restaurant (and other) recommendations for LA

we are staying in a corporate apt near the beach in redondo. and we are there just because our eldest daughter lives in that area. but the plans are taking place all over la.

friday: mostly redondo area, visit to 'fast cars' to see a car, then a tour of space x, and then a trip to korea town for dinner at toe bang.
saturday: redondo in the morning, then into rodeo drive, lunch at bouchon, then the peterson museum, then a little rest back in redondo before dinner at EP+LT and desert and drinks at the chateau marmont.
sunday: some kind of activity tbd (long beach, catalina, reagan library ???), and then evening at palos verdes with dinner at mar'sel.
monday hanging around redondo or other beaches there, and then flight at 3pm.

 

wrote a long review of all the restos i went to and then it got lost in here somewhere....

pita

the condensed version:

blue water grill: 6/10
toe bang: 6/10
bouchon: 0/10 complete crap
EP+LP: 8/10
chateau marmont 8/10
manuela: 10/10 best resto in last 4 days
mar'sel: 9/10 excellent, but pricey

 

i spoke with the young texan chef there Wes Whitsell. he is doing some imaginative rifs on standard southwestern recipes and combining them well with other themes like mediterranean and asian. menu changes every day for lunch and for dinner. you can mention my name, he might remember me.

other interesting food places in that neighborhood i would like to try sometime.... Wurstkuche - about 50 different home made sausages and craft beer, and Pie Hole, about 50 different pies.

 

i dont mind gritty ! better food than in some of the standard and pretentious places like bouchon (which was just appalling).

 

my lost review went into the detail, but just for you, i will try to repeat it.

bouchon front of house was fine.
waiter started off fine, but then disgraced himself....they were promoting some rose's so i chose one, when he brought it to the table, he also brought a small plate with 4 sticks of fried polenta, and a small bowl of tapenade to dip them into. i asked what that was and he said that was complimentary when ordering the rose....i thanked him for that, but remarked that since we were 7 people, would he be able to bring us another plate of these so that everybody could try one? he answered NO. really?? you cannot spare 4 more sticks of fried polenta, when the restaurant was only 25% occupied?? really?

then we got round to ordering. while everybody was hemming and hawing, i asked him to bring 2 orders of the fried zuchinni flowers. they came and were just balls of deep fried and greasy dough, accompanied by some kind of heavy remoulade sauce. bad all round.

3 people ordered salade au chevre chaud (goats cheese salad) as main courses. this is a salad that should have a large slice of fried goats cheese on top of a copious bed of lettuce, with lardons, croutons, and various herbs etc. well they brought this out on a desert plate, with one measly small slice of room temp goats cheese, on lettuce, with nothing else in the salad. amateur and false advertising.

2 people, including myself, ordered the pisaladiere as a main course. this is a salad that should have a poached egg on top of a bed of lettuce with lardons and croutons etc. it came in a bowl, but only filled 2/3rds and about 3 lardons - cut too large, and no croutons or anything else. amateur.

1 person had the salmon tartare. it looked ok, but was reported to be tasteless.

1 person had the waffles....my son, and he inhaled them, but told me they were not the best he ever tasted.

then we had 5 cups of espresso.

the total with tax and tip came to aroiund $350.

so the waiter was ok, but stupid.
the food was unsatisfactory, but for a restaurant supposedly run by a french chef, it was just piss poor. these are simple plates. they got them wrong AND were stingy on quantity and believe me i am no monster person looking for an all-you-can-eat joint.
the cost was an insult.

then i felt ill all afternoon.

never going back.

 

not your fault. these things happen. i read the other reviews online. mostly good. i think its probably better for dinner. but the bad reviews strangely sound a little like mine - so maybe i was there for the one day the sous chef is in charge?

but there are so many other restaurants to try that it doesnt seem worth it to subject yourself to a bad one twice.