‘Cheese’
While the Century City food court is always a winner, there is another restaurant within that mall that has been intriguing me for a while. It’s called Obika and calls itself a mozzarella bar. While I love me some mozzarella, I think I’ve stayed away simply because I didn’t think mozzarella alone was cheese enough to sustain a bar. But now that Obika has been around for a while, it has proven its staying power and I knew it was worth checking out.
Not too long ago (at least it feels that way), a new ramen place popped up in Culver City calling itself Ramen Yamadaya. It was around this time that I had been totally spoiled by the ramen of Tsujita, and while Yamadaya looked good, I wasn’t exactly in a rush to get there. This was a mistake, though, because when I finally got there, I had a feeling that this was going to be my go-to ramen joint.
Some people just can’t be satisfied until they have made everyone else unhappy. Neal Barnard is one of these people. Not only is he an advocate of the vegan (malnourishment) diet, he has now taken his attack upon humanity to the billboards.
In an all out attack on cheese, Barnard and his Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine have unleashed a couple of billboards purporting to show the “negative” affects of cheese.
On another fantastic trip to Disneyland, this one filled with wheelchairs and electric scooters from scooter sleuth rather than roller coasters, we ended up at Cafe Orleans for lunch. More upscale than your average Disneyland restaurant, Cafe Orleans is located in the heart of New Orleans Square, not far from Pirates of the Caribbean. Serving up French-influenced food, they had a good-looking menu with a couple unvegan options.
Taking advantage of a special from Living Social, the girlfriend and I headed to Cobras & Matadors in Mid-City for a bit of a date night. The place specializes in tapas and is BYO with a slight corkage fee. We forgot the booze, so had to make up for it in food instead. The deal was for 70 bucks worth, so that meant we had a lot of tapas to eat. As usual, I eyed cheeses and meats, and was happy to be eating small plates because so much looked good.
Where the mac and cheese balls from World Fare were my appetizer at the Silver Lake Jubilee, I still needed to find myself a main course. After a long stroll around the trucks, I found myself at a truck that I had never seen before, called Lee’s Philly. Lee’s Philly is born of the same vein as many of the Kogi-style food trucks. Their specialty is gogi beef, but while they have fused it with tacos and burritos, they have also created a Philly cheese steak out of the stuff. Wording on their truck claims that they have “LA’s Best Gogi,” but I took it upon myself to be the true judge of that.
For the birthday of a special someone in my life, we headed to little French restaurant called AOC. You may be wondering what AOC stands for, and so did we. Apparently it is not some made-up acronym, but actually is the French version of the FDA, which makes it far more pretentious and Frenchier. We had a reservation and were seated immediately, as I would expect from the French. Our waitress, who had an indistinguishable accent that most certainly was not French, brought us our menus so we could figure out some foodstuffs.
For a nice little Sunday brunch, the girlfriend and I headed over to Nick’s Coffee Shop at Pico-Robertson. Coffee shop is kind of a misnomer for this place, since it’s really more of a diner in the S & W vein. The place is pretty small, so there was a bit of a wait, which wasn’t a big deal on the sunny morning. By the time we took our seats, I was hankering for some food. I perused the extensive menu and found an omelet that looked pretty good to me. It was called the Cactus Omelet and the menu described it as being packed with nutrients. This was confusing, but then I saw that the ingredients included Hebrew National Salami and Jack Cheese. It came with a side, so I got myself some grits.
The highly anticipated Grilled Cheese Truck finally rolled into town tonight and due to my frightening obsession with cheese, I made sure to greet the truck. In the tradition of other great ks before it, the unveiling took place at The Brig on Abbot Kinney. I arrived 15 minutes before the scheduled 8:00 start time and was shocked to find the parking lot at The Brig empty except for the shiny orange truck. Apparently, I was to be the first in line!
LA isn’t the only place in the world to offer a restaurant week. Arizona also flexed their restaurant week muscles last month. At $29 for a three-course meal for every restaurant listed (as opposed to LA, which has three different price levels), it’s important to pick the right place. They also note that the price is $58 per couple. Thank you, but I can do math. I know that 29 x 2 = 58, so if you’re not going to offer me some sort of couples discount, I really don’t see the point of showing me this. Mathematical anger aside, we decided to head to Bloom, a fancy American restaurant.