Jer-ne (DineLA dinner menu)

Happy New Year everyone! I hope this year brings you good fortune, good times and good food :) I am so behind on posts, and am currently trying to catch up like crazy. I hope you will enjoy what I've got to share!

Dine LA! I look forward to these special two times of the year, with specially priced menus and a great way to try out restaurants that I wouldn't have necessarily tried out before, but give me a set menu and price, I'm always down to try new things in that kind of environment.

Jer-ne is inside the Ritz Carlton in Marina del Rey, so the place is already very high end. (forced valet, which I dislike, but at least there was a small validation for eating at the restaurant.) I liked the seating and ambiance, very relaxed romantic style. Daphne, Eric and I met up for a late dinner, and it happened to be Eric's birthday as well, so it was a nice treat for him. We all ordered from the Dine LA menu.

My usual drink order, the arnold palmer. A good one, I think. Not much else to say about it, but I remember I didn't get a refill...I stuck with water after I finished this.

Eric and I chose the prawn appetizer- grilled ocean prawns, lime, chiles, cilantro. Huge, huge prawns, atop a grilled piece of french bread, with soft roasted sweet tomatoes, microgreens, and a delicious sauce. I really enjoyed this, and each prawn was massive, which was a joy to eat. This was great, but after seeing/tasting what Daphne got...

...which was the soup - butternut squash, frangelico, pumpkin oil, I wish I had gotten that instead. The taste of her soup was so flavorful, so fragrant - just something special.

Eric got the lamb - t-bone, spinach, feta, kalamata, lemon. The server had suggested it, and it was a great choice. I tried a piece and it was super juicy. Eric seemed very happy with this, I think he finished everything, down to the painted artful sauce on the plate.

I remember craving beef that day, so I ordered the filet - chanterelles, brussel sprouts, zinfandel jus. I remember it being good, but not as juicy as Eric's lamb. Actually, maybe it was more on the dry side than what I would have preferred, but everything was still pretty good. The chanterelles and brussel sprouts were delicious, and everything was very artfully presented.

Daphne ordered the bass. I'm actually not sure what was with it, some spinach and veggies? This differed from what they said was going to be online for DINELA. This was very nice, Daphne gets giddy when she has some awesome fish, and this was some awesome fish.

Daph was really on a roll with her ordering...she ordered the brulee - pumpkin with maple walnut ice cream. The taste I had was so amazing that I ordered one of these to go for Owen to try at home. This was one of the best creme brulees I've had, definitely on the top 5.

Eric and I decided to go with the cheese plate- cypress grove truffle tremor, midnight moon and lamb chopper. I can't remember exactly how each one tasted, but I remember almost all of them were super strong and I almost wanted the cheese to keep going.

A super excellent meal. I will come back sometime for a special occasion.

Jer-ne (inside the Ritz Carlton)
4375 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90292
310-574-4333
www.ritzcarlton.com

Uncle Darrows

In the spirit of saving money, I've been using those restaurant.com coupons here and there, as I did a few posts ago. I didn't feel like cooking one night, so we decided to use a coupon I had for Uncle Darrows, a small place right off of Lincoln Blvd, and fairly close to Owen's workplace.

We walked in, and it was basically a ghost town - the only person there was the cashier/cook. I guess this place isn't too hopping on a weeknight. We were pretty straightforward with our orders, as they didn't have some things we wanted (didn't have oysters, or gumbo that night, no wonder, as there wasn't anyone there).

Owen wanted a po'boy, and the cashier/cook suggested the "Zeke Po'Boy", which contained catfish and shrimp, with potato salad as a binder/condiment substitute. The bread was just right, as most po'boy bread should be - light, not crusty bread. The fillings were good in the sandwich, I'll discuss more about fillings in a sec...because I basically got...

...the same thing, reconstructed. It was a catfish and shrimp plate, that comes with two sides, and I chose potato salad and red beans and rice. It came with one piece of bread, cut up, instead of a whole roll. The red beans and rice were excellent, a decent facsimile of the kind we had in New Orleans. Potato salad was a bit sweet. Here's close up of the catfish and shrimp...

The breading on the catfish and shrimp was all cornmeal. This was a very generous portion of both, but the taste got a ittle tiresome after awhile, as the fried cornmeal got heavy to eat. The catfish and shrimp were much better in the sandwich, eaten all together in one bite, with the potato salad. The desconstructed version I ate forced me to eat each part separately, so it wasn't as tasty as big bites of this between bread. I doused the fish with a ton of hot sauce, but I wish I had some tartar sauce - is that sacrilidge?

Uncle Darrows is a pretty quick little place to get some New Orleans style food, but it really doesn't hold a candle to the real thing. It'll do to fulfill your fix though.

Uncle Darrows
2560 Lincoln Blvd
Venice, CA 90291
(310) 306-4862
www.uncledarrows.com

Sushi King

A couple weeks back, Daphne wanted to show me the awesomeness which was Sushi King (she has had nothing but good things to say about this place), and so Owen and I met up with her there. The place is small, bustling, darkly lit and busy, but I suspected it would be on a Friday night. We managed to get a very squished table for three (more like for 2, but we squeezed in.) A quick glance at the menu, and with a few suggestions from Daph, food started to arrive at the table...

Sea Bass Misoyaki, one of the house specials that Daphne ordered. This is one of her favorites. I tried a bite and it really was good, the sauce was really tasty and it was not overcooked. I think it's a bit pricey for the amount you get but it might still be worth it for the flavor and preparation.

Owen and I ordered 2 sushis to start - salmon and I think, albacore. I'm not exactly sure that was albacore. Both were excellent though. Soft, tasty and creamy.

Another starter - spicy tuna tempura. It was basically a flat pressed amount of spicy tuna, run through batter and quickly fried. Almost anything fried is delicious, so this was no exception. I don't know that I would necessarily order this again (as there were many other things on the menu that were intriguing to me) but it was a solid starter.

Owen and I shared an order of a sushi set - from the top clockwise: tuna, whitefish, salmon, yellowtail, cut rolls were cucumber and tuna, makarel, shrimp, octopus and tamago. Everything was pretty tasty - we shared each piece, and it really was good, each piece was solid. (sorry about the bluriness of the photo, it was dark and I didn't want to bother any of the other diners with the flash of the camera).

We also ordered a rainbow roll, which was really good, great to try all the different kinds of fish. The California roll that all the fresh fish sat upon was fresh, and the crab inside was tasty. We made quick work of this roll.

Daph suggested for us to try the yellowtail, so we asked for 3 more, one for each of us. It really was amazing, a big succulent bite of fish. Melted in your mouth, just something special.

I think that Sushi King was a good middle of the road place that has really good quality fish. I know there are better places around, but in this price range (about 40 each, and we were stuffed) it was one of the better sit down Japanese restaurants I've been to in awhile.

Sushi King
1330 Wilshire Blvd
Santa Monica, CA 90403-5411
Phone: (310) 395-0120

Dynasty Chinese Restaurant

Judy's bridal shower was at Dynasty Seafood restaurant, mainly because us bridesmaids were planning this on the fly, and wanted to choose somewhere where they'd have a private room. I tease about the name of this place, as I call it "Dy-NASTY", but it's actually okay, a bit more upscale than the usual Chinese restaurant. Anna had wanted to get dim sum, but it ended up being a banquet type meal, because we were required to spend a certain amount of money to have the private room. Ah, well, at least we get to grub on banquet food that I don't get to have very often...

First up was a cold appetizer platter with, starting from the right - seaweed salad, cold cut pork, jellyfish, another kind of cold sliced pork, and in the middle, little red squiddie things. Jellyfish is something I haven't had in ages, so it was a nice treat. Seaweed salad was good too.

Seafood soup was up next, or was it sharks' fin? Or fake shark's fin? Anyways, it was tasty and seafoody, with soft tofu and those Chinese button cap mushrooms from a can. Yum.

Everyone's favorite banquet food, Honey Walnut Shrimp. This was a pretty well done version of it, even though it looks drenched in mayo it was not too bad. I like the candied sesamed walnuts a lot too.

This tender beef dish was a surprising win, I usually don't like the way they make beef dishes in these Chinese banquets, but this was really delicious. With a bit of rice, this was amazing. I would order this again, for sure.

This combination veggie meat seafood dish contained sugar snap peas, thinly sliced white chicken breast meat, squid slices, carrot and mushroom slices, all cooked together in a light starchy sauce. Pretty standard banquet dish, decently done, the squid was nice and springy, and I like any form of sugar snap peas. Solid dish.

This dish was fried fish filets with spicy salt. Pretty tasty, I really liked the spicy salt on this one, and the fish filets were yummy and free of any bones. I guess you could call them Fish McNuggets, as they were cut into bite size pieces.

Chinese style Fried chicken, all chopped up and ready to be attacked by chopsticks. This was pretty good, actually one of the better fried chicken I've had in awhile, with nice and crispy skin, and moist chicken meat. Wish this was in front of me right now.

One of the more decadent dishes of the banquet was Lobster, chopped up and cooked Chinese style, with scallions and ginger. It was good but not very many people ate it, as at this point, we were all getting pretty full (there were only 8 of us, eating a banquet made for 10.) I ended up bringing home a bunch of this for my parents as leftovers, which I think they appreciated. Look at those little lobster eyes staring back at me as I eat it! I think that makes the lobster taste even better, haha...

A mountain of fried rice, with shrimp, charshu pork pieces, scallons and egg. Tasty, but again at this point, we were getting a bit too stuffed.

This is the cake that I had bought from La Patisserie, one of the best bakeries in the world, in my opinion. Their cakes are consistently moist, super tasty and classically pretty. My mom picked this one out - I think it was their Black Magic cake - Chocolate cake, truffle and chocolate chip fudge fillings, iced with fudge and ganache. Can there be any more chocolate on one cake?? This was super delicious, and I usually don't really like sweets. It's that good. Funny story about the personalization part - so I asked for them to write, "Happy Bridal Shower Judy" on it, and when the lady first did it, and showed it to me - it said, "Happy BRIDLE shower Judy" on it...and I had to ask her to redo it...and she had to ask someone else how to spell "Bridal". Nice!!

Anyway, I think everyone had a good time and enjoyed the food, and DyNasty was actually very good to us - but I don't think I could ever stop calling it DyNasty, it's just too much fun.

Dynasty Seafood Restaurant
10123 N Wolfe Rd
Cupertino, CA 95014
(408) 996-1680

Jinpachi

A few weeks back, I was invited to go to a food bloggers event hosted by fooddigger.com, and was really surprised to be even asked - I keep thinking like 2 people read this food blog- and heartily accepted the invitation.

After arriving at Jinpachi, I was lead to a somewhat secluded set of tables, with people already there, chatting and enjoying some appetizers. They were all super nice - it's so cool to be able to name some restaurant I haven't tried yet, and for someone at the table to have already been there and to give me a synopsis. Awesome. Well, let's just skip ahead to the food...

Shishito Peppers were sitting around in a little dish, which kept us from starving inbetween the long pauses between each course. These were pretty good, and not as tongue burning hot as I thought they were going to be. The cooking process softened them up a lot, and were bordering on too soggy by the time I got to them, but again, ok to munch on while waiting.
Spicy tuna on crispy rice - a bunch of these were brought on a plate as an appetizer. I really liked these a lot, but put spicy tuna on rice and it's hard for me to DISlike it. Anyways, these were good.

Each of these got this placed in front of us - red snapper and salmon sashimi, in a light soy (?) sauce. The salmon was tender and soft, but the red snapper was just okay.


This is the non-fish version, served to John (of LA Pizza) who sat across from me and is allergic to fish. I am pretty sure one of these is scallops but I don't know what the other one is...I'm sure it's not fish though, heh.

Grilled black cod, with a tempura shishito pepper and two squirts each of black and white miso on either side. The cod was very good, with a sweet flavor to it, especially after dipping it in the miso.

John's non fish version was chicken teriyaki, with asparagus and sliced potato. This looked really good too - it looked like a complete meal!

Now the sushi. Bluefin tuna, and fatty tuna. I got one piece each of these. I love me some tuna, so this was top notch. I love when sushi melts on the tongue...

Then came a platter of (from the back to front) halibut, yellowtail, and albacore. The albacore and yellowtail were really good, but the halibut was not very good in my opinion. The texture was way too hard and too fishy.

John's non fish version - sea eel. He was worried that eel was too close to fish - is eel a fish? So I got to eat it, in trade for my glass of sake (a win-win situation, as I don't drink.) Pretty good, but I really like eel. I think it could have used a BIT more eel sauce, and could have been toasted to have those crispy edges I love in eel, but it was still solid, in any case.

Next up, came shrimp tempura roll - this was really tasty, the tempura was super fresh and crunchy, a great simple roll that exceeded my expectations.

The scary good uni that came to the table - scarily fresh, once hitting the tongue it dissipated into a tasty essence of the ocean. Very good, very rich, not something I would order at the usual cheaper sushi joints I would go to, because I would worry about quality. This was way tasty, can I emphasize this enough? Haha.

Shad sushi - this is the first shad I've had - and probably the last, if I can help it. Texture was too hard, had to chew it a lot, the rice was too vinegary (maybe to make up for the oiliness of the shad?) Not my bag.

This was the first blue crab handroll that was brought to the table, and it was for John to make up for the shad. More on that later, as we all got one...

Supposedly our last few pieces of sushi, salmon and more albacore? Heck, I'm not complaining, really good and solid sushi.

We requested these blue crab handrolls as our last order, as these are freakin' amazing good. The crab meat is super fresh, sweet, and cold, as a good contrast to the avocado and cucumber. The way the sushi chef rolled it, he added an extra piece of seaweed to the bottom, so when you started eating the handroll from one side, all the fillings wouldn't just start falling out of the end. Very considerate of him! This was definitely a great dish to finish the meal with.

Dessert consisted of different flavors of mochi ice cream, halved and presented to us on a plate. Chocolate, vanilla and green tea were the different flavors. I've had many a mochi ice cream, and this was alright. Hard to mess this up unless you let it sit out and melt to the point where they're unedible.

The fooddiggers were aware of the lacking dessert choices that Jinpachi had to offer, ever since their dessert chef had left! So they nicely bought us macarons from Paulette - which they swore were just as good as the kind they've had in Paris. Amazing! The two flavors that I got were pistachio and praline. Both had great texture and delicious interiors to their fillings.

I just want to note, this meal was comped by fooddigger (thanks!!), so I have no idea on pricing. This is the first time I've gotten a meal comped for any food posting. Thanks again to fooddigger, and all the awesome foodbloggers I met! (Shout out to Caroline on Crack, Gourmet Pigs, Tangbro, LA-OC Foodie, Potential Gold and John of LA Pizza!) Everyone is so nice and it's so fun to talk about food!

Jinpachi
8711 Santa Monica Blvd
West Hollywood, CA

Paulette
9466 Charleville Boulevard at Beverly Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90212

Bay Area Holidays - a retrospect

I've been seriously behind on my postings...so here's a quick post that's basically going to quickly go through my food adventures when I went back home to the Bay area for the holidays. I had some great food and I wanted to at least point these places out...at least, before the next holiday season comes around!First stop, St. John's Grill. I came here with almost all my immediate family members, and chowed down on some of the best burgers I've ever had. This is one of the places that I really wish they had in Southern California. Unfortunately, there's only one St. John's. And this is it.
Garlic fries will give you a kick start in the head...or in the gut. This plate of heaven is loaded with garlic, parsley, parmesan cheese and crispy - not oily - fries. The skin of the potato actually adds a really nice texture to each fry.
More bar food...fried zucchini rounds, with ranch sauce. Fried goodness. Enough said about those. These onion rings are to-die-for. Battered, fried, crispy, golden, sweet. Everything you want in a onion ring.
Owen went all out with his bacon-guacamole burger. Juicy meat, creamy avocado and thick bacon. Can't get any better thaDid I mention that on Saturdays, St. John's burgers are half priced?? Here's a blown out flash close up. Gotta work on my camera skills. I had a mushroom swiss burger. It was soo filling, I didn't even eat half of my burger. I think I filled up on fries. I guess the burgers USED to be bigger...although maybe it's better that they're smaller now...less gluttony. Each burger comes with a bag of Lay's original potato chips. I don't think any of us opened one. But we saved all of them (ew the bags were covered in burger grease) and took them home for later. Waste not want not!!!Next up with Frankie, Johnnie and Luigi's. We went to the original location in Mountain View. Great place, I've been to the other location closer to my house, but this is the ORIGINAL!! These are what was left of a plate of Ravoil Compare - Breaded cheese ravioli, deep fried, served with a chipotle-ranch sauce. The plate that came to us had more ravioli, but everyone took one before I remember to snap a picture. The plate was practically licked clean 2 minutes after taking this picture.
Horribly blurry picture of bread. This bread is awesome, (white, good crust, carby, warm) but what makes this an amazing bread is the butter herb spread. It's soft, light as air, easily spreadable, and completely delicious. We were warned not to eat too much of it because we had this coming up...
A MASSIVE beautiful pizza. This is the Stromboli, holding the holy trinity of meats - Sausage, pepperoni and salami, with some mushrooms thrown on there for good measure. The sausage is amazing, not that fake crap from Domino's or Pizza hut. It's freshly made, huge chunks of meat with great flavor. This pizza is meat-coma inducing. The crust is great too - chewy, crunchy, flavorful.
We also got a Fresh Tomato, Basil and Garlic pizza to balance out the Stromboli. I thought it was a great choice and really highlighted the perfection of the bread.
During Christmas break, I went to Rosie McCann's, an Irish Pub restaurant to meet up with some old friends. I ordered some garlic fries for the table. This was not as good as the garlic fries I got from St. John's during Thanksgiving break, but they were still of decent quality and consumed quickly.
Here's a crappy picture of Krang's California Chicken burger. Grilled chicken, avocado, bacon, rabbit food and fries. He seemed to enjoy it.
Here's an extremely blurry picture of Jay's Irish Nachos. I think Irish nachos are Jay's favorite comfort/junk food, because I remember him ordering irish nachos often at THE ROWS (Carrows...the only 24 hour restaurant open close to my house in San Jose.) back in high school. Basically, Irish nachos are just like regular Mexican nachos...but instead of tortilla chips, they use sliced baked/fried/extreme potatoes. They're sinfully good.
Chris and I decided to be good and split a plate of Wild Salmon fish and chips, with wasabi mayo. If anyone knows me, they know that I love wasabi infused...anything. So the wasabi mayo was great. The fried fish was alright...it had a crispy panko-crumb outside. I prefer the thicker batter type of fried fish, like from King's Head, but this wasn't bad. I liked the salmon itself, which was a decent cut of fish. The fries were alright. Slaw was edible but I don't really love slaw. Saved the WORST for last. Vicky and I met up and had a quick bite at The Village: California Bistro and Wine Bar. For a trendy space and dark mood lighting, the food was completely lacking. I got the Crispy Monterey Calamari with Garlic Aioli. The word to describe this was: Whatever. Not special, not outstanding, but not completely unedible. I've had better, but I've had worse. I guess I was just hoping for...something more special.
Vicky chose the Curried Seared Tofu - "Lightly Breaded & Seared Tofu, Jasmine Rice, Bok Choy, Garlic, Carrot & Tomato, Thai Red Curry Broth, Bean Sprouts, Peanuts". This was totally and completely lacking of flavor! How could anyone mess up tofu! AND to use curry, and to not even infuse the tofu with something so flavorful as curry...lame! For a 15 dollar vegetarian plate, this was supposed to be knock your socks off, but instead it was a waste of bean curd. Shame on you "The Village". (Doesn't help that the restaurant is named after an M. Night Shymalan movie. I hate his movies. And his ego.)

I had a great time during the holidays - it was good to get away for awhile. How I miss the bay area.