Smokehouse Restaurant

So, I work next to this old timey restaurant called the Smokehouse, which is supposedly one of George Clooney's haunts. Can't say I've seen him there (but when I do, I will give him a piece of my mind! One of my first questions - "How do you get your eyelashes to be so amazing?"), but Louisa and I have stopped in on numerous occasions now, mainly to take advantage of their $12.99 Prime rib Monday special. Yes, folks, you read it right - 13 dollas' for a sweet slice of prime rib, complete with 2 sides. If that isn't recession friendly, I don't know what is.

But they gotta make their money's worth as well, right? They're known for their famous garlic bread, as shown by their take out aluminum foil bread loaf bag...(this is another time, when I got take out garlic bread by itself...)

"Worlds Greatest Garlic bread" huh? We'll see about that...

And this is what a half order looks like. Old school artery clogging goodness. The topping, Owen has noted, looks and tastes like contents of those Kraft Macaroni and Cheese sauce packets. Processed, powderized cheese and garlic bits. Well, I guess they USED to be garlic and cheese at some point...right? Well, it's all pretty damn tasty still (again, my love for fake nacho cheese probably helps with this). This is where they get yer money's worth out of you, bread isn't free at Smokehouse, half order is like 4 bucks, and full order is like 6 bucks. Hrm, digging into the pockets now for that extra change...okay, back to the rest of the meal...


Here's my Prime rib special, (cooked to my specifications, medium) with my two chosen sides of creamed spinach and mashed potatoes. They have those little extras that are always nice with a prime rib - horseradish sauce, and a little gravy boat of au jus. Tasty...very tasty. This is a usual item on the menu, that costs, oh, 23 dollars? So this isn't that gross cheap 2 dollar prime rib from a shady casino in Vegas (oh so suspicious! why does it cost 2 dollars?!) I'd also like to mention that the service is LIGHTING FAST here. Once you order, I say it takes about 5 minutes for them to deliver your meal to the table. But I guess I'm speaking for myself, since I usually only go on Mondays, when there's less people. But every single time - super fast service.

Louisa's plate looks pretty similar to mine, except she chose the asparagus spears and the rice pilaf. She raves about their rice pilaf, someday I will get it instead of my power combo above.

Smokehouse feels fancy, like taking your grandparents out to a nice birthday meal, but with a deal like that, the fanciness is just the icing on the cake to a great meal. Clooney, I'll meet you there, when, next Monday? Yeah, prime rib's on me, hah.

Smokehouse Restaurant
4420 West Lakeside Drive
Burbank, California 91505
(818) 845-3731

B and B Ristorante - Las Vegas, NV

Vegas trip, a few months ago - as a celebration for Obray and Will's 30th birthday (a momentous event!) we wanted to go somewhere good for dinner, but we were in a bit of a rush as well, as we were going to see Blue Man Group that night. We decided on the B and B Ristorante, really close to the Blue Man group theater, and in the "Restaurant Row" area between Venetian and Palazzo. I've been wanting to go here for awhile but I think they are only open for dinner, so I was really pleased that everyone went along with it (we had a fairly large group, and the restaurant was happy to accomidate us.)

Our waiter was superb - really patient with us, wanted to go over any questions we had about the menu, really great suggestions. After a long deliberation, we made our choices..I was totally excited when they placed these plates in the middle of the table...

...A small appetizer from the kitchen - chickpeas, mixed with olive tapenade, over toasted bread. The chickpeas, oozing with the tapenade, glowed with flavor. I loved the finish with olive oil over the whole thing, it was really flavorful olive oil, and perfect toast. We were off to a great start.


Our waiter circled the table and individually placed a piece of french bread on our bread plates. -the crust was very crispy and crunchy, the inside soft. We dipped this in olive oil. Wished we got more than one piece each but wasn't going to complain.


Owen and I started with an order of Vegetable misto - Different kinds of veggies - carrot strips, eggplant, green onions, and onions, from what I remember - quickly fried, with a tomatoy dipping sauce. This was excellently fried, the delicate veggies were still fairly crunchy, but by the end of it, it was a bit much. I think we finished most of it, but by the end we were kind of tired of the taste of...fried. I know! How could I ever be tired of the taste of fried stuff?


Owen got The special of the day - Nettle paparadelle, with wild boar. This was a huge winner, Owen ordered this, along with a few people at the table. The meat was really tender, the noodles flavorful. The bite I had, reminded me of a stew my mom would make when I was a kid. Really wish I had gotten this one to have more bites of it.


Beef Cheek Ravioli with Black Truffles and Crushed Duck Liver Cheek meat, in general, is really tops. I tried a piece of this, it was very rich. I think this was a pretty small portion though...that'd be my only complaint.


Horribly blurry picture of my Duck with Cherry and Green Almond Conserva. This was just right, crispy skin, some of the best duck (that's not asian style peking duck) that I've had. I picked these bones clean.

I think this was Bryan's pasta dish, which had all sorts of seafood in it. He had no complaints. I like how all the pasta was very fresh (they made this in house, right?), but I have no idea how it tasted, so moving right along...

Pappardelle Bolognese was Obray's choice, sorry for the blurry ass picture. Not everyone is used to my snapping of pictures, and all of us were pretty hungry. I love papparadelle...I'm sure this was a tasty version, Obray certainly enjoyed it, I think.

And, for dessert, as it was Obray's 30th birthday, he got himself a bananas foster cake, with a nice "Happy birthday" written in chocolate sauce. Festive, fancy, and delicious. I can't think of a better combo.

And to finish the whole meal off, a plate of mignardises. There were little brownie bite things, awesome orange jelly things, and biscotti bites. My favorite out of all these were the orange jellies, very soft and homemade tasting, with fruity flavor.

Service, as I mentioned earlier, was excellent, and I definitely wouldn't mind coming here again, but there are so many places for me to try still...and it's difficult because they are only open for dinner, no lunch service.

B and B Ristorante
website
at the Venetian
3355 Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV
(702) 266-9977

Panera Bread

For a quick lunch fix before making a major grocery shopping run at Trader Joe's (I heart Trader Joe's so much, but going grocery shopping while you're hungry is probably the worst thing you can do - and especially in a place that has some of the best frozen food I've ever had), I usually stop into Panera Bread, located right next door. There's usually a ton of people here during the day, typing away on their laptops - I guess free wi-fi is just that awesome (well, it IS pretty awesome, heh.)

This is a standard order at the register, and pick up yourself kind of place. And this is what I usually order:

A "You pick two" combo - A half sandwich, Bacon Turkey Bravo, on focaccia, and a bowl of broccoli cheddar soup. You get a choice of a side, and I usually pick the whole wheat grain baguette. This is a filling meal - their sandwiches are usually something I can only eat half of anyways. The bread in the sandwich is fresh, the turkey is pretty tasty. The soup is pretty comforting. The cheese flavor is pretty nice, and has a lot of broccoli florets and shredded carrots running through it, which adds pleasant texture.

All the bread here seems to be baked fresh here daily. I've always had a decent and satisfying meal here. It's probably one of my top fast service food places to go to.

Panera Bread
8647 South Sepulveda Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90045
(310) 641-9200

C&O Cucina
Washington Blvd and almost to Abbot Kinney Blvd.

Italian food is always iffy to me as a choice when wanting to go out to eat, because I almost always feel jipped. Why? Because spaghetti and meatballs are the easiest thing to cook at home, and paying 15 dollars and up for a meal that sometimes equally tastes as good as frozen meatballs and dried pasta noodles from TJ's (so good, so cheap) is a travesty. Of course, there are a few exceptions to this rule. One of these exceptions is C&O's Cucina/Trattoria.

C&O's Trattoria is actually better than C&O's Cucina, for the ambience, waitstaff and location (closer to the water.) However, they're always more crowded, the wait-time is longer and the valet is more expensive. Cucina is really almost as good, considering the tradeoff.

First off...the Killer garlic rolls...

They come around with a big fresh batch of these little morsels of deliciousness every 15 minutes or so, and fill a white oval plate - carefully transferring them with a pair of tongs. These cute rolly bites of carby goodness are covered in real chopped garlic and parsley bits, and are usually gone in a second with a hungry group. However, I warn you - these are so good that you might not be able to stop - and there's much more delicious food to go, so keep in mind: they are KILLER!
Owen loves himself some caesar salad, and here was one order of it. Nothing outstanding, but not disappointing. The cheese is great in this - real grated parmesan, like it always should be (unfortunately, not always the case.)
Yes, even more food. Worth the wait though - this was the gargantuan order of The Special - Wide, flat noodles with shiitake mushrooms, apple chicken sausage in a tomato cream sauce. This was amazing good! The mushrooms this pasta dish an AMAZING flavor, and the wide noodles made this dish super special to me - I just like wide noodles alright? The creme sauce was great - not too creamy and not too tomato-y. The apple chicken sausage had good bite and flavor. This is my new thing to love here!!
Ish got the C & O Classic Cioppino - "A famous Italian Fisherman's Stew featuring shrimp, clams, mussels, salmon, swordfish and scallops in a deliciously light tomato and Pinot Grigio broth.". Dang. This was a seafood orgy in a soup. He seemed to like it a lot and who wouldn't with all those different kinds of seafood swimming in his delicious thick soup.
Bryan got a classic Spaghettini with meatballs. Huge meatballs (the size of a fist!) nestled above delicious spaghetti noodles and homemade sauce, what's not to like? Bryan managed to finish this whole plate himself so I'm assuming it was edible :D

Dean and Ryan shared a Linguini & Clams - in a Garlic Butter White Wine Lemon Sauce. Hearty and so full of clams...

C&O's motto is "People generally don't leave here hungry." I can attest to that statement...I was full to bursting when leaving, full of carby carbs and holding enough leftovers to feed me and Owen for the next few days. C&O's rules!