Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Food and Wine Pairings

My favorite assignment given to me by Refinery29 is up on the site today (here)! It was my second time seeing/hanging out with my editor, Sarah, with the first time being my interview for the position back in October! She and I communicate solely through emails and so it was really nice to do this assignment with her. We drove to four of the five restaurants together, and so we had a lot of time to talk and were able to get to know one another much more than before.

One thing I kind of knew about Sarah is that her boyfriend is a very popular chef/restauranteur: Kris Yenbamroong of Night + Market. Being an avid visitor of Eater LA, I knew exactly who he was. Since Sarah is dating such an esteemed chef, it's safe to say that she knows SO MANY chefs in LA. For this article, Sarah chose restaurants where she has close relationships with the chefs/owners and so we were treated like royalty at each restaurant we stopped at. I'll talk about each restaurant/dish in more detail below.
Terroni
Before heading to Terroni, we picked up all five wines from domaineLA: if you live in the LA area and are a wine connoisseur, this place is perfect for you. An added bonus is that the girls who work there are hilarious and so helpful. Sarah was of course good friends with them.
From there we went to the Italian restaurant, Terroni, where we got the arcobaleno pasta. The restaurant was beautifully decorated and the pasta dish looked just as good. 

Short Order
We then worked our way on over to the Grove which was (surprise surprise) packed, and I had the honor of meeting the executive chef of Short Order, Christian Page. Such a cool/awesome/funny guy. He prepared the steak dinner for us which was steak with a smokey romesco sauce, onion rings, a salad, fries, AND a milkshake. It was heaven. I'm pretty sure the steak dinner doesn't normally come with all that food, but Christian was just being a nice guy.
After wrapping up, Sarah and I walked over to Short Cake (Short Order's sister bakery/cafe) where Sarah knew Hourie Sahakian, the baker. Hourie was so sweet and gave us brunettes (the bakery's specialty) and offered us anything else we'd like. Also, Christian had run after us to see if we wanted more milkshakes and to say bye... love that guy. 

Picca
I am always reading about how amazing Picca is, as well as the restaurant below it, Sotto. Although the two restaurants are not owned by the same company and are different types of resturants (Picca is Peruvian and Sotto is Italian), both are equally popular and on my list of places to visit. At Picca we ordered the ceviche mixto, which looked so pretty, but I didn't try it because I am not a fan of any and all seafood. 

Bar Amá
After Picca, we had to journey to DTLA for Bar Amá which was kind of a pain because of it being rush hour, but it gave Sarah and I more time to chat. I was lucky enough to meet Bar Amá and Bäco Mercat chef Josef Centeno.  He prepared chicken fajitas for us.

Superba Snack Bar
I went to the last restaurant without Sarah because it was on the whole other side of town and wasn't too much of a hassle for me to get to. Located in Venice, Superba is a teeny-tiny restaurant. I was able to sit at the counter overlooking the kitchen (best seat in the house) and ordered the kale salad.

And did I mention that I got to eat all of this food (minus the ceviche)?!?! Sarah and I took everything to go, split up the food, and had a very odd/delicious dinner that night consisting of fajitas, pasta, steak, etc.