Savor Los Angeles, a showcase of L.A.’s sweetest of the sweet, is hosting its first event this Friday, July 30, at Miauhaus photography studio. There will be all kinds of desserts, including those from BabyCakes, Frosted Cupcakery, Gotta Have S’more, N’iceCream, p.o.p. candy, Plaisir, Popcakes, Pure Cheesecakes, Sweets for the Soul, The Crosby and XT Patisserie. According to press materials, these companies were chosen “for their emphasis on fresh and organic ingredients, alternatives to high-fructose corn syrup, vegan offerings, presentation and design, and good ol’ overall yumminess.” Sounds good to me! There will also be coffee from Intelligentsia, champagne and paired beverages, sparkling juices from IZZE, a cheese and fruit bar, drinks from PAMA liqueur, raffles, music, a photo booth, gift bags, and Boxed water.

The regular ticket price is $35, but Goldstar is selling tickets for $21. Not too shabby, eh?

Details:

Miauhaus
1201 S. La Brea Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90019
Friday, July 30
7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

I had visited First & Hope once before during its preview night when the atmosphere was close to mayhem. It was very crowded, and while the servers did their best, it was hard to get a good idea of what the food and drink should have been like.

So when presented with an invitation to have dinner at the restaurant under normal circumstances, I decided I would give the place another chance. I would have a proper meal and make a better-informed decision about First & Hope’s merits.

And I’ve made my decision: I would only come back here for one, maybe two, dishes.

You see, the menu sounds good; it reads like a food blogger’s wet dream, with foie gras, bacon and pork rinds littered all over its comfort food-centric offerings. But First & Hope leaves much to be desired in execution.

First, the cocktails. Nearly every one contains some kind of bubbly, no doubt an homage to the vintage style. I get it, but I thought the drinks were just OK, which was pretty much my summation after the preview party, too. I had an Elle for Leather, made with Famous Grouse scotch, vanilla syrup, “a touch of effervescence” and garnished with a vanilla pod. It smelled amazing due to the vanilla pod but tasted light on the scotch.

Elle for Leather. There's a blue tint because of the mood lighting.

I had sips of the Russian Spring Punch, made with Grey Goose vodka, cassis, raspberry and bubbly, which was too fruity, and the Seelbach, made with Woodford Reserve bourbon, orange curaçao, bitter, bubbles and garnished with an orange peel, which was a bit too sweet.

Russian Spring Punch

Seelbach

We were served a couple of appetizers before our starters, including an amuse bouche of potato, creme fraiche, chives and I don’t remember what else. It was fine, but not outstanding. The spreadable cheese and house-made saltine crackers were palatable, though.

Potato amuse bouche

Cheese ball and house-made saltines

Next up was a round of appetizers. The standout here was the All-About-The-Cheese Mac & Cheese Flight. It came with three pots of cheesy goodness, one filled with Marin triple cream brie, elbow macaroni (the menu says baby lasagna but it was elbow macaroni) and some kind of baked puffed cake on top; another with Cypress Grove goat cheese, mini shells and crumbled popped corn; and the last with porter beer cheese, corkscrew pasta and crumbled rye croutons. And each pot came with “sides,” including more cheese, honey, mustard and even a mini pint of porter beer. Score!

Mac & cheese flight

Unfortunately the rest of the starters left a lot to be desired. The Crab Meat Justine Potpie made with crab gratin topped with a puffy, buttery french toast was boring, and the Popcorn Shrimp & Grits with jumbo shrimp, corn relish, popped corn cream sauce and creamy grits might have been OK if it had arrived at our table hot.

Crabmeat Justine Potpie

Shrimp and grits

And the Back Yard Garden Salad looked gorgeous but left me wanting, especially the fiddlehead ferns that were promised on the menu but didn’t appear on the plate. This dish is also the first time we encountered the undercooked potatoes. While the amuse’s potato was perfectly cooked, the rest of the potatoes were crunchy (and there were many of them). The green goddess dressing was good, though.

Back Yard Garden Salad

The main dish that I liked best was the Duck-Duck-Goose — a duo of a sugar-and-spice seared duck breast and duck leg confit, roasted foie gras, spring onion hoe cake and wilted baby mustard greens. Even though I got a piece of gristly fat in my bite of duck breast that I ultimately had to spit out, the meat was nice and tender. And the duck leg confit layered between green onion pancakes topped with foie gras was heavenly.

Seared duck breast

Duck leg confit with foie gras

What wasn’t so heavenly was Nenaw’s Picnic Basket, which came with juicy-yet-bland deep-fried buttermilk hen (which was also slightly over fried), a crunchy potato salad, beer-braised collard greens and cornbread sticks. The potatoes were yet again undercooked, and while the collard greens were enjoyably spicy, the cornbread was placed in the same container, making it mushy.

Nenaw's Picnic Basket

And then there was the Moonshine Meatloaf: a ground chuck, foie gras and gin meatloaf wrapped in bacon served with “blistered potato and pearl onion hash,” brown butter green bean bundles and caramelized tomato marmalade. This was quite possibly the most disappointing dish of the night for me. There was just too much going on in the meatloaf, which seemed to suffer from unbalanced proportions and a texture that, dare I say, reminded me a bit too much of canned dog food. And does that look like “hash” to you? No, it doesn’t look like hash to me, either. Oh, and the potatoes were hard again. When we finally asked about the crunchy potatoes, we were told that they were meant to be “al dente.” Really? Really.

Moonshine Meatloaf

The desserts we tried were nothing to write home about, either. The Porky Pig Banana Split with bacon and banana ice cream, jalapeno hot fudge, brandied cherries and caramel pork rinds sounded better than it was (I personally didn’t like the pork rinds but a dining companion did), and the Lemon Meringue Beehive with coconut macaroon, lemon curd, lemon-thyme ice cream and toasted marshmallow had too much thyme in large pieces to be enjoyable. And I love the lemon-thyme combination usually.

Porky Pig

Lemon Thyme Beehive

The one saving grace was the strawberry milkshake with strawberry compote and strawberry whipped cream that came with the LAPD Donut Shake Down’s Boston cream pie doughnuts and chocolate dipping sauce. I don’t remember the doughnuts at all, but the shake was really good.

LAPD Donut Shake Down

Consistency and execution are definitely problems at First & Hope. The proportions are wrong, potatoes are crunchy (literally — I thought I was eating all celery out of that potato salad), and it’s like the kitchen has never read the menu. Of course, like the rest of the restaurant, the food presentation is pretty, and the service is excellent. Good service can go a long way. But in the end, you’ll need something to back up all that style.

Further reading:

First & Hope Supper Club: Because She’s In That Part of Downtown by e*starLA

Southern Discomfort: First & Hope Supper Club by LAist

Note: This was a hosted meal.

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.

Casa del Mar, a 1920s Santa Monica hotel with beautiful unobstructed views of the beach, recently introduced a $29 Sunday brunch, with your choice of an appetizer, entree and all-you-can-eat dessert buffet. Sounds great, right? I thought so, too, so I invited a bunch of my friends to try it out yesterday. Boy, were we disappointed.

It wasn’t so much the food, which was fine for the most part, though some of it had its problems, too. It was the extremely slow service that really got us. Since I made the reservation for the meal, my experience with the hotel started before anyone else’s, and it didn’t start off well.

When I called a week ago to make a reservation, I was told that there were two other large groups (we had eight people) that had already made reservations for my preferred day and time and that the restaurant couldn’t fit us in. Really? I found this hard to believe that in this economy any restaurant (with very few exceptions) wouldn’t accommodate a group of people who want to give their business. So after I asked about availability for the following week, the woman on the other end, after checking with the manager, came back on the line to tell me that they would “squeeze” us in after all. OK, great.

Then the restaurant called me back the night before our reservation to confirm. I confirmed. Then I realized that a restaurant with a different name had called to confirm my reservation. I thought we were eating at The Veranda, but Catch called me. So I called back to reconfirm. By this time, Catch was closed so I was transferred to the hotel’s concierge. I explained why I was calling, saying I just wanted to make sure my reservation was made for the dining area that I wanted. The concierge said, “Well, if you’re having brunch, you’re in Catch.” OK, I wanted to confirm since your Web site is kind of confusing, I said, which was greeted with silence on the other end of the line (take a look at the links above: two different venues with different brunch menus). That was pretty much the end of that conversation.

So I was a little apprehensive when we showed up the next day for brunch, but there were no problems getting us seated in the right place. But there were problems with getting our food. It took 20 minutes before our drink orders were taken and another 15 to 20 minutes before our food orders were taken. I ordered a roasted beet salad to start and a lobster club sandwich for my entree. I was then served eggs Benedict for my appetizer. That was sent back, and I got my beet salad, which was good, with red and golden beets topped with goat cheese and frisee. Other people ordered the seafood salad, which they described as tasting like a seafood Caesar with avocado.

Bellini

Bloody Mary

Roasted beet salad

Seafood salad

Then we got our entrees. My lobster club was OK. The bread was on the thin side and grilled like a panini, which was nice, since sometimes too-thick bread makes a sandwich hard to eat. But the rest of it — the lobster, avocado, tomato and lettuce — didn’t have a lot of flavor. The tomato on one half of my sandwich was looking more than a little worse for wear: not only was I given the “butt” of the tomato, the other piece was a mealy mess. And my potato chips were not warm, as the menu said they would be.

Lobster club

Tomato butt and mealy mess (above)

Oh, and remember that eggs Benedict? Two other people at the table had ordered that dish, and it obviously came back because one was cold. That one was replaced with a new one that the manager swore was made 3 minutes ago right before his eyes. And someone else was displeased with her steak frites; she said the steak was unremarkable and was cooked more than she had asked for.

Eggs Benedict

The saving grace of the meal was the dessert buffet, which offered all sorts of sweets, including puddings, cakes, cupcakes, ice cream, tiramisu, crepes and creme brulee. I had butterscotch pudding, which was good (I actually had this first thing since it took so long to get our real food, and just about everyone else at the table ate dessert first, too). I also had some strawberry ice cream with gummy bears (so sophisticated, I know). The ice cream was OK, but the gummy bears were nice and soft. Tara of When Tara Met Blog said that she thought the mini cupcakes came from nearby Vanilla Bake Shop, and I believe her because she’s the cupcake goddess. I didn’t taste any though, because I was somehow stuffed despite not finishing my entree. Perhaps I was stuffed with displeasure?

Butterscotch (left) and chocolate (right) puddings

Mini cupcakes

Tiramisu

Creme brulee (tart?)

And then we got the check, 2 hours and 15 minutes after we had initially sat down for our meal. I had put 2 hours and 17 minutes on the meter where I parked my car, so I was sure I would get a parking ticket. Thankfully, I didn’t. But there was a kicker — we were charged $27 for three bottles of Evian. When we were asked “sparkling or flat,” we said flat, thinking it was tap. I guess we should have realized when our water came in Evian bottles, but none of us did. The server should have asked if we wanted Evian or tap water after we said we wanted flat, but tap wasn’t even offered. The irony is we all got free booze because of a text-message promotion. Casa del Mar: Where booze is free, but water costs $9 a bottle.

The manager seemed to be the only person who was on the ball. We saw him actively directing the wait staff, and he came by more than once to make sure we were OK. And while our server was pleasant, he never apologized for the wait. Well, I’m not apologizing for this post, either.

Sliders at Rowdy Red Wine & Burger Bar

The folks over at Rowdy Red Wine & Burger Bar invited a group of food bloggers (many of the foodies in my blogroll, and then some) to have dinner with its newly introduced wine, which was added to the menu a couple of weeks ago and finally made the restaurant’s name make sense. Rowdy Red, which is named after a type of heirloom tomato, is located in the underground food court of City National Plaza in downtown L.A. But just because it has a name with fancy roots and serves wine doesn’t mean its menu will deplete your wallet; it’s really an American diner at heart.

I ordered the sliders, which came with grilled onions, pickles and special sauce. I’m not sure if there was anything really special about the sauce, but the whole mini-burger package was definitely satisfying, with the buns lightly toasted and buttery, too. You get three in your order, and they’re about the same size as Jack in the Box’s mini sirloin burgers, so they’re a good value at $5.75.

Actually, the entire menu offers a lot of bang for your buck: the most expensive menu item is the Angus skirt steak and fries for $14, and most items fall under $10.  You can get a combo of Rowdy Red’s classic burger, fries and soda for $8.70, or substitute a milkshake for a total of $9.30, a beer for $8.90, or a glass of house wine for $10.55. The restaurant has its own wine label, Free Run, which comes from Sawyer winery in the Rutherford area of Napa Valley.

Also worth checking out are the desserts. Milkshakes and soft serve sundaes are huge and cost less than $3 a piece. There are root beer floats, too. And for the building’s employees, coffee (Peet’s) is only $1 and espresso drinks are 20 percent off between 7:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., and again between 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.

Soft serve sundae with Oreos and chocolate sauce

All in all, you get decent food for decent prices. In addition to the sliders, I also enjoyed the sweet potato fries and the onion rings. I didn’t really like the mini corndogs – they were strangely sweet, and anyway, I’m not really a corndog fan to begin with – and the spinach artichoke dip was just OK. But if you’re at Rowdy Red, you’re looking for cheap food, not gourmet (though it is part of the same restaurant group as Morels French Steakhouse & Bistro at the Grove), so stick with the basics, and you’ll be satisfied.