Red Velvet Pancakes?!

Yesterday morning I had the pleasure of going to breakfast with a college friend that lives here in LA. Kathleen took me to the infamous Hollywood restaurant called The Griddle Cafe. It was amazing and I'll definitely be taking my next visitor there.

Apparently during the weekend, this place is a madhouse and the line to get a table wraps down the street but this morning being a Monday, we walked in and were seated right away. The menu is fairly easy to navigate and the page with the list of pancakes all sounded delicious and creative too. Kathleen and I decided to each get one pancake and share them. She chose the Black Magic, "Disbelief will possess you as you're pulled under the spell of our crushed Oreo-filled flapjacks!" Um, yeah, I usually think that anything at all with Oreos is great but these were downright delicious!
I chose their signature "Red Velvet panCake". While it was also super tasty, I felt like I was eating an actual red velvet cake so I couldn't eat too much of it. The swirls and swirls of cream cheese icing was seriously decadent. I can imagine eating this particular pancake as a dessert.


Breakfast food is definitely my favorite! What's yours?

My Chateau Marmont Experience

Last night I had dinner at the renown Chateau Marmont. Built in 1927, it is one of the oldest establishments on the strip. Originally, it was an apartment building but high rents and the Depression kept people away so it was converted into a hotel. Numerous songs have been written in it and several films have been shot there making this hotel quite the historic landmark here in LA. The Chateau is located on the infamous Sunset Strip, up a little slope from it. Thankfully, I've driven past it enough to know exactly where it was.

There was a pretty intense scene just in front of the hotel! There's even a list to valet-you have to have a dinner reservation to even park there! There isn't a ton of parking around it so valeting is really the only logical thing to do. If I was smarter I think that I would have investigated the parking garages around the Strip and seen how far they were from it. Oh well.. next time. I know for sure that I definitely DO NOT want to ever pay $28 for valeting again! UGH!! I about choked when I got my car at the end of the night and the guy told me that! Gotta love my expensive city, right?

Unfortunately, my friends that I was meeting there for dinner were about an hour late and I was 30 minutes early. So how long did I wait? You do the math. Needless to say, several people who worked there asked me if I was ok a few times-kinda embarrassing! At least they were being attentive. This did give me plenty of time to think about future blog posts and of course lots of people watching.

When I googled the Chateau Marmont, a million celeb faces appeared. Apparently, the celebs love this spot. Ok, so you are all probably wondering if I happened to see anyone last night? Well, yes, we saw a few... While I was waiting (ahem!) I believe that I saw Courtney Love wandering around the lobby. I thought so at the time but didn't think she would be alone and so quiet so I put it out of my mind...but then hours later during dinner, I overheard a group of men talking about her as they walked into the restaurant. So, you tell me? : ) Next, at the end of the night as we were getting our cars, in the span of like 10 seconds, we saw Chris Noth aka Mr. Big from Sex and the City and then Michael Lohan, Lindsay Lohan's dad! Crazy, right? So, yeah, it's safe to say that celebs enjoy this hang out. : )

Alright, so I've told you about the celeb sightings and the pricey parking but I haven't even told you about the Chateau Marmont itself.

I found the following quote on the hotel website and I think it sums up the experience pretty well:

"Arriving at Chateau Marmont you surrender yourself to a grandi-loquent environment, an infamous hideaway and the perfect getaway in the center of one of the world's most exciting cities. Modeled after an infamous royal residence in France's Loire Valley, Chateau Marmont is a fantastical folly in the land of make believe. While in residence you become part of a highly discriminating, international clientele desiring an experience at once luxurious and unique. Chateau is the perfect co-conspirator; as Harry Cohn, founder of Columbia Pictures said in 1939, 'If you must get in trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont.' You can be yourself or, better yet, be whomever you want to be; don't be surprised if your visit brings out your inner Howard Hughes, your Greta Garbo, your Jim Morrison. As public or private as you wish - there are those in residence who are desperate to be seen and others who choose to remain anonymous. The eccentric and highly personal history of the place, its luscious rich past, its tarnished patina are all part of the charm." -A. M Homes

Yes, it's a stylish and yet cozy hotel. Take the dining area for example, I felt like I was in someone's living room rather than a posh hotel.


The food? Well, a good friend who knows I love it recommended the gnoocchi so I had to get that and yes, it was great! I think that everyone else at dinner enjoyed their food too. Despite everything being very good at dinner, the service was pretty awful. I mean, if you are going to spend this much money on a night out, you'd expect the waiters to be super meticulous about your entire experience. This was not the case. If you remember in a previous post, I talked about my dinner at Mastro's Steakhouse and how amazing the dinner and the service were together. It was an expensive dinner but the food and the waiters were incredible. I'm totally willing to pay for a pricey meal here and there if it's deserved.

All in all, it was a lovely night and I am so happy that I got to see my dear friend Tracy who is in town for work with her sweet boss, who also joined us for dinner.

Here we are after the meal at a bar, The Den, which is just across from the Chateau Marmont.


So, have any of you been to the Chateau Marmont?

The Ivy Experience

Tonight, my two roommates and I had dinner at The Ivy, one of LA's many celebrity hangouts. Swati's birthday was last week so Gina and I wanted to take her out to celebrate. We thought it would be fun to surprise her with a dinner at this ritzy, paparazzi packed spot. We even blindfolded her in the car on the way to the restaurant!

There were no photographers around The Ivy tonight which means that they apparently were not tipped off that any celebs would be there. Guess no one told them that the three of us were going to be there...haha. We still had fun!

I was surprised that the inside has a rather French-rustic charm to it. According to my research, The Ivy is probably the only restaurant in Los Angeles surrounded by a white picket fence. The fence is framed by what of course, ivy. It's busy dining rooms are filled with odd little rustic antiques and plenty of fresh real flowers everywhere. The menu is mainly American, with several seafood options and even a few Mexican dishes. Apparently, the restaurant began life as "L.A. Desserts" catering. Oh, FYI, we went to Yogurtland for dessert!

Now, you may be thinking that we spent a fortune on dinner at The Ivy tonight, but honestly, the prices were pretty much typical of LA, nothing out of the ordinary. I've just read a few bad reviews online of the service being awful and the food being only mediocre. Well, I completely disagree with this. It might have taken us awhile to get our drinks, but after that, the waiters were very sweet and attentive to us. I really love that crumb scooper thing they use whenever there are crumbs on the table. Our food was delicious. I had simple spinach filled ravioli in tomato sauce and it was very tasty. My roommates seemed happy with their choices too.

But of course, the food is not what The Ivy is all about. "It's about seeing and being seen." This celeb hot spot has had pretty much every celeb spotted eating there. The list is way too long. An MSNBC article called The Ivy "a celebrity beehive that sees a constant stream of Hummers, Mercedes and Jaguars pull up and discharge folks who pay through the nose to be seen eating in public".

Well, my roommates and I certainly aren't celebs...yet... but it was still fun to eat at such a trendy and hip restaurant here in LA.

First Visitors!

I feel so lucky that not even a full week into my new life in LA and I already had two very special visitors, my sister and 7 month old nephew, Lucas! They drove here from San Diego which can take up to two and a half hours in bad traffic.

We went to a really cute place for lunch that caters to parents and their young children, Giggles and Hugs. It's a fun restaurant that was full of kids everywhere playing with all kinds of kid-friendly equipment. The menu was reasonably healthy too. I hope to find more of these kinds of restaurants for their visits here. It was so nice to spend the day with them but I was very sad when they left. It never gets easier saying goodbye to Lucas and in fact, I think its getting harder.. : ( It's difficult saying goodbye to the two people I love most in this world. It's crazy that in a city of over 12.9 million residents you can still feel so alone and I guess when they drove away, that really hit me. I don't have any close friends here in LA yet. But I do know that I will become closer to the friends that I do have here and of course make new friends too.

"Nothing purchased can come close to the renewed sense of gratitude for having family and friends." -Courtland Milloy