Near Century City there is a building that only houses restaurants with five letter names that have two of the same letters in a row. It is there that my friends and I dined at Sotto, which finds itself below Picca. ‘Twas a night of the first ever Summer Restaurant Week by DineLA, but these plans had been made without Restaurant Week in mind, so that kind of just turned out to be a bonus…for some people, because I decided to stick to the real menu.

And that real menu brought me to an appetizer of housemade bread with lardo pestato. I had assumed this meant some sort of pork on break, and my waitress assured me similarly that it would be a sort of prosciutto. When it came out, however, there was no solid pig meat to be found. Instead, each piece of bread had literally been schmeared with lard. While I’m sure lard plays a role in many things I eat, it was strange to see it so out in the open and eat it as such an important component of the dish. The result was a unique taste that was kind of like bacon fat, but different. The texture was similar to butter, which was good since the lard was being used basically as a butter.

For my main course, I went for the pastas, and for once opted for something that was not gnocchi. Instead I went with their casarecce, which came with braised lamb ragu, egg and pocorino cheese. This was truly something special. I often judge Italian restaurants by how easy it would be to reproduce their food at home with boxed pasta and jarred sauce – Sotto was not one of those places. The lamb was delicious and tender, with a perfectly flavored ragu sauce. The egg had already come pre-mixed into the sauce, which made me a little sad because I like to stir up some fried egg, but its flavor was definitely there. And of course, the casarecce pasta itself was tasty and had a great texture.

So, in the absence of ordering from the Restaurant Week menu, I think I did pretty good for myself. I won’t be getting the lardo pestato bread again, but it was an interesting dish that I’m glad to have tried.

A while back, Sang Yoon opened up a place called Lukshon in Culver City. For some, this was a time to rejoice, as this was the man behind the Father’s Office burger. But for me, it was a time to…well…consider trying out Lukshon. You see, if you know me, you know my disdain for the Father’s Office burger. So it took until dineLA’s Restaurant Week to get me out to Lukshon. I went with a sizable crowd, collectively known as the Suppah Club, and we had ourselves a seat at a massive table on Lukshon’s patio in Culver City.

While we were there initially for the fixed price menu, a group of us decided to go rogue and order a bunch of things from regular menu, including some of those from dineLA. This was great, as it gave me an opportunity to try more than I would have otherwise, beginning with the Spicy Chicken Pops. These things start out as basic Shelton Farms drumettes before being topped with garlic, kecap manis (a sweet soy sauce) and spicy Sichuan salt. And yes, they were as good as they sound. I loved the combination of sweet, salty and spicy flavor and could not get enough of these. They also had a unique texture, being quite crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.

Next came the Lamb Belly Roti Canai, an incredibly unique dish with perhaps a few too many flavors going on. The roti itself is flatbread and the belly was topped with chana dal (a type of lentil), cumin, mint and raita (a South Asian yogurt sauce). There were also pickled cauliflowers on the side, which went right to everyone else. While I was happy with this dish, I felt like I couldn’t really taste the lamb belly itself. Maybe that was the intention, and while I was happy to get protein, I would have liked to taste the meat rather than just the yogurt, cumin and mint.

Then we got down with some Short Rib Rendang, a beef short rib dish cooked with Malay spices and served with a red chile lemongrass rempah (spice paste) mixed with coconut cream. While I didn’t eat much of this, I found it to be quite the opposite of the lamb belly, in that none of the flavors really popped at all. Perhaps my taste buds had taken a vacation after the lamb belly, but I expect some strong Malaysian flavor and was a little disappointed to find none. Nonetheless, the beef itself was cooked perfectly and had a fair amount of its own flavor to offer.

With that taken care of, we moved on to my favorite dish of the night – Heirloom Black Rice. Tossed in with the rice was lap cheong (Chinese sausage), roasted garlic, onion and a Lily’s Farm fried egg. I couldn’t order without the onion, as we were splitting this delicious rice, but if there was any onion in the final product, it went unknown to me. The fried egg was perfectly runny and got sliced, diced and mixed in with the black rice. The result was some spectacular flavor and texture. The black rice is a bit heavier than white and has a tougher feel to it, while the lap cheong is a slightly sweet and chewy sausage that goes well with just about any form of rice. With the perfect balance, the Heirloom Black Rice was the big winner of the night in my heart.

But wait, we weren’t finished yet. There was still Garlic Pork Belly to be eaten. Mixed in with the slivers of pork belly was do ban jian (a spicy paste), tubular rice cakes, cabbage and garlic chives. This made for a dish I needed to pick at. You see, I wasn’t about to be eating cabbage, I do have a reputation to protect. Unfortunately, though, the dish was lacking in pork belly content. When I did find that delicious pre-bacon, it was delicious, but it felt too few and far between. The rice cakes were a nice touch though. They may have been filler, but they were delicious filler with the great flavor of the do ban jian.

Now, Lukshon has a unique policy of offering free dessert at every dinner. Ordinarily I love anything free, but I have to think a restaurant offering free dessert for every diner is offloading the costs onto its patrons anyway. And since I’m not a dessert guy, I would prefer a cheaper regular meal. But that’s beside the point, and it turned out that our desserts were delicious. I couldn’t tell you what they all were, but rest easy that Lukshon comes through on desserts.

I left Lukshon a happy and full unvegan. While not every dish was a hit, I loved the thought behind them all, the emphasis on local sources and the overall variety of Asian influence. Plus, the great dishes were truly awesome. I also want to mention our terrific waiter, who knew the menu like the back of his hand, made some great suggestions and prevented us from over-ordering anything. With all that said, Lukshon was definitely a step up from the Father’s Office burger and Sang Yoon is moving in the right direction.

Well, it’s that wonderful time of the year again – dineLA’s Restaurant Week. Yes, it’s the time of the year where I spend too much, eat too much, and still feel happy about it. Unless, of course, I’m eating at Katana. This time around, we went with a couple friends to Palihouse in West Hollywood. I’d been to Palihouse once before, late at night when it was trying to be a bar/club. It’s also a hotel. But on this night, it was simply a restaurant to us.

While most dineLA restaurants opt for the typical 3-course meal, Palihouse diverges a bit from the path. Instead of separate appetizers and main courses, they offer a range of options and you get to choose three of them. They also throw a dessert in, so it appears to be money well-spent.

Yet, despite the array of choices, only a couple fit into an unvegan diet. The first was the Steak Frites, the second was the Chicken Apricot Pot Pie and the final one was the Pork and Truffle Pate. I’m not much of a pate guy, so I had to get a little creative for my third choice. The one that looked the best was actually something I could never see myself ordering – Caesar Salad. But wait, before you chastise me, let me tell you that this salad comes with chicken nuggets, bacon and a poached egg. I asked the waiter if I could order the salad without the “salad” part and he said it wasn’t possible. Damn it all. But then he went on to tell me that it was a pretty manly salad. Challenge accepted! I am nothing if not a man willing to try things. And try I did. The nuggets were home made and didn’t even resemble their distant cousins from Happy Meals. The bacon and poached egg were equally delicious. The cheese that came with the salad also added a nice touch. It wasn’t just some shredded parmesan, but crispy and delicious. The same could not be said for the lettuce itself, which I found wholly unnecessary. While it may have been a pretty manly salad (and I give Palihouse credit for making salad interesting), it would have just been so much better without that damn lettuce.

But onto other things, namely the Chicken Apricot Pot Pie. This thing was exactly what it sounded like, except with a few peas and carrots thrown in to make me uncomfortable. Yet, despite these veggie inclusions, the pot pie was awesome. The crust was perfectly flaky and absorbed the juices of the pie quite nicely. The apricot contributed a unique flavor to the mix, which slightly sweetened things up and added a bit of tartness. It was the kind of unique dish that dineLA is made for, because I probably would not have ordinarily ordered it when I could have the…

…Steak Frites instead. This thing was a 6 oz. hanger steak, topped with chimichurri butter and a petite salad. And, as a bonus (because the weren’t listed on the menu), it also came with fries. The salad had fortunately been relegated into its own bowl and I didn’t have to deal with it. I’d ordered this at a medium rare and it came out cooked perfectly. Although the hanger isn’t typically the best cut of steak, this one had some great flavor and was quite tender. The chimichurri butter was a nice touch and added some good flavor as well, but like I said, the steak itself tasted surprisingly good on its own. The bonus fries were a great side, nice and crispy.

Finally, there were the desserts. Our choices were House Made Oreo Cookies or the Chocolate Muffin, if you are a cookie fan, you might  want to check this holiday cookie delivery service. The four of us ordered two of each to share and they turned out to be pretty unique. The oreos were elongated and came with a strawberry milkshake for dipping or simply drinking. This was definitely my favorite of the two desserts, as I loved the shake and cream filling. The cookie part itself was a bit rich for me, but nothing compared to how rich the chocolate muffin was. To call it a muffin is really a misnomer, as it was really a pile of chocolate cake in a bowl. It came with a carmelized banana, walnuts and banana ice cream and after a few bites, I was done for.

Palihouse turned out to be a better dineLA meal than I had expected. While the menu could have used more unvegan options, those that fit the bill were quite good. And the one that didn’t fit the bill was at least a nice attempt. I am not really in a position to judge the dessert because I’m not much of a dessert person. However, if they toned down the richness, I think they could have made the desserts more accessible to people like me. Having tried a fair amount of their menu now, I’m not sure that I feel the need to return to Palihouse, but I definitely recommend it for anyone looking to mix things up during Restaurant Week.

Katana (warning: turn down your speakers because their retarded site automatically plays loud bass) in West Hollywood is about as trendy as you can get for Japanese food. Yet, to my surprise, when I was sent their DineLA Restaurant Week menu for a possible dinner, I saw only one sushi option. With this in mind, I thought that perhaps the $34 fixed price would actually be worth it, so off we went to Katana. Showing up last, I was greeted with a rousing “irasshai” (although I was a bit disappointed they didn’t go for the more formal “irasshaimase”) and found that some chicken gyoza (potstickers) had already been ordered. This struck me as strange since we were about to order a fixed price meal, but I decided to roll with it.

While waiting for said gyoza, I decided what I wanted for my meal. For the appetizer I chose the Ebi Bacon, also known as bacon-wrapped jumbo shrimp with chili garlic sauce. Then I chose the Spicy Niku Don for my main course. Niku, of course, means meat and in this case the meat was sliced beef and served on steamed rice. To wrap it all up, I got the sorbet with fresh fruit. Now I was ready to eat some gyoza.

When it came out, there were a total of five dumplings. Not exactly what I had hoped for an 11 dollar appetizer. It really was some good gyoza, but I couldn’t help but think about my life once upon a time when I used to stuff myself with a plateful of gyoza for a buck in Hikone, Japan. Alas, such a memory could do me no good at Katana.

After that I moved on to my personal appetizer, the Ebi Bacon. If an appetizer is something simply meant to make you hungrier for the main course, then the Ebi Bacon really did its job. It came as one simple skewer and although there were multiple ebi on the skewer, this was certainly not an appetizer fit for the $34 price range. As for the taste, the Ebi Bacon was really quite delicious. I am often fearful of shrimp because it can be rubbery, but this was nice and crunchy with a nice balance of bacon, chili and garlic. After my skewer I was left wanting more, but there was no more to be found.

Instead, I found my Spicy Niku Don. This dish was pretty much an upscale Yoshinoya beef bowl, but with a vile twist. Yes, that’s kimchi in there. I don’t know what crazy person thought kimchi in niku don was a good idea, but dammit if I wanted kimchi I would’ve gone to a Korean restaurant. And I don’t want kimchi, because it is a terrible terrible pickled vegetable. I removed the kimchi from my don and then went to work. Once again, I was happy with my dish, but I was left wanting more. Preferably more of the beef, because I struggled to maintain a good ratio of beef to rice as I ate through my bowl.

Finally, it came down to dessert. First, they brought out the wrong dessert, so I sent it back. After about 15 minutes passed, my sorbet with fresh fruit arrived. I was amazed that such a tiny dish could have taken them so long. Among all the bright colors, I almost couldn’t find the sorbet, but then I realized that it wasn’t because of the bright colors but because the scoop of sorbet was only slightly larger than a raspberry. Wait, I take that back because I have seen raspberries bigger than that. I dug in knowing this would be my final food of the meal and once again I found some tasty food that left me desiring more.

Look, we all know the saying, “leave the audience wanting more.” Let me get one thing straight: THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO FOOD. When I leave a restaurant, I want to be full. I may want more another day, but I should never want more immediately after departure and I don’t care how good your food is. You know, unless I just paid a buck. But with Katana, I dropped a lot more than a buck and although I really did enjoy the general taste of the food, there is no way I got my money’s worth.

Although it seems like the last Dine LA Restaurant Week ended a couple months ago, it seems that it has returned, which means a lot of food and some difficult choices for the unvegan. These difficult choices usually stem from the fact that it is tough to find a veggie-free prix fixe menu. Fortunately, Culver City has a relatively new restaurant called Waterloo & City with an unvegan-friendly restaurant week menu.

Waterloo & City is named after a Tube line in London that consists of two stops – one called Waterloo and the other called…Village. Wait, no, it’s called City. As you may be able to guess by the name, the restaurant serves English food. That’s right, English food, also known as the worst international food ever. The kind of food where when people go to England, the favorite thing they ate was Indian. Well somehow the English food at Waterloo & City had garnered the place accolades for being one of the best new restaurants in LA, so despite the ancestry of their food, they had to be doing something right.

The appetizer that appealed to my unvegan sensibility the most was their Pan Fried Blood Cake, which came with fried organic egg and toasted pain poilane (which is just fancy-speak for toast). I wasn’t entirely sure what blood cake was, so before committing, I asked the waitress and she told me it was really like a cake made with pig blood and pig fat. I guess blood cake sounds a little better than fat cake, so that’s where the name blood cake came from. With a tinge of fear, I ordered it, still not quite knowing what to expect. When it did arrive, I was at first disappointed by the heirloom tomatoes upon my cake. I brushed these off and then took a look at the blood-splattered plate. Not exactly red velvet, the cake looked like Hannibal Lecter’s version of marble cake. Unlike your average cake, this was like a spread, which I wiped across a piece of toast. Then I took a bit of egg to put on top and bit in.

It’s kind of hard to explain the taste, which wasn’t bad at all, but also wasn’t especially good. It was kind of like a savory jam, where the bits of fat were like chunks of fruit and the rest of it tasted kind of like your own blood when you cut yourself. Do to my lack of experience with eating blood, I can’t really say if Waterloo & City did a very good job, but I can say I was glad I tried it and don’t really have any desire to try it again.

With the blood gone, I moved onto my main course, a Prime Beef and Bone Marrow Pie, with Potato Puree. Since this dish wasn’t on the normal menu, I kind of expected it to be some sort of mass-produced Shepherd’s Pie with marrow, but it turned out to be no such thing. Instead, it was a massive, yet individual pot-pie-looking dish that resided in a pan with a giant marrow bone sticking out of the middle. And the potato puree wasn’t even part of it and came on the side in its own bowl. Although the thing was taking forever to cool, I couldn’t wait and started digging in. Inside the delicious, crispy crust, I found some of the meatiest and tastiest pie-filling in the world. After some mild mouth and tongue burns, I found the beef inside this pie was perfectly tender, juicy and flavorful. Plus, every bite got a nice little spoonful of marrow, which add some nice gelatinous flavor to the already-perfect pie. The potato puree made an unnecessary, but delicious addition to the meal. Where the pie packed a powerful punch of flavor, the puree sort of balanced the mouth out with a much simpler flavor.

I also ate some of the House Merguez & and Slow Cooked Lamb Shoulder, which the girlfriend had ordered. Unbeknown to us, the Merguez was actually a sausage. I would think an English restaurant would have food items written in plain English, but this was not the case. Luckily the sausage was tasty, but it wasn’t as good as the slow-cooked lamb shoulder, which was so tender it almost melted like butter in your mouth. I think we both would have liked if the dish had a higher lamb shoulder to sausage ratio, but it was still a nice dish.

Finally, there were the desserts. Since there were only two choices, we each got one of them. The first was the Glazed Doughnuts with Jam and Custard. These looked more like doughnut holes, but also looked nothing short of delicious. Glistening in the dim light, I couldn’t wait to take a bite, and when I did I was not disappointed. Differing from normal doughnuts in the US, the English doughnut was less cakey and more bready. There was no lack of sweet, though, as the glaze was loaded with what I thought was caramelized sugar. The best part of the doughnuts actually happened to be the salt crystals that had been sporadically sprinkled upon them. This added a subtle, but much-needed balance to the doughnuts.

The second dessert was Sticky Toffee Pudding with Milk Ice Cream (didn’t realize there were other kinds of ice cream, other than vegan). By the time it arrived, the ice cream was mostly melted, so that was a bit disappointing. On the other hand, the toffee flavor was really good and almost made up for the ice cream. The doughnuts ended up being the better dessert, but had the ice cream been unmelted, the matchup would have fared better for the toffee pudding.

My Restaurant Week experience at Waterloo & City was a surprisingly delicious experience. The surprising part was because it was English, but the positive reviews I had heard turned out to be correct.

Ever since beginning my meat blog, Fogo de Chao in Beverly Hills has been in my sights. I’ve eaten Brazilian food before, but I have been told over and over again that Fogo is the king of meatiness. But it’s expensive. Like a fixed price of $56.50 expensive. But when Restaurant Week comes to town, that ridicu-price drops down to a more reasonable $44 bucks, including dessert. So for my first Fogo experience, I made sure to go during Restaurant Week and was amazed with what that price bought me.

Fogo de Chao boasts a selection of 15 different meats. This doesn’t mean 15 different animals, but 15 different cuts of meat from 4 different animals. The animals are pork, chicken, beef and lamb and the cuts are called picanha (top sirloin with garlic or just regular seasoning), filet mignon, beef ancho (rib eye), alcatra (more top sirloin), fraldinha (bottom sirloin), costela (beef ribs with garlic), lamb chops, leg of lamb, bacon-wrapped chicken, chicken drumsticks, costela de porco (pork ribs), lombo (pork loin crusted with paremesan), linguica (sausage) and finally bacon-wrapped filet. Wow, that’s a lot of meat.

But before I get to my own meat-eating, I’d like to talk about Fogo’s attempt to trick customers. You see, they have a huge salad bar and it’s not your average unvegan unfriendly salad bar. Sure, there is lettuce, but there is also bacon, cheese, bread and delicious-looking cold cuts. I avoided this area at all costs and figured I would pay it a visit in case I had stomach room after consuming my weight in meat. They also try to distract you with starchy sides like mashed potatoes, fried polenta, fried plantains and cheese-stuffed rolls. Fortunately I have an iron will and managed to avoid these until after the meat as well.

Now, the Brazilian Churrascaria is no ordinary buffet. Instead of doing your own work, people come around with skewers of meat to slice off for you. Buy how do they know you want food? Great question! Every diner is given a coaster-shaped disc with green on one side and red on the other. If the green side is up, the food comes. If red is up, the food stops. There is no yellow, so when it rains meat, it pours meat.

Honestly, I can’t get into each individual meat. Partially because I don’t have enough room to write, but also because at some point the meats begin to blur together. Overall, I ate 14 of the 15. Yes, somehow the garlic picanha escaped me, which is a shame because the picanha was my favorite cut. It was moist, tender, juicy and flavorful. In sure a lot of the flavor came from the huge layer of fat surrounding the thing and for that I was happy. They call it the house special, and with good reason. The filet was also delicious and I surprisingly found the bacon-wrapped chicken to be better than the bacon-wrapped filet. The flavors just seemed to work much better together.

The beef ribs were tasty and the pork ribs fell right off the bone and into my mouth. The assorted sirloins were decent, but seemed like a waste of space compared to the picanha and filet. The same went for the lamb and sausage. They weren’t bad. Really nothing was bad, but I only had so much stomach space and wanted to fill it with something better. About midway through, the meat gave me the dizzies, but I rallied and finished with a stomach stuffed with meaty deliciousness. I even had a little space to offer to the sides. Each of them were tasty, but I was glad I had concentrated on the meat instead.

The dessert was pretty good, but I honestly couldn’t be a very good judge at that point. I ordered the key lime pie and also tried the cheese cake. The cheese cake was better, but again at that point in the meal, my tastebuds were so savory that any sweetness tasted like it came from a different planet.

In the end, I was one full and happy unvegan. Fogo de Chao is truly a meat-lovers paradise, as long as you are a meat lover that can afford it. Restaurant Week is definitely the time of year to do it, because even though it only comes twice a year, it would be pretty tough (and too delicious) to handle Fogo de Chao more than that.

Although Restaurant Week has just concluded, I once again took the opportunity to try out a couple new places that I wouldn’t ordinarily visit. The first was Malo in Silverlake, which is a Mexican Cantina. Their menu wasn’t exactly exciting for me, but I still thought the place could surprise me. The reason the menu wasn’t exciting was because there was really only one good unvegan option for both the appetizers and entrees.

For the appetizer, it was their Salsa Flight. This flight carried some red salsa, verde, pico de gallo and some sort of creamy-ish salsa. When the flight came, I passed the pico de gallo off and went to work on the other salsas. Surprisingly, I found that the creamy salsa was the spiciest, but also had some great flavor. The verde and red were also pretty good, with the red having better flavor and the green having a better kick. Once I learned the subtleties of the salsas, I started combining the creamy one with the the other two to make a far superior salsa.

For the main course, my only real option was their Pollo Asada. It came with some vegetables that I didn’t order without so that other people could have them. This butterflied breast looked pretty good, but upon eating I discovered it was relatively flavorless. This was very disappointing, but would have been a lot more disappointing if I hadn’t ordered the flight of salsas. So rather than suffering through tasteless chicken, I started dipping it in the salsa to actually enjoy.

To finish off the meal, I actually had a tough time choosing which dessert to get. Finally, I ordered the Capirotada. This Mexican bread pudding was a delicious way to finish up the meal. The combination of orange, vanilla, raisins and whatever else they threw in there just ended the meal on a good note. I also tried out the other desserts, a tres leches cake and flan, and found those both to be tasty as well.

Unfortunately, good salsa and a good dessert isn’t enough to carry a meal. The meat of my meal (double entendre!) was quite disappointing and made the $26 prix fixe seem a bit pricey. I might consider going back to Malo for a burrito or taco some day, but I won’t be back for Restaurant Week unless they find some real entrees.

So in the middle of dineLA’s Restaurant Week, we decided to pay a visit to Upstairs 2 for some dinner. This little restaurant hangs out above the Wine House in West LA and if you didn’t know what you were looking for, you would probably never find it. Luckily, we knew what we were looking for and found it just fine. After parking on the roof, I found the restaurant to have a pretty swanky atmosphere that was just light enough to read the menus.

As we all began to read our menus, we realized that although the Restaurant Week fixed menu looked good, it did not look nearly as good as the items on their regular menu, so one by one, we all decided to forget restaurant week and go our own way. This regular menu was uniquely organized by the type of wines the food would go with and consisted of smallish plates that were bigger than tapas, but not quite the size of a full entree. We way began with an order of their Medjool Dates Wrapped in Serrano Ham for everyone to split. These were stuffed with Asiago cheese I found them to be a nice twist on bacon wrapped dates. After that, we went our separate ways with our orders.

I decided on two things. The first was their Prosciutto and Fig Flatbread. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this dish, but when it came out, it looked pretty amazing. I bit in and almost squealed with delight. This was one of the best individual foods I had ever tasted, I don’t know what they did, but somehow they made the cheese, bread, figs and prosciutto work together in such delicious harmony that makes me want to go back there right now as I write this and eat it again.

To follow up this amazing flatbread, I ordered their Grilled Elk Tenderloin. This came with sauteed spinach, roasted fennel and sherry glaze. I asked for it without the spinach, which must have been mixed with the fennel, because the waiter gave me a quixotic look as he told me it would come out simply as the elk and I told him that was perfect. The elk came out just as I had hoped it would, free of any frightful veggies. It did look a bit naked, but I was fine with that. It tasted pretty similar to beef tenderloin, but had a stronger overall taste to it while being a bit tougher.

I’m really glad Restaurant Week led me to Upstairs 2 so I could eat that amazing flatbread. Although nobody took advantage of the fixed meal, the food I ended up eating was really very good.