Well, it didn’t take long for me to return to Hawaii! And who would blame me…
Since my previous visit last Spring to Maui for the Maui Onion Festival, I had been looking forward to returning and seeing what the other Hawaiian islands had got going on — food wise that is. This time, I returned as a guest of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau to attend the 3rd Annual, Hawaii Food and Wine Festival!
Be sure to follow me ontwitter and instagram for live tweets and coverage and to see what I’m eating!!
…and who I’m meeting!
Part of the Kamehameha Schools Hawaii educational programs: I took a field trip to an 800-year-old fishpond, pounded poi and ate regional foods from local farmers. Here’s just a taste from my first adventure: Fish & Poi: Lunch at the Loʻi…
Check back for more posts from my Hawaii adventures! I’ll be telling you where you need to stay, what you need to eat, and where the locals go!
In case you saw the herd of 1000+ elegantly dressed people lugging tables and chairs and picnic baskets across Rodeo Drive this past Wednesday and wondered if you happened upon a cult (yes, we all wore white), you would be very close in your assumption.
Consider it a food-loving cult. A gang off freaky foodies. A barrage of tailgating chic-picnic-partiers.
This group of food lovers and friends gathered to this “secret location,” some having been on a wait-list for months. Others knew somebody who knew somebody, and got a ticket into LA’s first ever Dîner en Blanc.
This fancy-pants (and crazyweird cool) tradition that all started in France 25 years ago has grown to various iconic locations worldwide including the plaza at Lincoln Center in New York, in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Boston and Sydney. It was only perfect that Los Angeles’ inaugural Dîner en Blanc was an the most elegant of locations, Rodeo Drive.
Our group met at the designated bus pick up spot in Santa Monica and drove down Wilshire Blvd., many of us trying to guess where the secret location would be… LACMA? The Getty?
Once we saw the blockades and white balloons we knew this would be the place. There was no car traffic and no pedestrian traffic (except for the occasional dumbfounded tourists). There were people in white… everywhere.
There are a lot of rules to this thing. You must wear white (no off white or beige), you must bring white chairs and your own 30″ table. You also can’t arrive late or not show up or are threatened with being revoked from the party – for life! (this happened to a friend of mine). Also, even though you pay $30 for your membership and bus fee, dinner is not included. It is up to you to BYOFood, and booze.
If it sounds like a pain in the ass… it kinda is. But once you are there, and see it set up in all it’s glory — food, music, dancing, friends — there is no denying the uniqueness of the occasion and you can’t help but feel that you are a party of something truly special.
To see how you can get on the list for the next one, visit their website.
214 South Main St · Los Angeles, CA 90012 · Neighborhood: Downtown
Sure, pancakes are not everybody’s thing. My brother for instance, hates them with a passion! But I, for some reason, have always loved them – breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Flapjacks, hotcakes, whatever you want to call them, for me, they are the kind of thing you can dress up or down, make sweeter (and more sinful!) with chocolate chips or perhaps pretend you were being healthy by adding blueberries or some sort of fruit on top.
This past weekend, LA Weekly threw a breakfast party all dedicated to my special friend, the pancake. A 3-hour long sampling of LA’s best breakfast gems? How could I resist!? Watch below for the recap and read on for details.
Curated by Good Food’s Evan Kleiman, guests got to sample tasty treats from all around LA. Standouts included coconut sticky pancakes and spicy prime rib from Chego, lemon soufflé blueberry pancakes from Brite Spot and corn poblano cakes with chicharron, choke, and egg from the forthcoming Bunker Hill Mexican joint, Pez Cantina.
Caffeine was well represented at the event – Handsome Coffee Roasters, Cafecito Organico and LAMillserved up pour overs, cappucinos and cold brews for our morning wake up call.
I sampled some okonomiyaki, a delicious cabbaged-based Japanese “pancake” and the chefs from Gottsui on Sawtelle were surprised I knew what it was! Little did they know, I learned all about this tasty street snack from my pal Yoko Isassi’s Japanese cooking classes.
Then the unthinkable happened… I met someone who had bigger hair than Backyard Bite! Vintage songstress Lynda Kay humored me with a photo for a side by side ‘fro comparison. I think she won by an inch!
Not only was this event a great way to spend an afternoon eating and enjoying the great LA weather, a portion of proceeds benefited Project Angel Food which delivers meals to men women and children affected by HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life threatening illnesses throughout the LA area. A great cause!
Summer is in full swing, but just in case you still haven’t fully gotten your festival fix, here are a few up and coming events to make sure land on your foodie radar.
Wine, food, travel? It’s all here – read on for my must-do list:
// #1. Learn About Wine’s Rosenthal Private Estate Visit: Tour, Wine Tasting & Picnic · Sat, Aug. 10th 11AM and 2:15PM
Are you a wine-o-phobe? Make sure to check out the 10th annual tasting and picnic lunch at the Private Estate of George Rosenthal, owner of one of the premier producers in the region. Wine Educator Ian Blackhurst sure knows his wine, and by the end of one of his wine classes, you will know yours too.
SESSION 1 – 11:00 AM – 1:00 AM click here // SESSION 2 – 2:15 PM – 4:15 PM click here.
Read about one of my recent experiences with Learn About Wine, here.
How about sampling all of Los Angeles’ best in one place? The Taste is back again at Paramount Studios lot and this year features five distinctive events across Labor Day Weekend.
There’s an Opening Night kick-off celebration on Friday, a Flavors of L.A.event hosted by Jonathan Gold on Saturday and a Cocktail Confidentialparty with Matthew Biancanielloon Sunday — that’s just a few of the many TASTE events featuring unlimited tastings, specialty cocktails, wine seminars, live demos… etc. The Taste is always a fun day/night for a food lover… get tickets while you can and make sure you come hungry (and don’t forget to bring the Tums)! You will eat, and eat…
Opening Night: $125, limited availability
A 20% discount on individual tickets is available to all Los Angeles Times members
“This lake side Craft Beer festival features over 70 craft brews on tap, food trucks, live music and bikini Bocce Ball. CBF is the event of the year for any beer enthusiast. CBF’s main goal is to shine a light on the craft beer movement and celebrate great beer!”
“Started in the early 1990’s by a few restaurant owners who wanted to thank the community for their patronage, the fair has grown into an explosion of talented local shop & restaurant owners, artists and musicians bringing their very best to attendees more diverse than most cities in the U.S.”
Walk the neighborhood and check out local musicians, dancers, circus acts and great local food. The event is family friendly and best of all, admission is FREE!
// #5. 626 Night Market · August 31st and September 1st 4 PM-1 AM
For another event on the cheap, check out 626 Night Market at the Santa Anita Race Track in Arcadia, this festival touts itself as “the largest Asian night market in America.” With over 150 vendors featuring Asian street foods, merchandise, beer & spirits, live musical acts, artists, films and games. It’s a delicious – DO.
Final Event Labor Day weekend! August 31st: 4pm – 1am
Tickets are just $2-$3 and parking is FREE. Think globally, eat locally 🙂
O’ahu, HI is just a hop, skip and jump across the Pacific Ocean (about a 4.5 hour plane ride from Cali) so for those of us looking for a weekend getaway (who wouldn’t like to be in Hawaii right about now!?) there are two festivals around Labor Day weekend to get your tummy grumbling.
This year, you’ll find local LA chefs like Nancy Silverton, Celestino Drago, Sang Yoon and Ricardo Zarate cooking up some special treats with local chef celebs (Top Chef’s Sheldon Simeon, Iron Chef Morimoto) for guests in attendance to this year’s fest.
For tickets and accommodations visit their website. (hint: I’ll be there!)
// #8. Kā’anapali Fresh · Friday & Saturday, Aug. 30th and Aug. 31st
For a more “local” Hawaii experience Kā’anapali, MAUI is holding their second annual food festival, Kā’anapali Fresh, a 2-day summer event highlighting Kā’anapali’s “grown-on-Maui” products, local farmers and chefs.
Check out their website for tickets and accommodation info. Here’s a video recap from a recent Maui festival I attended this year.
Crème Caramel LA Booth, Silver Lake Farmer’s Market, Silver Lake , CA
Stop #2 of our Filipino tour takes me and blogger pal Karena Higgins to the Silver Lake Farmer’s Market to Créme Caramel LA, where Pinoy baker Kristine de la Cruz introduces us to her adapted family recipe of the French chilled custard. Along with her traditional crème caramel, she uses Filipino inspired flavors like Buko Pandan, Ube (purple yam) and Mango to present desert lovers with a fresh take on the classic dessert. Her flavors are rich, sweet and tasty and are sure to turn any previous notion of flan you may have had, upside down.
Growing her company from a solid business plan, utilizing her marketing skills from a previous job, and applying the aid from her local community, Kristine is one savvy bussiness owner who knows the secret to success: Patience and Perseverance.
When we first met with her early this Spring, Créme Caramel LA was in nine local California farmer’s markets and as of this post, she has booths set up in 14 with plans to be in 20 markets by the end of the summer.
Watch her story and be sure to look out for Créme Caramel LA at your neighborhood farmer’s market!
It’s so good. Trust me, you’ll swoon.
Hungry for more Filipino food? Click to watch Episode 1.
144 N Catalina Ave · Redondo Beach, CA 90277 · Neighborhood: Redondo Beach
Venturing outside of my usual Los Angeles vicinity, my food partner in crime and I found ourselves driving around Redondo Beach in search of a new neighborhood gem.
Not really knowing what we had a taste for, we used Yelp to search a few popular places in the area. We happened upon a spot with a very high Yelp rating 4.5 out of 5 starsand some amazing pictures of greasy and cheesy goodness. We thought we’d drive over and check it out…
Arriving at the Catalina Liquor Store parking lot, I looked around and scratched my head. Hmm… Where is The Standing Room? This is where my GPS brought me…
Then I noticed the little sign above and the whale window just below. Nice. Gem achieved.
Locals in bikini tops, locals on skateboards, boozy youngsters and families alike were coming out the front door of the liquor store with brown paper bags of food. I inhaled deeply and noticed the smell of french fries permeating the air. Yep. This was indeed the place.
Inside, it’s your average liquor store finds; booze and beverage, chips and cigarettes, and oh look, a take out restaurant in the back!
They have good looking “sammies” and “plates” but you’ll want the burger. Which to choose? There are so many hawaiian-asian inspired flavors, that bizarrely work together really well with the burgers. Fried egg? Check. Short rib? Check. Lobster? Yep. Bacon? Yes, Please.
It’s a bit confusing to order as there are a couple of different menus. Look, up here!
No, look down here!
Hey, over here!
Also, since they serve up burgers and fries… you have the inclination to call it “fast food” but a note of warning it’s definately not – I waited 35 minutes for my burger as it was cooked to order. The Danger Burger was legit. ½ pound patty, miso sauce (oh, the sauce!), tomato and onion tossed in spicy vinaigrette & fried egg… You’ll lick your fingers clean because it’s so tasty (and because it’s really messy).
Before.
After.
The parmesan truffle fries were outrageously flavored, cheesy and intense…
Even The Naked Burger, a basic tomato, lettuce and cheese burger was rockin’.
Where to sit? There are some tables and chairs underneath the red umbrellas to save you from the hot sun, Though, a lot of people were taking their lunch to-go.
BYB Tips:
It’s a messy Burger! Bring some wet-wipes. You might end up wearing the burger on your face.
Locals call ahead with their orders for faster service.
There’s a new app in town and lucky for me, (filmmaker/ foodie/ blogger/ host) it’s right up my alley. You might be rolling your eyes and grumbling, “oh, no, not another social media thing!” But for food lovers, this one is just too good to pass up.
Imagine if Instagram and Yelp had a baby and that baby made videos about food, it might look something like this…
Created by Demand Media founders Steven Kydd, Joe Perez and Larry Fitzgibbon, Tastemade is a Web TV Channel(ala FoodNetwork), an app,and a way to visually share what you’re eating with friends and followers… instantly.
I had the pleasure of beta testing the app prior to it’s July 12th release and got to play around with all the video functions. It’s pretty easy to use. I was thrilled to get to step away from my Final Cut pro project I had been working on and create something awesome, in an instant, without all that render and lag time.
There’s a formula. You shoot some clips with your iPhone, select some background music, choose a filter and voilá! Instant video. You are limited to 1-minute, but that’s also a good thing. As a visual person, a foodie and someone who likes to show and tell, I was an instant fan of this app.
Suddenly, everyone gets to channel their inner Guy Fieri and show us what’s on their plate (hopefully minus the bad hair and backwards sunglasses though).
Download and try it for yourself. What do we think? Oh no!? or Yummy, yay! Comments welcome.
1000 S La Brea Ave · Los Angeles, CA 90019 · Neighborhood: Miracle Mile
June 21st marks the official start of summertime. Whoohoo! What could be more “summer” than a roast beef sandwich and a chocolate milkshake on a hot day? Oh, what’s that you say? BBQ? They got that. Onion rings? Check. Banana Cream Pie Custard Dessert? Yep. Curly Fries? Uh huh. Soda floats? They got all that too.
The sandwiches at Top Round are the kind of roast beef you might have grown up on or at least wish you did. It’s true, every city has their own version of the oven roasted beef sammie. Personally, I never particularly liked going to Arby’s and I never really got into roast beef until very recently, but this place feels like the kind of classic joint I might enjoy, say on a sunny afternoon after a mid-day showing of Beetlejuice at the $1 cinema (that we snuck into anyway). A sheer guilty pleasure.
Owners include Anthony Carron (800 Degrees Neapolitan Pizzeria), Noah Ellis (Red Medicine), Steven Fretz (XIV, Curtis Stone), and Jamie Tiampo (NYC’s dell’anima, L’artusi). A good collaboration of people who like to play with their food and they do it well.
The vibe is new-old-school and there’s a throw back diner feel that almost begs for rollerskating waitresses to serve you in your car. Along with six different styles of sliced-to-order roast beef sandwiches, curly fries smothered in gravy and an insane(ly awesome) ice cream/shake/malt and custard dessert menu inspired by the St. Louis frozen custard shop Ted Drewes, going to Top Round feels like you left L.A. for a moment and went back in time to the 50’s. Never mind the fancy cars whizzing by on the corner of Olympic and LaBrea.
It may feel a bit mid-west in it’s simplicity of menu. A word of caution, you may have a hard time ordering just one thing.
As for the food, as you might imagine, there’s nothing really healthy about it. If you have guilt issues, suffer from self loathing and/or are trying to squeeze into that too-tight speedo just in time for the 4th of July, you might want to keep on driving cause this place won’t help that problem. You wont be able to resist the sweets. Even my crossfit training friend who’s on a strict paleo diet caved and ate TWO sandwiches, TWO curly fries and an ice cream shake. (hello, food coma!)
I tried the Bar-B-Cue Roast Beef Sandwich (fried onion & jalepeno straws, BBQ sauce, onion bun), the “Dirty” Fries (gravy, provel, caramelized onions & round sauce), a Pistachio Shake (simply wowsa!), The Banana Cream Pie Concrete Custard (Bananas, Nilla Wafers, Fudge, Whipped Cream) and the Hawaiian Custard (Bananas, Pineapple, Coconut, Macadamia Nuts).
Top Round is not quite a Philippe’sor Cole’s French Dip, instead think of it as the In-N-Out Burger of roast beef. It’s fast food. It’s cheap. And it’s a fresh take on a classic American English tradition.
Here’s a video recap on Top Round I shot courtesy of Tastemade.
BYB Tip: Faves included the Pistachio Shake, “dirty fries” and Bar-B-Cue or Beef on Weck.
1515 Griffith Park Blvd · Los Angeles, CA 90026 · Neighborhood: Silver Lake
Filipino food has been getting a lot of attention in the last few months. Well-known food personalities like Anthony Bourdain, Evan Kleinman and Roy Choi have been exploring why this underdog of cuisines hasn’t really gotten the love and exposure that it has deserved here in Los Angeles. My best friend and roommate in Chicago was Filipino, and somehow we never once talked about the type of meals he grew up on. Why had I never tried it before!?
I wanted to find out more about the Pinoy food culture once and for all…
Naturally, I hit up my blogger pal Karena Higgins, who runs the Filipino centric, Pig Parts and Beerblog. Karena took me to a few of her favorite neighborhood gems and taught me a thing or two about the local Filipino culture on the Eastside. Lucky for me, I got an edible education along the way.
Our first stop was at United Bakery in Silver Lake. Shop owner, Andrea de Guzman first came to the United States in 1978 with just $10 in her pocket. The bakery was her husband’s idea and they went from making traditional dishes (like pancit, lumpia, assorted hopia and siopao) in their apartment to the full fledged bakery that is there today.
As with any business, it wasn’t without hardship. Despite the “gang infested” neighborhood and fears of deportation when they started out, they were able to survive the violence and gentrification and have become a favorite among locals in the Silver Lake neighborhood.
Being that I never went to culinary school but always wanted to go, I love taking the occasional cooking class. When my foodie friend Marianasked me if I wanted to check out Foodstory, a cooking workshop about authentic Japanese cuisine, well, that was an easy “Hai onegai shimasu!” Translation… “Yes, please!” I went to see Yoko to find out more.
Yoko told me that she wanted the experience of her classes to resemble what cooking was like in your own home kitchen. I asked her how it all began…
Click to watch her story.
Read more about Yoko’s classes from a previous post!
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