Top 5 best dinners of my life!

Last night I had an AMAZING dinner at Mastro's Steakhouse in Beverly Hills. It is one of LA's renown steak restaurants with a few other locations here in California and also in Arizona and Nevada. Mastro's boasts excellent service and incredible steaks of course. Well, they certainly delivered in every way. Seriously, it's on my list of the top 5 best dinners of.my.life!!

Our waiter quickly arrived to take drink orders and was very friendly and laid-back. He joked around with us throughout the night which caught me a little off guard. Usually at places like this, the staff acts kind of 'hoighty-toighty' which can be intimidating. It was refreshing to see how casual the waiters were with their customers given the type of establishment we were at. It definitely lightened the mood of the dark room. Actually it was so dark in the dining area that we were give a small flashlight to see the menu. Romantic, eh?

Apparently, the appetizers were amazing-raw oysters. I don't care for raw oysters so I missed out on those. Together the 6 of us chose 4 sides that we shared and then we all picked our own meat entrees. Our sides were seriously out of this world: creamed spinach, Gorgonzola mac and cheese, brussel sprouts and the incredibly delicious and our table's favorite dish of the night, black truffle gnocchi. This gnocchi dish had crab meat, Parmesan, breadcrumbs and white truffle oil in it. I really couldn't taste the crab meat. This side was mouthwatering. I urge you all to try this STAT! The picture below doesn't do it justice at all. Oh geez, I really want some right now!


For my entree, I ordered the 8oz. petite filet. It was sooo good. It's rich juicy flavors literally melted in my mouth. I just discovered that all their steaks are marinated in a 15-ingredient rub and cooked w/ butter. I think that I can go as far as saying that it is perhaps the best steak I have eaten in my life. It was a simple and elegant steak…the way it should be. I really cannot rave about this meal enough!
This wasn't my modest 8oz. petite filet but my friend's entree which I'm not sure exactly which one it was. I'll have to ask. He loved it and seriously looked like he was in heaven as he ate it. : )

By the time the dessert menu was passed around, we were all completely stuffed but our waiter urged us to share just one thing. He recommend Mastro's Signature Warm Butter Cake. We happily obliged. In a word it was, delightful. It was served with a side of freshly made whipped cream. Yum. This butter cake was a warm, smooth, rich dessert. It was strangely light and fluffy yet dense at the same time. Turns out, they use cream cheese as a secret ingredient to give the butter cake its texture. It was the perfect size for the 6 of us to share.


Despite how superb this dinner was, it was also superbly pricey so I definitely won't be making it a habit to eat dinner hear often. I read the following on a food blogger's website, "Mastro’s is a great steakhouse with fabulous service and even better food. A dinner here, though, will put a nice fat dent in your wallet. But it’s well worth it, I think." I couldn't agree more.

I ❤ Wine!

This weekend I ventured up north to the Santa Barbara area to go wine tasting with my high school friend, Mya. It was a super last minute trip but amazingly fun nonetheless. I have never been to the area or gone wine tasting before so it was certainly a fun new experience for me. The vineyards were absolutely beautiful and it really was the absolute best weather for a day of wine.

Mya said the following earlier in the week and it really is so true about living here in California, "I love that every weekend can be a new city, new neighborhood, a new scene you can NEVER stop exploring!"

Dog Day!

Today I attended the annual Bulldog Beauty Contest in Long Beach and I had a blast! My friend Mya, has Diggy, a 3 year old English Bulldog and they have entered him in the contest for the past 3 years. It was great to sit and enjoy the parade of all these little animals. Well, some are certainly smaller than others. Many bulldogs went au natural while Diggy and many others had on little costumes and had a full theme going on with their owners. I've never been much of a bulldog fan but after going to this event, I am a full fledged fan! They may drool endlessly but they are adorable and have so much personality in their little bodies, especially in those wrinkly little faces!

I love dogs and would love to have one but sadly, we can't have pets in this house. I do hope to own a dog one day when I have my own home and a nice big yard for them to run around.

"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace." - Milan Kundera

"I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me they are the role model for being alive."

- Gilda Radner

Family Night

Tonight, well, technically last night, (it's almost 1am) I went over to my high school friend Belinda's home to watch the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. Sadly, they started very late and I never got to see them since I already had later dinner plans after. It was still so nice to visit with her and her boyfriend. Then our other high school friends Mya and her boyfriend Paul came too. That is the three of us in the picture. I know I look like a giant compared to them but I had on heels! : )

I can't describe what it's like being around people that knew the 'me' that lived overseas. It's not like I'm a different person now... it's just that they really understand me and where I'm coming from. They also knew my parents and were around them all the time. There is something so comforting being around that. I am so grateful that they invite me to get-togethers and want to show me around LA. They are certainly my new LA family.

After I left this party I went to my college friend, Jason's home in Brentwood. It was barely a 10 minute drive away from Belinda's home in West LA. That was awesome! I have yet to drive very far to get anywhere! So I met Jason my sophomore year at UofA and we stayed pretty good friends and hung out most weekends for awhile. Towards the end of college, we didn't see so much of each other and then when I graduated, he still had one more year left. He has been living in LA about a year now so that is really nice having someone around who knows the area fairly well. Anyway, he invited me over to his home for a home-cooked Persian dinner. He lives with his parents and his mom is a great cook. His two brothers and sister in-law also came to dinner. So, I got to meet the whole family! While it was delicious food, I mostly enjoyed the family dynamics around the dinner table and the humor of it all. They obviously are all very close and friendly with each other. It made me miss my parents a lot and our dinner table conversations. I hope to be invited again for family dinner night. : )

This is one of my favorite quotes about family:

"Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one." -Jane Howard