How Bazaar!

Hi there!! I know I have been very late in getting a blog up but I've been far too busy eating (and drinking)! Los Angeles has way too many fabulous food options to keep track of but last week I got to cross a biggie off of my list. The Bazaar by Jose Andres!! I've wanted to go to The Bazaar since I moved to LA and I am so glad I finally got to go. The Bazaar is located within the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills and big surprise, valet parking is expensive! But you are in Beverly Hills, live a little, just go with it! Our party of three arrived a tad early so we had drinks at the bar. I ordered a highly exotic Peroni beer (don't judge, I had a beer craving)! We were seated quickly after receiving our drinks and were sat at a comfortable table in the main dining room. After perusing the menu I felt like I needed a highlighter to mark off everything that I wanted! Luckily, our lovely server said that we should order 3-4 items each to share. We ordered 10 total and it was perfect! First, I stopped drinking beer and we ordered a nice bottle of grenache.

Ahhh, much better! Ok, then the food starting coming - quickly, yet at the perfect pace. We started with the lovely Tortilla de Patatas...wow!

I could have had a whole bowl of that stuff - potato and egg deliciousness! Then we had a lovely cheeseplate that included manchego, so really how could you go wrong?? Then we had the Embutidos Platter which was an amazing assortment of cured meats served with crusty bread with roasted tomato on top. I could go for a piece of that bread right now!! We also had the carrot fritters which I could of probably had ten of! Then the next notable dish was the "not your every day" Caprese Salad!

Luckily, the gentleman who brought us this dish told us to use a spoon so we wouldn't pierce the mozzarella in the salad! That was the best advice I had gotten in a while, because it made for the perfect bite and the liquid mozzarella bursts in your mouth in an explosion of flavor....I loved that salad! Then the food kept on coming and we had chicken croquettes and the wagyu flank steak and our lives were changed by the Dashi Linguine!

No, seriously, it was called the "Your life will change" Dashi Linguine! It was incredible and I could have had a great big bowl of this too. But then I guess I would be full if I did that.....nah, that's crazy talk! Last but not least we had the famous Philly Cheesesteak!

And that genius guy came over once again to tell us to make sure we eat the cheesesteak over our plates because the cheese tends to spill all over. For real, I want this guy to follow me around and make sure I eat everything properly! I'm not even being sarcastic, this guy knew things! Then we moved over to the Patisserie for dessert and we were ignored by our new server and we missed the main dining room dearly! The dessert was ok, we ordered a bunch of cookies (that's a techinical unit of food). We also had the hot chocolate mousse. The dessert was all fine but the lack of service made us sad and we were nostalgic for our time in the main dining room with the amazing food and attentive service. Ah well, I will go back for sure if I have the chance and cannot wait to order everything else on the menu! Keep eating!!!!

Introduction

I love making lists! But even more than that, what I love is crossing items off of my lists. While I have created impossible lists for myself that I may never complete I feel that as long as I am able to cross one or two things off of the lists every once in a while then I am making great progress. My lists include 100 Great Books to Read, watching all of the movies that either won or were nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, and the 1000 Places to See Before I Die. That last one I credit to the book that was written about those places, but since the majority of places in the list are available to the public, I figure it is for common use. I also collect cook books and cooking magazines. My goal is to cook every recipe in every cook book I own, as well as all of the recipes I fervently tear out of the magazines. Since this list has been getting incredibly overwhelming I have stopped buying new food magazines for a while to give me a chance at actually completing this one! My constantly expanding list is my restaurant list! Every time I read or hear about a restaurant in Los Angeles that sounds exciting, I put it on my list. This list is compiled of places I have read about in magazines or food blogs, or that friends or co-workers have told me about, and even places I happen to see on a few of my favorite reality shows. I have an intricate spreadsheet that is divided by neighborhood so whenever I know I'm going to a particular place in LA I can pull up the spreadsheet and choose whatever is in the budget for that day :) I hope you will join me on my journey as I go through my lists! I actually started this blog years ago and only had 2 posts and then life happened and I have not forgotten my username and password to that blog (OOPS!). So I wanted to start again fresh and see where it goes! Even if it is just a place for me to document my "list productivitiy". I have already made great strides in a few of my list but the task of retroactively writing about all of those seems very daunting so I'm going to skip that and start now :)