L.A.

First Monday of 2011, and I had the day off.  Luckily Louvain was in town, and we decided to go to L.A. to eat! We also met up the one-eyed bandit aka Tristen, to show us around her town.  We started off the day eating at Alcove for brunch.  Then went to Scoops for dessert. Stopped by Intelligentsia for a coffee break.  Then went back to Tristen's apartment in Silverlake to meet up Kc and took a few shots of Henny before we headed out to dinner at Animal. Overall it was a fun-filled day full of food and laughter.

ALCOVE

smoked salmon breakfast stack:   two potato pancakes topped with smoked salmon, poached eggs, creme fraiche and fresh dill, served with seasonal fresh fruit

meat lovers omelette: new york steak, applewood smoked bacon, chicken apple sausage, roasted peppers and caramalized onions, topped with pepperjack cheese and topped with a spicy hollandaise

Alcove is a cute little place in Los Feliz- It got pretty good reviews on yelp, but I'm not quite sure if I would rave about this place.  Our meals were good, but I guess we were expecting more, or maybe we just ordered the wrong things.  We didn't get to try any of the baked goods, we just wanted to save our appetite for some ice cream and lattes!

Ice Cream @ Scoops

Lattes @ Intelligentsia- Cool little spot in Silverlake where all the H-sters hang out

ANIMAL

barbeque pork belly sandwiches, slaw

marrow bone, chimichurri, caramelized onions

bacon chocolate crunch bar

tres leches, dulce de leche

poutine, oxtail gravy, cheddar

Animal- Featured on the Best Thing I Ever with Bacon.  This tapas style restaurant is filled with exotic dishes.  Pretty much everything on the menu has something to do with an animal.  From bone marrow to veal brains and rabbit legs we decided on the bone marrow, oxtail poutine,  melted petit basque with chorizo (not pictured), and barbeque pork belly sandwiches.  All were so flavorful and good.  This was my first time trying bone marrow.  The texture was a bit too gelatinous for me, but it was still good.  I really liked the other 3 dishes were ordered. The pork belly sandwiches were just so fatty and delicious! The oxtail poutine was so tender.  Tthe melted petit basque (sheep’s milk cheese) which came out sizzling, and it was oh so creamy.  Now off to the desserts, we ordered tres leches and the bacon chocolate crunch bar.   You can’t go wrong with tres leches, and the bacon chocolate crunch bar had a contrast of sweet and salty flavors, but the saltiness took over.  I wished they would have used milk chocolate instead of dark since milk chocolate is sweeter.