When I saw this statement necklace by Tom Binns, I wanted to rip it off the mannequin and wear it right then and there. Who could resist these red candy-like hearts, safety pins and crystal chains? It’s cute and edgy at the same time. I want, want, want! Too bad it costs more than $1,000…

Tom Binns All Heart necklace

There’s more: a broken tea cup necklace inspired by the Mad Hatter tea party and a chain-and-charm necklace featuring all kinds of images from the movie.

Tom Binns Smashing Time necklace

Tom Binns Charmed Adventure necklace

(There’s a simpler version of the Charmed Adventure necklace available from Bloomingdale’s for $175.) See more Tom Binns Alice in Wonderland jewelry on Luxist.

I also really liked the Charlotte Tarantola cardigans inspired by the film. Once again, the cute-yet-edgy look is prevalent with ruffles on the placket, a Tarantola signature. The black-and-white lace printed cardigan was my favorite.

Charlotte Tarantola cardigan

Charlotte Tarantola cardigan

And the pièces de résistance, the Sue Wong dresses. The Flower Wonderland-Inspired beaded gown ($588), with a tulip petal skirt, is gorgeous. And the Red Queen-Inspired dress ($388), which is really black, is very cool.

Sue Wong Flower Wonderland-Inspired dress

Sue Wong Red Queen-Inspired dress

Check out Bloomingdale’s, the Disney Store and Zappos for more Alice in Wonderland-inspired clothing and accessories.

And check out the lobby of the W Hollywood. It’s very open and modern, though I question the use of British terms such as “lifts” for elevators and “WC” (i.e., “water closets”) for restrooms. I bet the hotel will change that WC to restrooms soon enough. Anyway, a walk through the hotel’s Delphine restaurant yielded a modern take on art deco decor that I liked a lot. Too bad they were full (supposedly, with reservations, despite having many empty tables) and couldn’t seat us. Maybe another time.

W Hollywood

Allez cuisine!

That’s kind of how I pictured the special appearance of Ludovic Lefebvre at The Foundry on Melrose’s Bluesy Tuesday Southern food night last week — a battle of Iron Chefs duking it out over gourmet fried chicken, Ludo v. The Foundry’s Eric Greenspan, who was in fact a contestant on Food Network’s The Next Iron Chef. What we diners got was more of a delicious pairing of two very different styles of fried chicken that complemented each other rather than threw down against each other. Though both Ludo and Greenspan brought it, as they say…in the parlance of our times.

I figured I better not wait much longer to get this post up since I was outed by Jonathan Gold in L.A. Weekly’s Squid Ink blog. I decided to go to this dinner the night before at the behest of Esther of e*starLA, and I’m glad that I did. Esther and I were the first people at the restaurant, arriving at a punctual, if not a tad early, 5:50 p.m. for our 6:00 p.m. reservation. No matter; Krissy Lefebvre, Ludo’s devoted wife and partner in crime, entertained us while the restaurant prepared our table.

The meal started with an amuse bouche of sweet brioche topped with tomato confit, parmesan cheese and parsley. Yum. Then we were given a shooter of Ludo’s chilled chorizo soup with a float of iced cornichon, which was left over from Sunday’s Gold Standard event. Wow.

Tomato brioche amuse bouche

We ordered a grilled cheese sandwich ($9) made with raisin walnut bread, Taleggio cheese, apricot-caper puree and arugula. We added short rib, too (extra $3). Delicious.

Grilled cheese sandwich

Then came the main event — the fried chicken. A $6 duo of LFC (Ludo Fried Chicken) served with a sweet and spicy chili sauce, and Greenspan’s buttermilk fried chicken served with a goat cheese and tarragon waffle and a side of maple syrup. Yes, I said goat cheese and tarragon waffle. (Bluesy Tuesday fried chicken is normally sold for $4 per piece.)

Ludo fried chicken (left), Foundry/Greenspan's fried chicken (right)

The two kinds of chicken were so different that it’s really not a fair comparison to pit them directly against one another. On one hand, there’s Ludo’s chicken fashioned into boneless orbs and dusted liberally with rosemary. In true Ludo style, it’s a very interesting take on fried chicken, one that I had a brief encounter with at the L.A. Street Food Festival. I was glad to have a proper piece at The Foundry because I had only tasted it before. The sauce it came with was really great, too.

On the other hand, Greenspan’s buttermilk version is more traditional, though this doesn’t mean it’s boring. It’s juicy and infinitely satisfying. And the goat cheese and tarragon waffle was a perfect balance between sweet and savory. I enjoyed both versions of fried chicken immensely.

We also ordered fried green tomatoes ($5) to accompany our Southern meal. They came topped with watermelon, blue cheese and arugula. This was probably my least favorite dish of the night. I’m not a big tomato person, so I’m not sure why I thought ordering this was a good idea. It wasn’t bad, just not my cup of tea. I did enjoy the mini biscuits that came with herbed butter, though.

Fried green tomatoes

The Foundry’s Kentucky Trollope cocktail made with bourbon, pineapple, ginger and citrus was a great pairing with the meal and wasn’t too sweet, despite the pineapple. Bourbon and Southern food? Obviously. And the $8 price tag is easy on the wallet!

Kentucky Trollope (Hey, what did you call me?!)

Unfiltered Dassai 50 sake. Available only in the United States.

I love finding great hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and Sushi Central at the corner Palms Boulevard and Overland Avenue is just that: an under-the-radar sushi joint that serves good quality fish in a no-nonsense environment.

When I was invited by a sake sommelier Yuji Matsumoto to a sushi and sake pairing at a Palms sushi restaurant, I wasn’t sure what to expect, especially because I’m not normally a big fan of sake. But what we diners got was an epic meal with seven dishes and four sakes — a delicious and enlightening experience that has made me now like and appreciate sake.

Matsumoto, who also happens to be the beverage R&D manager for the Kabuki restaurants, teamed up with Sushi Central’s chef and owner Phillip Yi and Dassai sake representative Kazuhiro Sakurai (who came from Japan!) to give us a proper Japanese meal. We also learned a few things about sake, too. For example, when you see a number on a sake bottle, that’s the percent of the rice grain that’s left after it has been polished prior to brewing. The lower the number, the higher the quality.

Sake rice

Kazuhiro Sakurai

The nicest pairing for me was the yellowtail with the Dassai 23, which retails for $80 per bottle in the United States ($1,000 in Dubai!). The sake is fruity, with notes of apple, lychee and mango. The yellowtail sushi was great on its own, but the flavor completely changes and opens up when paired with the Dassai 23. It’s pretty amazing.

Yellowtail sushi

My favorite sushi of the night was the monkfish liver, which I thought was going to be really dense and heavy but was actually pretty light and airy. No, really. I’ve had livers I’ve liked (foie gras) and livers I haven’t (cow), so I was a little weary about this one, but I was pleasantly surprised. This was paired with the Dassai 23. (Fellow diner Esther of e*starLA missed this one, and I was sad for her!)

Monkfish liver sushi

We also had salmon belly, blue crab and spicy tuna sushi paired with Dassai 50 because these are fattier fish.

Salmon belly sushi

Blue crab roll

Spicy tuna roll

Dassai 50 sake

We also had a pairing of Japanese mackerel with Dassai 39. The mackerel is a stronger-tasting fish, but I still enjoyed it.

Japanese mackerel

We also had the ono, which Chef Yi calls his “crack” fish. I believe it was possibly lightly seared because it had a smoky flavor. It was pretty darn good.

Ono sushi

The omakase at Sushi Central ranges from about $55 to $125, and Yi says he always ends with uni. One caveat: Sushi Central doesn’t have a liquor license, so it’s BYOB all the way here. The restaurant holds sushi classes on Sundays and about every three months holds a seasonal food and sake pairing with Matsumoto.

Matsumoto (left), Yi (right)

This meal was hosted.

Alexander Wang Pyramid Clutch

Back of clutch

The Alexander Wang Pyramid Clutch sure is different, but I wonder how functional it is. It’s still a flat purse like a normal clutch, but how is it getting inside? Since it doesn’t zip all the way across, I wonder if it’s hard to use. There are some cool stud-like feet on the back, but I wonder if that makes it hard to carry, too.

Does anyone have first-hand knowledge of this bag? Please share!

We were served a bunch of potted meats to start. This is when I tried head cheese, trotters, rillete and beef tartare for the first time, and none were as scary as I thought they would be. I actually surprised myself by really liking the hand-cut beef tartare, which came with judion beans on the side. I also had escargot and bone marrow as starters, too, both for the first time as well. While neither were as that scary, I didn’t enjoy them as much as the beef tartare, which had a fresh taste to it, contrary to what I had imagined raw beef tasting like.

I think this is head cheese, but it could have been trotters or rillete

Beef tartare

The one appetizer that nearly the whole table went ga-ga for was the foie gras parfait with what seemed like whipped foie topped with quince confit. It was served with spiced bread, which I found to be too sweet a pairing with the quince; I opted to use some of the other more savory breads at our table to eat with this. The foie was very light and fluffy and just melted in your mouth. It seemed like the potted meats were a hit overall (read e*starLA’s and LAist’s takes).

Foie gras and quince parfait

My favorite main of the night turned out to be the sea bass served with orange-flavored vegetables. I normally don’t like sea bass, but this one was great. Other people loved the pork dish, which came with house-made sausage and what looked like pork belly but was really part of the short rib. Though I like pork, I don’t go crazy for it, though this was very good. I also tried a bite of veal sweetbreads, and while they weren’t my favorite, they weren’t bad, either!

Sea bass with orange flavored vegetables

Pork and sausage (at the far end)

Because I’m obsessed with brussels sprouts, I requested we have some to taste, so they showed up on the pork plate. They were cooked sous vide, as Chef Remi Lauvand informed us he did to make them tender. I’m not sure why he chose this method of cooking because the sous vide seemed to overcook the vegetables. Oh well, I guess I just prefer mine roasted.

My favorite desserts were the hazelnut cream puffs and the baba au rhum with slow poached pineapple. Once again, I’m not a big fan of desserts with cream, but both of these were wonderful, especially the baba with the pineapple. One of my fellow diners, Weezermonkey, also liked these two desserts best, and these two photos below are from her post.

Hazelnut cream puffs. From Weezermonkey.

Baba au rhum with pineapple

This meal was hosted.

From Eileen T. on Yelp

Healthy, organic Japanese food. Buzzwords may draw a crowd to Fukada in Irvine, but the delicious taste keeps them coming back. Because it’s in the same plaza as a 24 Hour Fitness, it’s not uncommon to see the same people frequenting both locations. Tucked away in a small plaza on the outskirts of town across the street from the Verizon Amphitheater, Fukada is not really the type of place you just come across randomly; you’ll most likely have to be introduced. There is also a “2 Go” location in north Irvine, not far from the UCI campus, with a slightly different menu.

In authentic Japanese restaurant fashion, Fukada is closed on Mondays, and regular hours are 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. There can be a wait, so if you don’t get there early, you’ll most likely end up having to wait until the end of the lunch or dinner hours to get in.

But the food is worth the wait. The tasty dishes also have this way of bringing out good conversations here. The food just brings out a joy that must be expressed. The dishes are mainly soups (udon or soba), rice bowls and various appetizers you would expect at a Japanese restaurant. The tempura is great, especially the scallops and avocado. The overall taste is all is very clean and not too heavy. The iced green tea is good and, unlike some other restaurants, refills are free.

The best deals are, as always, the combinations. At Fukada, there are separate lunch and dinner combinations. The prices differ by a couple dollars and a few extra choices for dinner. You can choose either a soup combination or a seafood salad combination. For the soup, you choose either 1) udon or soba, 2) hot or cold or 3) tanuki (tempura crumbs, basically) or sansai (mountain vegetables). These are paired with rice bowls with the choice of either white or brown rice (they tend to run out of brown rice toward closing time).

Tanuki udon and spicy tuna don

The seafood salad combination is basically the same, substituting in the salad for the soup, but is also a little more expensive. There is a good amount of fish in the salad and the dressing is sweet and not too tangy. Upon request, the rice bowls can be substituted at an extra cost for ones not on the combination list. The go-to order here is the seafood salad combination with the spicy tuna don (rice bowl) on brown rice. It’s clean, satisfying and good for lunch or dinner.

Seafood salad, curry and green tea

Just to be clear, Fukada is not a sushi restaurant – something that should be conveyed when introducing people to the establishment, to clear any of those expectations Fukada virgins might have. The restaurant serves rolls, but it’s not the specialty here.

It gets pretty busy, so sometimes the service gets slow or infrequent, but the wait staff is all very nice and hospitable. They thank you as you walk out after your visit, not just after paying your bill. You’ll most likely thank them right back for such an enjoyable meal.

This past weekend will go down in L.A. food history as The Weekend That Was The Clusterf*ck Known As The L.A. Street Food Fest. Don’t get me wrong — I thought it was a great idea, and I enjoyed myself while I was there. But as is the case with so many first-time events, there were problems, though I guess things could have been worse.

I actually got lucky with getting into this event, which featured 30+ food trucks and vendors and 30+ retail booths via Unique L.A. I had managed to secure a media pass, so I didn’t have to wait in the ridiculously — I mean ridiculously — long line to get in. This blocks-long line was most likely due to the extremely low entry fee of $5, payable at the door. (That is, if you could get to the door. A reported 10,000 people were turned away after the first 10,000 actually got in.) If I had to wait in that line, I definitely would have bailed.

The line stretched down the block...

...through the parking lot, and just kept going. Never saw the end, actually.

Once I got in, I had to contend with the long lines for food. Even at the beginning of the event, the lines for some of the most popular trucks were crazy long. I was looking forward to trying some of the trucks that have so far eluded me on the streets, including the Buttermilk Truck and the Grilled Cheese Truck, but the lines were prohibitively long. So here’s what I did get to try.

Louks to Go: This Greek food truck was pretty darn tasty. I tried a beef gyro, which came stuffed with tzatziki sauce and french fries, and some feta fries, which were just french fries topped with feta cheese. Both were satisfying, especially the feta fries because I loooove feta cheese. The fries weren’t anything special — I think they were the frozen kind — but the feta made up for that.

Beef gyro

Feta fries

LudoBites: It seemed like everyone and their momma was waiting in this line for Ludovic Lefebvre’s fancy fried chicken. As I have no patience for lines, especially when it’s 80 degrees out, so I decided not to wait for Ludo’s fried chicken. However, I ran into Fiona of Gourmet Pigs, who was kind enough to give me a bite of hers. It was very juicy and nicely seasoned with rosemary.

They waited in line for...

...Ludo's fried chicken

Monsieur Egg: This was one of the vendors I was looking forward to trying, having read the L.A. Weekly article describing it’s eggy goodness. First I tried the crab cake, which was a hand-me-down from Elina Shatkin, formerly of the Los Angeles Times’ Daily Dish. (I’m not too proud to turn down other people’s leftovers!) It was mostly crab, which I appreciated. Then I tried the croque madame, which is a croque monsieur topped with a fried egg. The ham and egg were awesome. Monsieur Egg normally sells via push cart, so if you see it, get something!

Croque madame

Mama Koh’s: Asian chicken wings. These would have been better if the skin were crispier. The sauce was good, sweet and tangy, but the sogginess of the skin was disappointing.

CoolHaus: I’ve had these ice cream sandwiches before, but at this event the truck was giving out mini tasting size sandwiches, which I actually liked better because the regular size sandwiches are too big for me. Anyway, my favorites were the Meyer lemon ice cream with ginger snap cookies and the brown butter bacon ice cream with…Who cares? There were candied bacon pieces in the ice cream!

To combat the extremely long lines, I would suggest raising the entry fee to $10 or $15 and having only presale tickets.

My fellow diners — Lindsay of LAist, Esther of e*starLA, Caroline of Caroline on Crack, H.C. of L.A. and O.C. Foodventures, and Natalie of The Liquid Muse — managed to order one of everything on the Dine L.A. menu, so none of us missed out. I had the carrot soup with candied ginger to start, and it was a great way to begin a meal. Creamy with a hint of spiciness really hit the spot. The chestnut agnolotti, or little ravioli, were buttery, and the hamachi dish was light and fresh. All winners.

Carrot soup

For my entree, I had the fried chicken served with a side of creamed spinach and crushed potatoes. Everything on my plate was great, even the creamed spinach, which I’m not usually a fan of. The chicken was moist and had a wonderfully crispy and seasoned exterior, and the potatoes came with a healthy dose of herbs.

Fried chicken with crushed potatoes

The beef tenderloin, which is cooked sous vide, served with roasted cauliflower and salsa verde was also very good, as was the strip bass (which was supposed to be swordfish but was traded out).

Beef tenderloin

Strip bass

For dessert, I had a steamed lemon pudding cake, which was divine. I love lemon anything, but this cake was exceptionally good. Also, the flourless chocolate cake, which I had initially passed on not having had good experiences with flourless cakes, was more than sufficiently chocolatey. There was also an apple tart that was served in place of the egg cream and ruggalah that was originally on the menu.

Lemon pudding cake

While I didn’t order a cocktail that night (I was trying to keep my portion of the bill on the lower end), many of my fellow diners did, and after tasting theirs I was a little disappointed that I didn’t order one for myself. Even though the bartender shook Caroline’s Manhattan (gasp!), the flavors of the drinks were fresh and well-balanced.

I really enjoyed this meal, so much so that I’ll definitely be back for Eva’s Sunday dinner, consisting of five courses served family style with wine for $35 per person. Yes, with wine. Until I have that meal, read Gourmet Pigs’ review.

And don’t forget the L.A. Street Food Festival!

Do-Lover: This special Valentine’s Day version of the summer party series the Do-Over will take place Sunday, Feb. 14, from 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. at Crane’s Hollywood Tavern, just like usual. Also like usual, it’s free to get in, though you do have to be at least 21 years old and RSVP here. Since Monday is a holiday (for most of us), expect a long line.

Stinker’s Truck Stop: The ultimate in ironic Silver Lake bars is shutting its doors and giving away everything it hasn’t already auctioned off. This Monday, Feb. 15, at 9:00 p.m. enjoy $2 Colt 45 tall boys while snatching up left over bar memorabilia — because you know you need that stuffed skunk wearing a trucker cap. (FYI: 1933 Group, which owns the bar, isn’t letting go of the space. A new concept will takes its place in a few weeks, per co-owner Dimitri Komarov.)

UPDATE: Komarov says the new concept taking over the old Stinkers space will be a whiskey bourbon bar tentatively called Old Crow projected to open sometime in mid March.