Firsts of the Year: Tea, Food, Drinking
My buddy Sunyoung is a game companion to my fooding
Samgyetang at the famed Sahn restaurant aka Mountain Cafe on Yelp.
After coming back down from the mountain on 1/1/2011 it was all I felt like eating.
Samgyetang is a Korean soup that is made from a small cornish hen stuffed with raw sweet sticky rice, ginseng, dried jujubes/dates, garlic. Then it is sewn up and simmered until everything is cooked and the water turns to chicken broth. The insides cook in chicken juices until the sweet sticky rice is cooked. It was awesome and full of goodness. I guess it counts as sick people food. I was seriously feeling sick from 2 hours of drinking and 4 hours of sleep followed by 2 hours of exertions going up the highest peak at Griffith Park (not to mention drumming and dancing around with folks) so it was good for warding off the SARS
Jocelyn and I get an entire corner of Chado's to ourselves. So luxurious!
Me and lilusako went to Chado's in Hollywood for tea! It was nearly deserted due to perhaps its newness, perhaps the weather, and perhaps its unfortunate location in the most farthest and forbidding area of Hollywood/Highland, so we had the place nearly to ourselves, and two waiters dying of boredom came to service us simultaneously. The food was pretty good, the service top notch, and the very very good tea was very cheap. We both dressed in lolita; I used the opportunity to wear my fearsome gorilla jacket from Lanvin x H&M (pictured above) -- it's really true what Vivienne Westwood says about dressing extraordinarily, as we then managed to meet some interesting fellow guests at the tea parlour who were intrigued by lolita fashion...
Later in the afternoon I went to go pick up my big sister from LAX. Never ever travel on the weekend of New Years. It was hellacious traffic at the airport, and it was only a foreshadowing of the traffic that would come later when I went hours later to get iamchubbybunny and Will from their (also hellacious) journey by air
With big sis in tow, I insisted on going for noodles -- after all, we were in the LAX/Gardena/Torrance area -- home of all the great Japanese food in the area!. Otafuku was closed since it was a Sunday, so we went to go eat at Sanuki no Sato, a restaurant I had heard great things about. We had some udon as a kind of post-New Year's good luck charm. The udon was really, really chewy elastic, and delicious. So worth it!
Sheyne, Megan, Glenn, Michelle all hanging at Villain's Tavern
The high windows are decorated with racks and racks of various bottle and liqueurs which must make an amazing sight during the daytime light. | The gang waits around at the lobby while I snap snap out with my camera on the second floor half drunk
I finally made it to visit for the first time Villain's Tavern out in the Arts District of Los Angeles, to join neku_niku and drclock as they were hosting Megan and Austin from Atlanta in their New Year's trip to visit Los Angeles. This tiny bar is definitely worth the trip! I soon got pretty swirly after having half of a hot bracing "Day of the Dead" apple jack cider, although that was supplemented by a good round of makkoli earlier at Kobawoo House with iamchubbybunny earlier in the evening. Soon I was falling over on the sofas and making a fool of myself and talking too loud to everyone who was out in the outdoor portion of the bar.