Lunch: After we got home and picked up Hairy from the dog boarding facility, we had a quick lunch of instant Nong Shim Ramyun with napa cabbage and egg.

Dinner: Tina's parents gave us some freshly made won tons when they picked us up from the airport in the morning. We boiled these for dinner.

Lunch: We ate at Santouka Ramen in the Mitsuwa in Culver City (3760 South Centinela Avenue, Los Angeles, CA‎ - (310) 391-1101‎). I've eaten at the Santouka Ramen in San Jose and thought it was excellent, so I wanted Tina to taste it. The Los Angeles location is just as good and with four people we got to try several different types.

Salt Ramen - pork soup seasoned with salt. This was the least salty of all the soups - best for people who prefer their food on the milder side.

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What I Ate: March 28, 2010 (Santouka Ramen)

There is a distinctly young and hip buzz that came at us when we walked into the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills to dine at The Bazaar by José Andrés (465 S La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90048‎ - (310) 246-5567‎). The air is filled with chatter and excitement as twenty and thirty somethings mingle with both the trendy and the trendsetters in the lobby which is filled with art for sale - both beautiful and shocking. Seemingly randomly placed leather chairs and lounge sofas and odd shaped tables scatter this open space with LCD displays portraying paintings of centruries old European nobility slowing metamorphosing into macaques help to complete this fantasy that can only be reality in Beverly Hills or Las Vegas - but it's not Las Vegas since it's not overdone and gaudy. To the right of this receiving lobby that serves as a cocktail bar, coffee shop, patisserie, and art gallery, is The Bazaar - a restaurant not afraid to try to push the envelope while staying rooted in the traditional (sometimes technique and sometimes flavors).

Simple black wood tables and cushion chairs or wood benches dominate the dining room at The Bazaar, but there are a few glass tables with neon lights that add to the postmodern decor. Artwork ranges from Spanish photography to energetic chalk designs covering chalkboards mounted to all manner of vertical surfaces. There are no linen table clothes here, nor are there candles or full sets of tableware (most of the time you simply have a fork) to distract from the focus - tapas placed on your table and unapologetically illuminated by an overhead spot light clearly showcasing each dish for what it is - art. And, like art, there were courses that resonated with me and ones that I just didn't enjoy, but it was an adventure to try everything placed before us. It's hard for us to recall when the last time we had a dinner that was this - fun.

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What I Ate: March 27, 2010 (The Bazaar By Jose Andres at SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills)

Lunch: We ate stir-fried rice noodles, asparagus, pork ribs and seaweed (konbu) soup, bean curd with carrots, pickled cucumbers, and vinegared potatoes.

Dinner: Tina and I ate at The Bazaar by Jose Andres in the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills. The meal was incredibly interesting and proved to be one of the most exciting and fun dinners we've ever had. Did we like all of it? No, but we were definitely challenged and the chef took enough risks when devising interesting and complex dishes that although not all were favorable to us, the ones that did work were simply amazing. I don't think we've had as many dishes that blew us away in one meal (three) than tonight at The Bazaar. The full review will be the next post - but it's late and I am too exhausted to write tonight.

After lunch at Din Tai Fung (see previous post), we had dinner at Providence (5955 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA‎ - (323) 460-4170‎). Providence serves seafood in what I would call New American or Modern California cuisine and they do it quite well. We ordered the providence market menu which is a nine course (including cheese and intermezzo) for $110 per person.

We were brought an amuse bouche of three cocktails - greyhound (grapefruit with vodka), gin & tonic, and margarita. All three were served in a solid form with the greyhound and margarita both in the form of gelatinous bubbles filled with delicious versions of the cocktail. The greyhound was my favorite with excellent grapefruit flavor and just enough vodka taste to tease the palate. My mother's favorite was the margarita.

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What I Ate: March 26, 2010 (Providence Restaurant, Los Angeles)

Big food day today starting with the world famous Din Tai Fung dumpling restaurant and followed by one of the highest rated restaurants in Los Angeles - Providence. I'll cover them in separate posts - first is lunch at Din Tai Fung.

Lunch: We've long wanted to taste the xiaolong bao (literally "small steamer dumpling" but often translated as Shanghai soup dumplings) from Din Tai Fung (1088 South Baldwin Avenue, Arcadia, CA‎ - (626) 446-8588‎) because a lot of people say they are the best. Their original location(s) in Taipei, Taiwan are supposed to be the best, but the Los Angeles location (in Arcadia, CA) is supposed to be quite good. Several people have claimed they make the best in the United States, so we definitely wanted to check it out. They actually have two locations in Arcadia next to each other. They serve the same food. The original location is in a strip mall and seems more like your typical Chinese restaurant in appearance.

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What I Ate: March 26, 2010 (Din Tai Fung)

Dinner: We were in Fresno during the day, so I had us go to El Pescador Seafood Taqueria (4610 North Blackstone Avenue, Fresno, CA‎ - (559) 230-1299‎) for some seafood tacos.

We started off with their shrimp and fish soup which was a simple broth enhanced with flaked fish and a few tender shrimp.

Pescado (Fish tacos) - fried fish in corn taco with a cabbage slaw. Very tender fish with a delicious lightly fried batter and refreshing slaw. The fish had a slight muddiness to its flavor that made me think it was tilapia, but I forgot to ask what type of fish it was.

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What I Ate: March 25, 2010 (El Pescador)

Lunch: We flew to Los Angeles today to visit my parents. Immediately, after getting off the plane, I had my parents drive us to an In-N-Out Burger where I got a Double-Double with Fries.

Dinner: For our first dinner in Los Angeles, I decided to try Yang Chow (6443 Topanga Canyon Boulevard, Canoga Park, CA‎ - (818) 347-2610‎) because it was one of the few Michelin listed Chinese restaurants with a location in the San Fernando Valley. After reading online reviews, I knew I had to try their Slippery Shrimp (which they claim on their website is world famous) and the hot and sour soup (which many report to be sinus clearing). The restaurant describes itself as Mandarin and Szechwan Cuisine, but none of the spicy dishes we ordered tasted like they were intended to authentically replicate Sichuan cooking. In fact, the whole experience was a little bit of a disappointment (we had high hopes) and it certainly is NOT one of the better Chinese restaurants in Los Angeles (at least not their Canoga Park location).

While we were waiting for our food, they brought out some pickled cabbage which was flavorful, but much too sweet. There was a pleasant mild spiciness attached to the flavor, but the sweetness was overwhelming.

The Hot & Sour Soup ($6.50) (this was an order for 2 that we split between 4) is the best thing we had at the restaurant. The soup was sour, but not overwhelmingly so. The spice (from peppercorns) was well balanced and left a pleasing tickle in the mouth after swallowing. We felt that there were a lot of pleasant flavors and yet everything was kept in balance. Was it peppery enough to clear sinuses? Not even close. If I were to try to develop a hot & sour soup recipe, I'd try to achieve this mix of flavors. I would highly recommend this dish.

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What I Ate: March 24, 2010 (In-N-Out Burger, Yang Chow)

Dinner: We felt like eating some delicious smoked brisket, so we headed over to Rudy's Country Store and Bar-B-Q (2451 South Capital of Texas Highway, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 329-5554‎) and ordered a pound of moist brisket, half a jalapeno sausage and a half rack of baby back ribs. The brisket was juicy, fatty, tender, and extremely flavorful.

The jalapeno sausage had just a tad of spiciness. Just enough to give flavor without having it burn.

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What I Ate: March 23, 2010 (Rudy's Country Store and Bar-B-Q)

Dinner: We had dinner at Gumbo's (710 Colorado Street, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 480-8053‎). We've eaten at gumbo's before (in 2008) and had a middling to poor experience there. The gumbo was not particularly tasty, the tilapia that Tina ordered was borderline inedible (they replaced it with blackened shrimp which was much better), and my steak was fine, but not inspiring. I had returned for a tasting in late 2009 and found the Redfish Francine to be particularly good. They didn't have redfish tonight, so we ordered flounder.

We started today's dinner with a serving of their Escargot (imported French snails, baked in beurre ál'ail and Cajun spices, $10). The escargot was very tender with no rubberiness or excess chewiness. They were served hot (temperature) and slightly spicy with a pleasant acidity. Unfortunately, the sauce was a bit too salty.

Flounder Francine (Blackened, served over crawfish tails sautéed in creamy tarragon sauce, $29). I loved this fish. It was excellently prepared - the fish was extremely tender and the delicate texture worked extremely well with the contrasting crawfish. The sauce was also well balanced for both the flounder and the crawfish.

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What I Ate: March 22, 2010 (Santa Rita Cantina, Gumbo's)