Andy Gavin's Blog, page 70
May 30, 2019
Quick Eats – Jon & Vinny’s
Restaurant: Jon & Vinny’s Brentwood
Location: 11938 San Vicente Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90049. (310) 442-2733
Date: April 24, 2019
Cuisine: Italian American
Rating: Food was excellent
_Despite the fact that Brentwood is already full of Italians, I was excited to hear that Jon & Vinny’s was opening on San Vicente as I’d been meaning to go and never make it out to Fairfax for someplace so casual.
Clean looking frontage.
And similar interior. Sometime by myself I’ll have to try the bar. Today I...
May 28, 2019
DRC at 71Above
Restaurant: 71Above [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
Location: 633 W 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Date: April 23, 2019
Cuisine: New American
Rating: Awesome in all ways
_71Above is one of my favorite LA restaurants and I’ve been many times. In fact there are 8 previous write ups! Today the location plays host to a special DRC dinner that owner Emil organized with a special menu. Chef Vartan Abgaryan has moved on to his own new place, Yours Truly, and 71Above is now seamlessly helmed by his dis...
May 24, 2019
Quick Eats – Superba
Restaurant: Superba Food + Bread
Location: 1900 Lincoln Blvd, Venice, CA 90291. (310) 907-5075
Date: April 21, 2019
Cuisine: American Bakery and Cafe
Rating: Seemed pretty good, need to go back
_On the way to the airport with friends we stopped at yet another new cafe, making this three new reports in one weekend!
Superba (how do you pronounce this?) has been on my list for awhile.
I pass it all the time on Lincoln, where it stands out as looking like it was built after the 70s.
The inter...
May 22, 2019
Quick Eats – Little Prince
Restaurant: Little Prince
Location: 2424 Main St, Santa Monica, CA 90405. (310) 356-0725
Date: April 20, 2019
Cuisine: American Cafe
Rating: Tasty, but lots of carbs
_I have tried several times to test out Little Prince but in LA new breakfast spots can get really busy — and I refuse to wait.
I even once had an OpenTable res here and showed up and they REFUSED to honor it, saying it would be 3 hours. Seriously? They claimed it was a “mistake” and it shouldn’t have been listed. But they shou...
May 20, 2019
Quick Eats – The Rose Venice
Restaurant: Rose Cafe Venice / The Rose Venice
Location: 220 Rose Ave, Venice, CA 90291. (310) 399-0711
Date: April 19, 2019
Cuisine: American Cafe
Rating: Solid contemporary Californian Cafe
_With some friends popping into town for a special occasion we met up in Venice on the way back from the airport.
Amazingly, despite having passed The Rose about a billion times, including dozens of times on my bike, I’ve never been — until today. I’ve even used it’s parking before (going to Gjusta).
...
May 16, 2019
Tim Ho Wan – Dim Sum Pedigree
Restaurant: Tim Ho Wan
Location: 2700 Alton Pkwy, Irvine, CA 92606. (262) 888-8828
Date: May 15, 2019
Cuisine: Hong Kong / Taiwanese Dim Sum
Rating: Solid, new format, but not amazing
_Tim Ho Wan, the Michelin-starred dim sum restaurant from Hong Kong, opened last week in Irvine at the Diamond Jamboree Shopping Center.
It’s the first Southern California location of Tim Ho Wan, which has 47 outposts in nine countries, with U.S. restaurants in New York City, Las Vegas and Hawaii. The restauran...
May 15, 2019
Yours Truly
Restaurant: Yours Truly
Location: 1616 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice, CA 90291. (310) 396-9333
Date: April 18, 2019
Cuisine: New American
Rating: Excellent
_Yours Truly is a new casual American small plates restaurant by former 71Above head chef, Vartan Abgaryan.
It’s located on super trendy, super busy, super expensive rent Abbot Kinney in Venice, near many other favorites like Gjelina, MTN, Tasting Kitchen etc. Oh yeah, and it used to be Saltair — which I ate at once but don’t seem to have wr...
May 13, 2019
Double Eagle is Pretty Standard
Restaurant: Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse
Location: 10250 Santa Monica Blvd Suite 1700, Los Angeles, CA 90067. (323) 784-0473
Date: April 15, 2019
Cuisine: Steakhouse
Rating: Middling
_Some of our core gang members decided to try out the new Del Frisco’s Double Eagle.
It’s a monster of a steakhouse in Century City — 15,000 square feet of restaurant — and represents Del Frisco’s attempt to go more upscale. Their regular place is like this.
It’s all those levels on the right.
The bui...
May 10, 2019
Szechuan Impression Tustin
Restaurant: Szechuan Impression
Location: 13816 Red Hill Ave, Tustin, CA 92780. (714) 505-9070
Date: April 14, 2019
Cuisine: Szechuan Chinese
Rating: that dependable SI quality
_I’ve long been a huge fan of Sichuan Impression having eaten regularly at the Alhambra location and about 40 times at the West LA location. At the opening of SI West Yarom and I met one of the owners, Kelly, and struck up a friendship. She’s come to a bunch of our dinners and she invited us down to a big dinner at th...
May 8, 2019
Marino Ristorante Back Room
Restaurant: Marino Ristorante [1, 2, 3]
Location: 6001 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90038. (323) 466-8812
Date: April 12, 2019
Cuisine: Italian
Rating: Superb
_Restaurants in Los Angeles are constantly changing, opening, closing etc. One of the recent changes I miss the most was the shuttering of Il Grano — certainly West LA’s best Italian, particularly in the fancy/modern department. I really miss it – as it was one of my favorites and has 9 write ups on the blog (I think the most of any re...
