ShopEatSleep

La Grande Orange is celebrating two years in Pasadena with a buy one, get one deal. On Monday, March 22, (that’s today) and Tuesday, March 23, buy one entree and get a second entree for just $2.00 during lunch and dinner.

And keep an eye out for the Cart For A Cause food truck, which launches Tuesday in Beverly Hills at United Talent Agency from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. with chef Nobu Matsuhisa dishing up $10 meals. The truck will run once a week with a different celebrity chef, starting with Matsuhisa and continuing with the likes of Walter Manzke, Susan Feniger, Sal Marino, Eric Greenspan, Josef Centeno, Jean Francois Meteigner, and Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook. All proceeds go to support St. Vincent’s Meals on Wheels, so not only do you get a gourmet meal at a bargain price, you’re helping out others in need. Follow the cart on Twitter at @CartForACause for times and locations.

Correction: Chef Alex Becker from Nobu will actually be the one serving up the food truck meals, not Matsuhisa himself. Apologies for the confusion.

Pork belly slider at Petrossian

Petrossian: This West Hollywood restaurant and market is offering a special six-course prix fixe menu and a champagne and caviar toast in two seatings, one at 6:00 p.m. and another at 9:00 p.m. The first seating, at $95 per person, will feature blinis, hand-sliced smoked salmon, foie gras terrine, seared scallops, prime beef filet mignon and vanilla panna cotta. The second seating, at $125 per person, will feature the same menu except a traditional caviar presentation with 12 grams of domestic, sustainable Transmontanus caviar will be served in place of the blinis.

Vertical Wine Bistro: This Pasadena eatery and wine bar is offering two dinner seatings for New Year’s Eve. The first seating at 6:00 p.m. will feature the regular dining menu, and the 8:00 p.m. seating will be a five-course prix fixe meal, including a cheese course and dessert, for $65 per person. There’s also the option of basic wine pairings for another $65 per person or deluxe wine pairings for $125 per person by wine expert David Haskell. After dinner there will be a party in the restaurant’s bar and lounge area from 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. for $20 at the door and $35 to reserve a seat in the bar and lounge.

Dakota Chop House: The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel’s Dakota Chop House is hosting dinner, as well as a live band, dancing, midnight countdown and champagne toast. There will be two seatings, one from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. that will feature a three-course meal for $75 per person including braised young artichoke salad, osso bucco and spumoni millefoglie, and a second one from 9:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. for $125 per person including veal cheek ravioli, rabbit and taglitelle with lamb ragu.

Further reading: e*starLA has a great list of New Year’s Eve dinners, too.

XT Patisserie displaying its wares

Last weekend, I attended the Los Angeles Luxury Chocolate Salon, a totally insane event filled with all kinds of chocolate products that basically turned the Pasadena Conference Center into a crack house for chocoholics. You think I’m exaggerating? I was hip checked at one point by an overzealous chocolate grabber, pushing me out of contention for a piece of something or other, which at this point, is mostly a blur. But some chocolate stood out more to me than others, so here were my favorites.

Keep Reading

Obsessed with chocolate? Can’t get enough? Well you’re in luck because the folks with the Los Angeles Luxury Chocolate Salon, a chocolate show featuring tastings, demonstrations and even wine tastings, have given me a pair of tickets to the salon to give away to one of you! The event will be held at the Pasadena Convention Center on Sunday, Oct. 11, from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Once you get in, you’ll have access to unlimited tastings and demos, and if you like something, you can purchase it, of course. Here’s a list of some of the companies you can expect to see:

• Valerie Confections
• Amano Artisan Chocolate
• Mignon Chocolate
• The TeaRoom Chocolate Truffles
• Marti Chocolatt
• Jade Chocolates
• William Dean Chocolates
• Sterling Confections
• Alter Eco Fair Trade
• Helen Grace Chocolates

…and many more!

Here’s what you need to do:

Leave a comment on this post telling me your favorite kind of chocolate candy before midnight on Oct. 1 (that makes the deadline 11:59 p.m. on Sept. 30).  Make sure to leave some kind of contact information, too. I’ll choose a winner at random the morning of Oct. 1.

Hope to see you there!

[Video from TasteTV]

Farmers Market. From Rosebud_03 (flickr).

Ever wondered about the inner workings of some of your favorite restaurants in the Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax or along West Third Street? If you take a walking food tour with Melting Pot Food Tours, owners and guides Lisa and Diane Scalia will give you the low down. And now the ladies have expanded their walking tour business into Old Pasadena.

Keep Reading

Daybreaker egg-white omlette

Well, an abbreviated version of its weekend brunch menu, at least. Starting Monday, June 15, at 7:00 a.m. LGO debuts its “Commuter Breakfast” featuring the Daybreaker egg-white omlette, Commuter sandwich, house-made English muffins, and organic oatmeal, among other brekkie items. Unfortunately, as this is a commuter, i.e., quick, breakfast, LGO’s eggs Benedict and lemon ricotta pancakes aren’t on the menu during the week. But those English muffins are pretty darn good, and you can even buy a pack to take to work with you. What may be the best part is nothing on the menu (save for the six-pack of English muffins) costs more than $6.

Market counter at La Grande Orange Santa Monica

After a Macallan scotch tasting at the Viceroy last night (set up by e*starla and attended by Caroline on Crack, LAist’s Julie Wolfson and LA-OC-Foodie – but more on that later), we headed over to La Grande Orange’s newest outpost in Santa Monica for dinner.

The good: The entrance is decorated with pots of homegrown herbs – nice touch. The market counter and wine display upon entering have a simple, clean presentation. This new location serves sushi, and the rainbow roll was excellent (go with the aioli dip, not the soy – too salty). The sweet potato roll, something I hadn’t seen before, was decent, though it was really just tempura-battered and fried sweet potato with avocado. The service was prompt and friendly. And when our server charged us for the wrong dessert item, she ended up comping it.

Keep Reading

From SteveMcN (Flickr).

Here’s a partial list of upcoming Nordstrom Rack stores (full list at Nordstrom’s Web site):

• Los Angeles, CA – Beverly Connection – Opening Date: September 24, 2009

• Pasadena, CA – Hastings Village – Opening Date: October 8, 2009

• San Jose, CA – Westfield Oakridge – Opening Date: October 15, 2009

• Lakewood, CA – Lakewood Center – Opening Date: Fall 2010

Apparently Fashion Island in Newport Beach is getting a regular Nordstrom store (opening date: April 16, 2010), as is Santa Monica Place, whose re-opening date has yet again been pushed back (to Aug. 27, 2010). More on that at RackedLA.

Eggs Benedict

Last week, Pasadena’s La Grande Orange Cafe, which is opening a new location next week in Santa Monica, invited a bunch of food writers/bloggers to “brinner,” or breakfast for dinner. The special menu (you can’t actually order breakfast food for dinner right now, though some dishes may be added to the dinner menu in the near future) included eggs Benedict with the cafe’s signature English muffins, lemon-ricotta pancakes and huevos rancheros.

I had the egg-white omelet with turkey, tomatoes and avocado, which I found nice and light, though there was a bit too much parsley. The eggs Benedict I tasted had great flavor, with the sourness of the sourdough English muffins a great touch. My favorite dessert of the myriad the restaurant gave us to sample was the cucumber sorbet – it was refreshing.

The cafe is adding a pizza parlor in a space adjacent to its patio. As of last week, the space was used as storage for some of Santa Monica’s furniture, but the restaurant says the pizza will be ready to go some time this fall. Pizza will be served from the get-go at the Santa Monica location, and they’ll also be selling packaged English muffins there, too.

More photos after the jump

Just opened:

• Tavern From Suzanne Goin and Caroline Styne (AOC, Lucques, Hungry Cat) comes the ladies’ newest creation, a restaurant/lounge/marketplace, in Brentwood. Yes, it did open today. I called.

• Pourtal A high-tech wine bar in Santa Monica, Pourtal offers wine via preloaded punch cards and electronic dispensers. Fancy.

To open in the near future:

• Trader Vic’s The Beverly Hills institution moves downtown to L.A. Live. Scheduled to open Saturday, May 2.

• La Grande Orange Cafe The Santa Monica location is scheduled to open May 7. Food being tested and staff being trained, according to tweets from @LaGrandeOrange. Pizza will be added to the menu at the new location, with Pasadena getting pizza some time this fall.

• Playhouse and Sweet Love Hangover The nightclub/24-hour restaurant taking over the Fox Theater space on Hollywood Boulevard is now slated to open June 11. We’ll see. This is like the third or fourth time the opening date has been pushed back.