad and I had a fantastic and crafty Brad and Kelly day off (I’ll update you on the crafty projects soon!), and after a two hour long Skype call with my parents, we headed over to Venice.

Directly across the street from one of the best restaurants in the WORLD (Tasting Kitchen) and one of the best restaurants in Los Angeles, if not the United States (Gjelina), Capri has never been successful.  I had never heard of it, but people tell me it was over priced and always empty.  Last night, as WISC, it was bustling, bright, and lively.

All white with white Christmas lights and brilliant, simply framed celebrity photographs lining the walls, it was a clean and classic atmosphere.  The brown craft paper laid on top of classic white table cloths was set with mismatched china (borrowing from their neighbors across the street?) and simple kitchen towels for napkins.  Mismatched chairs made it feel like a big family gathering where all the seating in the house was pulled together.

I love the feel of the ‘fancy mixed with simple’ trend going on now in restaurants.  Beautiful food served on amazing dishes in an environment that feels comfortable. People want the quality of fine dining food without the air of snobbery that can come along with it.  People want to feel like you are a chef inviting them into your house for a home cooked meal, not like they have to worry about which fork goes with which course.  This all goes double in Venice.

Also, I love white Christmas lights.  If Brad would let me, I’d have them up all around the house all year long.  When we have a restaurant, believe me I will sneak in Christmas lights some way.  Last night, I believe it was the Christmas lights that did me in.  I knew this place was going to be awesome.

I was right.  The menu was phenomenal.  The food was fantastic.  Our server was amazing and she told us the story behind every taste of wine and every dish she put in front of us.  The wine parings were out of this world and complemented both of the dishes each taste was meant for in big, bold and different ways.  Even the china was fun – we got the plate voted “Most Likely to Be Stolen By The End of the Weekend”.

Look at that ‘STACHE!!!

And then we made sure they saw that we gave it back.

For dessert, we had our second amazing biscuit of the day on Abbot Kinney (the first was a buttered quince paste biscuit for breakfast at Gjelina Take Away), and Brad said WISC’s beat out Gjelina’s hands down.  I ranked them neck and neck.  Buttery heaven.

As we drove back down Abbot Kinney on our way home last night, stuffed full and a little tipsy (just me), we passed the Otherroom and reminisced about my first birthday here in LA, just three days after we moved from NY to LA.  A friend of mine from college met us out at the Otherroom (her suggestion, I had no idea where to go), and we began our Abbot Kinney love affair with the Mick Jagger painting that was hanging right at the entrance.  That night we thought AK was a crazy little street with amazing window displays and such cool people.  Almost two years later (!!!), we are still finding new and amazing places on the street and still marveling at how cool all the people are.

WISC will only be around this weekend and will reopen to occupy the Capri space again for all of December.  I know for sure that Brad and I will be back as many times as we can afford to make sure that this new addition to AK sticks around into 2012.

Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing, thank you for the great time and for the delicious meal and best of luck to you!  We can’t wait to see you again in December!

On Becoming A Vampire

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In the food industry, there are a few things you just have to get used to.  When the world is celebrating holidays, you’re working.  When the 9-5ers are enjoying a martini at Happy Hour, you’re working.  When it’s a three day weekend and everyone’s at the beach, you’re probably working.

There is, however, a HUGE flipside.

When those same 9-5ers are waking up at the crack of dawn, we’re sleeping.  And when they’re sitting on 405, bumper to bumper in rush hour traffic, we’re not.  While they are all at work and the malls and grocery stores are empty and quiet and put together, that’s when we’re shopping.  Bad grocery store Muzak and organized, full shelves.  Ah…. Heaven.

It’s addicting, really.

There was a time not long ago that neither Brad or I hardly ever had to be at work before 4PM.  We would get home sometime between one and three in the morning from whichever restaurant and then we would make ourselves some dinner.

Yep.  Dinner.  At two o’clock in the morning.

And you know that we don’t ever skimp on dinner.  Not even at 2AM.  Oh no, it’d be Roasted Chicken or Pork Chops or Pasta or some other crazy invention.  It goes against everything any diet has ever told you, I know, but that was our nighttime routine.  Sometimes I felt sorry for our upstairs neighbors.  I’m sure they were having dreams of lavish feasts most nights, waking up to their bowl of cereal in the morning. One time, Brad made chocolate chip cookies after I’d fallen asleep early on the couch.  I dreamed of bakeries and sweets.  At least I got to wake up to the real thing.

Along with our eating schedules being out of the norm, we got onto a ridiculous sleeping schedule.  I mean, you can’t just come home from slinging drinks all night long and immediately fall asleep.  The brain is in smily, happy, customer service mode and it takes some time to unwind.  I would usually fall asleep around 4am.  Brad?  He would typically see the sunrise.

At one point, we were setting our alarms for two o’clock in the afternoon to make sure we’d wake up to make it to work on time.  And in Upstate New York in the winter, getting up at two only guarantees you about an hour and a half of daylight before the sun sets.  Not that there was ever a chance to get any sun whatsoever, but my Rollins girl, 365 days a year tan skin got freakishly pale.  And I wore all black to work every night.

I started feeling like a vampire.

Now when you’re in the restaurant industry, it feels semi-normal.  Most of your friends are also in that same routine so there isn’t much reason to change.  I tried to tell myself many times that we were just on “West Coast time” because we could usually catch our friends in San Francisco as we were getting out of work and they were getting ready for bed.

Now that we really ARE on West Coast time, its even worse.  If I don’t get up until noon on a morning after closing down the bar late, its already 3PM back home.  I’ve almost missed an entire day!  So much could have happened in the world that I just slept right through.  I often think about some crazy major event happening that the East Coast finds out about right when they wake up and then people have to wait to tell me until three that afternoon.  Torture!!  Being a vampire on the West Coast makes you DOUBLE behind!

Thankfully, things have changed a lot recently.  For a while I had the closest thing to a 9-5 job that I would let happen, and it was kind of strange.  My love of grocery shopping was quickly eliminated by the insane amount of people who all did their shopping on Saturday mornings.  I never went to the mall because on the weekends you have to park SO far away and the racks are just a freaking mess.  And I was on the exact opposite schedule from a lot of my friends and, worst of all, of Brad.  I never saw anyone unless I went to their restaurant to eat.

That obviously wasn’t the only reason I left the job, but now I’m back to my night-crawling, drink slinging ways.  Except I make myself get up at a reasonable hour (for a bartender, I think 10 is a very reasonable hour) and see a good amount of sunlight before heading into the dark bar.

Because even vampires in California have to be tan and blonde.  Duh.

West Coast

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Last night I took this picture before getting dinner at Brads old restaurant, Bar Pintxo…

Making Baseball Better

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In my fifth grade memory book, I wrote that in twenty years I would be as good at basketball as Joe Smith and as good at baseball as Cal Ripken Jr.

Well I guess I still have 4 years…

I was a baseball nut when I was a kid.  My next door neighbors had season tickets to the Orioles games and we would go to a few games every season.  I had a strict uniform for all games.  An Orioles jersey (about 18 times too big), a baseball glove (in case a foul ball came our way), and a book about Cal Ripken, Jr (for autographs).  And nearly every game I would either spill Hawiian punch or ketchup on my white jersey.  My mother is a laundry genius.

I used to make my family stay after as many games as I could get them to agree to and we would wait for the players to leave so I could hopefully get an autograph.  I wanted Cal’s or Brady Anderson’s, but the only signature I ever got was from Doug Jones.  Remember him?  I don’t really either.  I just remember being so disappointed that I got Doug Jones’ autograph.  Wasn’t he the worst closer ever or something?

I actually met Cal Ripken, Jr once.  It was Mother’s Day and players were at all of the gates welcoming Mothers to the game with carnations.  We just happened to go to the main gate that day and there he was, all dressed for the game and ready to go.  I approached him like I imagine I’d approach a god of some kind.  Everything else went blurry.  I forgot how to talk.  He was SO tall!  He saw the Cal Ripken book in my hand and made a joke about me reading during the game.  I didn’t even think to hand it over to him, and then he turned to my little sister Nicki.

“And how old are you?  4?” (or something like that, I was still in lala land)

Um, Nicki was not 4, she was 6.  And she was mad at Cal Ripken for the rest of the night because he dared to think she was 4 years old!  I, however, was mad at myself for the rest of the night.  All of those times waiting out front after the games and my autograph opportunity was pretty much handed to me – and I still had a blank book?  Really?!?

Anyway.  A lot has changed since then.  I have a lot of fantastic Orioles memories and I still consider myself a fan, but they are just not fun to watch anymore.  And because life gets really busy after 5th grade, I’ve started paying attention to baseball less and less.

But last Friday, with Nicki in town, we wanted to do something very L.A.  I looked through all of my touristy books and did a few Google searches, but we were kind of hungover and didn’t really want to exert a lot of energy into anything.

And then I thought of the Dodgers.  Another team that’s really not doing so hot right now, therefore tickets are easy to come by.  We went online for tickets and then headed downtown to check this stadium out.

Best idea ever.

Turns out, 45 years ago this weekend was the Beatles 2nd to last show ever, and it just happened to be at Dodger field.  The entire night was Beatles themed.  And oh, have you met my family?  We are Beatle-maniacs.  We play Beatles RockBand together and involve Beatles music in our weddings and know every word to every song.  We converted Brad when I started dating him, and now he’s come over to the dark side.  Him and a few friends back in Ithaca called themselves “The Yokos” and had listening nights for the re-mastered albums when they came out.  Oh yea, he’s one of us now.

So everything was Beatles all night long.  The font all around the stadium was Beatles font.  The organist played Beatles songs throughout the game.  There were videos of the concert and interviews from people who were there.  Did you know the Hell’s Angels rescued the Beatles that night from the swarms of fans?  Thanks, Dodger Stadium, for your Beatles trivia.

We realized early on that we hadn’t heard of a single player on either team, but the Beatles made it all better.  We ate a Dodger dog and did all the baseball game stuff you have to do (even got frozen yogurt in a Dodger helmet).  A foul ball even came within a few rows of us.  But we were mostly just waiting for the little Beatles moments.  And we were mostly waiting for the after-game.

Beatles Fireworks.

So the Dodgers won.  It was a great and exciting 7th inning, blah, blah, blah…  But once the game ended, the real show began.  And what’s even better than Beatles fireworks?  How about Dodger stadium letting everyone and anyone onto the outfield to sit and watch the show??  Seriously.  Please come down to trample and sit on our perfectly manicured grass.

Don’t mind if I do.

It was the coolest thing I’ve done in L.A. so far.  We sat on the left field grass in the darkened stadium and watched fireworks to a Beatles playlist.  Little kids, grandparents, and every age in between knew all the words and turned it into a huge sing-a-long.  My mom did make the point later that they should have included the song “Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds”, but other than that obvious omission, it was perfection.

Here’s the finale to “All You Need Is Love”.  You know, if your nostalgic for the 4th of July or something…

Baseball is still great, but the Beatles make everything better.

Oh, and mom?  I spilled frozen yogurt on my white shirt.  Had to keep the tradition alive…

Bmore vs. Malibu

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I have discovered in the past week that I am more of a gangster than I give myself credit for.

Hear me out, Cali friends.

I was driving to my business meeting yesterday in my cargo pants and flip-flops – pretty Cali of me – down the PCH with my windows down.  The ocean was to my left, mountains to my right, and a little bit of a fog hung on to the blue sky you could see peeking out every now and then.  And as the salty wind whipped through my blonde California hair, “Watch the Throne” was bumping on my stereo.  I am hooked on Kanye and Jay-Z’s new album.  It’s smart, it’s powerful, and I bet it was just a whole lot of fun for those two to get together for an entire album.  I’m a music chick, I think about the recording process…

But driving through Malibu yesterday, I realized this was not the ideal soundtrack for this occasion.

On the East Coast, back in Ocean City or even up into Rehoboth, this would have been perfectly acceptable.  I never would have thought twice about it.  I bet if you were in OCMD this weekend you heard it blasting from most of the cars driving up Rt 1, stuck at red lights.

But something about the songs with those heavy beats and dark lyrics about all the murder in the world, fathers leaving sons and past lives as a dope dealer… It just seems a little out of place in Malibu.

It’s the same way that out here in Santa Monica I’ve had to read the Washington Post to get any real updates and information on what is going on with our government right now.  Sure, the LA Times covers it.  And some of their articles are very well written on the topic.  But as soon as Lindsay Lohan breaks a nail, the budget ceiling is bumped down to a tiny headline in the newsfeed.  I call home sometimes and my family talks about the pending government shut-downs like we talk about Carmageddon.  I mean, the government shut-down could have probably been like DC’s 405 being closed on a weekday.

People here get angry when Obama comes to town.  And its not about political parties or budget reform.  It’s about rush hour traffic and street closures.  We are 3000 miles from DC and Angeleno’s like to keep it that way.  We have an entertainment industry to run.  Keep the traffic moving.

I just looked to see if I was being outrageously cynical, and the big story on the LA Times website right now is about a man who has 19 naked David statues (think Michelangelo).  Apparently, he is selling his house and his 19 statues because they have overshadowed his singing career.

Really.

So anyway, I didn’t turn down the WTT as I was driving.  I let my senses get confused.  I thought about what music those groups of surfers listened to as they cruised here this morning.  I thought about all of the differenet genres of music I have on my iPod right now.  I thought about the Dead Weather creepy rock show Brad and I went to a couple of months ago and then the Ellie Goulding British pop we just saw last week with Deva.  I bet sometimes those Malibu surfers like a little Kanye and Jay-Z, also.  I mean, “Watch the Throne” broke the record for most first week sales on iTunes this past week.  Somebody’s buying it.

But Katy Perry just seems a little more Malibu to me.  Or MGMT.  Or just anything upbeat and breezy.  But maybe that’s the prejudice of the East Coast in me.

I decided, so what?  I’m a little Bmore gangster.  I’m also a little pop, a lot of dance, a bit of indy, a little bit rock and roll, a tad musical theatre, a bit of jazz, a little bit West Coast and a whole lot of East Coast all rolled into one.  And I will give my new West Coaster’s view of Malibu whatever soundtrack I’m feeling that day.