Weekend Round Up

I might have had the laziest weekends of weekends. I did manage to make it out of my house for Zumba, a manicure and the farmers market but that is about it. For some reason I needed to catch up on some major z's. It was actually really nice to relax at home for once!

This picture is the only proof I made it out! Taken in front of our favorite little french restaurant having an iced latte while waiting for a friend to hit the Mar Vista Farmers Market! I'm stoked to go to this farmers market! They have organic, sustainably farmed seafood, beef, poultry, goat, lamb, eggs and raw milk! Plus lots of organic/sustainable fruit and veggie farmers! It feels good to shop local and support my farmers.

Dinner with Friends

Last night, we dressed up and drove to downtown LA to go to Cirque Bezerk, a twisted circus. A pretty long winded story but basically I had a coupon for 50% off 4 tickets and when we got to the box office they refused to take it. The box office was owned by Club Nokia and opperated by Ticketmaster. I thought it was BS and I requested to speak to a manager from the show and we got frustrated and decided to go to dinner instead (which was what we were going to do after getting tickets anyways!).

So we walked for about 10 minutes to this little wine bar, CorkBar.


view of the bar

The girls got a bottle of wine and the boys got a bottle and we shared a three cheese's and three charcuterie's plate. As well as these little cheese puffs that were something like "cheddar gogugeres". I referred to them as cheddar boogers. Not because they tasted like booger but because I couldn't pronounce the fancy french gogugeres.


cheddar boogers

Then we all had our own main entree. I did a rootbeer braised beef short ribs over polenta, Jack had pan seared scallops over bacon spinach and turnip puree, and the other couple had hangar steak over risotto.


We didn't have the top picture which I believe is the pork tenderloin. Left is the scallops and right is the hangar steak.

Then to complete it off we had a chocolate board with about six small truffles and a brioche cupcake with caramel and bacon.


cinnamon brioche cupcake with bacon and caramel

It was pure gluttony but man was the food amazing. It's also really nice when you like to go to nice restaurants and you find another couple who's compatible and get down with that. Also, downtown LA is turning around and becoming quite the night spot with lots of fun restaurants and bars. Wish we had a metro that we could take its a little too far for a cab and driving after drinking is never a real good idea.

*all of the pictures are from a random google search of corkbar

Sweet Deal

First off, I'm really sorry if you are one of my friends and if you've seen this 3 or 4 separate times about the same thing. I'm just trying to spread the words out to all of my friends. Its such an awesome deal that I don't want anyone to miss it!

Jack and I love to go out but the hefty bills are hard on our wallets and we can eat at home for a fraction of the cost and we know what's going into our food but for those times when I'm lazy or we need to get out of the house these little gift certificates will come in handy!

I found this website on couponmom.com and its been accredited by the Better Business Beaureau and also been features on many morning news shows.

so here it is!

www.restaurant.com

coupon code - indulge

good until 1/19th

Buy any $25 gift certificate for $2 ( normally $10 purchase price) . Just put the code in the discount box when checking out and you can pay paypal and they will immediately give you a link to print out your certificates. My only word of caution is to read the fine print on EACH restaurant. Some are valid certain dates, times, minimum food amount, etc..

I hope you can find some good deals. I've noticed that more populated areas ( ie..LA has 65 pages but some smaller towns have 1 or 2 or no pages) have more selections. I hope that you can snag some certs to your favorite restaurant or even try some new ones! I think we might try to use one over the weekend to see how it works and buy some more before Tuesday !!

Cheers and happy dining!
R

Impromptu trip to San Francisco

So I have not gone to alcatrez, rode on a cable car, or walked across the Golden Gate Bridge but what I have done is drank my way through some great restaurants in San Francisco. Two of my besties live up there and one lives in the city and makes it her job to try every cool place so that when I come to visit I have somewhere absolutely fun to go!

So Friday night we started at the Tipsy Pig for some drinks and food. They have this amazing drink called Strawberry fields and its crushed strawberries, vodka, simple syrup and other good things and these things are amazing. Its got a really cool pub feel going on and really great food!




We sat in the far right corner by the wall and a really awesome touch that they do is when they bring you the receipt it is in an old book. Love it. After that we met up with some friends and went to some pubs.

On Saturday we headed down for bloody mary's, mimosa, deviled eggs, and biscuits at the Elite Cafe. Where we made great friends with the tender of the bar and he hooked us up with drinks and even made some of his own personal cocktail creations for us. Let me say I am a huge fan of his espresso martinis. narm.



Also, girls if you're going out for breakfast sit at the bar and make friends with the 'tender! You will have a way better experience...Just sayin.

Fast forward to my last day up there and we decide to do a walking tour of SFO. First we, got coffees and wandered around Fillmore St. which is filled with really cool shops and restaurants. We decided to do lunch at Dosa, which is a South Indian restaurant. We had such good food and we both had elderberry mimosas. Yum.



Then we headed down to Japantown and walked through the little mall to walk off our lunch. When were done there we headed down to the Clift Hotel, which is an awesome Phillipe Starke designed boutique Hotel. How awesome is this giant chair in the lounge? Plus, I love all the mismatched chairs in the lounge.



We hung out for a bit in the lounge waiting for their bar to open which is called the Redwood Room and rumor is the entire wood covered bar was made from one giant redwood tree back in the '20's. How effing cool is that?


We had a cocktail here and decided to do some more wandering to other bars . We tried to go to Bourbon and Branch. A really awesome speak easy bar/lounge but when we got there no one was answering their doorbell ( which btw you have to give a password at). So we ended up wandering to an Irish pub and grabbing a pint .

At this point we were a bit hungry so we headed down to Betelnut which is an amazing asian fusion restaurant. The Best part is the wait staff wheres these really awesome little costumes. Loved it in there and the food was to die for!


After this we headed back to the house and fell asleep. I had a long day of driving ahead of me on Monday and we were both tired from our debauchery all weekend long. Maybe one of my most favorite parts of the trip was on Monday morning we walked a block down to her local coffee shop and the city was so sleepy and beautifully quiet. For being right in the middle of the city you would have never guessed how serene it could be. I love SFO.

Cheers-

Raechel

*all pictures were borrowed from a quick google search.