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And in more happy hour news…

I’m a sucker for good, inexpensive food and drink. Cheap eats, as it were. And you can always find deals during happy hour, right? (Sometimes, if I can muster the appetite that early, I’ll make happy hour my dinner. But I digress.)

So e*starla and I went to check out the happy hour at Hokusai, a Japanese restaurant near the intersection of Wilshire and San Vicente boulevards in the space that used to house Continental. It’s pretty darn close to where we live, and just across the street from e*starla’s place of business. (This was a while ago, but you know you still want to hear about it — because it’s happy hour!)

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After being open for a couple of months, I’ve finally made it to BoHo, the Spacecraft-designed and Adolfo Suaya-owned restaurant that’s “a little bohemian, a little Hollywood.” Since it’s usually packed on weekend nights, I was a little surprised that it seemed kind of slow last night, but I guess you can’t expect too much on a Monday night. Anyway, on to the food.

The good: My table, which included e*starla, enjoyed all of the food we ordered. I had the potato pizza, which included fingerling potatoes, spinach, roasted garlic, mozzarella, ricotta and grated reggiano. We also had the Pile o’ Ribs, the meat of which was tender and fell off the bone easily. The fries were decent. And we had an order of the beef shortribs, which were braised in Rogue chocolate stout and guajillo chiles and came with spaetzle. That might have been my favorite dish, actually. We were impressed by the list of 25 microbrews, and I had a Raspberry Sunset cocktail made with framboise lambic beer, lemonade and muddled mint. It was good, even if there wasn’t much alcohol in it. That’s probably why it was only $4. The waitstaff was friendly, helpful and knowledgeable.

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Poolside at the Avalon Hotel

Avalon Hotel’s restaurant, Blue on Blue, has just introduced its version of a chef’s table – the chef’s cabana. The poolside dining experience starts with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres that lead into a four-course family-style dinner. There’s a special menu that includes ingredients from local farmers markets and herbs and greens from the hotel’s rooftop garden. I had a chance to experience the cabana menu last week (along with e*starla, Pocket Lint and Ritz Bites), and some of the standout dishes were the smoked trout crostini, golden beat tartare, quinoa and hericot vert salad, and spiced pork tenderloin. The Elixir martini, made with house-infused cucumber-dill vodka (made with rooftop dill that’s infused with the vodka for six days), sweetened lime and white cranberry, is excellent (this martini is available on blue on blue’s regular drinks menu, too).

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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.

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