ShopEatSleep

I recently blogged about the new happy hour at Oliverio restaurant at the Avalon Hotel, and now that I’ve actually tried it, I can honestly say that it’s one of my new favorites. Every dish that I tried was excellent, and the cocktail I had was nice, too.

As you may remember, Oliverio’s Salute! extended happy hour is on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., with everything on the bar/poolside and cocktail menus half-off. (If you ask nicely, you can get these prices on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., too.) For a top price of $11, Chef Mirko Paderno offers an amazing menu in taste and value.

Let’s get to the food and drink, shall we?

I started out with a Lombardia cocktail made with bourbon, apple, cinnamon and orange ($7 at happy hour). The apple, orange and cinnamon made this a comforting drink, and well let’s be honest, so did the bourbon. It bordered on being too sweet for my taste, but I still enjoyed it. On a previous visit, when the space was Blue on Blue, I had the Elixir made with cucumber-dill infused vodka, sweetened lime and white cranberry, which I also liked. I’m a sucker for cucumber in my cocktails.

Lombardia

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Thanks to some terrific help, the redirect on ShopEatSleep is gone! Hallelujah! (If you do notice something weird happening to you, though, please let me know in the comments.) Thank you for hanging in there with me. New posts soon!

There seems to be a problem with ShopEatSleep redirecting some users (including me!) when visiting the homepage. It looks like the site has been hacked, and I’ve been working hard to find the hack and get rid of it. So I must apologize for the lack of posts until I get the site cleaned up. As far as I know, visiting the site does not infect your computer with a virus. Thanks so much for your patience!

Bren! She just won two tickets to the LA Luxury Chocolate Salon happening Oct. 11 at the Pasadena Convention Center. This is what Bren said was her favorite kind of chocolate candy:

“white chocolate cookies and cream bar. OR milk chocolate with almonds. OR chocolate covered cherries. i dont know i kind of just like chocolate everything.”

“Chocolate everything” sounds good to me, too. Actually, the comments left didn’t have any bearing on who won (I picked the name out of a bag), but it’s fun to see anyway, right?

Thank you all for entering. There will be more giveaways in the future, so stay tuned!

I’m having problems with my Twitter account, @shopeatsleep. Until the folks at Twitter fix it, I’ll be out of tweeting commission.

For those of you who enjoyed my Marketplace column while I was at the Los Angeles Business Journal, this blog is meant to fill the void that’ll be left by my departure, but it’ll be a little different – more laid-back and lifestyle-focused. I’ll do my best to cover retail, dining, hospitality and travel, as I did at the paper.  Thanks for following me!