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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.

Petrossian in West Hollywood recently held a special event dubbed an industry night for those in the food business to meet and mingle, and that included food bloggers — oh, how far we’ve come, huh?

The restaurant/marketplace (very trendy these days, though to be fair, Petrossian was a market first) is planning on holding these industry nights about once every couple of months, according to Chef Benjamin Bailly. If this recent event is any indication of what these nights will be like, we’re all in for some great food and drink. It’s a great deal, too: Drinks range from $2 to $8, and the plentiful appetizer-size food is free!

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Akasha food from Great Chefs of L.A.

Friday is the first day of Akasha‘s Hanukkah meals, which include slow-roasted brisket; potato pancakes made from Yukon gold potatoes with gravlax, wasabi tobiko and horseradish crème fraiche; and Israeli doughnuts. There will even be special cocktails, including the Winter Mary made with celery-peppercorn vodka, carrot juice and pickled carrot. The special holiday food is available through next Friday, Dec. 18, during happy hour (small plates and cocktails) and dinner.

On Saturday, join in the Loopt Holiday Scavenger Crawl, which is part pub crawl, part scavenger hunt that promises to take participants to speakeasies, galleries and coffee shops on a hunt to be the first to find a “VIP” party. Along the way, you’ll win prizes from the locations you’ll scurry to, as told to you by the Loopt iPhone/BlackBerry app that guides you. The top three players from each city (there are also scavenger hunts in New York and San Francisco) will $200 gift cards to the retailer of their choice, and the grand prize for the top player out of all the cities will get a round-trip ticket to Hawaii.

Wrap up your weekend on Sunday from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the Cynthia Vincent and Sid Vintage sample sale at Code C boutique, where there will be one-of-a-kind of pieces available only at this sale. Bonus: Bring an unwrapped toy to donate to L.A. Family Housing and receive a free Coolhaus ice cream sandwich. Shopping and ice cream? Yes, please!

Eat My Blog: On Saturday, Dec. 5, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at Zeke’s Smokehouse in West Hollywood, a whole bunch of food bloggers are getting together to sell their homemade baked goods to benefit the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank. Enjoy everything from macarons and carrot cake cookies to mini bundt cakes and bacon brownies with bourbon caramel sauce for $1 to $3 each. Participating bloggers include Diana of Diana Takes a Bite, Anjali of Delicious Coma, H.C. of L.A. and O.C. Foodventures, Anisha of Food is My Nish, Liz of Food, She Thought and Jo of My Last Bite, among many others. Check out the menu here.

Space 15 Twenty One Year Anniversary: Get your shop on Saturday at the hiptastic Space 15 Twenty in Hollywood, where you’ll get 20 percent off at all stores from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. There’s also a party of sorts, with DJ Ana Calderon, a “very special guest band,” giveaways, raffles and hors d’oeuvres from Umami Burger. For some reason you have to RSVP, so do that to rsvp@space15twenty.com.

Unique Los Angeles: This is a two-fer event. On Saturday and Sunday, from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., pay $10 and get entry for both days to this shopping event featuring independent designers — and a free tote bag, drink ticket and access to workshops. There will be clothing, accessories, stationery, housewares, artwork, screenprints and more. New this year is a special “green” room with more than 50 eco-friendly designers. Unique will be at the California Market Center downtown, and parking will be $6 with validation (a steal, considering I’ve paid $20 to park here for fashion shows!).

Weekends just don’t come around quickly enough. To celebrate the coming of this weekend, here are some events to consider:

Friday: Harveys, purveyors of fancy seat belt hand bags, is continuing its search for the most arty of designs to feature in its Melrose Avenue store and to feature on one of its bags. From 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., stop by the store to help narrow the entries down from 10 to three. Hot dogs, party punch and raffles will sustain you through what promises to be an arduous voting process.

Saturday: D.O.G. pet boutique on La Cienega in West Hollywood is hosting a custom jewelry event for your furry friends. Bring you four-legged friend to the Bling Your Bitch event (not the best name, I know) between 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. to check out the myriad charms, crystals and pearls available to create your own doggie jewelry, which can be coordinated to some you make for yourself, too. Prices start at $12 for the Gems4Paws-designed bling. Oh, and there’s champagne!

Sunday: The 23rd Annual Great Chefs of Los Angeles is themed “Go Green, Go Organic” and will feature more than 30 L.A.-area chefs and their food, including the Dragos, Benjamin Ford, Mary Sue Milliken, Susan Feniger, Neal Fraser and Akasha Richmond. Enjoy all the food and alcohol you can handle from 12:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at CBS Studio Center in Studio City. There will also be auctions to benefit the National Kidney Foundation of Southern California. Tickets are $150, but you can get them for $75 through Goldstar.

And if you haven’t had enough, stop by Stinkers Truck Stop‘s one-year anniversary party. The oh-so-ironic Silver Lake bar will be having drink specials, a DJ and swag giveaways from 7:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Because you need to close out the weekend right.

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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Summer is coming to a close, but don’t fret if you’re still hankering for a mini getaway. There are still deals out there for those of us in denial of having to go back to school/work.

• Maison 140: Looking for a place to put up your wedding guests? This West Hollywood hotel is offering a wedding package where you pay just shy of $20,000 for a weekend to rent out all 43 rooms for your friends and family. And no, the package doesn’t include actually having your wedding at the hotel. What you do get, in addition to the rooms, includes a glass of champagne on arrival, continental breakfast, private Vin et Fromage tastings in the hotel’s Bar Noir, Wi-Fi and overnight parking. Pricey, yes. But the rooftop pool is pretty darn cool…

• Spa Resort Casino: Through Sept. 30, this Palm Springs hotel and casino is offering a Paradise Nights package that includes a room, dinner for two, a 25-minute spa treatment, $25 in slot machine play and a dip in the hot mineral springs for $164 a night. Sister property Agua Caliente in Rancho Mirage also has a package good through the end of the month: a room, $25 in slot play and two-for-one buffet for $89 per night (Sunday through Thursday) or $129 (Friday and Saturday).

• Terranea: If you’ve got kids, I imagine finding a place that’s fancy and kid-friendly is tough. Terranea on the Palos Verdes peninsula is trying to change that with a family fun package.  The deal includes 50 percent off a second room for the kids, use of a private cabana at the pool, admission for one child to the resort’s kids camp with the purchase of an adult spa treatment, and a child’s breakfast with the purchase of an adult entree. The family package starts at $355 per night for the first room, which makes the second room $177.50.

What Talesai's facade will look like "in the near future." Courtesy of Talesai.

West Hollywood’s Talesai recently announced some menu changes, bringing back some items that had been taken off when the Thai restaurant went through a remodel and overhaul last year.

Chef Kris Yenbamroong added some “back by popular demand” dishes to the menu, including spicy duck rolls (“We often sell out as we don’t prep a ton of it to ensure that it’s always fresh”), hidden treasures (“the quintessential Talesai dish” with shrimp, crab and calamari baked in a chili coconut sauce), golden triangle (“a crispy ‘pancake’ made by folding a big wonton skin over spiced and minced shrimp then fried and served with a sweet plum sauce”), heavenly duck (“This was a real popular dish that I pulled cause I always felt it was a bit tough and not too tasty. Now it’s a lot tastier and moister, but still retains the stuff that people like”) and Thai boxing chicken (“street cart chicken they serve in front of boxing stadiums in Thailand eaten with sticky rice”).

The restaurant also recently introduced delivery during lunchtime on weekdays and dinnertime seven days a week.

Last week, I was invited to a rooftop/poolside cocktail party hosted by the Chamberlain West Hollywood hotel. The views were awesome, and with a fire going on mid-pool (see photo), the ambiance was great. I didn’t get to see much of the hotel itself as the elevator zips you up to the roof directly from the valet parking level, so I can’t comment on the decor. I can, however, comment on the food and drink provided at the party.

The food was pretty. The drinks were colorful. But neither impressed me much.

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Just got word (per official flakage) that Philippe Chow is opening a Philippe restaurant “in West Hollywood this September in the space that formerly housed Dolce.” Since Dolce is still up and running, this leads me to believe it’s either closing or moving to another space. Chow’s rep says he finalized the contract last week to take over the space; waiting for official word from the Dolce Group.

[UPDATE: Official flakage from Dolce Group: "They have made us a generous offer and we are considering moving Dolce West Hollywood. Nothing has been finalized just yet." Who do you believe?]