no. 3

Grill On The Alley

Saturday night dinner.
The Grill On The Alley in Beverly Hills.

This place is a pretty classic old school styled steakhouse in Beverly Hills.  
Apparently it is the "home of the entertainment industry's "power lunch"

We started with a round of martini's and one of the evening's specials, the tuna tartare.
Martini was good, tuna was a fine - but needed something.  It came with 3 sauces, but it was still lacking.

For dinner we had:
Baked Parmesan Crusted Chilean Sea Bass
and
Prime New York Pepper Steak
with
Wine referred by our waiter.


Both entrees were fine, but surprisingly mediocre. Good, but nothing amazing.
The dinner was enjoyable because of our waiter/table runner Dan though.  He was a delight!  :)
Very accommodating and friendly.

Since our meals were a little blah, we talked ourselves into dessert and shared a slice of key lime pie.
AMAZING!
Silky smooth and creamy, sweet but tart.


Finished the meal on a high note!
 

no.4

Ford's Filling Station

Located in downtown Culver City, this restaurant is pretty fun.
The menu overall has standard dishes that have been a little funk-i-fied.

We each had 'Eric's Manhattan' which had both sweet and dry vermouth, and was very very good.
So far this lunch was starting off right!!


For an appetizer we shared the
Shrimp Pil Pil {made with garlic, marash pepper and sherry}
Pretty good.  A little spicy, and very garlicky.  Served with bread that helped calm down the burn from the marash pepper that was generously sprinkled on the shrimp.

Main dish we had:
Shrimp Curry { with jasmine rice, marash pepper and topped with applewood bacon }
and the
Pub Burger {+ cheddar cheese and bacon }

Shrimp curry
A- rating.
It had strips of bacon! Whaa! Unexpected, but a nice surprise.
Shrimp, rice, spices and sauce were all great. Perfect for lunch.

Pub Burger
The burger was gigantic, and served with bacon and cheddar cheese that really made it standout.


Phew!

no.2 part 2 {Kitchen 24}

Ventured over to Kitchen24 again for a little lunch.
I hadn't had much for breakfast, so eggs and a good book sounded pretty good for lunch.

I ordered a Ginger Ale
and
the Garden Benedict:

toasted english muffin, with ham, avocado and poached eggs topped with smoked paprika hollandaise, served with herb roasted potatoes.

The first few bites of the garden benedict started off well enough, nicely poached eggs, ripe avocado -  but after awhile that smoked paprika sauce became so overwhelming! I couldn't taste anything else!

I suddenly noticed as I was making a mess with my eggs and benedicts the rest of my food and the smokey paprika sauce were locked in a land battle and I was kept busy trying to keep the sauce off my potatoes before they also tasted like nothing but smokey paprika.

Unfortunately, the potatoes didn't make it.

My advice - order the smokey paprika hollandaise on the side!!