Wines~!

La Crema
2007 Nine Barrel Pinot Noir

I normally don’t drink Pinot Noirs.  However a trip to the Sonoma Wine Country up in the Bay Area landed me in Healdsburg where the La Crema tasting room was located.  With some friends we tried their normal tasting flights which were decent.  The lady serving us was kind enough to allow us to try the “higher quality” wine.  She had us taste the difference between the Sonoma Coast, Russian RIver Valley and Los Carneros PInots.  There was a significant difference between Sonoma Coast and the latter two.  After whetting our appetite on these three Pinot Noirs, she brought out the Nine Barrel.

And wow!  The difference between the Nine Barrel and the other three was immediate.  The Nine Barrel left me very impressed both at the flavor and how smooth it was.  I generally do not like tannins and this one had very little comparatively speaking to the three previous PInot Noirs.

In the end, each one of us bought at least one Nine Barrel.  Her tactical whetting of our appetite brought in at least 2 bottles worth of sale.  

If you like reds and aren’t stuck with one particular varietal, I highly suggest you try this.  It might be expensive ($90/bottle) but it was worth very penny in my opnion.

Musical^2

West Side Story

For those who may never have seen the movie like me, you may have probably heard it was based off a 1960s musical with the same name.  That musical was loosely based off Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  And I can’t help you if you’ve never heard of Romeo and Juliet.

This 2009 revival was nominated for the Tony award “Best Revival” category but failed to win.  Oddly enough, it also never won the category in its previous 1980s revival attempt too.  It is currently on tour in the US and was in LA for the past month.  Go watch it to support the Arts.  I did.

I went to watch this with 3 other friends in the mezzanine area.  The location of the seats were pretty good.  Although it wasn’t as “centered” as I had hoped I think for the price and the location it was pretty decent.  The alternative seats would be down in back orchestra much further back relatively speaking than the mezzanine seats.

I thought the beginning of Act 1 was pretty boring.  I think all the dancing and choreography that was done to imitate street fights back during the 1960s was probably very unique and interesting to watch.  I think the “fight scenes” were well choreographed but just lasted a bit too long.  The acting was fun to watch since these types of “acting” musicals are a rarity.  Act 2 was a bit better.  I did find out where two songs come from: Oh So Pretty and Somewhere.  I never knew these two songs came from West Side Story.  In fact I thought Mel Brooks wrote the “oh so pretty” song since I recall him singing it in some movie musical in the past.  I also thought Barbara Streisand was the one who wrote/sung “Somewhere” and popularized it back when she was a star.

Next to Normal

The National Tour arrived in LA sometime last month.  I went to see it with a friend of mine.  We bought balcony seats which were pretty cheap.  Since we both have no expectations, the upper balcony seats were a good trade off for something that could be good or could be horrible.

From the first number, we both realized that mezzanine seats were a must.  The stage was a multi-story background that had the actors walking on all three levels.  Unfortunately We were sitting higher than the third level.  The scenes on the first level were sometimes cut off due to our viewing angle.  As the show progressed, I began to get annoyed at the female lead.  She was singing in a low octave or singing from the belly.  Whenever she sang, about 50% of her words that came out were really muffled.  Most of her songs or songs she participated in sounded like it was missing an alto or soprano voice.  At the end, it sounded as if she was either fighting a cold or trying to sing an octave too low.

Overall the show was very minimalistic... like Rent.  It featured only 5 actors.  The music also sounded very similar to Rent’s rock ballad fusion -- bits of rock, bits of classical, bits of pop.  There were definitely some songs that I liked much more.  I think I enjoyed Act 2’s music more than Act 1’s.  

I think for the price we paid, we were surprised by how good it was.  It might be worth it to pay for mezzanine and/or orchestra seats.  This musical definitely made use of the multi-story structure of the stage effectively which added more to the story.  However, if the female lead sang like she did, I probably wouldn’t want to watch it at all.

Gourmet Food Trucks (13)

Re: GourmetGenie2Go
Looking at the menu, this truck offers Mediterranean food.  I’ve seen it a few times near work at Olympic and 26th.  There’s usually a small line that moves relatively quickly.  I guess Mediterranean food can be served pretty quickly.  On this particular day, I went with a coworker who was also going to go out to lunch.  She had never been to a food truck and had always been interested in going after I usually bring back food from the trucks.  So for that day, I had great company.

I chose the “Sultan’s Feast” since it looked interesting as a combo and offerec beef and chicken shwarma..  I’ve liked shwarma ever since eating the chicken shwarma plate at the Mediterranean restaurant in the Durant Food Court days.

The plate wasn’t that good.  Because it was a shwarma plate, I expected the meat to be juicy and flavorful from being slow cooked like a rotisserie.  Unfortunately it wasn’t.  The chicken shwarma was decent but the beef didn’t taste like it belonged in the dish... maybe it was the parsley?  The cabbage salad was also bland.  I think if it added some vinegar it may have tasted better and contrasted more with the hummus.  Their hummus was the only item I liked.  It also tasted very similar to the hummus you buy at super market or even at Zankou Chicken.  I think this truck could be even better if they made a hummus that looked like the normal hummus but tasted amazingly different from the regular store bought hummus.

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Re: Comfort Truck
This truck is has a “celebrity chef” who was a contestant from Season 1 of Top Chef.  I’ve seen this truck on the twitter aggregate as well as the google map aggregate that I frequent to see where the different trucks are serving food.  They have not been in Santa Monica for lunch or West LA for dinner service.  However, recently they were finally in West LA for dinner service and I took the opportunity to eat from them.

I had their BBQ chicken wrap and the corn relish.  I originally wanted to get the Chicken wrap since it was one of Chef Brian’s original suggestions as a menu item that represented the truck.  The BBQ sauce was a suggestion by the chef who said it would make the wrap taste even better.  Being the first time I’ve even been to the truck, I went with his suggestion.

The small balls at the bottom right are from Flying Pig Truck (see below)

The BBQ chicken wrap was delicious.  The sauce the chef used was sweet yet tangy and made me wanting more each bite.  I couldn’t tell what else was in each bite.  But it was good.  The corn relish wasn’t so great.  I thought it’d be almost salsa like with a vinegarette like flavoring since conjures up a profile of sweet yet tangy.  Unfortunately I only tasted the corn.  It felt like it needed at least some seasoning.

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Re: Mighty Boba Truck
I think I’ve reviewed this truck awhile back for its popcorn chicken and milk tea.  I don’t remember if I mentioned that they also had a “lunch menu” that consisted mainly of the Taiwanese snacks with rice.  So you can choose from popcorn chicken, taiwanese sausages, pork chops and tofu to go along with a side of rice and vegetables.  I had the chicken and pork chops for lunch.  It was actually a decent amount of food for the price and I only finished half of it.  I like the vegetables that they included.  It was cooked with garlic and seasoned just right.  Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures.

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Re: Flying Pig Truck
It’s a “can’t miss” Hot PINK TRUCK.  Their crab balls looked interesting (see above picture) so I just ordered it.  Unfortunately, it didn’t taste too good.  I think it was the honey drizzle that made it taste awful.  I remember eating this type of snacks when I went back to Taiwan at those night markets.  They were the exact size but had salt and pepper sprinkled on them.  I think having the balls be salty instead of sweet would have made this a better dish.

Gourmet Food Trucks (12)

Re:  Get Your Lard On aka the Bacon Truck
This truck was brought to my attention by a coworker.  Looking at the website, you can definitely tell this is a bacon lover’s wet dream.  Everything oozes with bacon... even the dessert!  I tried this truck one day since it was “close by.”  The guy behind the cash box suggested that I try their signature dish --” the Baco.”  Its a taco filled with potato and cheese, except instead of a normal tortilla shell, they used three strips of bacon.

Ya... I had it and it was good.  Just the smell of the bacon was intoxicating.  

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Re: Greasy Wiener
A hot dog truck.  I’m not a big fan of hot dogs... let alone gourmet style hot dogs.  I’ll eat them every so often with the usual toppings of ketchup, mustard, relish and onions especially at CostCo.  But when this truck was in town, I went to try their signature “Greasy Wiener” spicy hot dog.  The heat from the hot dog was pretty good.  Their bun could have used a little bit of heat to warm it up.  It was pretty stiff when I had it.

I didn’t like their pickle that they included.  I think I prefer relish more.  Although if you watch Food Network long enough, some of the shows say the “classic method” (meaning old) hot dog preparation is with pickles.  Go figure.  I”m not a fan of sauerkraut so I don’t really know what to say about it.
They have other items on the menu that might be worth trying.  Unfortunately it’s not really at the top of my favorite’s list.

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Re:  Shrimp Pimp
Similar to how Lard On truck is bacon inspired, Shrimp Pimp truck is shrimp inspired.  I’ve seen them near work a few times usually with a long line.  Generally, if there’s a long line, people probably consider their food to be decent enough to go back a second or a third time.

I tried their Shrimp and Chips.  They gave me like eight battered shrimp.  EIGHT!  They definitely aren’t skimping on the shrimp.  The shrimp itself was also pretty good.  The batter could be made a bit lighter.  I’ve had beer battered seafood in the past before and I seem to recall it wasn’t as thick.  Perhaps it’s because the dish is made in a truck and has difficulty perfecting the beer batter coating?  I enjoyed their spicy chipotle(?) dipping sauce.  I had enough of the fries to consider them decent.  My coworkers liked the fries though.  They think it tasted really good because the fries absorbed some of the beer battered shrimp flavor.

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Re: Fishlips Sushi
This is a sushi truck.  Ya... Sushi and truck just doesn’t seem “safe”.  However just like Shrimp Pimp, I see this truck near work usually with a good amount of people waiting for their food.  So it can’t be that bad can it?

Well... I found out they mainly specialize in rolls.  The california roll (crab/avacado), tempura roll (shrimp tempura) and spicy tuna roll (spicy tuna) seem to be their most popular.  They do have sushi though not in the traditional sense that you find at fine dining Japanese sushi bars.  Their sushi is in the form of mini rice balls with a small slice of sashimi layered on top.  I guess... it can still be called sushi.  

Anyways, being a bit hesitant, I tried only their “fully cooked” rolls like the shrimp tempura roll.  The roll itself was decently made.  It looks even better rolled then something you would find at Ralph’s or Whole Foods.  You could even say restaurant quality rolling.  A full roll gives you 8 pieces and these pieces were decently large (maybe as large as a sit-down sushi restaurant).  The shrimp tempura was fairly typical.  It wasn’t the best tasting but it also wasn’t as horrible as Ralph’s.  It’s a pretty passable alternative to grocery market made rolls.

I would probably like to try the other rolls they have.

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Re: Che Truck

Argentinian truck I had posted before.  They make good empanadas.  I’m sure there are other places that make great empanadas as well but these by far are the best ones from a truck (and so far the ONLY ones too). I highly recommend trying their empanadas if you ever get a the chance.

I highly recommend trying their empanadas if you ever get a the chance.

Music!

To those that know me well, I enjoy listening to music.  However, I don’t fret about quality as much as some people do.  I actually think 192 kbps for mp3s is good enough to listen to.  I can bear the size increase for 320 kbps for a slight incremental benefit in quality.  But the sound quality for flac does not warrant the sometimes three fold increase in size.  When I look at it, most of the time, I’d need to have very expensive sound system to notice the quality difference.  And frankly, I listen to music in my car, at the gym, at work and at home so the quality difference will be pretty unnoticeable.

Currently, my iPod music library is full of anime and anime character songs at the moment.  I have some classical as well as trance music as well too.  I also have some albums that anime seiyuus put out.  I have a few random instrumental only music albums.  To some, it might be a pretty eclectic collection.  

But music is all a matter of personal taste.  And I’ve noticed that the one type of music that I’ve pretty much stop listening to is a broad genre I call “American music.”  It’s a broad category of American artists/groups in pop, alternative, and rock that have signed under the big record companies.  Oh sure there are some songs I enjoy listening to (Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars, Coldplay’s Viva La Vida) but these gems are very rare.  I find much of the music that is given air play are not worth my time to listen to.  I don’t know if its the composer or the conglomerate machine that decides what “sounds good” when the songs are recorded.  

Perhaps the RIAA and the big record companies need to start putting out good albums so their music CD sales will start rising?  Oh wait... maybe they should have spent all the money that was used to sue people into producing better music.  Or even better, spend all that money into developing a new business model (hello iTunes!!).  Ten years ago, during the height of all the mp3 downloading, no one would want to spend close to $20 on a CD for only two or three songs.  Aside from the fact that you could probably get the album for free off the Internet, even the hit singles would cost $5.  Totally not worth the money.  The record companies unwillingness to break up a CD into song components and charge a “fair market vale” for hit songs was probably their undoing.  

But all that’s in the past now... what’s still for certain is... I enjoy anime music much more than any other genre.  It has much better melodies, beats and emotive response than American music.  I want you to listen to an awesome song with pictures from my favorite anime, Aria.  This Makino Yui song represents the epitome of what I love about anime and anime music.

Gourmet Food Trucks (11)

Re:  Ludo Truck


So there’s this chef called Ludo Lefebvre (wiki) who help plan the menu for this truck.  I’ve honestly never heard of him maybe some of you have.  But this truck came on the scene a few months ago.  I’ve been meaning to try it but never really got a chance to do so until recently.

This truck offers fried chicken (not shown), chicken strips (the middle strips) and this fried chicken ball (the two fried things on the outside).  I’m not a big fan of having to pick bones so I ordered chicken strips and the fried chicken ball.  The chicken strips didn’t seem to be very spectacular.  They honestly tasted like something you’d get from Ralph’s or Chicken Now.  The fried chicken ball however was uniquely different.  It had this creamy herb sauce in the ball and tasted very good.  This truck also offered four different types of dipping sauces.  I tried the bernaise and honey bbq.  

Unfortunately, neither of the sauces appealed to me.  The two chicken orders also came with a cole slaw with a very vinegar type dressing.  The cole slaw would have tasted better if it weren’t so vinegar-ish.  I think the sourness of the dressing took the taste away from everything else.



On a side note, the cole slaw should have a lid to prevent accidental spills.  I didn’t know these cole slaw didn’t have lids so I put them in a bag in such a way that the dressing leaked out onto the passenger side chair.  =[





Re: No Tomatoes

I’ve never had Dosa truck or India Jones truck.  This truck is also new into the LA food truck scene.  I believe they said it was only their first month in operation.  They certainly are not listed in the twitter feeds I normally visit.  I tried their Chicken Tikka Masala over rice.  Aside from not having enough sauce, this tasted very much like a normal dish you’d find at a typical Indian restaurant.  The price for the amount though was pretty good -- six dollars for a good amount of rice and curry.  After having this, I wonder how the other two Indian cuisine trucks taste like.

Re: Mighty Boba Truck

Boba Milk Tea with Taiwanese style treats like fried popcorn chicken and sweet butter toast.  The milk tea is pretty good though the standard mix is a bit sweet for me.  Supposedly they are willing to remake the milk tea to make it more or less sweet.  Perhaps they should have a number system to determine the sweetness for a better customization.

The popcorn chicken is like Tapioca Express' popcorn chicken.  It's really nothing special.  I would however like to try the sweet butter toast.  These toasts are usually 1-inch thick with sweet butter cream.  I think its the same type of cream that is found in some of the Taiwanese bakeries bread (which is very good).

Re: Dumpling Station

Finally I don't remember if I had blogged about Dumpling Station in the past.  I may have and probably wasn't too impressed.  I wasn't too impressed again after having deep fried kimchi pork and beef dumplings.  Maybe I'm just not ordering the correct type of dumpling?

Gourmet Food Trucks (10)

Re: Patty Wagon

The company I worked for has a monthly company sponsored luncheon.  Somehow my chats about food trucks with the HR person responsible for setting up the catering convinced her to get a food truck for the luncheon.  Patty Wagon apparently was able to fit the bill.  Patty Wagon offered “unlimited sliders and french fries” for a set amount of time.  

The sliders were decent.  I think the brioche bun they used gave the gave the slider a pretty dry taste.  Adding condiments (ketchup/mustard) didn’t really help making the burger moist.  I used the sliced tomatoes in hopes of adding some juice for the bun to soak up.  They also didn’t have onions.  No onions!!  That is wrong on so many levels.  Their meat was really good.  I don’t know if its because the meat comes from grass fed cows.   But I suppose this whole grass fed meat was something that makes Patty Wagon “uniquely” different from all the rest of the “hamburger” food trucks.

The french fries were cut in a unique way.  It looked as if it was peeled since the fries were unusually flat and long yet wasn’t very curly.


Re:  Lee’s Philly

Philly Cheesesteak Korean BBQ style.  I had the chance to try them out once by ordering just a taco.  I had already bought dinner from the Dumpling Station and Shrimp Guys and just wanted to see what they taste like.  Man their Kogi Beef taco was good.  They overfilled the taco not only with meat but with the crunchy cabbage (or lettuce) topping.  Unfortunately to eat this taco was to be a very messy eater.  In the end, I had a very difficult time picking up the taco by hand and resorted to a fork.

After the initial taco, I went back a week later looking for dinner.  I bought two tacos (one beef one chicken) and a kogi beef cheesesteak.  The cheesesteak was amazingly good.  Although it wasn’t very spicy, it still had a slight kick.  What made it very good was the juices from the meat soaked into the bread softening it up.  Each bite was had a korean yet gooey cheese flavor.  This cheesesteak got messy very fast.  I had a hard time picking up the cheesesteak and ate it with a fork after two bites.  The tacos were also eaten with a fork too.

I think this place has better tacos than Calbi.  Their tacos might be better than Kogi’s as well.  The wait certainly is better than Kogi’s although lately they have been getting more business so wait time is somewhat longer.


Re:  CheTruck

There is no website for this.  They recently opened up and bill themselves as an “Argentinian cuisine” truck.  I’m not expert in South American food so I honestly don’t know if its “authentic” or not.  One of their specialty dishes was the empanadas.  I ordered the three different empanadas they had - beef, chicken and pork.

The beef and pork were really good.  The beef actually reminded me of the Brazilian Ta-Bom Truck’s beef pastel.  The flavoring was very similar to each other.  The pork was very good.  It was the last item I ate so it had cooled a bit already.  But I think it would have been really good fresh out of the deep fryer.  The last empanda wasn’t as good as the other two.

Gourmet Food Trucks (9)

I’ve been raving about how good No Reservations Catering Truck is for the past few couple posts.  Their garlic fries is definitely the best that I’ve eaten.  The aoili sauce is a great complement to the fries. Here is a picture of these fries.

I hunted them down last week.  Their special was a Szechuan Chicken Taco.  It was great.  The chicken in the taco was very juicy and had great flavoring.  The onions and cilantro added a more distinctive Asian flavor. Doesn’t this look good?

LA Street Food Festival

Held at the Rose Bowl this past weekend, quite a few food trucks were on hand to showcase their respective cuisines.  The event had 58 food trucks of which I had only tried 10 of them.  And even of these 10 trucks, I’ve only consistently gone back to only 2 trucks -- Grilled Cheese Truck and FrySmith.  These two were a “must eat” in my opinion for Evelyn and Emi.

I tried to take as many pictures as possible, but I usually end up eating all of it before I remembered.  Overall, because of the lines, I wished we could have had more opportunities to eat some of the other ones.  

We ended up tasting:

- Dogzilla (japanese inspired hot dogs).

- Mariscos (Fish tacos)

- Ta Bom (Brazilian)

- Tamales from somewhere.

- Cupcakes a Go Go (cupcakes)

- FrySmith (Rajas and Kimchi Pork fries)

- Grilled Cheese Truck (Cheesy macaroni with pulled pork)

- BBQ ribs from somewhere.

- Crepe’n Around. (Sweet Crepes)

- Fresh Fries (Sweet Potato fries with peanut butter and nutella)

- Kabob N’ Roll (Chicken Kabob).

- Cool Haus (Ice Cream Sandwiches).

The public album can be found here.

This was such a cool event. I hope more people I know will go for the next event.

The move

Before and After~

Gourmet Food Trucks (8)

Re: Grilled Cheese Truck
They were close enough to work to stop by for dinner since I had already planned on working late.  I had tried them previously before and found them to be exceptionally good.  Grilled cheese comfort food always has a huge following and the multiple times I’ve gone back there was *always* a long line.  They’re good... but not worth 30+ min of waiting.

This time around, 5 minute wait got me this.

I enjoyed their cheesy mac and rib -- again!  I actually was looking for a special but didn’t see it in time until after I had already ordered.  Next time I’ll know where to look!  I also ordered the tater tots.  The last time I had the tots, they were covered in grease.  This time I think they were done perfectly.  The tots were crispy and hot.  I also had their Chipotle dipping sauce last time and made sure to get double order of the sauce.  The spiciness from the sauce complemented the gooeyness of the grilled cheese.

So good~!

Nom nom nom~