Monday , November 16, 2009
Kitchen 24: our favorite new place to eat cute food in L.A.
We're starting to do more foodie stuff here on nogoodforme.com, so let's try a restaurant review, shall we? Kitchen 24's a new diner-type place on Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood, right near Velvet Margarita and a zillion other bars I never go to (and I mean that in the least attitudey way possible, I swear). I went for cocktails and dinner last night and sat a table away from big famous Steve Aoki and, as a result, all the many giggly girls who came over to chat him up throughout the evening. Cocktail hour was a Bloody Mary for my pal and a Key Lime margarita for me - it's this strangely frothy and pleasantly seafoam-green concoction with a dust of graham cracker around the edge of the glass. (The menu describes the graham cracker as a "crust," but let me assure you: It's way more dust than crust.)
Deciding on dinner was rilly, rilly hard, as the menu's got pages upon pages listing ridiculously cute-sounding food. For instance, there's:
-Ho Cakes (buttermilk pancakes with lemon butter and blueberry syrup)
-Gingerbread Pancakes (served with a warm spiced apple compote and whipped cream)
-Cinnamon Roll French Toast (battered and griddled homemade cinnamon roll topped with maple walnut butter and mixed berries)
-The After-School Special (tomato soup with a provolone grilled sandwich)
And the beat goes on. Lots of classic diner food like turkey pot pie and chicken-fried pork chops and steak and eggs, but then also meat-free stuff like Mediterranean tofu scramble and veggie burgers and a really yum-sounding rye-crusted vegetable frittata. I got the Garden Benedict (poached egg, ham, avocado, grilled onions on toasted English muffin with smoked paprika hollandaise); my date got the Smac and Cheese (elbow macaroni and a blend of cheddar, mascarpone, and smoked gruyere with peas and a basil herb crust). They served us on big plates that looked like flying saucers and my Garden Benedict was almost too adorable to actually eat, all carefully piled up and hopefully pretty like that. (There was also an entire half-avocado on each piece of English muffin, which was so overwhelming that I pushed both halves away and pretended they weren't there. That's just too much.) All in all, the meal was probably most memorable for its presentation, but the eggs did have a really satisfying fluffiness and I liked how the English muffin soaked up all the goodness of the other ingredients. And it didn't leave me painfully stuffed like most diners often do, though maybe that's 'cause I paid more attention to my sweet little fruit cup than the side of potatoes.
But it's not about the food anyway, man. It's all about the cute: the charmingly Pepto-Bismol-pink decor, display case full of gourmet cupcakes, Giant Drag on the stereo, lemonade made with muddled strawberries and caffeine-infused vodka. I think I can pretty much guarantee that you'll see this place on the next season of The Hills; it's got such a Hills-y type aura that for a while there I thought maybe our waitress was Audrina.
Oh, and another need-to-know detail: Next to the cupcakes in that display case are lots of trays full of penny-store candy, like gummy bears and red licorice and candy necklaces and so on. I guess it's all mostly for show but I, being terribly uncouth, asked the hostess on the way out: "HEY, C'N 'AVE SOME RED LICORICE?" She looked kinda confused and then just gave me a big handful, completely free of charge. It's quite lovely to walk down Cahuenga Boulevard on an early-June night with your hands full of free red licorice. I'd go back for that alone.
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Posted by Liz in Food |
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