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As some of you have noticed, about once a year, I write about some extravagant dining experience. Well, it’s that time again. Once upon a time, I went to Melisse and did the carte blanche, which basically means the chef chooses what will be served. I recalled that there were about 9 wonderful courses. Things have changed. Last night, I found out the carte blanche ($210 per person) is a 13-course meal (not counting extras). Now usually, I do a detailed recap of what I had during a given meal, but seeing how there was so much food last night, I will just list each course here:

1) red grapes covered with goat cheese and crushed pistachio; 2) amuse bouche - sturgeon with black truffles and celery root; 3) orange gelee topped with fennel flan and vanilla essence; 4) butternut squash soup with almond butter, brioche croutons, chives puree, and crispy sage; 5) egg with cauliflower creme and caviar; 6) truffled egg; 7) duck liver served 3 ways; 8) lobster thermidor and lobster bolognese pasta; 9) truffle covered sole with gnocchi and mushrooms; 10) duck; 11) pork served 3 ways; 12) cheese plate; 13) vanilla bean yogurt with strawberry sorbet; 14) passionfruit parfait with coconut ice cream and coconut wafer, served with lemongrass broth and tapioca; 15) chocolate dessert sampler.

I can’t say I was in love with every single thing I had last night, but everything was overall beyond good. Perhaps my favorite last night was the truffled egg ($115), which was actually an additional order, not part of the carte blanche. This was a plate of melting organic egg with truffle sauce and truffle foam. After arriving on the table, the servers shave white truffle over the whole thing. We were also given a half slice of toast that is used to break the yolk and sop up all the egg, truffles, and truffle sauce. Every bite was absolutely delectable. Part of the enjoyment though was also realizing that I was at one of the top restaurants in Los Angeles, using my fingers to break off pieces of bread and shamelessly swirling it in a plate so soak up as much yolk and truffles as I could, behavior that Ms. Etiquette would surely frown upon.

I’m a little torn about which of the actual carte blanche was my favorite. If I am really pressed to pick, it is a toss up between the foie gras and the lobster thermidor. The foie gras was part of the duck liver trio. It was cooked just so perfectly and placed on top of a piece of gingerbread. The two together was an interesting pairing that worked surprisingly well, though the gingerbread proved to be a bit too overpowering. After the first bite, I realized this and ate the foie gras with just a bit of the gingerbread crumbs instead, which worked much better. Also on the plate were pate over toast with persimmon, seared duck liver served with toast and apple, and lemon ginger sorbet in shot glass.

The lobster thermidor actually was served simultaneously with the lobster bolognese pasta. The latter was good, but the lobster thermidor was just so much more flavorful. It is served with some creamed spinach (that can be found on the bottom of the dish) and a Dijon glaze, that really had more of a custard texture. I enjoyed a couple big bites of the lobster before blending it with everything else in the dish. Once I did so, I felt that the lobster flavor became more present throughout the dish. After I finished picking out every bite with my fork, I took a page from my earlier lesson with the truffled egg, and I ripped off a piece of brioche on my bread plate and sopped up the left over Dijon-spinach-lobster blend.

The entire dinner took over 4 hours. While I enjoyed this experience, I really probably could have stopped eating after the truffled egg. I love food and eating, but this was probably the first time in my life I wished the food would come to an end. Everyone at my table was beyond stuffed by the end of the night. I don’t think my stomach has recovered yet. It had taken about 21 hours since that dinner ended before I could even eat anything today. Still, last night was a fun excursion for my taste buds.

Now for all the non-food related comments. The service was quite good, which is expected from a restaurant like Melisse. The ambiance was pleasant. On a very silly note, one of the things I always tell people who had never dined at Melisse is how the restaurant has purse stools, so that we ladies do not have to set our purses on the floor and let it hang awkwardly on a chair. I always thought this would take off in other restaurants, but I have yet to see that happen. Fortunately, Melisse did keep this old tradition going. Needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway, I would not recommend dining at Melisse on a regular basis unless you can afford it. The cost of last night’s dinner is yet another reason (and quite honestly the primary reason) why this will probably be my last fine dining experience for years to come. (This also means that this is the end of my annual fine dining posts.) Nevertheless, I would recommend dining at Melisse and going carte blanche at least once if you can swing it.

Melisse
1104 Wilshire Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 395-0881
Tuesday-Thursday: 6:00 PM - 9:30 PM
Friday: 6:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Saturday: 5:45 PM - 10:00 PM

By Pauline (see more of her posts).

It’s easy to miss this hole-in-the-wall restaurant with its generic name and bland red awning, but Shanghai Xiao Chi serves up tasty Shanghai dishes on par with that of better known Shanghai restaurants such as Mei Long Village.

We started off with a traditional Shanghai appetizer called kao fu. The kao fu was soft, chewy, salty and sweet. It was a bit on the sweet side for me, but its sweetness reminded me of the type of kao fu I used to eat in Shanghai. Sometimes it’ll come with some wood-ear mushroom and lotus root, but this version at the restaurant was mostly wheat gluten and light on peanuts and pieces of mushroom.
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Louise absolutely LOVES filthy, cheap places! (See more of her posts). You can also find more of Louise's writing at her own website NakedSushi.

Earlier this year – actually, during summer – I made my way down to Santa Monica to try a restaurant that I’d heard rave reports about. A young, new chef, Evan Funke, had just taken over the kitchen at Rustic Canyon Wine Bar. Word on the street was that he had studied pasta making in Italy. Plus, Rustic Canyon’s primary ethos is to use fresh, local produce. They even declare on their menu that “All of our food comes from growers and suppliers practicing sustainable agriculture and is handled and prepared with love.”

Perfect!

Well, after our very first small course I was swooning. What kind of creative culinary genius pairs two of the most luscious things on the planet – soft, ripe and sweet nectarine chunks with creamy, dreamy burrata – and dresses it with a mild, unfermented version of balsamic vinegar known as saba? Wow!

We took a flight of SMALL PLATES, that included:

Postage-stamp sized Sweet Corn Agnolotti was served with caramelized corn in a light and creamy sauce. This dish was outstanding and extremely memorable. Sadly, this sweet item was not on the menu the next time we visited, several months later. BUT according to their online menu, this delectable dish is currently available.

One small course was a delightfully golden, single Scallop served beneath a large, crimped raviolo that housed more slices of scallop as well as a vibrantly golden, runny egg yolk that burst forth when I punctured the elegant square of pasta. So cool.

Another favourite was the Crispy Stuffed Squash Blossoms, all golden and oozing with warm chevre ricotta. These were comparable to those on offer at Pizzeria Mozza.

We just loved the Roasted Baby Beet salad;

paper-thin shavings of pretty, variegated beets are beautifully offset by fresh sorrel leaves and a piquant mustard seed dressing.

These last two dishes are on the current menu.

So, although they are a seasonal kitchen, certain dishes (or versions of them) are available virtually all year round:

MAINS include:
Pan Roasted ‘Jidori’ Chicken
Slow roasted ‘Grimaud Farms’ Duck breast with cherries, celery-fennel puree and wild morels.
Apparently a house favorite is the Niman Ranch Cast Iron Burger served with crispy onion rings, point reyes blue cheese, wild arugula and hand cut french fries.

SIDE NOTE:
This restaurant has a fascinating story behind its origin. Read the rest of this entry »

By MaxMillion (see more of her posts). Max Million is the nom de 'net of Pauline Adamek. Born in Sydney, Australia, Pauline has lived in Los Angeles for the past thirteen years and finds it agrees with her. She has been reviewing films and filing celebrity-based interview articles since 1991, and has filed stories from various international film festivals, including Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance. She completed a family cookbook and has also written novels for 8-12 year olds. She is the creator and host of ArtsBeatLA.

We have a special place in our hearts for The Oinkster, Andre Guerrero’s masterpiece of “slow fast food” on trendy Colorado Blvd. in Eagle Rock (and one of Jonathan Gold’s 99 Essential LA restaurants in 2008).

Part of this is Pinoy Pride: as the celebrated owner and chef of Max, Senor Fred, and Oinkster, Guerrero is one of the highest-profile Filipinos in town.

Another part is nostalgia: we celebrated our first “dating” anniversary at Max. We can still taste the magnificent miso-marinated black cod and ritzed-up lumpia shanghai (which, sadly, has been taken off the menu!).

Mainly, though, we love Oinkster because it’sso damn good.

In fact, it’s near the top of our To-Do list whenever we have meat-eating guests in town, which is how we ended up there with Chris’s Dad a few weeks ago. From the look on his face, it didn’t disappoint!

The Ultimate Pastrami

With Oinkster, Guerrero puts a gourmet spin on the classic roadside burger stand. You can see it in the details: the red-roof A-frame and bulb-rimmed signage boasting burgers, pastrami, and rotisserie chicken is revamped with red leather lounge seating flanking flat-screen TVs. Composite floors lead out to a spacious patio ringed by close-packed bamboo.

Like Bruce Wayne training with Ra’s Al Ghul in order to become Batman, Guerrero apprenticed himself to Norm Langer, L.A.’s top deli man, in order to come up with the perfect pastrami recipe. The result? Mouth-watering mounds of meat that Guerrero cures himself in-house for two weeks. He smokes it with applewood and rubs it with spices, then heaps it generously onto French rolls, slathering it with Gruyere cheese, caramelized onions, and red cabbage slaw.

Guerrero backs up this Abrams tank of a sandwich with an infantry of Belgian fries. They’re twice-fried, meaning you get them hot, with a firm, crisp bite on the outside and a light, fluffy reward on the inside.

Dip these suckers in homemade ketchup (plain or chipotle) or the garlic aioli, which fellow Filipino blogger Burnt Lumpia described as “containing the souls of a million garlic cloves.” We also like dipping the fries in Guerrero’s Carolina-style barbecue sauce which, true to it’s name, is vinegary and sweet, though it’s no Bone-Suckin’ Sauce.

Forget about the chili fries: the chili is thin and relatively flavorless. We say keep the fries plain and indulge yourself in the ketchups and sauces instead.

This time around, Yuri tried out the burger, which gives Pie ‘n Burger a run for its money. Weighing in at 1/3 lbs. of Nebraska Angus and doused with Oinkster’s house-made Thousand Island, this burger’s only drawback is that all that goodness soaks the bun fast: we had to finish it off with a fork and knife!

Next time, we want to try the pulled pork sandwich. According to the menu, it’s “brined with soy and honey, then slowly roasted and smoked,” and finally topped off with that Carolina barbecue sauce. Even copying and pasting that text makes us salivate.

Shake Your Ube

If you can swing it, Oinkster’s ube (OOH-bay) shake delivers a knockout punch.

We’d been meaning to try it — after all, this is the one menu item that gives Oinkster some Filipino flash! — but are usually flattened by the sandwiches and fries. This time, though, we saved room.

What is ube? It’s the purple yam that gives Filipino baked goods like <i>hopia</i> a violet hue and buttery flavor. Oinkster’s shake features Fosselman’s ice cream, fusing ’50s malt shops with Pacific Island palates. (We thought there was a hint of coconut milk in there too).

After a greasy meal of savory standbys, the ube shake is mind-numbingly good. Instead of beating you over the head with sweetness, this shake is rich, buttery, refreshing, and complex.

By Chris and Yuri (see more of their posts). You can find more of Chris and Yuri's writing at their own website MIXED WELL.

I had a thought the other day. Let’s assume that the economy gets bad. I mean really bad. So bad that many of your local specialty food providers went out of business. I really, really hope that this isn’t the case.

Again, let’s assume that it does get that bad. What would you stockpile? What would you spend your precious dollars on to make sure that you would have them in the future?

For instance, I might fill a freezer in my garage with Peppermint Stick and Pistachio ice cream from Bennett’s.

I might create an airtight shed of Groundwork Coffee, along with some extra filters for my Chemex.

How could I help to keep these kind of local gems in business? By visiting them of course. Maybe not spending as much as I used to, or making sure that I buy coffee that I know I am going to use in time not to throw it out.

Where do you hope to still be patron in the next year or two? If something does go awry, what would you stockpile?

By Jonah (see more of his posts). Jonah is the founder of la.foodblogging and also created Digesty, a food blog aggregator and Cheww.com, a spam free foodblog search engine.

Fulfilled is a brand new venue offering a completely unique treat, dubbed by owner Susumu Tsuchihashi as “Ima.” The Beverly Hills-based shopfront is an exquisite little jewel-box of a café, where they offer a traditional Japanese delicacy known as imagawa-yaki but with a twist!!

This pocket-like Japanese dessert is often found at festivals and other places that one might, say, in the States, find funnel cakes. Traditionally, imagawa-yaki are made from a pancake-like batter that is cooked in a special pan (similar to a waffle iron but minus the honeycomb pattern), and filled with sweet Azuki bean paste.

History:
As far back as the late 1700s, Imagawa-yaki began to be sold near the Kanda Imagawabashi bridge, hence the name [the “yaki” suffix means fried].

Anyway, the batter is prepared and cooked on a cast aluminum grill with the paste filling sandwiched and then cooked within. But here in LA, the bold and inventive Susumu Tsuchihashi has developed the treat to include a nice variety of different fillings and flavours from all over the globe.

The traditional ‘Ima,’ called Sweet Geisha and filled with azuki bean, goes for $1.75, while all the other, more complicated flavours sell for $2.75.

The Honey Yakuza contains goat’s cheese, mission fig, honey, walnut and cracked pepper. I wanted to like this one but felt it definitely needed more balance to its ingredients; the walnut overpowered all the other flavour components.

Others on the menu with cute and catchy names include sweet ones such as Harajuku Monkey (banana and Nutella) — this one was my favourite — and Karoke Kitty (Strawberry, cream cheese and Ghirandelli white chocolate) or savory ones such as Sumo Italiano (Prosciutto di Parma, aged parmesan and fresh basil) and Spicy Samurai (chicken apple sausage, pepper jack cheese, green chili and fresh cilantro).

Verdict:
I’m glad I sampled these pancake-like treats, but to be perfectly honest I found them to be fairly stodgy and a bit on the heavy side…

I first heard about Fulfilled over at EaterLA, so check out their recent postings: one & two.

Fulfilled
9045 S. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills, between Canon and Beverly Drives
(310) 860 0776
Open daily 10.30am – 7pm
Free two hour parking is available across the street, with entrances on Canon and Beverly Drives.

By MaxMillion (see more of her posts). Max Million is the nom de 'net of Pauline Adamek. Born in Sydney, Australia, Pauline has lived in Los Angeles for the past thirteen years and finds it agrees with her. She has been reviewing films and filing celebrity-based interview articles since 1991, and has filed stories from various international film festivals, including Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance. She completed a family cookbook and has also written novels for 8-12 year olds. She is the creator and host of ArtsBeatLA.

Tipped off by FoodEater’s post about Doomie’s Home Cookin, the BF and I braved LA traffic this afternoon to drive to Chinatown for lunch. Doomie’s Home Cookin’ is located upstairs in a bar called Roberto’s Club. You can either eat outside on the patio, or inside in the bar.

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Louise absolutely LOVES filthy, cheap places! (See more of her posts). You can also find more of Louise's writing at her own website NakedSushi.

Note: My apologies, readers, for the tardiness of this post. This entry was actually 80% finished, but I went out of town and had (gasp) no email/internet access for days, so it was left incomplete, until now. The tapas tasting event at Bar Celona that I attended was actually a week ago, but I decided to not change the time frame of when the article was written, so you know that the following were my thoughts right after the event.

I am relatively familiar with Old Town Pasadena. Restaurants open and close all the time along Colorado Boulevard, but I’m not sure how many of them successfully reopen after a major revamp. I do think the odds are in favor of Bar Celona. This Spanish-styled restaurant has reopened with a brand new menu. Chef Josef Centeno has been consulting for Bar Celona for the past month and created some new items that will surely be a hit. Last night, I was invited to sample some selections from the new menu. Here are some of what I sampled:

Drinks
First up was the featured specialty drink, Montresor & Fortunato. This is one of the drinks that is currently a candidate for favorite Grand Marnier cocktail for the Travel & Leisure’s Beverage Arts Challenge. This drink is basically a mix of sherry, vermouth, and of course, grand marnier. I think the drink by itself was just okay at best. It was too sweet, somewhat reminiscent of caramel, for my taste. What I liked was how this sweetness contrasted the saltiness of the 3 olives that the drink was served with. I also tried the sangrias ($8). Personally, I preferred the white sangria. This was interesting to me because most of the white sangrias I have tasted in the past were citrus heavy. I believe Bar Celona’s white sangria used more apples. The white sangria is still very sweet. In fact, a guy next to me tried the white sangria and had it sent back for a red instead for that very reason.

Tapas Menu
For the most part, everything was good. There were just a few items that I felt really stood out. My favorite of the entire night was the citrus grilled shrimp. The shrimp retained the slight crispness on the outside without tasting charred. The inside of the shrimp was very tender. I know based on this description, the shrimp doesn’t really seem special or unique, but my taste buds were entranced anyway. The other one I liked a lot was the whipped salt cod. This was an elegant concept with a homestyle comfort. Basically, it tastes a little like a croquette, but not as fine, which I actually preferred because I wanted to know I was actually eating fish. I liked how the whipped salt cod was topped with pomegranate, creating a contrast in both texture and taste. I am also biased towards pomegranate. I think it is the key to this dish. Without it, the whipped salt cod would probably be less sophisticated.

So now that I’ve shared the positives, it’s time for the negatives. While I enjoyed most of what I sampled last night, I do think Bar Celona leans a little more towards the expensive side. For instance, the grilled shrimp is $8 and the whipped salt cod is $9. Earlier in the night, there was this one blond server who kept passing me by without ever offering me any of the food. She was the only server who did this to me - REPEATEDLY! Everyone else was friendly and courteous. At one point she even made eye contact with me and walked with the tray of sample chicken empanadas right by me and offered it to the party next to me. Those people were a great bunch and laughed with me and my guest about how ridiculous that was. They then gave us the chicken empanadas they actually ordered, which was $8. These were a little larger than the sample ones that were given out as samples, and they were served with a romesco sauce (red pepper and hazelnut sauce) instead of garlic aioli like in the samples. Now even though they were (a smidge) larger than the sample ones, there were only 2 empanadas given per order. I imagine the rest of the tapas items are also going to be similar, including the grilled shrimp and whipped salt cod. I think there are many other restaurants on Colorado Boulevard that are overpriced, and Bar Celona is very close to entering that area, but the restaurant has not crossed that line yet. I can not really recommend Bar Celona as a restaurant, but I do support them as a bar. Hanging out there, meeting new people, and enjoying one of their specialty cocktails and ordering a couple small plates items. Beyond that, it’s at the risk of your own wallet.

Bar Celona
46 E. Colorado Blvd.,
Pasadena, CA 91105
626-405-1000

By Pauline (see more of her posts).