Andy Gavin's Blog, page 58
February 28, 2020
Chinois Champy
Restaurant: Chinois On Main [1, 2, 3]
Location: 2709 Main St, Santa Monica, CA 90405.(310) 392-9025
Date: January 10, 2020
Cuisine: Asian Fusion
Rating:Still good decades later
_When I first moved to LA 25 years ago, Chinois was already a vibrant pillar of LA’s hot high end dining scene. It represented the kind of cool “fusion” of east/west cuisines that was so novel at the time, and almost never seen (by me) back on the East Coast.
The outside remains tres (80s) LA.
The interior has been...
February 27, 2020
War Stories: Crash Bandicoot
Ars Technica — the awesome technical website — put together an equally awesome video interview with me about the making of Crash Bandicoot as part of their War Stories series detailing how various video games were created.
You can check it out here:
This interview gets into the nitty gritty of various problems we faced and overcame at Naughty Dog in our quest to realize the goal of making one of the first 3D Platform Action Adventure games. When we started, no one had ever made a Character...
February 26, 2020
More Pasta at Antico
Restaurant: Antico
Location: 4653 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90004. (323) 510-3093
Date: January 8, 2020
Cuisine: Italian(ish)
Rating: Very good pastas
_Our Foodie Club (+ Yarom) has been trying to get to Antico — the new solo place by Chi Spacca chef Chad Colby for several months and finally we did.
The frontage looks normal enough but when you…
Zoom out: Antico is located, oddly, in a run-of-the-mill KTown strip mall.
The inside is all contemporary upscale dining.
The menu.
Erick...
February 24, 2020
Boar at the Borgese’s
Restaurant: Dinner at the Borgese’s [1, 2, 3]
Location: Santa Monica
Date: January 6, 2020
Cuisine: Italian influenced gourmet home cooking
Rating: Awesome
_Dinner at the Borgese’s is a special house dinner in Santa Monica cooked by the stunning pro-level home chef Borgese couple.
The dynamic Borgese duo.
Their house has not only a wine cellar, but a cheese and meat larder!
Plus all this incredible wood fired oven set up.
Pasta and steaks at the ready.
Since it was a “wintery” January...
February 21, 2020
Last Supper – Ho Kee
Restaurant: Ho Kee Cafe
Location: 558 Las Tunas Dr, Arcadia, CA 91007. (626) 822-3399
Date: December 29, 2019
Cuisine: Hong Kong Chinese
Rating: Quite good
_The last Sunday of 2019, the last trip to the SGV, the last (restaurant) Chinese meal of the year…
Skylar arranged this banquet at Ho Kee Cafe in Arcadia, ordering a bunch of off menu dishes.
The decor is fairly modern.
Our menu was all in Chinese.
And we had this cute private room all to ourselves.
Salty peanuts on the table.
Pork...
February 19, 2020
Quick Eats – Park’s BBQ
Restaurant: Park’s BBQ
Location: 955 S Vermont Ave G, Los Angeles, CA 90006. (213) 380-1717
Date: December 23, 2019
Cuisine: Korean BBQ
Rating: Great charcoal KBBQ
_It’s been many years since I was at Park’s BBQ — before I started blogging in 2010 for sure — so when my friend Jerome mentioned that he wanted to try some KBBQ off we went.
Park’s is seriously OG. It’s been around for a long time, has real charcoal grills, and very high quality meat.
Even on a random Monday in December at...
February 17, 2020
Sebi Mastro’s 2019
Restaurant: Mastro’s[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
Location: 246 North Canon Dr, Beverly Hills, Ca 90210. 310-888-8782
Date: December 20, 2019
Cuisine: Steak House
Rating: A top LA Steak joint
_For the fourth year (sort of) in a row, my friend Sebastian picked Mastros for his birthday dinner — no complaints here — so we all hauled out the wines and headed across town. Wine theme: First Growth Bordeaux.
We setup in the luxurious Penthouse!
The current menu upstairs (the Penthouse has a different menu)....
February 14, 2020
888 Not So Late
Restaurant: 海珍大酒樓 888 seafood restaurant [1, 2]
Location: 8450 Valley Blvd, Rosemead, CA 91770. (626) 573-1888
Date: December 19, 2019
Cuisine: Cantonese Dimsum
Rating: good cart dimsum
_We had such a good banquet dinner at 888 Seafood a couple of weeks ago that we decided to return and try their dimsum during the day. It should be noted that 888 has been around for a long while — decades — and is still a cart place. I.e. everything rotates around on the steam carts.
Har Gow. Shrimp...
February 12, 2020
Not Boaring at Sáu Can Tho
Restaurant:
Location: 8450 Garvey Ave #103, Rosemead, CA 91770. (626) 307-8868
Date: December 15, 2019
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Rating: Excellent!
_Every December my Hedonist club goes to this awesome SGV Vietnamese place — which used to be named Phong Dinh and is now Sáu Can Tho. This authentic Vietnamese/Chinese continues to serve up interesting stuff — plus they’re happy to take some of Yarom’s “do it yourself” meats, like his recently shot wild...
February 10, 2020
Harlan at BOA
Restaurant: BOA Steakhouse
Location: 9200 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90069. (310) 278-2050
Date: December 13, 2019
Cuisine: Steakhouse
Rating: Pretty good food, mediocre service
_Continuing my December run of Steakhouse dinners is a huge Harlan vertical.
This was originally intended to happen at Arthur J Steakhouse in Manhattan beach, but was redirected to BOA Sunset. Now BOA has decent food, but it’s run by Innovative Dining, which has a style-over-substance approach and medium...
