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Bold & Loud at Leona

Apr08

Restaurant: Leona

Location: 123 W Washington Blvd, Venice, CA 90291. (310) 822-5379

Date: April 5, 2016

Cuisine: American Small Plates

Rating: Bold flavors, many hits, a few misses, and uneven pacing

The Hedonists have long been frequenters of Wilshire, and so when chef Nyesha Arrington opened her own place in Marina del Rey we wanted to check it out.

Leona has a typical but attractive contemporary space with open kitchen, bar, and high ceilings.
There’s a pretty extensive porch too.
The problem with those high ceilings and hard surfaces is a nearly deafening din. LOUD, even at the end of the night with only a few people in it.

But anyway, on to the food.

Ron brought as usual: NV Billecart-Salmon Champagne Brut Rosé. VM 92. Pale orange. High-pitched red berry, orange zest and jasmine aromas, with suave mineral and smoky lees notes adding complexity. Spicy and precise on the palate, showing very good punch to its strawberry and bitter cherry flavors. Opens up smoothly with air and picks up a bitter rhubarb quality that lingers onto the long, tightly focused finish. This bottling showed more brawny character than many past renditions of this cuvée, but with no lack of vivacity.
The current menu. There aren’t that many dishes, and we were 13 people, so I ordered most of the menu and they brought 4-5 of each dish.

From my cellar: 2002 Louis Jadot Corton-Charlemagne Domaine des Héritiers Louis Jadot. VM 96+. Knockout musky, soil-driven aromas of lime, chicken broth and crushed stone. At once dense and penetrating, with elegant but seriously intense flavors of lime, lemon, powdered stone and mint. Wonderfully light on its feet for a wine with this degree of power and thrust. Great building aftertaste shows superb density and cut. This should age like a red wine, and will be spectacular in 8 or 10 years.
COCTEL MIXTO. Local Seafood, Radish, Cilantro, Crispy Rice Paper. This was one of the weaker dishes. It was fairly hard to eat, and even harder to get the ceviche on the crisp.

Ron brought: 2007 Domaine William Fèvre Chablis Grand Cru Bougros. BH 92-95. Here too there is a very subtle influence of wood that frames ripe yet elegant and impressively pure aromas of citrus, spice hints, tidal pool and oyster shell notes, all of which are picked up by the highly complex and deep big-bodied flavors that are incredibly intense and quite unusually for Bougros, possess ‘hot knife through butter’ cut and delineation. An atypically elegant effort for the appellation.

CITRUS CURED TAI SNAPPER CEVICHE. Fire Water, Crispy Sweet Potato. This raw fish, by contrast, was fabulous. Looked good. Tasted great. Interesting textures and really bright flavors.

2005 Faiveley Nuits St. Georges 1er Cru Les Chaignots. BH 88-91. Strong wood influence currently dominates the dark berry and black raspberry-infused nose that precedes the somewhat woody medium weight flavors that are round and sweet with fine depth and complexity but the wood is not subtle and it causes me to question whether it will cause the finish to eventually dry out?

BABY ICEBERG. Local Blue Cheese, Hard Cooked Egg. Not bad, but I kinda missed the goopy cold Blue Cheese dressing.

Brock brought: 2000 Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair Vosne-Romanée Clos du Château. BH 88. This has opened considerably since last year with expressive, intense aromas of Vosne spice and a bit of toast followed by medium weight, beautifully defined flavors and solid length. The tannins are ripe though firm and show through on the lingering finish. The same mineral character of the 2001 is present here as well. Very solid quality here.
CRISPY SMELT. Kennebec Potato Crisps. The chips were a bit chewy, but this was some really great fried fish. Lots of batter, but light and crunchy and oh so delicious.
Chile de Árbol House Malt Vinegar took it to the next level.

Brian brought: 1996 Maison Champy Chambertin-Clos de Bèze. 94 points. A bit more mature than we were expecting, and clearly further along in development than my bottle three years ago. Nonetheless, this remains an enjoyable bottle of Beze and a nice example of at peak burgundy. My red wine of the night actually.

LAMB BELLY WONTONS. Tat Soi, Crispy Artichoke. I really liked these. Nice texture and rich lamby flavor.

Ron brought: 1996 Maison Roche de Bellene Clos Vougeot Collection Bellenum. 89 points. Open for hours. Really tight at first; took a good 30 minutes to get anything off the nose. Darker fruits, oak, five-spice, and the longer it is open a touch of truffle. Medium+ weight, long finish due to integrated but prominent tannins.
“BACON & EGGS”. Potato Crusted Duck Egg, Smokey Bacon Broth, Chives. Super creative great tasting dish. The fried egg was seriously crusted in there in those yummy potato strips and the big chunks of crispy bacon were awesome.

Larry brought: 2008 Louis Jadot Grands-Echezeaux. VM 93. The 2008 Grands-Echezeaux is wonderfully expressive in its aromas and flavors. Clean, mineral notes frame an attractive melange of sweet red cherries, flowers, licorice and spices in this mid-weight, intensely long Burgundy. This is a classy effort from Jadot. Nice, but not yet in balance. Needs at least 10 more years.
FOREST MUSHROOM PIZZA. Tallegio Cheese, Tarragon, Orange Zest. Not a bad pizza, if a little earthy.

Brock brought: 1998 Bruno Giacosa Barolo Riserva Le Rocche del Falletto di Serralunga d’Alba. 95 points. Young and tight, but still going to be a great wine.

SPRING PEA “RISOTTO”. Burrata Cheese, Red Wine Reduction, Quinoa, Almond Crumble. Very soft, with a tapioca like texture to the risotto, but I loved the mix with the burrata and it was light, refreshing, and delicious.

2002 Dominus Estate. VM 92+. Red-ruby. Cool, shy aromas of currant, blackberry and licorice, with a leafy, medicinal aspect. Dense, fat and structured but also quite penetrating and powerful, with black fruit, licorice and herbal flavors and a strong impression of extract. This offers noteworthy energy in the mouth, and finishes quite claret-like, with fine-grained tannins and sneaky length. A sample from another bottle that had been decanted for 24 hours showed a suaver texture but had not lost its solid tannic spine. Offers excellent potential but not quite the length of the 2001. Champy notes that the pH of 3.87 is the lowest in recent years here.

agavin: drinking nicely now

TAHINI ROASTED CARROTS. Mint, Turmeric Oil. This was probably our least favorite dish. Just kinda mush.

1996 Whitehall Lane Petite Sirah. Big.

DUTCH FRIES. Kale Salt, Seaside Sauce. Salty, but good.

1994 Peter Lehmann Shiraz Stonewell. VM 88. Ruby-red. Aromas of redcurrant, chicory and smoked meat complicated by herbal nuances. Thick, ripe and suave, with lovely fleshiness but not at all overly sweet. Finishes with dusty tannins and good length. Rather subtle, sophisticated shiraz. Also tasted: 1998 The Barossa Chardonnay, 1995 Mentor Barossa Valley, 1998 Cabernet Sauvignon Barossa Valley*, 1998 The Barossa Shiraz*, 1996 Eight Songs Shiraz Barossa, 1998 Botrytis Semillon Sauternes Barossa.

LOCAL BLACK COD. Sweet Onion Jus,Japanese Mustard Greens. Very soft and full of rich umami flavor. Nice!

2000 Château Calon-Ségur. VM 90. Full red-ruby. Musky aromas of tart red berries, smoke and meat, with a light medicinal nuance. Suave on entry, then rather tightly wound, even a bit youthfully dry. Fairly rich wine, but the redcurrant, smoke and spice flavors are presently dominated by solid underlying structure. Finishes firmly tannic, with sneaky persistence.

CAULIFLOWER ALIGOT. Smoked Mozzarella. Loved the cheesy top. Very nice gooey stuff.

2005 Chanticleer Cabernet Sauvignon. 87 points. This blend of 98% Cabernet Sauvignon and 2% Sangiovese captivates immediately with aromas of cassis, fraise des bois, Morello cherry, cantaloupe, spearmint, tarragon, cedar, and vanilla. It offers luscious, ripe, dark-berry fruit, juicy natural acidity, and creamy oak notes. The silky, mouth-filling Cabernet shows its tannic structure only on the slightly drying finish, which is also imbued with a gorgeous, long-lasting blackcurrant note. A mere 405 cases were produced.
MEATBALLS DE CORAZON. Piri Piri, Crispy Plantains, Roasted Beef Jus. We had high hopes for these, but it was like they dumped 2-3 times too much seasoning in the meat balls rendering them VERY salty and a bit too spicy (even for me, mostly because of concentration). Not good at all.

2001 Neal Family Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain Estate. 92 points. Nice black cherry, plum, currant up front. Typical earthy H.M. notes throughout. Smooth tannins on the end, good finish.

CRISPY DUCK CONFIT. Kumquat Chutney, Red Chard. Solid and tasty.

1991 Robert Mondavi Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve. 91 points. Evolved, almost fully mature Cabernet nose that combines black fruit and cedary and earthy elements. It’s just a touch short on the finish, which is surprising given the lovely aromatics and good mid-palate depth.

BULGOGI BRAISED SHORT RIB. Roasted Bone Marrow, McGrath Mustard Frills. The meat was very tasty. Some thought it a bit salty, although compared to the meatballs this didn’t bug me.
Fun evening and some great eats.

Food was very creative and about half of the dishes were great. Most others were just “good”, but a few, like the carrots and meatballs were oddly off. Leona either need a bit of a menu tune up or there is too much kitchen variation. Still, I really enjoyed the plating, interplay of textures, and flavors of most of the dishes. There was some nice novelty to them as well, which is rare, so I was basically impressed by the food.

Service tried real hard, and the were SUPER NICE in accommodating our giant table. I picked all the stuff off the menu and they did a good job sequencing it and bringing a large number 4-5 of each dish. After 2 dishes I tried to scale back the number to 3-4 but we got a new server (shift turn over?) and the message never got through. The result was we had too much of each dish, leading to skipping dessert, and people being full too early in the progression. This was mitigated by the reasonable pricing. More serious, was that at the end of the night, with the mains, even though the place was emptying, the gap between dishes grew very long. I’m sure the kitchen was a bit overwhelmed with our giant size, but combined with too much food the slow pacing altered the meal momentum and “agitated the locals” (i.e. the dinners).

My biggest problem with Leona has nothing to do with food or service, and this is in the context of some really good food, is the noise level of the space. It’s just WAY TOO LOUD. Really, this is taking “loud is cool” to ridiculous levels. We couldn’t hear each other. I’m not a supporter of this trend — put up some sound dampeners.

Price was super reasonable for all we had.

Wines were great — of course 🙂

For more LA dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
Comments (1)

Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Corton-Charlemagne, hedonists, Leona, Marina del Rey, Nyesha Arrington

Mountain Eats – Petra’s

Apr06

Restaurant: Petra’s Bistro & Wine Bar

Location: 6080 Minaret Rd, Mammoth Lakes, CA 93546. (760) 934-3500

Date: March 22, 2016 & Jan 1, 2019

Cuisine: French / American

Rating: excellent, for Mammoth

Mammoth Lakes isn’t exactly a culinary capital, but my friend Liz had recommended Petra’s as among the best that it has:Located just across Minaret from the village.
The menu.

From my cellar: 1997 Louis Jadot Echezeaux. VM 91. Full deep red. Complex aromas of red berries, cassis, cocoa powder, tar, game, dark chocolate, nutmeg and roasted nuts. Concentrated, spicy, fresh and youthful. Dense and mouthfilling but not at all heavy. Structured to age. Finishes long and subtle, with ripe, dusty tannins. Even better than it appeared a year ago from barrel. Drinking great right now.

Pretty olive oil and vinegar.

Green salad.

Caesar Salad. Hearts of Romaine, Shaved Parmesan, Croutons, House Caesar Dressing, Parmesan Tuile.

Baked Brie (1/1/19). My wife liked, but didn’t love this appetizer.

Smoked Salmon Trio. Applewood Smoked Salmon Flake, Gravlax, Smoked Salmon Mousse, Dill Crème Fraiche, Fried Capers, Pickled Shallots, Cucumber, Grilled Pita Bread.

Duck Confit. Crispy Skin Duck Leg Confit, Mushroom & Leek Risotto, Fried Leeks, Whole Grain Mustard Sauce. Not bad at all.

Grilled New York. New York Strip, Gruyere Potato Au Gratin, Grilled Asparagus, Cab Demi Reduction.

A swordfish special.

Scallops. Pan Seared Sea Scallop, Turnip Puree, Sautéed Snow Peas, Brown Butter, Lemon Parsley Oil.

A different version of scallops with beans, radish, and lobster (1/1/19).

A slightly strange maple/orange ice cream float. The liqueur was very strong, giving this a pretty intense alcoholic taste.
Homemade brownie vanilla ice cream.

Not only did Petra’s have a more modern menu, but the kitchen out cooked by far most Mammoth places. Service was pretty good too. This would just be middle of the pack in LA, but it’s solid, probably the third best kitchen in this small town.

For more dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: French Cuisine, Mammoth Lakes, Petras

Akbar – Big Flavors, Big Fun

Apr04

Restaurant: Akbar [1, 2, 3, 4 5]

Location: 3115 Washington Blvd, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292. (310) 574-0666

Date: March 30, 2016

Cuisine: Indian

Rating: Bold and balanced flavors

ANY CHARACTER HERE

It’s time for my my Hedonist group to return to LA’s best Indian restaurant, Akbar (Santa Monica branch). Too many Indian places focus on low cost buffets of very over cooked food, but Akbar cooks everything to order — even baking their own Naan when you place the order. They are more focused on the cuisine of the Punjab (Northern India), with very good curries and kormas. You can get anything from extremely mild to blow the top of your head off. Once I had the “pepper lamb” on 5 (max heat) and my scalp sweat for hours.

This was one of those really crazy evenings where we took over half the place with 25 people and even more wines!

Fellow Hedonist Chef Avi commands the kitchen!

Avi’s Kale Salad with Balsamic Mango Dressing. Not your usual Indian dish, but a nice refreshing salad with a good mix of textures and a bright sweet/tangy flavor.

Chana Samosa. Sort of Indian loaded baked potatoes, potato samosas covered in yogurt, tamarind sauce, curry chickpeas, and more. Awesome tangy, spicy, sweet, curry flavors.

Poutine du Yarom. The big guy requested this one. Fries with curried lamb and fried egg! Good stuff, and certainly not on the vegan diet!

Ground meat skewered and cooked over the fire. One of the Indian variants of Kafta kabob.

Lamb Chops. My friend Dave declared these the best lamb he’s ever had. Incredibly soft and full of fabulous lightly spicy flavor!

Chicken 65. Spicy south indian specialty served with serano and onion. Hot wings crossed with chicken nuggets! Hottest dish of the night.

Fresh baked Naan.

Mushroom Pilau. Rice with mushrooms and maybe a bit of meat.

House favorite Chicken Tikka Masala. Another perfect batch of this amazing dish. The chicken itself is all super tender chunks of white meat. The sauce has this snappy tang and complex flavor.

Shrimp Goa Curry. Shrimp prepared in onion, coconut and tamarind sauce with sauté of mustard. Some found it too sweet, but I loved this — nice creamy sauce too.

Goat curry. A rich, dark, strong curry with chunks of flavorful goat. It is, after all, the most eaten meat in the world.

Kaddu Ki Sabzi. Butternut squash cooked with coconut powder with sauté of mustard and red chilli peppers. Very Southern Indian dish with that coconut and black mustard.

Apollo Fish. White fish battered fried served with tomato onion bhuna.

Shrikhand. Whipped yogurt with saffron and pistachios.

Gulab Jamun. The classic sweet dough/cheese balls in syrup.

This was such a big dinner that wines were many, varied, and chaotic. For the most part, not the really good stuff, and a whole bunch of the New World swill, but a few tasty fellows.

Bonus from Arnie: NV Marc Hébrart Champagne Premier Cru Brut Mareuil-Sur-Ay. 90 points. Light straw. Larger but good bubbles. Toast, apples, okay depth. Nicely done.

Bonus from Ron: NV Billecart-Salmon Champagne Brut Rosé. VM 92. Pale orange. High-pitched red berry, orange zest and jasmine aromas, with suave mineral and smoky lees notes adding complexity. Spicy and precise on the palate, showing very good punch to its strawberry and bitter cherry flavors. Opens up smoothly with air and picks up a bitter rhubarb quality that lingers onto the long, tightly focused finish. This bottling showed more brawny character than many past renditions of this cuvée, but with no lack of vivacity.

2013 Cyril gautheron Chablis Mont de Milieu 1er Cru. Never heard of this Chablis!

Ron brought: 2002 Joh. Jos. Christoffel Erben Erdener Treppchen Riesling Kabinett. 90 points. Crisp green apples, with some slight honeyed notes on the palate. A little sweet, with not quite enough acidity.

Arnie brought: 2012 Joh. Jos. Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spätlese. 93 points. Crisp aromas of passion fruit, nut oils and cinnamon. Rich, sleek and invigorating, but with creamy tropical fruit flavors remaining light and ethereal. Well-balanced, elegant and impeccably long. This does not have the depth of the auction wine, but at present more it offers greater drinkability.

From my cellar: 2000 Trimbach Pinot Gris Sélection de Grains Nobles. VM 93. Bright medium gold. Superripe aromas of apricot jam, exotic spices, honey and tobacco; just misses the clarity of the best SGN bottlings from this producer. Very dense but not hugely unctuous thanks to firm, perfectly integrated acidity. Sappy, vibrant and very long on the aftertaste.

From my cellar: 1996 Maison Roche de Bellene Latricières-Chambertin Collection Bellenum. 93 points. A wonderful 1996 Burgundy. Needed a few minutes to open up, but then was great. Plenty of upfront plush rich cherry, still dominating the subtle emerging mushroom and forest floor flavours that should develop well. Lovely balance of acidity and some spice on the finish, makes this all too drinkable (I only wanted to have half a bottle, but it all vanished!)… slightly too sweet now for my liking, but that is evidence of the (further) potential here. Drinks extremely well now, but will easily cellar and improve for another 10yrs. Recommended.

Fernie brought: 2012 Occidental Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast. 90 points. Oaked fruit juice.

1999 Marqués de la Concordia Rioja Reserva. 87 points. A little thin, although had some character. Not bad for a cheap Rioja.

Ron brought: 1970 Marqués de Murrieta Rioja Ygay Reserva. 93 points. Still vibrant and dark red, a little VA but not off putting, surprisingly strong fruit and good acidity with a little dill on the finish. Plenty of life left in this one.

2003 M. Chapoutier Châteauneuf-du-Pape Croix de Bois (magnum). VM 91. Light red. Wild aromas of charred meat and garrigue add complexity to the sweet notes of raspberry preserves, candied cherry, red plum and subtle white pepper. Explosively fruity Chateauneuf du Pape with no rough edges to its lush strawberry and candied raspberry flavors. Finishes with excellent length. way too young.

2007 Domaine de la Janasse Châteauneuf-du-Pape Cuvée Chaupin. Vinous 94. Opaque ruby. Spicy raspberry and cherry aromas are complicated by garrigue and Asian spices. Sweet, focused red fruit flavors are given spine by zesty minerality and pick up an exotic floral quality with air. Expands nicely on the finish, leaving behind sweet lavender pastille and raspberry notes.

2006 Monti Coroni Amarone della Valpolicella Classico.

2005 Pax Syrah Walker Vine Hill. VM 93. Opaque purple. Sexy blackberry, mulberry and candied licorice aromas, with a gentle graphite accent. Silky in texture, displaying a full array of sweet dark berry flavors and outstanding depth and focus. Very fine tannins add support to this extroverted bundle of fresh fruit, with tangier red berry notes coming on with air. The fruit carries impressively through the bright, seamless finish. This is the highest in alcohol of this year’s releases at 14.8%.

No info on the front, no review.

2013 Justin Vineyards & Winery Cabernet Sauvignon. Can we say young?

2008 Troll Bridge Cabernet Sauvignon.

Not even in Cellar Tracker! Impressive.

2010 Eighty Four Wines Petite Sirah. Some reviewer liked this enough to give it a 93.

2013 Predator Zinfandel Old Vine Rutherford Ranch Vineyards. Oh lord, I don’t even love 70s Zin.

Lipper brought: 1997 Turley Zinfandel Hayne Vineyard. VM 94-96. Black-ruby. Bright, spicy, very complex aromas of blackberry, black pepper, iodine and brown spices, plus a lively floral note. Extraordinary fruit offers great sweetness and intensity. Thick yet almost miraculously poised. Finishes with endless, palate-saturating fruit and exhilarating Christmas spices. Always a monumental wine from Turley.

agavin: if I’d noticed this was ’97 I’d have tried it just to calibrate my semi-mature Zin palate.

Akbar has long been my favorite LA Indian, and this meal was probably my best yet — and very different than usual. Chef Avi really turned out a lot of unique things tonight, including a bunch of southern specialties. And the wines were really great too. All in all an excellent night.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

or more crazy Hedonist dinners here!

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Akbar, ctm, curry, hedonists, Wine

Hill Party

Mar30

It’s time for Hedonist buddy Chevy’s annual birthday party — although this time, as he’s getting married next week, it’s a combined bday and pre-wedding party.

Located at Chevy and Seb’s parent’s house on Venus. Actually La Crescenta, which is FAR out there, but gorgeous.

Not a bad view!

This party was BYOB wine, and pot luck food with some people bringing pre-prepared stuff and some of us cooking!

I made my “famous” Dan Dan Mein — super hot with lots of authentic Szechuan chilies.

Fried onions from… Outback I think. haha. Pretty tasty though.

Falafel and humus and eggplant.

Roast Chinese pork!

Roast goat from Boa (there was a goat dinner there 48 hours before).

Chef Avi’s Indian goat curry.

Rice of course.

Yummy fried chicken.

Vegetables. Like Curry Cauliflower.

Hmmm. Green.

Poke.

Seb holding a live lobster.

Yarom chewing on the goat head!

And lots of others having fun.

What’s a party without chips?

Or sausage.

Ceviche.

Crab mushrooms.

Ron’s Veal Milanese. He spent hours making this totally from scratch and it won the dish of the night — although I hold out for my Dan Dan 🙂

Live lobsters!

Chef Adam killed them and basted them with…

Lavender butter.

Then they were grilled. Next to them are marinated venison and buffalo steaks!

Oh and Mark brought Prime Rib!

I probably missed a brunch of stuff too. And then there were the desserts.

Like red velvet cake.

Here is the happy couple, Chevy and Mary with a bit of their wedding cake (in advance).

This party kept on going. Not only were there about 80 bottles of wine! Yeah, 80, but there was a Napa Cab blind tasting with 19 bottles. I tried, but petered out at about number 7 or 8 because this was WAY too much cab for my “delicate” pallet.

More good times.

I’m not going to bother showing all the wines. Way, way too many. I’ll just show some of the cabs and the like.This is the blind line up after the reveal.

And here are some, but not nearly ALL of the other wines. This was A LOT of wine. Much was too New World or young for me, but some were great.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: birthday, Dan Dan Mein, hedonists, La Crescenta, Wine

Mountain Eats – Campo

Mar28

Restaurant: Campo

Location:6201 Minaret Rd Suite 240, Mammoth Lakes, CA 93546. (760) 934-0669

Date: January 17 & March 20, 2016

Cuisine: Italian

Rating: decent, for Mammoth

Mammoth Lakes isn’t exactly a culinary capital, so we twice went to:

Campo, the Village’s designated Italian.

Campo calls itself Rustic Italian. Well, I guess that’s reasonable. More Rustic Contemporary Italian American, but who’s being specific.

Bread and olive oil / balsamic.

This is a composite of two dinners, both times I brought Brunello. Forgot to photo the first one.

From my cellar: 2004 Tenuta le Potazzine Brunello di Montalcino Riserva. VM 93. Deep ruby-red. Knockout nose combines red cherry, smoky plum, minerals and licorice. Enters creamy, fleshy and smooth, with decadently rich red and black fruit flavors, but turns more austere towards the back. Finishes with above-average complexity and depth, featuring ultra-smooth tannins and an enticing mineral persistence. Lacks the length for an even higher score, but this very serious wine only needs a few years in the cellar to show all it’s got. This is the first Riserva ever made by this estate.

agavin: I got this bottle (and a couple cases of others) at the winery. It was bricking slightly but in a really good spot.

Charcuterie. Meats!

Butternut soup.

Simple Green Salad. White balsamic vinaigrette.

Kale salad. Various extras.

Wood fired cauliflower. Calabrian chilies. garlic. Not bad.
Beet Salad. roasted baby beets, butternut squash, rosemary goat cheese, chile oil. Strange neon glow to the beets!

Special with burrata and prosciutto and very salty crackers. Super yummy though.
Pizza!

Kid’s pasta.

Special Pappardelle with orange and duck. A little sweet but quite good.

TAGLIATELLE wild boar bolognese, grana padano. A decent, but slightly dry version of this classic dish. The meat needed more flavor somehow.

Special seafood risotto with shrimp and scallop.

Steak and potatoes. This is Mammoth.

A very unattractive split of a root beer float.

Caramel budino. These are always great. Love it.

Campo is great for Mammoth and sort of decent by LA Italian standards. It’s got a good menu and execution is decent. Some dishes are tasty and some are a tad flat. Service is overwhelmed. Both times we were there — granted with big parties — they couldn’t really handle it and there were issues. They were nice though. Mammoth servers usually are. They just couldn’t get it all right / timed / etc.

For more dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Campo, Italian cuisine, Mammoth Lakes, pasta, Pizza

Quick Eats – Pho 2000

Mar25

Restaurant: Pho 2000

Location: 215 N Western Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90004. (323) 461-5845

Date: March 18 & July 5, 2016

Cuisine: Vietnamese Pho

Rating: A lot like Vietnam

I was in Korea Town and looking for a quick lunch.

And I drove by this, so figured I’d give it a try.

This is a super quick eat, so I just photoed what I ordered from the large selection of Pho and fried rice. Menu is in Korean too. lol.

They have all the condiments.

And bring you the fresh ones, like onions.

And the lime and cilantro and basil.
House Special. Meat Ball, rare steak, Brisket, tendon, tripe, onion, cilantro, green onion. Good broth. It pretty much tasted like straight Pho I had in Vietnam. I liked all the meat except the tripe and maybe the tendon. I find that dipping the noodles in the hoisin is delicious too. I’m all about hoisin.

Pho Seafood Combo. Pretty much the combined meat and seafood works. Doesn’t look so different does it?

People say Pho 2000 isn’t very authentic. I’m no serious judge, and I ordered only one thing. It was pretty tasty though.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

Or to check out some “real” Vietnamese dining (in Vietnam), my “Eating Vietnam” report.

By: agavin
Comments (1)

Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Pho, Pho 2000, Vietnamese cuisine

Inotheke – Modern Greek

Mar23

Restaurant: Inotheke

Location: 606 Broadway #101, Santa Monica, CA 90401. 310) 458-3366

Date: March 19 & November 11, 2016

Cuisine: Modern Greek

Rating: Good flavors

I’m always on the lookup for new local restaurants, plus I like Greek food, so I as excited to hear about modern Greek eatery Inotheke.

Located right near the promenade on Broadway.

The menu is full of reinvented classics, but tuned toward sharing and small plates.

Likewise the interior is modern and clean, with only a touch of blue and white to remind us of the “theme.”

Tzatziki. I never eat Greek without ordering my favorite tangy yogurt. This version was pretty good. Tangy, garlicky, but not as thick as I like it.

The pita was grilled, soft, and greek style.

Oven Roasted Beet salad. Arugula, goat cheese, red onion, dill, lemon vinaigrette. Fairly typical, but still a tasty salad.

Spanakopitakia. Feta, kaseri, spinach, red pepper. Got to love fried pastry encrusted cheese!

Scallop tartare. Cucumber, lemon, olive, chili flakes. This had a good bit of dill too and was quite “Greek” in flavor. The scallops were nicely firm. Good stuff overall.

Salmon “Exohiko”. (11/5/16) Filo Pastry, Eggplant, Zucchini, Capers. Basically salmon baked in a pastry!

Shrimp Saganaki. Tomato Sauce, feta, ouzo. A version of the classic greek dish. Sometimes in Greece it was cheesier and creamier, but this was solid. Lots of acid.

Scallop Saganaki (11/5/16). Tomato, Feta, Ouzo, Scallions, Rice. On our second visit, Inotheke mixed up their Saganaki, venturing away from the classic shrimp to scallop (never seen that in Greece) and adding in some lovely rice underneath. The rice alone made this version better.
Lamb & Orzo. Tomato, Parmesan. My favorite dish of the night. Basically like a lamb risotto or pasta. Nice texture from the orzo and appropriate lambiness from the soft meat, plus the cheese really worked.

Moussaka. (11/5/16) Ground Beef, Eggplant, Zucchini, “Bechamel”. A nice version of one of my favorite Greek dishes. Lots of goopy Béchamel!

Overall I liked Inotheke and I’ll be back. Sometimes I like my Greek pretty “traditional” but this split a nice balance as they had many of traditional dishes, merely with updated plating (that’s a plus). Flavors were good and bright and I like the sharing format — plus it’s very convenient.

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: California, Greek cuisine, lamb, Moussaka, Santa Monica, Small Plates, Tzatziki

Quick Eats – Da Jeong

Mar21

Restaurant: Da Jeong

Location: 3909 1/2 W Olympic Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90019. (323) 931-8900

Date: March 14, 2016

Cuisine: Korean

Rating: Great homestyle Korean

Los Angeles is blessed with a huge Korea Town and an extensive library of Korean food.

Da Jeong is a home style place that’s famous (at least among my friends) for its Korean fried chicken. But somehow I’d never tried it.

Pretty much beer friendly food.

Like any good Korean place, Da Jeong comes with an array of banchan (small usually pickled dishes). This one was a spiced pickled cucumber.

Kimchee, the classic.

Greens and onions.

Bean sprouts.

Chewy radish and peppers, vaguely chewy and quite tasty.

Little “candied” fish. Sweet, spicy, and briney.

Seafood pancake. This omelet/pancake is served with a soy sauce-like sauce. It was full of green onions and all sorts of seafood goodness. Really quite excellent.

Soy sauce shrimp. Raw or marinated prawns soaked in soy sauce. You twist off the head and chomp. As we noted, this was an “advanced” dish. Not so hardcore as the raw crab, but hardcore enough.

Fried chicken. Had to get this of course. Very crispy, with a strong Asian salt and pepper in the batter. We found it a touch mysterious which part of the chicken we were getting under all that fry, and the cuts are different than classic American breast and thigh. I’m guessing it was mostly dark meat. It was pretty darn awesome though.

Hearty Korean Spicy Beef Stew. That standard red Korean sauce with beef and cabbage and green onions and other stuff. Certainly a hearty hot stew.
Purple rice (rice with a bit of red bean).

I have to come back here with the Hedonists and a bigger gang and/or someone Korean. Food was very good and I could tell the ingredients were super fresh and the execution excellent. I don’t really know enough yet about Korean food to know how to order well, and with just the two of us we only got to try a few things — plus with portion sizes as they were we had WAY too much food.

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By: agavin
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Tagged as: Da Jeong, fried chicken, Korea-town, Korean cuisine

Kali on Melrose

Mar18

Restaurant: Kali [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Location: 5722 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90038. (323) 871-4160

Date: March 16, 2016

Cuisine: New American French

Rating: Really good

I’ve known Kevin Meehan for years as a private and popup chef and have had the pleasure to enjoy many a fine meal he’s put together. But this year he’s transitioned into the more stationary, and possibly more hectic restaurant world by opening up his own Melrose Ave restaurant!

Here he is in the attractive new space, exhausted at the end of a long busy dinner service.

With the opening of Kali Restaurant, Chef Kevin Meehan’s broad 23-year culinary career reaches its apex. At Kali, Meehan, whose deft hand was cultivated in Los Angeles’ most prestigious kitchens, joins forces with long-time friend and professional colleague, Drew Langley, previously the wine director at the iconic, Michelin-starred Providence.
For the 39-year-old Meehan, Kali represents the evolution of not just Kali Dining, his roving private dinner pop-up, but the rigorous years he spent refining his craft. The contemporary California restaurant blends the precision and hospitality of the white tablecloth kitchens where Meehan developed his culinary acumen, with the accessibility and ease of a local’s favorite neighborhood haunt.
Born and raised in Long Island, New York, Meehan’s initial foray in the industry was at a fried chicken joint when he was a teenager. While most would be turned off by working the fryer, Meehan was feeding an innate attraction to food, and, in the process, unearthing what would become a life-long love affair with the restaurant world. After graduating high school, Meehan enrolled in the esteemed Culinary Arts program at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, an education that he would test and sharpen on-the-line during an apprenticeship at the Michelin-starred L’alban Chambon under French Master Chef Dominique Michou, and, later, alongside Los Angeles’ finest chefs.
In 2000, Meehan drove cross country to assume a post at the celebrated L’Orangerie, then helmed by Chef Ludo Lefebvre. It was there that Meehan met Langley, who he would subsequently work with at the now late Bastide, where Meehan served as Chef de Cuisine, and, later, at Citrine. After Citrine’s closure in 2005, Meehan joined Patina Restaurant Group as Chef de Cuisine at Joachim Spichal’s seminal Patina restaurant in Downtown. During his three-year tenure, the restaurant received a Michelin Star for its fresh interpretation of French cuisine informed by seasonality, and Meehan was consequently promoted to Executive Chef of Café Pinot.
In 2012, Meehan parted ways with the prolific restaurant group to launch his passion project, Kali Dining. The underground operation quickly garnered critical attention for Meehan’s assertive, yet nuanced tasting menus that he prepared, dinner party-style, for Los Angeles top tastemakers, luminaries, and food enthusiasts. Kali the restaurant was birthed from the success of Kali Dining, and the passion that Meehan and co-owner Langley share for pushing the boundaries of the typical fine dining experience.

For Kali, Kevin partnered with Drew Langley.
While most known for his esteemed tenure as the Wine Director at the Michelin-starred Providence in Los Angeles, Drew Langley brings an extensive resume of experience to Kali Restaurant, a passion project born out of his 15-year friendship with Chef Kevin Meehan.
As Co-owner and Wine Director of the contemporary California restaurant near Hollywood’s iconic Paramount Pictures Studios, the 39-year-old’s near life-long matriculation in the food & beverage industry is fully realized. Kali blends the haute cuisine and hospitality of a fine dining destination with the accessibility of an everyday neighborhood haunt, and Langley’s concise, intelligent wine program is a reflection of the core philosophy that defines the restaurant.
Born and raised in a small town in south Maryland, Langley’s initial introduction to the industry was as a dishwasher at a local pizzeria at the age of 13. While his contemporaries found inspiration in the classroom, Langley was drawn to the rhythm and intensity of the restaurant world, acquiring a vast understanding of its inner workings through odd jobs that ran the gamut from line cook at regional chain Perkin’s to corporate trainer for Applebee’s openings to bar back at Solomon’s Pier, a seafood restaurant and nightclub.
In 1997, the then 20-year-old Langley leapt at an opportunity to relocate to Los Angeles, and stumbled into a position at Greenblatt’s, a beloved deli and wine shop in West Hollywood, that would ultimately pave the way for his future career. Langley furthered his three-year wine education at Greenblatt’s with a position at Dennis Overstreet’s Beverly Hills Wine Merchant, before joining the now-closed L’Orangerie in Beverly Hills as Sommelier in 2000. It was there that Langley crossed paths with Meehan, who he would subsequently work alongside at the late Bastide and Citrine.
After opening Bastide in 2002 as Commis Sommelier, and enjoying a stint as Wine Director at Citrine in 2003, Langley switched gears to lend support to entrepreneur and wine collector Jeff Smith for the launch of Carte Du Vin. His time at the local wine cellar management firm birthed and deepened relationships with prominent private collectors, relationships that inform his wine program at Kali today. In 2005, Langley joined the opening team at Providence, serving as Wine Director for Michael Cimarusti’s nationally-acclaimed seafood destination through 2015 when he left to prepare for Kali’s debut in early 2016.
An avid music enthusiast, when Langley is not refining his wine list with new finds or overseeing the day-to-day operations at Kali, the Koreatown resident can be found indulging in the local drum-and-bass culture.

This was a Foodie Club dinner, with just 6 of my regular dining intimates — and of course great wine.

1973 Perrier-Jouët Champagne Cuvée Fleur de Champagne. Agavin 93. Strong oxidative notes, but delightfully in balance with a terrific acidic backbone.

NV Krug Champagne Brut Grande Cuvée. This is the 1990-2006 disgorgement. The NV Grande Cuvée is absolutely stellar. This is one of the very best Grande Cuvées I can remember tasting. The flavors are bright, focused and beautifully delineated throughout, all of which make me think the wine will age well for many, many years. Lemon peel, white flowers, crisp pears, smoke and crushed rocks race across the palate in a vibrant, tense Champagne that epitomizes finesse.

Sous vide egg. Very close to straight egg with a little creme fraiche and rosemary. Super delicious and an awesome pairing with the old champagne.

From my cellar: 1985 Bouchard Père et Fils Chevalier-Montrachet. agavin 87. Kinda funky, especially at first, with strong petrol notes.

1986 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Chardonnay. agavin 95. Who would have thought, but this old Cal chard was gorgeous. Nutty, with an incredible white floral nose and a lot of round punch. Fairly Burgundian, although not as acidic.

Bass Crudo. citrus / olive / nasturtium. A fabulous crudo with really strong olive notes that really worked. That EVO drizzled around was amazing, very intense.

1970 Château Haut-Brion Blanc. 93 points. On the nose, ripe apricot, lapsang souchong, gasoline initially. An older dry palate with dried apricots, bitter orange, and faint pecan skin. This bottle was really singing with a crazy strong acidic backbone.

2003 Louis Latour Corton-Charlemagne. Burghound 91. Here too the nose has incorporated virtually all of the wood and offers elegant ripe and spicy green apple fruit aromas that complement the big, rich and very powerful flavors that are complex and massively long. Interestingly, the flavors seem almost heavy on the mid-palate yet there is good vibrancy to the finish that provides the necessary lift. This would merit a slightly higher score save for the noticeable finishing warmth.

agavin: super round and ripe without a lot of acid. Some botrytis on the finish, almost like honeysuckle.

Shrimp and potato agnolotti. A really nice pasta dish with strong harmonious flavors. Great sauce, nice like texture on the pasta, and very fresh little shrimp with no hint of fishiness.

From my cellar: 1975 Charles Noellat Vosne-Romanée. agavin 94. While this was a bit cloudy, and funky for a second, it blew off and possessed a ton of red fruits, cherries and strawberries and a really nice mature finish. Not a super refined Burg but in great shape.

1990 Domaine Rossignol Trapet Chapelle-Chambertin. 96 points. Considerable bricking and somewhat opaque; knew from the outset it was at least fifteen years old. The luxurious bouquet sings with the finest elements of great Burgundy! Sous-bois, earth, rose petals, charred cork, and hints of smoke, etc. The wine features brilliantly focused acidity, all the elements on the bouquet, and a mind-bending textural mouthfeel! Lasting finish marked by tremendous acidity and unbridled deliciousness!

Wheat berry Risotto. black garlic / toasted cheese. Looked all funny, but a really nice balance between the earthy risotto and the crunchy cheese.

1987 Bruno Giacosa Barbera d’Alba. agavin 93. Drinking great, age having smoothed out all the rough edges.

1952 Giacomo Borgogno & Figli Barolo. This was a weird one, some ancient 1952 Barolo “restored” at the domain with 2000 barolo. It tasted like a 1998! Very nebbiolo, with some maturity, but none of that old bricked character.

Aged Liberty Farms duck!

Duck breast with carrots in carrot jus. Just a really nice piece of aged duck with a very french bit of gaminess.

Whole Wheat Crackers. For the cheese below. Delicious. Like wheat thins and graham crackers blended.

Creamy Chevre. tangerine marmalade / whole wheat cracker. Small but delicious on the toasts.

1976 Maison Sichel Niersteiner Rehbach Riesling beerenauslese. agavin 94. Yummy sweet stuff.

1986 Château Filhot Comtesse Durieu de Lacarelle. Nicely mellowed.

Toasted Meringue Gelato. grated candied yolk. This tasted like sweet cream with a dusting of salty eggy goodness. It was mild, creamy, and absolutely stunning. I ate two.

Petite Fours.
We had a few glasses for 6 people!

Overall, not only was this a great meal with great friend (and wine), but Kevin’s food was really bang up fabulous. He’s always been a very talented chef but it seems to me (and I’ll have to try more dishes — oh, poor me) that he’s really polished up the details. Perhaps it’s having his own kitchen, but execution was really on point for each dish. There are comfortable but slightly unusual flavor pairings — and they all worked — which gives a lively freshness to the cooking. His concept was Michelin food in a casual setting, and Kali really seems to be delivering.

Service was great. We felt like family.

Really great stuff. Bravo Kevin and Drew!

For more LA dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Foodie Club, Kali

Tasty Duck X 4

Mar16

Restaurant: Tasty Duck [1, 2, 3, 4]

Location: 1039 E Valley Blvd. Ste B102. San Gabriel, CA 91776. (626) 572-3885

Date: February 28, 2015

Cuisine: Chinese

Rating: Great Duck!

Tasty Duck is a regular spot with my Hedonist food and wine club.

The interior is jammed and the turnover is high. There isn’t even a space inch to stand while waiting for a table as the serves need what little space there is to reach the tables. Although tonight being Sunday, the crowds died down by 8pm.

NV Billecart-Salmon Champagne Brut Rosé. VM 92. Pale orange. High-pitched red berry, orange zest and jasmine aromas, with suave mineral and smoky lees notes adding complexity. Spicy and precise on the palate, showing very good punch to its strawberry and bitter cherry flavors. Opens up smoothly with air and picks up a bitter rhubarb quality that lingers onto the long, tightly focused finish. This bottling showed more brawny character than many past renditions of this cuvée, but with no lack of vivacity.

The main event: Peking Duck. Not only was this delectable, with fantastic crispy skin and delicate meat, but it’s artfully arranged. We had two plates of these per table and it was a feeding frenzy!

Here are the traditional accompaniments, starting with excellent pancakes. One mystery question I must ask: why do Chinese restaurants insist on putting far too few pancakes and too little hoisin sauce on the table?

A pancake in the making. For some reason tonight the hoisin seemed saltier and less sweet than usual, so wasn’t quite as good. The meat was awesome as always.

From my cellar: 2011 Coche-Dury Bourgogne Blanc. VM 88. The 2011 Bourgogne is an excellent introduction to the domaine. Tension, energy and focus are the signatures in a wine that announces the Coche-Dury house style beautifully. Citrus and white flowers abound on the finish.

agavin: I brought this way overkill pedigree, which had a long citrus finish. Very nice.

Cold appetizers. Spicy beef, seaweed salad, cold chicken.

2006 Sine Qua Non The Hoodoo Man. VM 94. Sine Qua Non’s 2006 White Wine The Hoodoo Man is insanely beautiful. Remarkably fresh for a nine year old white, the 2006 The Hoodoo Man will change readers’ perceptions about what California white wines are and can be. A rich mélange of apricot, peach, honey and exotic white flowers graces the palate as this voluptuous, intense, yet remarkably vibrant wine shows off its utterly compelling personality. Slightly reductive, the 2006 needs a good bit of air. Today, the 2006 shows no signs whatsoever of fading. It should continue to drink well for another 5-10 years. The Hoodoo Man can only be called an absolute triumph in viticulture and winemaking. Time and again, I thought I had mixed up my glasses and that this was 2013 White Wine Résisté. The Hoodoo Man is 39% Roussanne, 31% Viognier and 30% Chardonnay; 75% from John Alban’s vineyard and 25% from Eleven Confessions. The wine was aged in 58% new oak, the rest 1-2 year-old barrels and a dollop of stainless steel.

French style Beef. Extremely tender and delicious, almost sweet, morsels of filet.

2012 Maurice Schoech Riesling Kaefferkopf. Middle dry.

Their interesting take on “walnut shrimp.” The fried shrimp, sweet mayo sauce, and walnuts is supplemented with pineapple! Not my favorite rendition of this dish. Still good, but I can live without the pineapple. We’ve gotten spoiled.

2012 Dönnhoff Oberhäuser Leistenberg Riesling Kabinett. Vinous 87. Nectarine, pine nuts and lemon oil on the nose. Delicate tropical fruit flavors are brightened by a salty twang. Refreshing acidity gives a feminine character to the finish. Nicely balanced.

Duck part 2 (with bean sprouts).

2010 Cherry Pie (Hundred Acre) Pinot Noir Stanly Ranch Vineyard. VM 90. The appropriately named 2010 Cherry Pie offers up juicy red cherries, mint, cinnamon and cloves. In this vintage, the Cherry Pie has tons of energy and minerality to support the racy, sleek fruit. Sweet floral notes add lift on the finish. The 2010 is a gorgeous, exuberant Cherry Pie with great balance and overall harmony.

agavin: a very contentious wine at the table. Ron and I thought it tasted like cherry cough syrup. Way too high alcohol for pinot noir to my Burgundy pallet. Those who like more of a sledgehammer to the face loved it.

Some amazing Shanghai style soup dumplings (XLB). Tasty little morsels stuffed with pork and broth. We got 2 orders of these.

2012 Louis Jadot Gevrey-Chambertin. Burghound 89-91. A ripe yet markedly cool and restrained nose offers up notes of cassis, spice, earth, underbrush and menthol. There is a lovely mineral streak to the rich and relatively large-scaled flavors that possess excellent mid-palate concentration and plenty of verve on the complex and impressively persistent finish. This is a fine Gevrey villages and worth your attention plus it is sufficiently pliant to enjoy young but should reward longer term cellaring as well.

agavin: just super young one note village Burg. Not bad, but way too primary for my taste.

Simple vegetables. These barely had sauce, but yet were surprisingly yummy. They did have an “oil” flavor (in a good way) and were very light and crunchy.

2009 Château Branaire-Ducru. VM 92+. Red with a pale rim. The fruity nose hints at macerated red cherries, bitter chocolate and dried herbs. Then big, fat and soft on the palate, with fresh, harmonious acidity providing adequate lift to the black cherry, chocolate and sweet spice flavors. The long, plush finish offers a concentrated coffee and red fruit cocktail quality. Still very young and likely to develop more complexity. As good as this is, Branaire-Ducru is one estate where the 2010 will likely turn out to better than the 2009.

A very nice mixed fried rice.

2013 Sine Qua Non Grenache ♀. Super massive and extracted grape juice.

Pork hock. Some kind of crazy pig leg. Some serious fat here and the skin was a bit mushy, but the meat fell off the bone and was incredibly tender and delicious.

See the meat.

Giving her the bone!

2009 E. Guigal Châteauneuf-du-Pape. VM 92. Deep red. Potent cherry, redcurrant and floral scents are given a musky, earthy touch by a hint of rhubarb. Sappy, sweet and broad on entry, then tighter in the mid-palate, offering bitter cherry and raspberry preserve flavors and a touch of licorice. The clinging finish is shaped by silky, even tannins and given bite by a hint of cracked pepper.

Corn soup. Meat, peas, corn, carrots, egg. Super simple. Incredibly delicious. I don’t know what it was about this soup, both flavor and texture, but I had 3 bowls!

1994 Bodegas Muga Rioja Torre Muga. VM 94+. Bright, deep red. Expressive aromas of red- and blackcurrant, plum, tar, tobacco, and nutty, spicy oak. Sweet entry, then very concentrated and silky; really expands in the mouth. Strong acidity gives the flavors a penetrating, lively quality. Very long, subtle finishing flavors supported by firm but not harsh tannins. As suave as this extremely impressive wine is right now, it will be better for several years of additional bottle aging.

agavin: certainly my red wine of the night, as it had age and complexity. Really nice.

Lamb with green onions. A nice tender lamb.

2006 Inniskillin Vidal Icewine Niagara Peninsula VQA. GV94+. #1; COLOR-medium to dark golden; NOSE-pineapple jam exploding; apricot; mango; exotic; this is seductive; gorgeous nose; canned peaches; PALATE-huge viscosity; almost like cream; completely coats your palate; gorgeous pineapple; peach and apricot; the delicious factor is simply off the charts; virtually almost impossible not to like this; the fruit is fantastic; I would like a little more acidity, but this is delicious

Crispy whole red cod with sweet and sour sauce. A really nice fish, but VERY sweet and VERY fried.

2013 Larkin Cabernet Franc.
Beef rolls with BBQ beef and cilantro. Really nice, tasted like rolled up Pho. The shell was a bit chewy and tough, which detracted.

Overall, another fantastic meal. Tasty Duck isn’t the most adventurous SGV place, but they do an excellent job. They were super friendly and willing to serve us the dishes one at a time over a long period. Tonight was better than on some of the overcrowded Saturday’s when they don’t have as much bandwidth for us.

The duck was first rate, as good as Peking duck gets — more or less. Although I was disappointed in the hoisin tonight. Some other dishes, like the pork hock, and the XLB were amazing too. A few others just so so, like the shrimp. Tasty Duck is all about the duck.

Also, as usual for Chinese, the order of the food is so crazy from a wine perspective nothing really matches up right.

For more Hedonist adventures or

For more LA Chinese reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: hedonists, Peking Duck, SGV, Tasty Duck

Witcher 3 – Middle Impressions

Mar14

Title: Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

System: PS4 (also on Xbox / PC)

Genre: (A)RPG

Developer: CD Projekt Red

Publisher: CD Projekt Red

Date Played: February / March 2016

Rating: Sprawling and involving

I had such a great time playing Bloodborne earlier in the year that I couldn’t resist another foray into the world of console RPGs — this time the highly regarded Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. And by the way, I’ve never played a Witcher game before, barely even heard of them.

But Witcher 3 has garnered tons of great reviews, sold 6 million copies last year, and has an interesting development history. CD Projekt Red is a Polish company that is relatively new (to making original games) and does its own publishing too.

Which leads me pontificate on Witcher 3 (and to a lesser extent Bloodborne) in the context of the history of video games and of RPGs — of which I have played (more than) my fair share over the last 35+ years. Although both of these 2015 console games are both great, and both technically ARPGs (Action Role Playing Games) they are worlds apart in style and design emphasis. As I discussed before, Bloodborne is essentially descended from Castlevania, with a bit of RPG DNA grafted in. Bloodborne is all about learning how to navigate through very fixed levels of extremely difficult monsters. You memorize where they are, and how to beat each type, and you do so primarily by mastering one of the best hand to hand combat systems yet made. The core of the game is closer to a Brawler (like Final Fight) or Fighting Game than it is to old school RPGs. The RPG element is a way to customize and level up your character.

Witcher 3, however, is a bonafide descendant of the OG RPG family. And while like all good games, it inherits from countless older games, if I were to pick a “most important ancestor” I’d go with Ultima IV: Avatar. Both games focus on questing (in U4’s case, proto-questing as the formal quest hadn’t been as formalized), big worlds, and moral choices. And I mean the greatest compliment to W3 by placing it in this family, for U4 is one of the best RPGs of all time, and W3 is a very modern, very worthy successor.

I have to say, that for a few hours I was a little disappointed with W3, thinking that it just wasn’t as good as Bloodborne (which I’d just finished). It’s certainly slower paced. But the game has really really grown on me. They are very different RPGs and W3 is fantastic in its own right, just with a total different design balance.

Every game design team has to decide what they are interesting in focusing on, and you can assign them buzzwords, but let’s really break this game down by looking at separate elements and how the game emphasizes them.

Setting/Style/Graphics. W3 is set in this mysterious “northern middle ages” of the 1200s. It’s gritty and “real” except there are monsters and magic. The world is vast. Really vast. Fairly sparse, with a lot of riding or running around through the wilds. People eek out a living and it feels pretty authentically medieval. It’s based on a fantasy series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. The moral style of both books and games diverges from the traditional black and white tropes of fantasy to offer an extremely (deliberately) gray scale picture of the world. The hero Geralt is a monster hunter and sword for hire, and he blends worldly cynicism with a certain heroism — but in the game all your choices have consequences (more on that below).

The graphics are realistic and naturalistically gorgeous. Not hyper colorful, nor drab.The world is lovely in a Northern way (bogs, forests, tundra, water, stone). I haven’t seen any desert or jungle. There is weather and time of day and very nice natural lighting. You often get these gorgeous sunsets and the like. The people are naturalistic, ugly even. Textures are very high resolution and there is a LOT of animation — pretty good animation at that — not Naughty Dog great, but very good. The voice acting is spectacular as rule, particularly Geralt — which is a good thing given how much you have to listen to him.

Things are lusty. There is a ton of swearing. There are wenches and strumpets and actual nudity and sex. It’s kinda weird as I’m not that used to this in video games, but also at the same time like a bawdy 80s fantasy novel (which it derives from), and therefore slightly in the Conan school, but much darker.

There is also a ton of detail, particularly in the construction of minor ruins and castles. While built of similar materials, each feels uniquely constructed. Vistas abound, as do lush sunsets, the glare off ice blue water, the bright expanse of a sun spilling in through a castle window. Witcher is a pretty pretty game with a surprisingly un-game-like visual style.

This enormous city is fully explorable

Story. There is a lot of story in W3, both in the past and in the present of the game. Bloodborne by contrast is a game with almost no present story, very little dialog, just a very complicated mood and world and a bunch of events that setup that world. W3 has all sorts of personal and political history, some of it from the previous games, but it also includes a monstrous (haha) number of hours of directly related, animated, voiced over story. Online I read that there are 300 hours of recorded dialog! This includes an enormous main story with very elaborate central quests and plenty of options as well as an epic number of side quests. Plus Geralt helpfully comments on things constantly.

Geralt’s two main squeezes, Triss and Yennifer

Questing / Gameplay. Like many RPGs before it, W3 aims for a a quest driven gameplay. It’s not a grind driven game, in fact monster XP is poor enough and monsters sparse enough that you’d be ill advised to go out just for the purpose of killing. It’s viable to explore “unknown markers” (question marks on the map) and discover/kill whatever is there, but these aren’t super dense either. Mostly, you work through the quests which will drag you into the game’s three main mechanics anyway: travel, investigation, and combat.

But let us compare the sub-balance with World of Warcraft. In that game, a quest giver will deliver a couple written paragraphs of mumbo jumbo, which you won’t read, which will basically sum up to “kill 14 boars in this zone” or “collect 7 blood crystals” which are either dropped or guarded by said boars. Mostly in WOW, you collect 3-4 quests that allow you to kill monsters in the same area repeatedly until you have finished off those quests. I rarely read much of the quest text, even though my main has the Loremaster achievement (having finished EVERY quest in the game!).

In W3, however, ALL the quest dialog is animated and blessed with voice over. This alone ups the interest level by a factor of 10 and is an impressive feat. Plus, the quest writing is far more character driven and the goals usually less about grinding some monsters. Most quests involve numerous steps before the kill, usually an investigation and some more dialog. This dialog usually offer Geralt choices, and the designers have cleverly set it up such that the quest usually finishes no matter how you chose, yet the consequences vary. In countless scenarios, someone must live and someone must die — and it’s usually Geralt who chooses, although not always with clear insight as to the ramifications of the choice. Do you want to get out of an argument by using the force, bribery, or violence? Well, you’ll get to chose (a lot). So not only did CD Projekt Red have to write the quests, then record, animate, and program them, they had to write them with branching options and multiple endings. This goes for both main and side quests too.

Now, there is some clever structuring here where the choices more or less fold back together, or in the case of side quests the varied consequences don’t matter to the main story. For example, you might be thrown into prison and can escape by stealth, combat, money or magic, but anywhichway you will end up at trial. Or you might have a choice to let a malfeasant go (and maybe get a reward) or kill them and collect the loot. Occasionally, these people you save will show up again later (or not) and your choices will have big long term consequences.

This is particularly the case with the “romances.” Geralt is a lusty fellow and he has two main love interests in the game, along with a couple (possible) side affairs and a whole bunch of “strumpets.” With the two main ones, how you play influences who you end up with, and it’s all a little hard to predict. I ended up consulting with the internet to try and divine the “best” choices — but the game is structured to elude any optimal solution. If you try to romance both hard, you end up with neither.

Sometimes the feel is decidedly Eastern European fairy tale

Mechanics. if the questing is the mid level gameplay, the mechanics are the actual controls and combat. W3 has spread the love in terms of designer effort, and the lower level mechanics are good but not perfect. Combat has a variety of options and there is a nice skill tree. You can balance between melee and “signs” (simple combat magic). Brewing up potions is significant. The actual fighting is fun, and blessedly single character action based. One of the things that has scared me away from some recent well-reviewed console RPGs like Dragon Age: Inquisition is the party based combat. I never find it fun. Witcher‘s solo fighting is great. However, this is no Bloodborne, where a huge percentage of the design effort was spent on the intricate physical combat and the myriad weapons. In Witcher, all the weapons feel more or less the same and the game doesn’t “real your mind” with regard to the nuance of strikes, but it’s still satisfying head loping fun. Witcher‘s combat is also vastly easier than Bloodborne‘s nail biting encounters and bosses are just larger typical monsters, not highly specialized (and brutal) special encounters.

Geralt’s normal non-combat control also isn’t as stellar as Bloodborne‘s. He has a bit too much inertia and there is something a little funny going on with the rotation of the camera such that I constantly got turned around for a second — even after 50+ hours of play. In BB, the control is dead on, earning them an A+. Witcher‘s are more in B territory. They are good enough, and the overall game great enough (it really is a superlative overall game), that it’s not a problem — but they could have been better.

An interesting and new (to me) sub mechanic is Geralt’s skill at investigation. He has these Witcher Senses, which a bit like the sonar mode in The Last of Us allows you to slow down and see the important things in the world. But the Witcher uses this like no game I’ve played before. You can use it to look for look or monsters, but you also use it constantly to find secret passages, hidden traps, foot prints, blood stains, and to generally follow and track villains to their lairs. I have to say it’s a very effective mechanic, and very much in keeping with the exploratory pace of the game.

Also like The Last of Us, there’s a significant looting “minigame.” In that, there are chests, barrels, and bags of stuff EVERYWHERE and you can spend as much or as little time as you like scavenging from them — albeit with care, as sometimes guards take offense. Oddly, peasants don’t, so you can pilfer their houses right under their noses. I found lots of good stuff this way, and as crafting and alchemy require tons of materials and are very valuable in this game, I played as quite the petty larcenist.

Between Geralt’s various modes and gear, inventory management, the map, quest management, etc. there is a lot of menu use. And the menus can be a bit clunky, particularly getting in and out of shop keeps. The inventory has sluggish tabs and there is this strange need to page through them all to reach the shop keep’s “tab.” Then, if you want to actually equip an item you might have to back out of the whole store and go into the normal inventory. But at the same time, the game’s need to “keep it real” wth the dialog means Geralt will have to pound through “hey, how are you” “can I take a look at your goods” and “farewell, maybe I’ll be back later” types of useless animated dialog — again and again. Some of these asset and menu controls are more like C+ or B-. They don’t ruin the game, but they could use some programmer/designer love.

There are a couple additional side mechanics in Witcher 3. A major one is the Gwent card game. This is a Hearthstone/MTG style minigame available across the whole world. I found the pace too slow and after a couple (loosing) games just skipped it as best as I could. Some people might enjoy it, but I was more focused on the the main game. Sometimes there is also horse (or foot) racing too. This was closer to the main mechanics and I enjoyed it much more. Sure, it was sometimes hard to know where the race course was and accidentally straying led to frustrating losses, but for the most part it was fun.

You spend a lot of time on your horse Roach

Meta-Game/Progression. I’ve played hundreds of RPGs and Witcher has an unusual balance. Leveling is glacial. It’s several hours (maybe 2-4?) between levels and the amount of XP both needed and earned is fairly flat. 60+ hours in and I’m still at level 22. This isn’t like WOW‘s carefully orchestrated progression where early levels ding in quick secession and new abilities are dolled out one by one with ordered and rapid progression. In the Witcher, you have all your spells at the start. Sure you can improve and modify them with the ability points (slowly), but it’s mostly there to begin with. There is no choice of complicated rotations and the like inherent in each build (ala WOW or Diablo 3). Builds are more about emphasis. There is a lot of gear, but the Witcher sets, found through following specific treasure quests, are the best. Questing and exploration are more emphasized in this game than gear and character progression.

Medieval Europe brought to life

Odds and Ends. PS4 load times are pretty abysmal, particularly when you die. Think at least 1-2 minutes on the load screen. This is a big detailed world, and the blu ray isn’t the speediest, so I half understand. But it’s possible to zone in, move 5 feet, die, and still spend over a minute loading. The programmers must dump all of memory and start over. I solved that problem in the mid 90s :-). Fortunately you don’t die that often, but teleporting across the world and back to turn in a quest or sell loot can be annoying. As is the “weight limit” mechanic. This is one of those “some RPGs do it” things, and I never love it. When you are full you even walk slow and can’t use fast travel! Another complaint is summoning and mounting Roach, your trusty steed. For some reason, he’s a bit shy, and he has a knack for always showing up behind you. Then when you mount up the camera somehow rolls around leading to an inevitable canter off in the wrong direction.

It’s also worth mentioning, that while Geralt is a bad ass capable of slaying the most fearsome of monsters, he must have fragile bones because a fall off the wrong roof or cliff edge can easily lead to instant death. Save often in the presence of these perilous foes.

The views are frequently just awesome

Balance. It took me a few hours to adjust to Witcher‘s peculiar game balance. This isn’t a super fast paced game, but once you accept the beauty of it, and the incredible depth of its gorgeous, windswept, Nordic game world and complex moral/character driven plotting, this game really grows on you. Sure, if I were the producer I would have spent another month or so tuning up the inventory and control mechanics. But the game’s greatness transcends a bit of control clunk. And I have the impression Witcher 3 represents quite an improvement in this regard over the earlier installments. If the story / exploration aspects of fantasy RPGs appeal to you at all, than Witcher is a MUST PLAY, having created one hell of a real-seeming world.

NOTE: As of 3/13/16 I’ve completed about 75% of the game. More thoughts to come after I progress…

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By: agavin
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Melisse – 2008 Montrachet!

Mar10

Restaurant: Melisse [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

Location: 1104 Wilshire Blvd.Santa Monica, CA 90401. (310) 395-0881

Date: March 8, 2016

Cuisine: California French

Rating: Awesome again

And so we arrive at Part 3 of the epic three night 2008 White Burgundy Dinner series (Part 1 can be found here and part 2 here). This series of dinners, hosted by Burg-meister Don Cornwell, explores in great detail the best wines of a particular vintage, in this case 2008.

Tonight features “Mostly Montrachet” that is, the wines of the great “Le Montrachet” Grand Cru, often considered the best white wine in the world.

This particular dinner is at Melisse, one of LA’s few 2 star Michelin restaurants and also one of my favorites (you can find links to three epic Carte Blanche meals at Melisse in the brackets at the top of the post). Let’s just say that Melisse generally has every area of fine dining covered: great food, great wine service, great everything service, etc.

And with regard to the wines. In Burgundy, in 2008, up to the middle of June, when the moon was full on the 18th., the season had been cool, wet and miserable. The flowering was late and drawn out, promising a late and uneven harvest. The next six weeks happily saw a marked inprovement: plenty of sun, not too much rain – and what there was was sporadic and localised – though it was warm rather than hot. Temperatures rarely exceeded 30°C. Then the weather deteriorated. There was more rain and less sun right through to mid-September. A bleak summer indeed! Overall there was less precipitation on the Côte de Nuits than the Côte de Beaune, and less still in the Côte Chalonnaise. Chablis seems to have enjoyed the mildest weather of all. But inevitably, the incidence of mildew, oidium and botrytis became ever more serious as the weeks progressed. At various times from the beginning of May onwards, hail damaged the vineyards of Marsannay, Volnay and Meursault, Chassagne and parts of the southern Màconnais and northern Beaujolais.

At the last minute, however, more benign conditions returned and continued well into October. The harvest kicked off in the Beaujolais, as I have said, on September 15th. A week or more later the growers began to attack the Mâconnais and to some extent the Côte de Beaune. But many in the Côte d’Or held off until Monday 29th or even, in the Côte de Nuits, into October, and were able to profit from natural sugar levels of 13° and higher. It was the latest harvest for some years, requiring 110 or more, not 100, days from flowering to fruition.

Our testing was setup in the elegant private room just to the right of the entrance.

Tonight’s special menu.

Flight 0: Amuses

2002 Moët & Chandon Champagne Cuvée Dom Pérignon. VM 98. Honey, almonds, butter, tropical fruit and brioche are some of the notes that emerge in the 2002 Dom Pérignon. Here the flavors are bold, rich and exotic, as they have always been, while the textural feel is one of pure exuberance. The 2002 remains dense, honeyed and totally voluptuous on the palate, with more than enough density to drink well for decades The style will always remain opulent to the core.

The first amuse is a Melisse staple. On the spoon are sphereized grapes dusted with pistachio. An explosion of grapeness.

Black Truffle Cheese Tart. Like a mini cheesy quiche.

Wagyu Beef Tartare. On a puffed rice. Soft and crunchy. All yummy.

Beef Béarnaise. Taking a card from the Jose Andres deck, the sauce was actually inside the little hush puppy-like thing.

The bread. I’m particularly partial to the green basil bread and the bacon bread (far left).

The starter for an amuse soup.

Spring pea soup. I like the combo of the warm soup and cool butter.

Flight 1

2008 Bouchard Père et Fils Montrachet. Burghound 98. At the risk of waxing poetic, the nose is genuinely like a spring day in a garden with utterly beguiling and multifaceted aromas of an implausibly broad variety of flowers, spices, discreet pain grillé, roasted nuts and a hint of garrigue that complements the dense, brooding and very serious flavors that are borderline massive yet, like the Cabotte, betray absolutely no sense of undue weight or blowsyness. The explosive finish stains the palate and coats the mouth with dry extract and this is one of the greatest examples of this wine that I have ever seen from Bouchard but be prepared to be patient. A true ‘wow’ wine.

agavin: one of my favorite wines of the night, certainly of the flight. Long finish.

2008 Remoissenet Père et Fils Montrachet Le Montrachet. VM 92. The 2008 Le Montrachet is a bit reserved at this stage. It shows good depth and energy in its fruit, yet remains heavily marked by the oak, which dominates the flavor profile and also dries out the finish a bit. I much prefer the approach the Maison took with the 2009.

agavin: nice.

From my cellar: 2008 Louis Latour Montrachet. Burghound 95. This is clearly the most backward and reserved wine in the range as the restrained nose reveals only hints of white flower, citrus and green fruit aromas that are trimmed in a noticeable touch of pain grillé. By contrast, the muscular and big-bodied flavors explode on the palate as there is a chewy texture to them yet the ample minerality present adds lift to the powerful and hugely long finish. This is not a Montrachet of finesse in 2008 but the abundant amount of dry extract should insure that it matures, and then drinks, over a very long period.

agavin: nice, but a little hot.

2008 Lucien Le Moine Montrachet. Burghound 93-95. Somewhat curiously, this is actually more elegant and refined aromatically as well as more powerful and more concentrated yet despite the jaw dropping size and weight, it remains focused, balanced and harmonious. We’ll see in time but at present, I give the Chassagne cuvée a slight edge.

agavin: more cloudy in the glass, a bit flat and flawed. Worst wine of the flight for sure.

2008 Louis Jadot Montrachet. Burghound 93. A moderately toasty nose of peach, apricot and citrus aromas that verge on the exotic and this character continues onto the delicious, generous and sappy medium-full flavors that offer real volume and mid-palate fat if not much finesse and the finish, while impressively scaled and persistent, seems to lack the focus that I expect from great examples of the vineyard. To be sure, this remains a very fine wine but at the moment, it’s not a genuinely great one. We’ll see in time whether it finds its center; if so, it will certainly merit a higher rating as the underlying material is clearly present.

agavin: very rich

Stonington Maine Diver Scallop. Salsify, Polenta, Sauce Perigourdine. A very nice rich dish with a variety of mushroomy flavors.

Flight 2

2008 Etienne Sauzet Montrachet. Burghound 96. The fresh and incredibly dense nose is inexpressive to the point of being almost mute and only aggressive swirling manages to coax glimpses of the floral, white and yellow orchard fruit, oak, spice and citrus suffused nose. By contrast, the gorgeously rich and massively-scaled flavors explode on the palate and in a distinct divergence from the Chevalier’s finesse, this is a bulldozer of a wine. No, this is not especially elegant at present but it has enormous potential though note that ample patience will be required.

agavin: very reductive

2008 Blain-Gagnard Montrachet. Burghound 95. A stunningly broad yet restrained nose displays breathtaking purity of expression, offering up incredibly complex and ripe white flower and green fruit aromas that complement beautifully balanced, harmonious and impressively scaled flavors that possess huge length and knockout depth. This is class in a glass with terrific vibrancy and the palate staining finish is almost painfully intense as there is so much extract that the palate impression is borderline chewy. This should age for several decades.

agavin: lots of acidity

2008 Marc Colin et Fils Montrachet. Burghound 95. What was a grudging nose has become notably more expressive now that it has been in bottle for almost two years with pretty and highly complex notes of white peach, pear, spice hints and ample pain grillé in evidence. There is nothing subtle about the huge, indeed even imposing flavors that brim with dry extract that completely coats and stains the palate yet there is ample acid support that keeps everything in perfect balance and harmony. In fact, the balance is so impeccable that I would call this a Zen wine that is somewhat less forbidding than I originally thought and thus I have reduced my suggested drinking window by two years. Indeed, there is sufficient mid-palate fat present that this could even be drunk now though there is so much upside that it would be a shame to leave so much of it on the table at this early juncture.

agavin: maybe a touch advanced, lots of botrytis.

2008 Marquis de Laguiche (Joseph Drouhin) Montrachet. Burghound 93-96. A perfumed and simply knock-out nose features highly perfumed notes of honeysuckle, acacia blossom, sandalwood and yellow orchard fruit aromas that give way to powerful, rich and dense full-bodied flavors that possess obvious muscle and simply huge length on the overtly austere, deep and palate staining finish. This is a dazzling effort that will only add to the already immense reputation this wine enjoys but note that patience will be required.

agavin: darker and quite rich.

Black Bass “En Ecailles”. Hope Ranch Black Mussels, Fava Beans, Shellfish Emulsion. Nice soft fish, traditional butter derived foamy sauce, and then that treatment of the scales, all crunchy/crispy. Now to the taste the skin/scales was awesome. But something about its spiky regular texture seriously triggered the latent Trypophobia in me. Just thinking about it is creeping me out 48 hours later! CLICK HERE IF YOU DARE.

Flight 3: Not all Monty

2008 Coche-Dury Meursault 1er Cru Les Perrières. Burghound 95. A trace of reduction is not enough to mask the amazingly pure, cool and airy citrus peel, rose petal and essence of stone aromas that precede the energetic, intense and gorgeously well-detailed flavors that brim with plenty of palate staining dry extract. The explosive and mildly austere finish is shaped by firm but ripe acidity that is impeccably well-integrated and this should age effortlessly for years. This is textbook Perrières.

agavin: probably my favorite wine of the night! Just awesome. Reductive. Massive. Long. Textbook.

2008 Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey Montrachet. Burghound 94-97. A riper if less elegant nose presents a broad range of yellow and white orchard fruits with ample floral, spice and citrus nuances that also are reflected by the massively endowed big-bodied, powerful and muscular flavors of imposing size and weight, all wrapped in a palate staining, chewy and hugely long finish. One expects Montrachet to be great and the ’08 from Pierre-Yves Colin does not disappoint.

agavin: another fabulous wine with a long finish

2008 Domaine Ramonet Montrachet. Burghound 97. A highly expressive and radiant nose offers the purest fruit in the range as it offers up a mélange of upper register acacia blossom and freshly cut lemon-lime aromas trimmed in a discreet amount of wood. The nose is followed by strikingly detailed, stony and powerful broad-scaled flavors that culminate in a palate-etching finish of spectacular length. This is breath-taking stuff as balance is perfect and this should age well for years.

agavin: This bottle or at this moment wasn’t my favorite. Just too rich and hot (alcoholic).

2008 Coche-Dury Corton-Charlemagne. Burghound 98. A fantastically complex and beguilingly fresh nose of extract of liquid stone, green fruit, citrus zest and elegant floral notes dissolves seamlessly into rich, intense and beautifully mineral-driven broad-shouldered flavors that culminate in a superbly long and bone dry finish of positively Cistercian-like austerity. This is a wine that is absolutely packed with potential and I wouldn’t dream of opening a bottle before it had at least 10 years of bottle age and probably 12 to 15. I should note that this is anything but seductive yet I find the incredible delineation and purity of expression to be nothing short of brilliant.

agavin: another great wine. Lots of reduction and acid. Long finish. Not as great as the MP right now (I think it needs more time), but still very good.

Dover Sole Filet. Potato Gnocchi, French Horn Mushrooms, White Wine-Brown Butter Jus. Another great fish, although I miss the chicken from year.

Have a few glasses.

Flight 4: Dessert

1994 Fritz Haag Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Riesling Beerenauslese. MFW 100. Dark orange yellow color; petrol and baked lemon nose; tasty, sweet, baked lemon and lime palate with depth, minerality and uplifting acidity; long finish

Rustic Caramel Apple Tart. Heilala Vanilla Ice Cream. Pretty much a perfect version of this traditional dessert. Great crunchy pastry texture.

Petite fours. pate de fruits, cannelles, macarons, cookies, chocolates.

The chef de cuisine.KEN TAKAYAMA. Chef Ken was born in Saitama, Japan and, from early childhood, was raised in Monterey Park, Ca. Straight out of high school, Chef Ken got his start at Kayo , a neighborhood restaurant in Monterey Park, learning traditional techniques for preparing robata, sushi, and tempura. Chef Ken’s previous experience in the kitchen also includes working under Christophe Moreau for Patina Pastry of the Patina Group in Burbank.

Chef Ken cites his grandmother as a huge influence on his family. She was a remarkable artist who drew and sculpted in leather. “Both of my siblings, Eriko and George, and I all followed creative career paths due to her powerful artistic sensibilities that she shared with us.”

food: As usual the food at Melisse is great. I generally prefer a more mega tasting menu with more flavors and the requirements of matching White Burgundy limited the options, and last year at this dinner we had more variety, but still there were some nice dishes here.

service: perfect.

agavin on the wines: Like the other two 2008 nights, all these wines showed a strong vintage character, namely that rounded, ripe, lots of botrytis. But the Montrachets were in general drinking fabulously. Almost any of these wines would be fabulous additions to more normal lineups. There were no premoxed wines in my opinion, with only 2-3 showing very slight touches of advanced notes on the nose. Nothing was obviously corked, although the Le Moine was flawed somehow. The Monty character were often strong and present.

Overall quality was quite high, but there was some serious doubt in the group as to how long to hold this vintage.

Voting results of the night were:

1 Coche MP
2(tie) Coche Corton
2(tie) Colin-Morey Monty
4(tie) Bouchard Monty
4(tie) Sauzet Monty
6 Ramonet Monty
7 Remoissenet Monty
8 Blain-Gagnard Monty

Don’s detailed notes can be found here.

Other big tasting dinners from this dinner series:

2008 White Burgundy part 1

2008 White Burgundy part 2

2007 White Burgundy part 1

2007 White Burgundy part 2

2006 White Burgundy

2004 Red Burgundy

2005 White Burgundy part 1

2005 White Burgundy part 2

2005 White Burgundy part 3

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: 2008 White Burgundy, Melisse, Montrachet

Game of Thrones – Season 6 Trailer

Mar09

The first Season 6 Trailer is here!

This finally shows a bunch of new clips – set to weird contemporary music – and reveals a taste of pretty much everyone’s thread. Major bits include:

Jon Snow’s body (duh).

Jaime apologizing to Cersei (also duh)

Jorah chasing after Dany (even more duh)

Melisandre sounding like a broken woman (surprise!)

Dany in chains with the horde (we knew that).

Cersei with a typical fun one liner (“I chose violence”)

Theon and Sansa alive.

The return of the Iron Islands.

The return of (all grown up) Bran — and more White Walkers.

Arya jumping off a building.

Davos’ closes it out over Jon Snow’s dead body…

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Season 1: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

Season 2: [11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20]

Season 3: [21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30]

Season 4: [31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40]

Season 5: [41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50]

Season 6: [51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57]

By: agavin
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Chuan’s – Even More Pepper

Mar07

I love me some Szechuan, and surprisingly, so do a lot of others because Szechuan places have become all the rage lately. The Hedonists recently headed back to Chuan’s to check out its spicy Szechuan fare a year+ after opening — this time with wine!

Read all the details here.

By: agavin
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Tagged as: Chuan's, hedonists, Sichuan

Sidecar Donuts

Mar04

Restaurant: Sidecar Donuts & Coffee

Location: 631 Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90401. (310) 587-0022

Date: March 1, 2016

Cuisine: Donuts

Rating: Best (but pricey) donuts I’ve had

There has been a lot of buzz about sidecar donuts, a super trendy artisanal donut shop in Santa Monica. Truth is, I adore a good donut, so I figured I’d give it a try.

The interior is very slick and clean. Not exactly Dunkin’ Donuts.

The donuts are baked every hour! And they sure look decadent.

Plus there are very creative flavors, although far less flavors than a typical shop. Here some flavors rotate daily and some weekly or monthly.

I got a cappuccino too. Solid.

These are pricey donuts. They vary from $3-4 each! Normal donut shops sell donuts for slightly less than $1! But they do come in a fancy box. haha.

Here are the four I tried.

Maple Bacon! Raised doughnut topped with pure Vermont maple syrup glaze and crisp Niman Ranch bacon. Oh yes, I love a good maple bacon anything. This soft and sweet confection didn’t disappoint.

Huckleberry. Oregon huckleberry cake doughnut with huckleberry glaze.
Super soft and caky with a nice tangy berry glaze.

Saigon Cinnamon Crumb. Slightly sweet, slightly spicy Saigon cinnamon cake doughnut, topped with sweet glaze and a house made cinnamon crumble. Great cinnamon flavor and nice texture.

Coconut Cream. Our signature brioche raised doughnut topped with housemate coconut milk custard & cream, toasted coconut shards, and pie crust crumble. Arousingly good.

Overall, These were some seriously good donuts. You pay for it with a 4-5X multiple, so I wouldn’t be ordering them up en-mass for a party, but as I’m more calorie limited than worrying about a couple of bucks, definitely a treat!

The Mendocino Farms next door seems to be doing a healthy business too. Look at the line at 11:30am on a random Tuesday! I’ll have to try it out.

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: coffee, Donuts, Santa Monica, Sidecar Donuts

Gods of Egypt

Mar02

Title: Gods of Egypt

Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Brenton Thwaites, Gerard Butler, Rufus Sewell, Geoffrey Rush, Alex Proyas (Director)

Genre: Fantasy

Watched: March 1, 2016

Summary: Deities & Demigods

Sure Gods of Egypt was panned and is tanking at the box office, but it’s a big budget fantasy movie with (vaguely) Egyptian deities and Jaime Lannister — how could I not go see that? I’m glad I did too, because this is one of those films, like Jupiter Ascending, that I enjoyed in the theatre, but would have bored me at home.

Looks dumb, huh?

But if you totally suspend disbelief. Ignore the voice over. Abandon hope of character development. Forget the incoherent mythology. And turn a blind eye to Egyptian religion cribbed solely from Dungeons and Dragons: Deities & Demigods.

If you can do all that, and just view it as a “Egyptian inspired fantasy”, it’s actually a fun romp. The film is gorgeous in a CGI kind of way. I mean, this movie may have the MOST CGI of any live action movie yet made. Ever. They must have built more real sets for a Star Wars prequel! And the character writing is simplistic. But the actors actually do a good job with it. Particularly Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the two mortals Brenton Thwaites and Courtney Eaton, Chadwick Boseman, and the ever enjoyable Geoffrey Rush. And there are some funny lines. No one takes themselves very seriously, director on down. Gerard Butler’s Set is a little annoying, but not nearly as bad as the recent General Zod (barf!).

But the GOE plot is easy to follow. Nonsense, in its way, but straightforward without a lot of mumbo jumbo. It’s an old score quest / adventure plot in that way. None of the battles last that long, which is great, although there are a lot of them. But they are each different. And there are many cool sets (ahem, CGI modeled sets). We have palaces, temples, secret tombs, the afterlife (loved Anubis), gods that are twice the height of people, and my personal favorite: Ra’s “boat of a million years.”

The film is ridiculously anachronistic, with modernistic jokes and like the recent Hercules movies (set in 1200 BC) where they ride horses with saddles, stirrups, and all that — none of which was invented until much later. Here, besides the gods and magic (fine), you have giant pedestrian freeways, stone traps made of rock with the properties of aluminum, sandals with buckles and all sorts of things that certainly didn’t exist even in New Kingdom Egypt, not to mention “pre-historic” Egypt when the gods reigned — but I didn’t think about it — again, Egyptian inspired fantasy world.

Some of the magic and general religious-magic was kinda cool. Like the way Anubis emerges and descends into a swirl of dust. The production did a tiny itty bit of research before throwing almost all of it out. When Horus sends Zaya’s soul to the afterlife he says something to the effect of “may the earth doors of Aker open to you, may the sky doors of Geb open to you” which is standard Egyptian magio-religious rhetoric out of the Book of the Dead.

Sigh. Too bad they’d never use this kind of giant CGI budget to an actual real plot set in a recreated real ancient world.

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Almost looks like Beastmaster or something!

By: agavin
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Posted in: Movies

Tagged as: Alex Proyas, Ancient Egyptian deities, Brenton Thwaites, Chadwick Boseman, Fantasy, Geoffrey Rush, Gerard Butler, Gods of Egypt, Horus, Movie Review, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Lao (Hipster) Sze Chuan

Feb29

Restaurant: Lao Sze Chuan

Location: 152 S Brand Blvd. Glendale, CA 91204. Phone number (818) 552-8888

Date: February 28, 2016

Cuisine: Szechuan

Rating: A little Americanized

Regular Hedonist Chevy has been trying to get us to go to this new “hipster Szechuan” in Glendale since it opened.

Lao Sze Chuan is from China by way of Chicago, but this branch is located across the street from the Americana mall in Glendale.

It’s not as “home style” in decor as the SGV joints.

And the menu is a mixture of Szechuan and other more generic popular Chinese dishes.

Chevy in the house.

We had a great private room that was sealed off, large, and quiet.

2009 Ariston Aspasie Champagne Brut Millésimé. Bitter citrus carries through to a slightly austere finish.

Cold garlic cucumber. Normal enough version of this Chinese classic starter.

From my cellar: 2011 Domaine des Comtes Lafon Meursault. VM 90. The 2011 Meursault is quite beautiful, even if it shows some tightness from its recent bottling. White peach, pear and spice notes all wrap around an energetic frame. I very much like the way the 2011 opens up in the glass. The Comtes Lafon Meursault is now a blend of various parcels, mostly Clos de la Baronne, En la Barre, Luraules and Crotos.

Shanghai Style Jellyfish with mustard. Not a lot of flavor.

2011 Greenlip Wine Sauvignon Blanc. 84 points. Some petrol, but not a particularly good wine. Way too light to stand up to Szechuan too.

Cold Spicy Beef Tendon. Nice dish. Good Szechuan chili oil flavor and a bit of peppercorn numb.

1995 Schloss Schönborn Erbacher Marcobrunn Riesling Spätlese. 93 points. Beautiful golden color, nose incredibly fresh, elderflower, ripe peach, slate, no oxidation. Depth of flavor with high acid, fresh with long lean finish. Could not believe Michael Jordon was playing baseball when these grapes were harvested… it’s holding up well.

Dan Dan Noodles. Of the “chili oil” variant.

Mixed up. Noodles themselves were over-cooked but the flavor was good, with a little mala. Not as nutty as I like.

From my cellar: 2004 Joh. Jos. Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spätlese. GV 92. #1; COLOR-nice golden; NOSE-burnt BMX tires meets peaches, apricots & pears; spritzy; TASTE-beautiful bluestone; gorgeous dried Apricots; viscous & oily; gorgeous peach juice; very polished; great, great wine; very delicate; nice floral aspects; subtle cactus juice & on the finish; a concoction of Cantaloupe & dandelion dancing on the back-end; very complex; great balance of acidity & fruit; great structure; absolute elegance at it’s finest; DS-92; GV-92

Numb Taste Wontons. Not as much flavor as these should have.

Spicy Cabbage. Great dish with a lot of mala from the excellent house chili oil and a nice bit of crunch.

Lao Sze House Fried Rice. A bit of everything. Solid. Not too fried.

Crispy Shrimp with lemon sauce. White guy Chinese, but still nice and tasty. Guilty pleasure.

Same dish with sauce on the side — not nearly as good.
1995 Bieche Vouvray. Sweet and tangy. Pretty good, and a good pairing.

Eggplant with garlic. Decent, although I’ve had much better versions of this dish.

Tea Smoked Duck. Pretty good. Looks like Peking duck but this had a smoked flavor. Not as characteristic as the best versions I’ve had, but good.
Ma Po Tofu. They said there was even no pork in this version, which is odd. It had the correct chili oil mala flavor, although it wasn’t super spicy. The chili oil here is pretty good.

2012 Château de Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape. VM 93. Opaque ruby. Potent, mineral-laced raspberry and cherry aromas are complicated by suave floral and spice qualities, picking up white pepper and cola accents with air. Seamless, round and sweet on the palate, offering intense red berry preserve and floral pastille flavors with a touch of allspice. Finishes sappy and precise, with velvety tannins and a late jolt of cherry compote.

House Spicy Beef. Fried to oblivion, but very tasty.

2008 Clos des Papes Châteauneuf-du-Pape. VM 91. Bright ruby. A heady bouquet displays fresh red berries, sandalwood, dried flowers and a hint of baking spices. Creamy in texture, with lively acidity lifting sweet red and dark berry and candied rose flavors. Becomes sappier with air and finishes with very good clarity and lingering spiciness. Avril thinks this wine will surprise people with its ability to age.

Lao Sze special pork chop. A really tasty sparerib covered in Szechuan goodness.

Szechuan Style Boiled Fish. Drowned in Szechuan sauce. Fish itself was a little mushy.

White rice.

Mixed Hunan Style Vegetables. Mediocre. And not too Hunan.

Combination Chow Mein. Fried noodles with everything. Tasty enough.

Szechuan Chili Hot Pot with lamb. Good stuff with a nice chili oil and cumin flavor and crispy vegetables. Good amount of mala numbing here too.

Cumin lamb. Soft lamb. High quality meat, so not a bad version of this classic.

Shrimp Lo Mein. Not too exciting.

Szechuan String Beans. I’ve certainly had better versions of this dish, but I’ve had far worse.

Various ice creams. Green Tea, Plum, Strawberry, Lychee, and Black Sesame. I loved the three fruit flavors. Nice texture.
And the plum was insanely good, with a fabulous finish.

Overall, Lao Sze Chuan beat my expectations slightly. It is Szechuan, but it’s not seriously hard core about it. Food-wise, I’d say they are middle of the pack as SGV Szechuan restaurants go. The ingredients were pretty fresh, and the meat better than many SGV places. The location is good too, and there is some decor to the build out. Prices are reasonable. Service was great too, better than you’d likely get at a more authentic spot. Very nice servers and they did a great job staging stuff. They didn’t charge us corkage and even gave us a regular discount (as Chevy lives across the street and goes all the time)! A+ for effort.

Now somehow, mysteriously, Lao Sze Chuan has been voted “one of the best Chinese restaurants in America.” Or at least it garnered a real reputation in Chicago. This isn’t hard to imagine as real Szechuan is probably nonexistent in Chicago. Here it’s just fine. Good even if you live in Glendale and don’t want to drive down to the SGV. For me, since Glendale is actually slightly further (in terms of driving time) than the SGV, I’d only go if meeting friends.

For more LA Chinese dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Dan Dan Mein, Lao Sze Chuan, mapo tofu, Sichuan, Szechuan cuisine

Valentino – 2008 White Burgundy part 2

Feb26

Restaurant: Valentino Santa Monica [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

Location: 3115 Pico Blvd Santa Monica, CA 90405. (310) 829-4313

Date: February 25, 2016

Cuisine: Italian

Rating: Fun and educational!

This dinner is the second part of the annual White Burgundy Premox test series, hosted by Burg-meister Don Cornwell. This dinner covers 2008 Bienvenues-Bâtard, Criots-Bâtard,Bâtard-Montrachet, and Chevalier-Montrachet. 2008 White Burgundy Dinner series Part 1 can be found here. You can also read about previous year’s 2004 Red Burgundy dinner and 2006 White Burgundy tasting.

This particular dinner is at Valentino, which has been a mainstay of the LA fine dining scene for decades. I first started coming here in about 1995 and it was a mind blowing change from the usual trattoria and red-sauce style Italians. Valentino is much closer to Michelin 2 star restaurant in Italy, although not as modernist as some of those are in recent years. If food in Italy turns you on, check out my Eating Italy segment.

Our private room. Notice the large table with a lot of space. This is important when you have 29+ glasses a person!

Notice the awesome array of glasses in the background. Only about half of them are visible. Few restaurants can handle this sort of thing, as they need over 400 stems of the same type and a dedicated Sommelier with sufficient experience and skill. Ours tonight handled the whole wine service with extreme professionalism and personality.

Tonight’s special menu.

Flight 0: Champagne

1998 Philipponnat Champagne Brut Clos des Goisses. Burghound 95. A brilliant, complex and broad-ranging nose offers up floral, citrus, yeast and extremely subtle red berry hints that complement perfectly the delicious, restrained and still quite youthful flavors that are very crisp and impressively precise with a medium effervescence on the deep, palate staining and lingering finish. The ’98 isn’t quite in the league of the superb ’96 but it’s not far off either and in my view, trumps the ’97 and ’99 as well.

agavin: had a very nice mature oxidative tone which I really enjoyed.

Prosciutto And Grana Padano “Schegge”. Basically ham wrapped Parmesan!

Burrata Caprese. On a spoon.

Ahi Tuna Tartare Crostini.

Oysters.

Bruschetta With Wild Arugula. The cheese and greens took this up another level.

Bread. I particularly liked the cheesy sticks.

Flight 1: Bienvenue / Criots

A word about tonight’s format. Every bottle was served blind, except we were aware of what flight it was and what was in the flight, just not of which wine was which. The reveal was held until the end of the entire evening so that we could vote on favorite wines without bias.

Personally, I’d prefer a reveal halfway through each flight for a number of reasons. True, this would compromise the voting a bit, but that’s not super important to me. I’d prefer to be able to taste the wines both not knowing which was which and knowing, so that I can continue to build up my subjective memory for each house style. I also find it very difficult to remember back across multiple flights for “best” comparisons. I took notes and marked my favorites of each flight and compared those.

agavin: Also, some general comments on this flight and the vintage. 2008 is really round and ripe. The wines are darker in the glass than average and have Botrytis and tropical notes. Some of them still have a lot of acid too.

From my cellar: 2008 Domaine Ramonet Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet. Burghound 94. Soft if not invisible wood sets off strikingly pretty and solidly complex honeysuckle, white peach and spiced pear aromas that give way to intense, delicious and equally complex middle weight flavors that possess ample concentration and outstanding balance and length on the palate staining finish. This is really classy juice and quite stylish as well.

agavin: One of my two favorites of the flight — well, it is Ramonet.

2008 Louis Carillon Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet. Burghound 95. A discreet touch of pain grillé frames an equally expressive and every bit as pure nose of honeysuckle and lemon-lime aromas that combine seamlessly with rich, round and quite generous middle weight plus flavors that possess even better depth and stunning length. This is the complete package with a textured and palate staining finish as the level of dry extract here is most impressive. A stunner of a Bienvenues that should reward at least a decade of cellar time.

agavin: a little darker and more advanced, although drinking nicely

2008 Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet. VM 91-94. Peach, ginger, honey and medicinal herbs on the nose, plus a more exotic suggestion of lichee. Dry and penetrating on the palate, but with a distinctly tactile quality to the flavors of pineapple and flowers. Today this comes across as more austere than the Corton-Charlemagne, which is probably not a bad thing for a 2008.

agavin: our bottle was a bit corked

From my cellar: 2008 Domaine Leflaive Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet. Burghound 91-4. A subtle touch of pain grillé highlights citrus notes that, like the Pucelles, exhibit hints of honeysuckle and fennel nuances that complement perfectly the textured, rich and sweet medium plus weight flavors that are quite supple yet remain detailed, energetic and strikingly long on the explosive finish. This is a relatively powerful Bienvenues. In a word, terrific.

agavin: a bit darker than most.

2008 Paul Pernot et ses Fils Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet. Burghound 94. Here too the nose speaks of honeysuckle, citrus and lightly spiced pear aromas that serve as an elegant introduction to the pure, cool and understated middle weight flavors that possess outstanding depth of material and stunning length. This is a hugely long and quite serious yet impeccably well-balanced Bienvenues.

agavin: My second favorite of the flight. It was darker, but it was drinking very nicely with a rich honeysuckle quality typical of BBM.

From my cellar: 2008 Domaine Fontaine-Gagnard Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet. Burghound 94. This possesses arguably the ripest nose of the range with its mildly exotic aromas of white flower, spiced pear, apricot and mango that combine with rich, full, powerful and overtly well-muscled flavors that offer impressive volume and power on the textured, indeed even opulent finish that is amply concentrated and seriously long. Overall, this is no more elegant than the La Romanée but there is another dimension of depth and length present. A terrific Criots.

agavin: Lots of Botrytis and a touch darker. Perhaps a little advanced.

2008 Henri Boillot Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet. Burghound 94. As one would reasonably expect given Criots’ natural tendency to high ripeness levels, the nose is notably riper than that of the Caillerets with ample amounts of highly complex yellow orchard fruit where a hint of exoticism comes into play. The equally ripe, rich, powerful and sappy full-bodied flavors display impressive size, weight and volume yet the finish remains focused and even reasonably well detailed with so much extract that there is the impression of chewiness. As is usually the case, this is not as refined as the rest of the grands crus but this is imposing.

2008 Hubert Lamy Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet. Burghound 92. The most complex nose in the range with an elegant array of citrus, floral and pear aromas that are less ripe than usual. The rich and precise medium weight flavors are delicious and pure with good if not great volume though there is fine balance and excellent length. This is really very stylish and sophisticated.

Dover Sole Involtini With Wild Mushroom Sauce. The mushrooms were really good, but sole is never that exciting and so this wasn’t a show stopper. It did pair well with the wines and didn’t conflict.

Flight 2: Batard

2008 Domaine Leflaive Bâtard-Montrachet. Burghound 96. Here the nose is notably tighter and more reserved with aromas of citrus blossom and zest, spice, smoke, fennel and hints of acacia that introduce big, muscular and wonderfully complex broad-scaled flavors that culminate in a long, focused and explosive finish of breathtaking length and intensity. This should reward at least a decade in the cellar and drink well for a similar period thereafter. This too is terrific and very Bâtard and like the Combettes, the ’08 version is one of the very best young examples from Leflaive that I have ever seen.

agavin: rich, good stuff.

2008 Ramey Chardonnay Hyde Vineyard. VM 95. Bright gold. Energetic aromas of green apple, jasmine, minerals and lemon zest. Dry and nervy, with brisk acidity and a saline nuance giving energy and lift to its citrus and orchard fruit flavors. Vibrant and impressively pure chardonnay, finishing spicy, long and dry, with an intriguing floral quality.

agavin: A 2008 California ringer. Not bad for a Cal Chard. Burgundian. Tropical too, with a bit more oak than most white Burgs.

2008 Etienne Sauzet Bâtard-Montrachet. Burghound 95. A more open and expressive nose speaks of white flower, white peach and spiced pear before sliding gracefully into delicious, mouth coating and serious big-bodied flavors brimming with dry extract and power on the driving finish. Despite the substantial size and weight, the flavors and finish retain a fine sense of cut while avoiding any sense of heaviness or loss of focus. This is a knockout.

agavin: rich with a lot of acid

2008 Henri Boillot Bâtard-Montrachet. Burghound 95. A less expressive but more complex nose speaks of notably ripe but not exotic aromas of lightly spiced and toasted green, yellow and citrus fruit that complements to perfection the reserved, intense, round and very powerful big-bodied flavors that display obvious concentration and muscle on the dry but attractively textured and detailed finish. This is a knock-out effort and worth a special effort to find and cellar as it’s going to require at least a decade to reach its apogee.

agavin: lots of acid

2008 Domaine Ramonet Bâtard-Montrachet. Burghound 94. A restrained but stylish nose of pain grillé, citrus blossom and apple combines with understated, pure and refined medium full-bodied flavors that culminate in a stunningly intense finish that displays a good deal more minerality than is typical for Bâtard. This is still very primary yet oozes class and refinement but even so it will clearly require a few years in bottle before it’s really ready for prime time. In particular, I really like the overall sense of balance and harmony and this should eventually be quite special.

agavin: a bit weaker than most in the flight

2008 J.M. Boillot Bâtard-Montrachet. VM 93. Very rich aromas of pineapple, nut oil and smoky oak; the most exotic of these 2008s and the highest in alcohol at 13.5%. Rich, powerful and generous, combining strong acidity and an impression of sweetness and viscosity of fruit. Very smooth, silky wine with a long finish that throws off hints of very ripe stone fruits, nut oils and brown spices.

2008 Paul Pernot et ses Fils Bâtard-Montrachet. Burghound 95. An almost completely inexpressive but relatively high-toned nose of lemon rind, acacia blossom, ripe peach and apricot gives way to almost painfully intense full-bodied and overtly muscular flavors that offer exceptional richness on the magnificently long, mouth coating and palate staining finish that is wrapped around a very firm core of ripe acidity. Chez Pernot, I typically prefer the Bienvenues but as good as it is, and it is very good, in 2008 I give the nod to the Bâtard, if only by a nose, no pun intended.

agavin: finish like Tropical Flavored Skittles!

2008 Domaine / Maison Vincent Girardin Bâtard-Montrachet. Burghound 92-94. A strikingly complex if somewhat less elegant nose offers a considerable breadth of aromas that include ripe peach, spiced pear and white floral hints that serve as a flourishing introduction to the equally ripe, rich, muscular and mouth coating big-bodied flavors that are quite serious and hugely long. Just as the nose is more complex than that of the Bienvenues, so is the finish as there is just another dimension of underlying material present.

agavin: rich with a lot of acid

Pan Seared Scallops “In Porchetta” Wrapped In Pancetta, White Wine Sauce. While tasty, the bacon was so potent that this really distracted from the wines and threw off the palate.

Flight 3: Chevalier part 1

2008 Etienne Sauzet Chevalier-Montrachet. Burghound 96. A notably more elegant, cooler and more reserved nose of white flower, green apple and ample minerality complements to perfection the silky-textured, pure and stylish medium weight plus flavors that possess excellent volume but also wonderful detail and punch while culminating in an intensely mineral finish of superb intensity while remaining a study in purity and refinement. This is one of those ‘wow’ wines that amazes through transparency and delicacy rather than brute force. Still, don’t be fooled by the finesse as the intensity is such that a deep breath is required after sampling this.

agavin: rich and tropical

2008 Domaine Jacques Prieur Chevalier-Montrachet. Burghound 92-95. An ultra elegant nose features notes of citrus, pear and rose petal that precede the racy, gorgeously intense and seriously pure mineral-driven flavors that are textured, naturally sweet and mouth coating on the energetic and penetrating finish that delivers spectacular length. A wine of sheer class.

agavin: slightly darker. lots of acid and tropical ripe notes

2008 Bouchard Père et Fils Chevalier-Montrachet La Cabotte. Burghound 96. There really isn’t much to modify since my last review was only a few months ago, except to say that if anything, my score might be one point too conservative as this is going to be a great, great Chevalier. The original note from Issue 39 was: Discreet wood sets off a slightly riper but otherwise similar nose to the “straight” Chevalier, which leads to bigger, richer and fuller well-muscled and impressively scaled flavors that culminate in a powerful and beautifully textured finish of simply stunning length. Despite the weight and obvious heft, there is absolutely no sense of heaviness as the underlying minerality imparts a real sense of lift. In a word, terrific.

agavin: rich, tropical, Botrytis

2008 Domaine Michel Niellon Chevalier-Montrachet. Burghound 95. This hasn’t changed much since my 2010 review as it remains strikingly complex with an ripe, pure and airy nose that speaks elegantly of white flower, spice and subtle pear aromas\nthat complement perfectly the rich and mouth coating flavors that are built on a base of fine minerality, all wrapped in a sappy and explosive finish that oozes dry extract. This is really a stunning effort that is perhaps a bit more forward than I originally envisioned and thus I have shorted my estimated initial drinking window slightly. Seriously beautiful juice.

agavin: slightly darker, with sweet tart like acid

2008 Domaine / Maison Vincent Girardin Chevalier-Montrachet. Burghound 91-94. A reserved and quite discreet nose reflects notes of ripe green fruit, white peach and rose petal are trimmed in visible wood spice while complementing well the rich, full and intense flavors that are built on a base of firm minerality which contributes to the textured mouth feel on the beautifully balanced and powerful finish. While there is no question that this is a classy, stylish and delicious effort, the flavors seems quite forward for a young Chevalier though again, it’s possible that this is a side effect of being prepared for bottling. Note that my drinking window assumes that it will tighten up once in bottle.

agavin: very reductive, with an almost potty like nose at first

Risotto With Prawns And Maine Lobster. The seafood risotto’s here are really quite excellent and this one was no exception, particularly with its big chunks of lobster.

We even got seconds in the form of a prawn only variant.

Showing off the golden chard.

Flight 4: Chevalier part 2

A ringer: 2008 Bouard-Bonnefoy Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru en Remilly.

agavin: darker and a bit advanced

2008 Michel Colin-Deléger et Fils Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru en Remilly. Burghound 92. A background note of sulfur does not detract unduly from the citrus, anise and rose petal suffused nose. The nicely rich, round and detailed medium-bodied flavors are utterly delicious and display an intense minerality on the elegant, refined and stylish finish. Lovely juice.

2008 Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet. Burghound 97. Like the Bâtard, here the nose is quite restrained but exceptionally elegant and pure with white flower, green apple, pear and wet stone where the latter element continues onto the rich, full and highly energetic flavors that tighten up considerably on the detailed, minerally and bone dry finish that displays distinct citrus mineral nuances. This is long, tight and linear with huge amounts of dry extract that renders the very firm acid spine almost invisible at present though the finish is clearly shaped by it. This magnificent Chevalier should be a genuine stunner in 12 to 15 years.

agavin: also a little darker and more advanced

2008 Domaine Ramonet Chevalier-Montrachet. 97 points. a really great wine. Reductive, rich, with a super long finish.

2008 Domaine Jean-Marc Pillot Chevalier-Montrachet. Burghound 92-94. Not surprisingly, this is the most elegant wine in the range with a spicy nose of citrus peel, acacia blossom and plenty of wet stone nuances that merge seamlessly into rich, vibrant, fresh and beautifully detailed middle weight plus flavors brimming with an intense minerality on the firm and hugely long finish that is almost painfully intense. In sum, this is a wine of harmony and supreme grace.

agavin: tropical and quite nice

2008 Bouchard Père et Fils Chevalier-Montrachet. Burghound 94. This is also wonderfully elegant with high-toned, pure and airy aromas of white flower, light toast, spiced pear and a hint of green apple that gives way to supple yet detailed mineral-suffused middle weight flavors that are perhaps even more refined than those of the Perrières, all wrapped in a balanced, stylish and lingering finish. As good as this is, and it is very good, it’s not necessarily leagues better than its junior partner, just different though it will most likely require a few more years to reach its apogee.

agavin: very nice

2008 Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey Chevalier-Montrachet. Burghound 93-96. This offers up the most elegant nose in the entire range with its stone, lemon, chalk and citrus characters that complement the ultra precise and intense flavors of crystalline purity and the same penetrating minerality as the Perrières displayed, indeed this seems constructed on a base of stone that is like rolling rocks around in your mouth. The finish is very much in keeping with the rest of the wine as it’s explosive, bone dry and palate staining. A classy, balanced and harmonious effort that brims with energy. In a word, outstanding.

agavin: strong reductive bandaid qualities, super long finish, very nice.

Grilled Veal Chop With Sage And Parmigiano Fonduta Served With Rosemary Roasted Potatoes, Haricots Verts, Carrots. A hefty slab of veal and a nice sauce.

Flight 5: Dessert

Walker brought this old bonus: 1984 Domaine Fontaine-Gagnard Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet. 86 points. Very mature, although certainly not totally over the hill. Very strong “nutty” tone.

Ron brought: 1976 Schloss Eltz Eltviller Sonnenberg Gewürztraminer Auslese.

Sicilian Cannoli With Pistachio And Prickley Pear Sorbet. I love cannoli and while this didn’t have the candied fruit tone, the honey pistachio mix was awesome.

The bagged bottles.

And opened up.

There is a lot to say about this tasting. First of all, Valentino did a good job as usual. The wine service was impeccable, and this is a difficult task (pouring lots of big blind flights). Overall service is absolutely first rate. It’s a large quiet room, and the staff was highly attentive. The food was solid, although not as bright or modern as some places. The decor and food are a tad dated now, very very 90s — and not even as good as I remember back in the 90s. But memory is a funny thing. All the dishes tonight were tasty. Pairing with the Burgundy was spot on (thanks to Don and Ron who worked hard on this aspect).

There wasn’t quite enough food and the flights were too large, although maybe not as bad as at the Chablis dinner. Really this dinner could use 6 flights, no bigger than 5 wines each and about 6 savory dishes. This was more a planning/budget issue than anything under the restaurant’s control. I wanted to go for awesome porky ramen after, but we were just a little too tired and full.

2008 as a white vintage is subjective. It’s very very ripe. These are golden wines with a ton of ripe fruit, a touch of advancement, and a lot of Botrytis. Sometimes they are almost honeyed. We had just one corked bottle and no out and out premoxed bottles, but several were “advanced” although in my mind drinking pretty well right now, as I like creme brûlée in my white Burgs. The real question is how will they age. Hard to say. Most at the table thought not well. But these wines do have a lot of acid. They remind me quite a bit of the 2000 vintage, which I have been enjoying in recent years — so who knows?

As usual, these bigger grand crus are rounded and richer than the Chablis etc we had last time, so they seem riper and even more tropical.

In terms of dinner mechanics, I also think we should vote on each wine in the flight and then reveal that flight. Keeping them blind until the end seriously reduces the learning aspect of the evening, as you can’t really remember or effectively revisit. Plus, my “voting” is pretty random, consisting of picking my favorites from each flight anyway. I just don’t have it in me to go back and retaste 30 wines or to compare Chablis and Corton Charlie against each other. Just my opinion.

Thanks to Don C again as always for organizing a super fun and education event! It’s an enormous amount of organization and we all really appreciate it.

Speaking of Don, his compiled results and comments are below:

The top five ranked wines of the evening were:

2008 Ramonet Chevalier Montrachet, which edged the Colin-Morey Chevalier by just one point (48 vs. 47)
2008 Colin-Morey Chevalier Montrachet
TIE 2008 Bouchard Chevalier Montrachet
TIE 2008 Ramonet Bienvenues Batard Montrachet
2008 Jean-Marc Pillot Chevalier Montrachet

The Ringers for the evening – 2008 Ramey “Hyde” Chardonnay, 2008 Bouard-Bonnefoy Chassagne-Montrachet “En Remilly” and 2008 Colin-Deleger Chassagne Montrachet “En Remilly” did not fare as well as the ringer on the first night. The group consensus was that two of them were advanced and four more of us thought all three ringers were advanced.

Of 28 wines, we had 1 bottle which was corked, 1 bottle which was oxidized (Leflaive Chevalier Montrachet — not in agavin’s opinion), 3 bottles which were advanced by group consensus. We had two other bottles for which the group consensus was that the wines were clearly off from technical perspective. In this tasting, 25% of the bottles were either premoxed to some degree or had obvious winemaking defects.

A few generalizations –

once again, many of the wines showed obvious botrytis. The professional reviewers did no one any favors in failing to report the overwhelming incidence of botrytis-affected wines in the 2008 vintage. A few of the wines had so much botrytis they were almost undrinkable (to Don — agavin likes botrytis, as this is a highly personal palate thing).
The Puligny/Chassagne grand crus all exhibited a greater degree of ripeness than did any of the wines on the first night. The wines had more buttery textures and flavors on the mid-palate and the acidity on the palate seemed softer, although I think was likely just the impression left by the greater level of ripeness and viscosity.
Except for many of the Chevalier Montrachets, the colors again tended to be much deeper gold in color than the 2007s at the same stage.
The Batard flight was easily the least impressive since the 2005 vintage and quite possibly the least impressive flight of Batard I’ve ever tasted in the premox series (agavin didn’t mind it as much because he likes botrytis). Thankfully, the first flight of Bienvenues and Criots was very good and the last flight of Chevaliers (aside from the three oxidized or advanced bottles) was pretty exceptional.

Other big tasting dinners from this dinner series:

2008 White Burgundy part 1

2007 White Burgundy part 1

2007 White Burgundy part 2

2007 White Burgundy part 3

2006 White Burgundy

2004 Red Burgundy

2005 White Burgundy part 1

2005 White Burgundy part 2

2005 White Burgundy part 3

By: agavin
Comments (2)

Posted in: Food

Tagged as: 2008 White Burgundy, Bâtard-Montrachet, Chevalier-Montrachet, Italian cuisine, Los Angeles, Valentino, Wine

Modern Breakfast – Huckleberry Cafe

Feb24

Restaurant: Huckleberry Cafe

Location: 1014 Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90401. (310) 451-2311

Date: February 22 & April 17, 2016

Cuisine: American Breakfast / Pastry

Rating: Jury is still out

Josh Loeb and Zoe Nathan have a mini food empire going in Santa Monica. This includes Rustic Canyon, Milo & Olive, Sweet Rose, and Cassia.
Huckleberry is their take on a breakfast bakery, which is an ever popular sort of place in LA — where nobody makes their own breakfast.
Huckleberry offers various eggs, sides.
And tons of attractive looking pastries.
And more desserts.

Check out the line on a Sunday at 11am!

The format is a bit weird, with multiple lines. While I do like “fast casual” in some circumstances, I’m never a fan of the multiple line thing. There are separate lines for take out. A different one to order than to pay, etc. This was my first time and I didn’t totally understand where to wait, leaving me with the feeling like I wasted 10 minutes with the whole line thing.

Then it was confusing if they would bring it to you, or you picked it up, and the kitchen wasn’t churning out much. It took 20-25 minutes for us to get our stuff — after 15 minutes in line. That part wasn’t so good.

They made a good cappuccino — although it sat on the counter for 5 minutes before they brought it to us.

Poached eggs over farmers’ market vegetables with pesto. The veggies leaned perhaps a bit heavy on the cabbage side.
Green eggs & ham with prosciutto di parma, pesto & arugula on housemade english muffin. Basically an egg’s Benedict without the hollandaise and with added arugula/pesto. Not bad, lighter tasting than the regular.

Hard boiled egg sandwich. They sure love the arugula!

Breakfast burrito. Eggs and sausage. Not bad, but not mind blowing or anything either.

Blueberry muffin.

Coffee cake. Solid, if a tiny bit dry.
The concept here is great. Yummy breakfast. Yummy pastries. Great location right next to Melisse. Hip looking modern space.

Huckleberry is going to take more than one quick visit to really suss out. I need to try some real pastries. The food was well prepared, but maybe we didn’t order as well as we could. The line format was confusing and the service slow. Is it always slow? I’ll have to come back and find out. It was pricey, $60 for 3 egg dishes and 3 cappuccinos.

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Eggs, Huckleberry, Huckleberry Cafe, Josh Loeb, pastry, Zoe Nathan

Manhattan Beach Post

Feb22

Restaurant: Manhattan Beach Post

Location: 1142 Manhattan Ave, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266. (310) 545-5405

Date: February 18, 2016

Cuisine: American Tapas

Rating: Solid New Style Eats

I needed to find a good place in Manhattan Beach and two Hedonist buddies both unanimously recomended MB Post, a New American style share plates place — all the usual features: loud surfaces, wood tables, paper menus, shared plates, fancy cocktails. Let’s see how it is.

The small but appealing menu.

Bacon Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits, maple butter. The house’s signature dish — and well worth it. Awesome biscuit notched up with cheese and bacon. The butter was awesome too.
From my cellar: 1995 Gros Frère et Sœur Clos Vougeot Musigni. 92 points. The classic CVM cherry/strawberry nose and flavor. Light, but quite tannic still.
Assorted pickles. Nice crunch. Only mildly pickled. A bit of spice.
Blistering Blue Lake Green Beans, thai basil, chili sauce, crispy pork. This was pretty close to a Szechuan Green Bean dish. The pork ruled too.
Song Family Kimchi Fried Rice, butternut squash, Ha Farm’s Asian Pear, scallion, egg. Another great dish. A good bit of heat too, with nice eggy rich rice.
Albacore Tuna Tataki, Grilled Pineapple, Yuzu, Serrano. A hot/sweet thing. Not our favorite dish, just didn’t quite sync together.
Squid Ink Tagliatelle, shrimp, squid, maryann’s cherry tomatoes, breadcrumbs, serrano. More heat, but a nice pasta. Except the tomatoes.
Mac & Cheese, fontina, parmesan, mycella blue. A pretty straight up baked “fancy” M&C.
Solid stuff, sticks to the ribs.
BBQ Moroccan Lamb Belly, harissa caramelized onions, Japanese eggplant. Rich and tasty. Very soft flavorful meat.
Salmon Creek Roast Pork Shoulder. Apple Mostarda. Grilled Escarole. Good roast pork, but pretty straight up and not as complex as some of the other dishes.
The “Elvis.” A mess of chocolate pudding, peanut butter mousse, bacon brittle. Everything but the banana was great.
Chai Tea Soft Serve, brioche beignet, orange tapioca, caramel. Good stuff. This had a complex soft “chai” taste to it that really stuck with you. Nice combo of textures too.

Overall, MB Post is doing some good stuff. It’s not earth shattering, or haut cuisine, but this is creative tasty fare in a cute little setting and the chef has a good sensibility with combinations. I’m sure it is one of the best places in Manhattan Beach.

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