La Jolla Cove’s sea lions
To celebrate our first wedding anniversary, Rory and I took a weekend trip down to La Jolla, just north of downtown San Diego. La Jolla, an affluent beach community that’s home to UC San Diego, is just a couple hours’ drive from Los Angeles, so it’s easy to either make a day trip or weekend out of a visit there.
Magnolia Bakery's banana pudding
Magnolia Bakery may be best-known for launching the cupcake craze, but you’d be remiss to pass up the banana pudding. This is no ordinary pudding, folks: it’s a vanilla pudding full of Nilla wafers and chunks of real banana, so it’s almost like a deconstructed banana creme pie. It literally makes me say, “Mmmmm!” every time I eat it. And it’s not too sweet, just the way I like my desserts (this basically means I can eat way too much in one sitting). It’s not exactly cheap — 12 oz. cost $4.50 — but it’s well worth it.
Note: I purchased the container pictured above using a gift card I won on Twitter from Magnolia Bakery.
I’ve found my new favorite food truck — Manila Machine!
It’s a surprise to me that I enjoy Filipino food so much considering my only real experiences with it have been lumpia, or the Filipino version of egg rolls, and few tastes of other dishes here and there. But Manila Machine has continued to pleasantly surprise me each time I’ve eaten at the truck; I have yet to taste a dish that I don’t like.
Red velvet Baby Bundt. Photo courtesy of e*starLA.
My favorite bakery Kiss My Bundt is in dire need of some cold, hard cash. Owner Chrysta Wilson is asking, for the second time, for help from the L.A. cake-loving community so she can keep her doors open. Kiss My Bundt needs to sell 150 Big Ol’ Bundts (those are regular-size bundt cakes), which retail for $32, by Jan. 31 or else the store on W. Third Street will have to close. The bakery is behind on rent due to the craptastic economy, which as well all know has forced many a beloved store to shut its doors. Wilson asked for help back in November, too, which raised a bunch of money but not enough to pay the bills.
So go over to the store and buy a Big Ol’ Bundt, or buy the equivalent in Mini Bundts ($2.50 each) or Baby Bundts ($4.50 each) for your friends, family or co-workers. The menu has something for everyone, from red velvet to maple bacon, and the cakes are perfectly moist, something that I can’t say about some of the cupcake stores out there. I recommend the pumpkin spice with the cinnamon spice glaze (I prefer glazes instead of frosting, but that’s good, too), the Luscious Lemon Drop, and the chocolate banana. My finance, Rory, likes the German chocolate, and this says a lot because he is not a sweets person!
Kiss My Bundt Bakery
8104 West Third Street (at Crescent Heights Blvd.)
Los Angeles, CA 90048
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.
