Restaurant: Beach Club
Location: Torre Canne BR, Italy
Date: August 5, 2024
Cuisine: Italian
Rating: Not bad for the beach
We caught this meal at our “local” beach club.
Packaged, but these are still delicious.
Octopus.
Salmon Carpaccio.
Orecchiette Pomodoro.
Seafood pasta.
Weird cute packaged desserts.
Had the freezer taste.
Not bad for the beach.
July 5, 2022 we took a Ferry ride across the Mediterranean from Sardinia to Corsica to visit some friends of ours.
The have a beach-side house on the east coast of Corsica, not far from Bonifacio. This is really an incredible spot.
The house is lovely and the patio looks out on the incredible view of the sea above.
Our friends prepared a traditional Corsican lunch, including wine of course.
Moroccan olives that are almost sweet.
Empanadas with caramelized onions and cheese and a Corsican herb.
Watermelon and avocado salad.
Tripe made by the local priest. very tender but smelled and tasted “fecal.” Eww.
Cannelloni with cheese and spinach.
Green beans.
Fresh melon.
Flat breads.
More wine.
Pecorino and fig jam.
These were the best packaged gelato I have yet had.
Overall, this was just one of those peerless afternoons. The food was nice, but it wasn’t about that per se, but really the location, weather, company, and all that.
Restaurant: Manta Ray
Location: Promenade | 7 Koifman St, Tel Aviv 63305, Israel. +972 3-424-7717
Date: July 6, 2019
Cuisine: Israeli
Rating: seafood!
Our final night in Israel — just hours before heading to the airport for a very long series of flights home.
Some friends had recommended this.
And it’s right on the beach.
With a straight on view (and the typical glass barrier beach restaurants often have).
The menu.
Plain pasta.
Pasta sauce.
Here they bring this slate of mezze and you can choose whichever ones you like. Pretty good stuff.
And served with fresh bread.
Filleted Blue Bream served on red rice, pineapple & chili butter.
Chunks of Filet of Grouper on mashed blue potato and shallot flakes.
Mixed seafood in a black cast-iron pot. This had a slightly sweet sauce.
Sharing Seafood: mussels, shrimp, and crabs, sweet potato and grilled pineapple in a coconut milk sauce with lemon grass, ginger and curry paste. This broth was better (although the seafood quality was good for both). Really nice vaguely Thai flavors. Lots and lots of crab! Probably 4-5 whole ones.
Overall, a fairly simple menu, but I liked the Mezze and the seafood was delicious.
Location: 14160 Palaway Way, Marina del Rey, CA 90292 310.439.3033
Date: July 28 & 30, 2011
Cuisine: Modern
Rating: Interesting, but a little all over the place
My brother and I were out for our weekly lunch adventure and after Gjelina had a 45 minute wait we made our way to Vu, which I had tried a couple months ago for dinner.
Vu does live up to its name, sporting a nice patio with an excellent view of the marina.
I was a little surprised to find the lunch menu, PDF here, a bit “more conventional” than the modern tapas centric dinner menu.
Bread.
“Grilled Polenta: Asparagus, tomato, pickled red onion, aged balsamic.”
“Green Curry Soup: Mussels, coconut boba, micro cilantro.” This was quite good. Fairly spicy, coconuty, definably rich. The mussels, boba, and pork lumps inside were like little prizes to hunt for.
“Seared King Cole Duck Breast Salad: mixed greens, goat cheese, dried cherries, chocolate-spiced cashews, red wine vinaigrette.” This was pretty tasty, the duck was good, and the various elements. But the mix was overall a little weird. I’m pretty sure there was sisho in the greens, as they had that distinct flavor. Now I like sisho, but the overall flavor profile of the dish was a little helter-skelter.
“Blue Crab Cakes: charred tomato, orange, brioche bread crumbs, pickled red onion, mache, mustard ice cream.” These crab-cakes were way over fried, and inside they were stuffed with tarragon. So much so that they tasted like tarragon cakes. This wasn’t ideal, masking the crab flavor (as did the heavy fry). No where near in the league of the crab-cakes from Houstons or Capo.
I also popped down to Vu two days after this with my toddler from some brunch as we were already in the Marina.
The brunch menu can be found here.
Pancakes. Pretty conventional. I think the syrup was vanilla syrup, which was tasty.
My son likes a mix in with strawberries.
“Lobster Omelette: asparagus, shaved fennel, niman ranch pork belly, pommery hollandaise, home fries.” This wasn’t bad at all, but the overall flavor profile was again a little weird. The sour mustard clashed a bit with the sweetness of the pork and lobster.
Some VERY good fries, with a cumin based seasoning on them.
And some fantastic Neiman ranch bacon. Really really good bacon.
Overall Vu is trying interesting stuff, but the chef is too wild with his palette. I’m all for crazy and interesting combinations and new modern techniques — really all over them — but they need to be employed with care. Dishes still have to work together harmoniously, which isn’t really going on here.
Click here to see the previous review of Vu.
