If you’re ever prone to wondering — and I suspect you are — why it is that you’re living in a traffic-choked, overpopulated metropolis that’s twice as expensive as say, Phoenix, Andiamo in Silver Lake might help you answer that question, if only for a night.
Truly, there are few cities in the United States where a local pizza place offers fresh mozzarella, homemade sweet Italian sausage, locally grown tomatoes and fresh pasta. Andiamo – Italian for “let’s go” – is the creation of husband-and-wife team Billy Basha and Megan Dillon and Chef Anthony Spinella who, according to the blurb on the menu, want to make a “green restaurant movement, which is good, clean and fair.”
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Allegations of performance-enhancing drug use have stained professional baseball in the last few years. But using drugs to get an edge is nothing new to the sport. Many players routinely took amphetamines before games. Joe DiMaggio was rumored to have drank 10 cups of coffee before suiting up. Today we’re going to hear from one of the more eccentric icons of baseball: Dock Ellis. Pitching primarily for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1970s, Ellis was an unusual player, an intimidating, cerebral presence on the field.
He once won 13 games in a row. And he led the 1971 Pirates to a World Series title. But Ellis, now 63, might just be remembered for one of the strangest accomplishments in the history of sports.
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No, an Irish meal does not consist of a pint of Guinness followed by one another. Not even on St. Patrick’s Day. Always warm and heart, Irish cuisine, including breakfast, will leave you full. And probably thirsty.
O’Brien’s Pub and Restaurant
This Santa Monica favorite will open at 6 a.m. to get the people their poached eggs, Irish toast and Irish bacon.
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The steak might be tender, the veggies perfecty fresh, your date a true charmer, but if the lighting is off, none of that really matters. Some perfectly illuminated spots.
Canele
Orange light bounces off dark wood tables and blankets this entire Atwater Village restaurant in warmth.
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Opening a second restaurant is like having another baby: Some agonize over it and others are set on a large brood.
Jonathan Chu knew Buddha’s Belly — his afforable pan-Asain joint on Beverly — had to spawn, but it took two years before he found thr right location: 2nd Street in Santa Monica.
“It’s like yoga row right up the street,” Chu says, pointing out the mat-totting lovelies who wear a path to and from power yoga every hour.
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It takes some cheek to open an organic café with a full vegetarian menu, and also offer “Bunny Bits” – a small plate of deep-fried rabbit. It also takes cheek to offer “small plates for sharing,” with dishes reaching $29 a pop.
Indeed, all of owner and chef Fred Eric’s cheek (Vida, Airstream Diner, Fred 62) is on display with his new dinner menu at Downtown L.A.’s Tiara Café: Pan-seared “Tongues of Fire” bean cake; Alaskan king crab “Freshwich”; a white “Pizzette,” with or without chorizo. The menu revels in unusual and esoteric tastes, up to and including the aforementioned rabbit, served with fried green tomatoes.
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It’s hard to keep count of the lawsuits piling up against cheap chic retailer Forever 21. The cases numbered more than 20 in October, when menswear label Trovata joined Anna Sui, Harajuku Lovers – Gwen Stefani’s line – and Diane von Furstenberg Studio in filing an intellectual property suit against the Downtown Los Angeles company. Forever 21, they claim, stole their prints, logos, patterns, favorite colors and lunch money to boot. OK, not the lunch money. Forever 21 then sells the knock-offs at prices so low, they befuddle even the most thrifty chain store shopper.
Some of the arguments are pretty convincing. The yellow, printed von Furstenberg smock dress, an item in question under the Manhattan-based clothier’s lawsuit, looks identical to the one sold for less than a tenth of the price at Forever 21. Less convincing is that Anthropologie and Bebe, who themselves copy high-end designers as a matter of course, also have lawsuits pending against the chain.
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It surprises my friends, who know me as an avid cook, when I tell them that prior to my mid-twenties I never cooked; I heated. My meals were made up of unholy quantities of canned, packaged and preserved “stuff.” But after moving to Paris for a spell at 26, I had an awakening. I tasted actual food: real, fresh, flavorful and simple food. It was neither packaged nor trucked-in from distant parts. I found succulent produce, creamy dairy, choice cuts of meat and fish, not at a fancy organic food store, but fairly cheaply at any corner grocery or, better yet, at the daily markets.
Besides turning me into a gourmand – that’s French for can’t-stop-eating – all these delicious ingredients took away my fear of cooking. Starting out with vine-ripened tomatoes, curiously flavorful cheese, warm, fresh, baked bread and just-picked herbs, I’d have to make a lot of wrong turns to end up with a bad meal.
Dinner at Atwater Village’s Canelé operates on this same principle. Chef and co-owner Corina Weibel serves dishes made from produce she buys at local farmers’ markets that day or a day before. Her meats come only from trusted ranchers and fishmongers. That uncompromising taste is evident. The simple mixed-green salad teems with subtle flavors. The peach cobbler bursts with fruit, but is plenty sweet and rich. The heirloom tomatoes are at peak ripeness.
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Most toil in the outskirts’ soil. Then, they come here, to the land of smog, traffic and Type-A organic shoppers to sell their wares.
We couldn’t help but wonder about the vendors at our Certified Farmers’ Markets. For most, the markets in Los Angeles provide 100 percent of their income. And in the hours not spent selling — or driving to and from selling — they battle weather, disease and pests in order to farm. Also, there are musicians, whom everyone just loves.
The work exhausts them, but these aggies and artists wouldn’t have it any other way. They love their farms, crafts, and most of all, their independence.
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A fall breeze wafted through the olive trees at 8475 Melrose Place. A small assemblage of diners sipped champagne in the front garden. The summer heat was three days over, and the restaurant Bastide four days open.
This Melrose house-turned-restaurant has been empty for well over a year while owner Joe Pytka figured out how he would reinvent Los Angeles’ only four-star restaurant. What was once French to the point of defiance – even a California wine was too juvenile – is now an internationalists’ delight. New chef Walter Manzke presents a superb menu, with both playful avant garde dishes and sturdy French classics.
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