Before I left for Paris, I lived a few blocks away from Huckleberry. Somehow, though, I failed to visit until just before I moved away. I’ve been trying to make up for my negligence by visiting nearly every weekend since being back, getting runny fried egg and gruyère sandwiches or duck hash, and trying to save enough room to have a piece of rich salted caramel shortbread for dessert.

It’s a deservedly popular spot, and doesn’t take reservations, so be conscious of the wait if you’d like to eat in. Or, you can be like me and go at an off-time like 2pm. Or! You can get everything to-go and drive the mile or so to the beach and consume your comestibles while wiggling your toes in the sand.

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Posted in: dining out, los angeles, Uncategorized | Tags: bakery, breakfast, brunch, cafe, coffee, food, healthy, huckleberry, latte art, los angeles, lunch, organic, photography, restaurant, santa monica, santa monica brunch, santa monica restauarant | 3 COMMENTS

So, Animal. Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s dude-food, nose-to-tail, pig-centric restaurant on Fairfax.  With those hyphenated adjectives, was there any doubt I would love this place?

I just want bone marrow to be on all menus forever. Also fried pig’s ear. I suppose Animal’s popularity — and therefore its influence — is helping push that dream closer to reality territory.

Also? Animal is one of the places where I regret California’s foie gras ban the most. Short rib poutine is divine, if unpicturesque, but damn would it be spectacular with some seared goose liver under all that gravy.

Animal
435 N Fairfax Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 782-9225

Music to eat by: Them Shoes [Patrick Sweany // Every Hour Is A Dollar Gone]

Posted in: dining out, los angeles, Uncategorized | Tags: animal, animal los angeles, animal restaurant, bone marrow, food, los angeles, photography, poutine, restaurant, short rib poutine | 2 COMMENTS

I have a deep and abiding love for brunch. I know from reading Anthony Bourdain that cooks hate working weekend brunch, and that most of it is derivative, overpriced slop, often cobbled together from whatever’s left over from the week’s dinners. I know all that, and yet, I can’t get enough of the soft light and copious coffee and bloody marys. And hopefully, if I’ve done my research, I find a place like The Tasting Kitchen that takes brunch as seriously as I do.

Three different kinds of bloody marys, people. You have the option of having your waffles (which are paired with ridiculously most, flavorful, crunchy fried chicken) stuffed with bacon.

I went with my buddy A of party bus fame and ordered enough food for four people. And then he ordered half a grapefruit. Unironically.

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Posted in: dining out, los angeles | Tags: abbot kinney, bloody mary, brunch, california, coffee, food photography, los angeles, los angeles brunch, photography, sunday brunch, the tasting kitchen, the tasting kitchen venice, venice, venice brunch, weekend brunch | 3 COMMENTS

A bunch of colleagues and I were two bars in on an after work bar crawl when we ran into/onto this new place. We had been aiming for a casino simular to casinos in alabama At EasyMobileCasino but the address we went to was incorrect. Fortuitously we veered a little to the right and landed in Honeycut.

Honeycut is the kind of bar that I find myself in more and more these days: dark, vaguely speakeasy-ish spaces with intricate, ambitious craft cocktail programs (blah blah homemade bitters blah handcrafted sodas something something) and a little something extra  going on on the side (in this case, a disco with a Saturday Night Fever light-up floor).

I’ve been back a couple of time since, both with colleagues and with friends, and have never had a bad time. I like a bar that equally pleases lawyers in suits sporting expense accounts and vagabondish twenty-somethings in torn jeans and flip-flops.

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Posted in: dining out, los angeles | Tags: bar downtown la, california, cocktail bar, cocktail photography, downtown, drinks, honeycut, honeycut los angeles, los angeles, los angeles bar, photography | 2 COMMENTS