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When we first heard that Chef David LeFevre left downtown’s Water Grill late last year, we freaked out a little. Where else could we enjoy LeFevre’s sublime cooking? And how long would we have to wait?

But almost immediately LeFevre announced that he would be opening his own restaurant, so our fears were allayed. That new place turned out to be MB Post in Manhattan Beach, and it hasn’t disappointed.

Housed in the beach town’s historic post office on Manhattan Avenue, MB Post is much more laid-back than Water Grill. With its rustic interior, bench seating and rockin’ soundtrack (think Elastica, Guns N’ Roses and the Beastie Boys), MB Post is much more LeFevre’s personal speed. But just because the white tablecloths are gone doesn’t mean the quality of the food has suffered; in fact, this menu is interesting, playful, and most of all, delicious.

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Café Pierre, a French restaurant in Manhattan Beach, is holding its next monthly winemaker social on June 3 with Fred Brander of Brander Vineyard. Brander will be on hand to pour wines and discuss things that wine people discuss. (Can you tell I’m not a wine person?). Wines will include:

2009 Cuvee Natalie (sauvignon blanc blend)
2009 Cuvee Nicolas (sauvignon blanc/semillon)
2007 Bouchet (bordeaux-style blend)
2008 Colson Canyon Syrah

Café Pierre’s Chef Remi Lauvand will also prepare some appetizers to go along with the wine. (Read about Lauvand’s food in a previous post.) All this for the price of $20. Reservations are recommended but not required.

And if you can’t make it to this event, the winemaker socials take place the first Thursday of each month, with La Fenetre Wines on July 1.

Café Pierre
317 Manhattan Beach Blvd.
Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
June 3, 2010, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

I don’t make it down to the South Bay very often, so whenever I’m invited to a dinner in the area, I try to get over the “it’s so far” feeling that inevitably creeps up and go. This time the dinner was at Cafe Pierre in Manhattan Beach, a contemporary French eatery on Manhattan Beach Boulevard. This was a meal full of firsts for me, and I discovered I liked things I never thought I would like.

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

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Texas beef brisket at Zeke's Smokehouse

Let me just begin by saying that this isn’t a completely fair comparison. (How’s that for a lede?) Mr. Cecil’s California Ribs and Zeke’s Smokehouse offer totally different styles of barbecue. But I liked different menu items from each of these places, so I thought I would pit the two against each other — in a friendly BBQ cookoff in my mind, of course.

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