My Doughboys Addiction - Back Again!!!

Doughboys is back, Doughboys is back!!!! http://www.doughboyscafe.com/. One of my favorite places to eat at in all of Los Angeles was closed in 2007, but it is open again in 2010, and everyone that lives in Southern California are the better for it. =). They have a new renovated exterior and interior, and, they now have an online ordering option! https://doughboyscafe.gimmegrub.com/. Even though I'm on the East Coast right now, I am tempted to order something online and fly back to Los Angeles just to eat there today at lunch =). Seriously. Do you think they would deliver to South Carolina? =).

In case you've never had the chance to go to Doughboys, you have to go and eat there at least once - they have the best red velvet cake in the city (Oprah once anointed the red velvet cake here as the best she's ever had west of the Mississippi), I think their breakfast offerings are one of the tastiest in Los Angeles, and their sandwiches, salads, and soups are truly top notch (bread is freshly baked and fresh) and delicious. Please go and support this wonderful location, this is one of my favorite places in Los Angeles, and I never want to see them close ever again.

I will obviously be back to Doughboys when I go back to Los Angeles, but until I can update this post again, and because the photos are at least helpful in showing how good the food at Doughboys is, below are some photos from my previous posts (Note: all the photos are of dishes are still offered on the Doughboys menu, I just checked, so the photos should be accurate. The posts also have more commentary on the food, just in case you need more info):

The warm portebello mushroom and pancetta salad.

S.O.S. - a breakfast dish, grilled asiago bread and home fries, topped with homemade beef and two steamed eggs - looks kind of unappetizing, but it tastes good, and even better as a leftover, as strange as it sounds. And yes, it does stand for something, look at my previous post if you're really interested.

The pan bagnat: Doughboy's fresh sourdough bread filled with a salad nicoise (tuna, artichoke, green beans, tomato, red onion, olives, capers, peppers, hard boiled egg, and pesto).

A "sandwich" (if you could call it that), called "The Monster" - one of my favorites, it tastes great, although it is really messy: a big, round piece of grilled foccacia (looks like a fat tortilla), topped with melted emanthal cheese, grilled onions, mushrooms, and roast beef, served hot, and open faced (it looks like a pizza and you eat it like a big taco). It comes with some shredded lettuce, diced tomato, and horseradish sauce

And the piece de resistance: tons of photos of their red velvet cake, truly delicious, sweet, moist, yummy cream cheese frosting - this is the best red velvet cake I've ever had, even after wandering around the South for awhile now.

This cake is sooo good, it deserves more than one photo...=)

And a closeup - it is prepared so well, and so moist, that you can easily see it in this photo!

Eat up! And please enjoy Doughboys as much as I will be!

The India Restaurant - Los Angeles

The India Restaurant in Artesia, CA (in the "Little India" area of Los Angeles, in case anyone was interested) offers some of the richest, spiciest Indian food I've ever had the opportunity to eat. They had a wide variety of food, and everything we ordered was incredibly flavorful and well-prepared. Although I can't eat Indian food all the time (I think my tastebuds would rebel because of the heat if I ate spicy food every day, sadly to say), a restaurant like this makes me want to go back again as much as I can!

One of the two appetizers we ordered: Bhel Puree, which is also a typical Indian snack food. It is puffed rice, potato, onion, and tomato, mixed with a sweet and spicy mint sauce. I loved the contrast in texture of the puffed rice with the vegetables and the slight heat of the dish.

Our second appetizer - vegtable samosas, a tasty deep-fried treat filled with potato and peas.

Chicken tikki masala is my favorite dish, and one I order wherever I go. Here, it is excellent, with a deep-bodied, yet mild creamy tomato flavor that I've never tasted before at any other Indian restaurant.

An order of their tandoori chicken - for those who have never ordered it, tandoori chicken is an excellent dish to start with if you've never tried Indian food before - the chicken is marinated in yogurt and spices, and then cooked in a clay tandoori oven. The tandoori chicken here isn't the best I've ever eaten (that is reserved for Mahan in Alhambra), but it was still prepared very well, juicy and flavorful.

An order of their matar paneer - green peas, other vegetables, and cheese in a spicy curry sauce.

My favorite vegetarian dish - Aloo Gobi. Basically, it is cauliflower and potatoes cooked with spices. The dish was prepared excellently, if a bit too spicy for me, with a good ratio of cauliflower to potato (some other places are a bit too heavy with the potato).

Another excellent vegetarian dish - Bhindi masala. It is okra, cooked with tomato, ginger, garlic, cilantro, and other spices.

Palak paneer - spinach cooked with cheese and spices.

An Indian dessert - rasmalai. If I am describing it correctly, it is a sugar-coated and flattened ball of paneer (cheese) that is cooked in a clotted cream sauce. It is actually very mild and sweet, and the cream sauce was a much appreciated relief after the delicious, but spicy, food of the night!

Hawaiian Food Showdown - Shakas and The Loft - Los Angeles/Orange County

I don't know if Hawaiian food has spread to any cities past the West Coast, but in Los Angeles, we are blessed with several good Hawaiian food restaurants. Two of them - Shakas and The Loft - are in this post. (I've never been to the third, King's Hawaiian - in Torrance, which I must do sometime!). So for those that are unfamiliar with it, what is Hawaiian food? I'm not from there, but it is a mix of several different cuisines - native Hawaiian cuisine, Japanese, Chinese, and American. It is food that you would see at a Hawaiian luau - kalua pork (a slow-cooked steamed pork, that you often see cooked in a covered pit), poi (mashed taro root), lomi lomi (a combination of diced salmon and tomato), teriyaki chicken, char siu pork - as well as some delicious homemade foods like Mochiko chicken (more on that below) and Loco Moco (hamburger steak topped with two eggs and brown gravy over rice. I like other dishes better, but some people I know swear by it). Let's get on to the food!

Here is one of the plates we ordered from The Loft, in Cerritos/Lakewood. The Loft has several locations spread throughout Los Angeles and Orange County, but of all the ones I've been to, I think the one in Cerritos/Lakewood is the best. Hawaiian entrees (referred to as "plate" dishes) are often served with saimin noodles (on the left side of the plate) and/or macaroni salad (on the right). In the middle are two typical things you can order, char siu pork (Chinese) and kalua pork (native Hawaiian), along with some white rice on top.



My plate dish: mochiko chicken (bite-sized pieces of chicken, breaded with a sweet rice flour and fried), and pork katsu (a pork cutlet breaded with panko crumbs and fried), with some white rice on top.
Two side dishes I often like to order with the plates: a spam musubi (a piece of pan-fried spam sandwiched between rice and wrapped in dried seaweed - almost like a spam sushi). Sounds a little odd, but it is delicious), and lomi lomi (chilled, chopped and diced salmon and tomato, with green onion and sea salt).

One of the main reasons the Loft at this location is the best of the bunch: they have homemade desserts at this one, not made at any other Loft that I know of. This one is a Haupia Cheesecake - a coconut gelatin cheesecake over a walnut crust.

Another dessert: what they call a Sweet Potato Manju (I think): it is japanese sweet potato in a shortbread crust.

A typical meal I order at Shakas, in Monterey Park (they also have locations in Alhambra, but this one is a hole in the wall where I think the food is prepared better)...I start off with a spam musubi...

and a passion fruit drink that I can only find in these Hawaiian restaurants - lightly sweet without being too overpowering...

And the main plate dish - a mochiko chicken plate, with a chinese chicken salad, some mac salad (at the top. The other two containers in the middle are a dressing for the salad and a sauce for the chicken). The mochiko chicken at this location here is my favorite - the pieces are a great size (not too big or small), the outside is crunchy and sweet without a coating that is not too thick, and the inside is tender and juicy, with a hint of soy sauce. It is perfect! (and I am drooling thinking about the taste and crunchiness). I like the chinese chicken salad they offer with it, and the mac salad here is much better than anywhere else. They serve their plates here in a styrofoam container, which is a typical way of plating for Hawaiian plates.

Matsuhisa - Los Angeles

As far as Japanese restaurants in Los Angeles (and probably the United States, for that matter) go, this place almost needs no introduction, but I will give it a try anyway. For the past two and a half decades, Chef Nobu Matsuhisa has been at the forefront of Japanese fusion cuisine. Many people probably know of the restaurants he started up with actor Robert DeNiro - the simply named "Nobu", that have been springing up in all major metropolitan areas (Iron Chef Morimoto used to work at the Nobu in New York before starting his own line of restaurants). But Matsuhisa, on La Cienega in Beverly Hills, is the one and only original restaurant of Nobu Matsuhisa. (As a random side note, it is right across from Lawry's The Prime Rib...If I died and went to heaven, I would live right smack dab in the middle of these two restaurants). Unlike Nobu, which tends to be a lot trendier and more modern, Matsuhisa is a simple, clean, and unassuming Japanese restaurant on the outside and inside. The food is anything but unassuming. For me, it is the among the best (if not THE best) in Los Angeles. The omakase here is absolutely phenomenal (please look at my post for "The Hump" if you don't know about omakase), although it definetly can get on the expensive side. I've had the omakase here many times, and I've never been disappointed. If you love Japanese food, then the omakase here is one of the places you have to try at least once before going on to the great beyond. Here are the omakase dishes we were served the last time we went there:

First, we were served a seafood appetizer. It was an eggroll (with shitake mushroom and shrimp inside, with caviar on top). It was served with a maui onion sauce, a daikon pepper, and a small cherry tomato.

Next was our first main course: From the left upper corner: monkfish liver with sweet miso, a lobster ceviche, conch with parsley and butter, and halibut sashimi with olive oil and sesame seeds. The ingredients here were top notch, but I have to admit, I wasn't really a fan of the conch - it was a bit too chewy for my tastes.

A sashimi salad, with tuna and baby squid from Japan. The red sauce on the plate is jalapeno sauce on the left and a citrus sauce on the right.

Next, we were served a chilean sea bass with truffles (the pink vegetable is baby ginger, btw). The sauce was a citrus soy sauce with butter. I liked this dish a lot, but I was sad - I was really looking forward to Matsuhisa's black cod with miso, and this dish just didn't compare.

For the past decade and a half, Matsuhisa has been including Japanese kobe beef with every omakase (at least, every omakase that I've had so far). Here is a japanese kobe beef topped with crunchy onions and mushrooms, served with a miso peppercorn sauce. I could have enjoyed another two or three of these. =)

No omakase would be complete without assorted nigiri sushi - from right to left: sea urchin, silver needlefish, clam, golden snapper, otoro. And as always, as you can tell from the color and texture of the fish, the quality of the fish was as good as you can get anywhere.

Time to clean up the palate before dessert - this was a snapper head soup, bushido style. Very warm and comforting.

So, here is the first of our desserts - a shaved ice with a green tea sauce, and a wafer flake on the side.

A picture of the inside: white chocolate ice cream with red bean on the bottom.

A creme brulee - probably the least popular of the desserts we ordered (the omakase actually came with one dessert, but being the dessert gluttons that we are, we ordered a WHOLE bunch more. So much that after we finished ordering it, our waiter asked us in suprise, "All of it?!" Yes, all of it...and yes, we are pigs =). But well-fed pigs).

A chocolate souffle, with vanilla ice cream.

A banana cake.

And the last of the desserts, which was definetly the most popular of the night. From right to left: brown tea ice cream, asparagus ice cream, and nobu beer ice cream. The nobu beer ice cream flavor was absolute genius, which I can only describe as sweet creamy beer goodness. And yes, the asparagus ice cream in the middle had a faint asparagus flavor - not for the timid. All in all, an excellent meal - thank you Matsuhisa!

A Celebration of Great Food at Water Grill

Water Grill has been on my list of restaurants to eat at for a long time, and after going there, I wish I hadn't waited so long! I had heard already heard a lot of good things about the food here, but after enjoying a truly wonderful meal there, I think this place is near the top in Los Angeles for creative, high-quality seafood presentation and preparation. And although I don't usually comment on the service at a given restaurant, I had such a good experience with the entire staff at the meal that I couldn't go without commenting about it; everyone was incredibly polite, pleasant, AND very efficient - it was a quite impressive orchestration of the service aspect of restaurant dining.

A photo of the inside of our restaurant, specifically a view from our booth. I don't usually take photos of the interior in restaurants, but you can thank Jen for doing so. The atmosphere is warm and private, without being overly pretentious; it is very easy to enjoy a good meal here.

We went to Water Grill for Jen's birthday, and they printed out a more personalized menu for us. A very nice touch...sometimes, it is the small details about a place that really distinguish it from the rest. I should also note that they allowed us to keep the menu from that night, which really gives it extra pluses from me as a foodie.

I've probably said this before, but I always love to order the tasting menu to really see how creative a chef can be. Some places just present the same dishes as on their a la carte menu, but not at Water Grill, something which I appreciated very much. The prices were very reasonable for a six-course tasting menu as well.

The dish above was our first dish for the tasting menu, an amuse bouche: a tuna tartar wrapped in cucumber with a sprinkling of caviar on top; a light and refreshing way to start off the meal.

The two photos above are of Water Grill's "Fruits of the Sea" platter, not included in our six-course tasting men, but since Jen loves seafood and it was her birthday, there was no way we would leave the restaurant without trying it. On the platter was a choice of oysters, Prince Edward Island mussels, littleneck clams, dungeness crab, mexican white shrimp, and maine lobster.

Onto the next dish of the tasting menu; a marinated Hawaiian blue prawn with charred octopus, lemon curd, and smoked paprika oil. And it tasted as good as it looks.

I probably should have taken two photos of this next dish, but I didn't =P. The description of the dish is a "european turbo with sunchoke-truffle soup and spiny lobster angalotti". The angalotti, basically a lobster-filled pasta at the bottom of the bowl, isn't visible in the photo, unfortunately (it is the lump in the middle of the soup). The bowls were brought to our table first with just the angalotti, and they poured the soup over the angalotti at the table. I think this soup was one of the better ones I've had so far in my life; I loved the texture - very smooth and warm, and eating the angalotti at the bottom with the soup brought an extra layer of lobster flavor to combine with the rich truffle soup. It was quite delicious, and one of the highlights of the meal.

Next were grilled diver scallops, braised in red wine and fennel, with a confit pork belly, coco beans, and tiny carrots.

Jen loved the oysters so much that we ended up ordering more of them; since we love oysters from the West Coast, we tried some Tottens (from Totten Inlet, WA), Raspberry Points (from Prince Edward Island), and our favorites, Kumamotos (Puget Sound, WA).

We were sent an extra dish not included on the tasting menu from the kitchen - hey, I never complain about free food sent to me! =) - although I didn't write down what dish this was, I think it was one of the appetizers off the a la carte menu: Japanese hamachi crudo with grapes, meyer lemon, and english pea puree. It was nice to have a light dish to clean the palate between heavier foods.

Back onto the tasting menu course again: A veal loin and breast with red wine risotto, chanterelle mushrooms, and sage. Although Water Grill is known in L.A. for their seafood, I have to say that the chef cooks veal equally as well.

Finally nearing the end of the meal! Apologies for the bad quality of this photo; we were served a cardamom and cinnamon carrot cake with candied walnuts, and ice cream - the flavor was orange soursop and cream cheese. A whimsical presentation also.

The last dish of the tasting menu was a chocolate broiche pudding with coconut cream and marshmallows, candied pecans and maple brown butter ice cream.


But we weren't done yet; Since I am a dessert glutton, I ordered another dessert off the menu that I was very intrigued by: a chocolate and peanut butter coulant, served warm with cracker johns, vanilla marshmallows, and banana. Loved the presentation and flavor of this dessert - especially the reinterpretation of "Cracker Jacks", a childhood favorite of mine at baseball games, as "Cracker Johns" (renamed by Pastry Chef John Park).

And finally we are at the end of our meal at Water Grill...a couple of small desserts to finish with. My experience at Water Grill from beginning to end was one of the more consistently delicious and beautifully presented meals I've had so far. And not only was the food excellent, the service was top-notch; with our own dishes added on, we basically had a eleven-course meal that night, and it was under two hours. They were paying attention to our eating pace that night very closely...Jen and I do eat very fast, and we never had to wait very long in between dishes, which means that the timing by the waiter and chef was impeccable. An all-around wonderful experience!