LA. Day 7. Sweet like sweets.
We woke up around 8 and took our time getting ready. We went down to breakfast at Tres. All of the restaurants here are by Jose Andres, so there’s interesting food everywhere. The breakfast option was either a cold buffet or a hot a la carte menu. We did the cold buffet and Hallie had pancakes. It was fine. We had thought about going to shul, but that wasn’t happening. Hallie and Tzvi went to sit at the pool for a half hour or so.
A little before 12 we left to hotel to go to Daniel and Deborah for Shabbat lunch (same JNF Daniel as before). He told us to “yell up” when we got there but that didn’t work because he didn’t tell us to yell up in the alley behind the building, so we were just standing in the front of the building yelling for a while. Finally some young guy let us in. Their apt is so neat (like clean, not like neato!) and has a lot of cool art (which actually was neat like neato!). We had tacos for lunch! Deborah made brisket in a crock pot and served tortillas and salad and dips to make the tacos. They were so good and Hallie even ate some of the meat. She also ate all of their corn up. Like all of the corn they had in their apartment. (We owe you guys a can of corn.)
We left there around 5. Hallie fell asleep on the walk home so we got back to the hotel, packed things up for her, and walked to the Kaplans where she was going to stay the night. We made it back to the hotel with about a half hour until Shabbat ended. We changed and got ready for dinner.
Dinner was at the Bazaar by Jose Andres, the main restaurant in the hotel. The restaurant is certainly bazaar, decorated with lots of interesting stuff, very dark, lots of mirrors. The Bazaar is a tapas restaurant, so we had lots of small plates. But first we started with cocktails. I had a caipharina, which was basically a lemon slushy with tequila that was made tableside with liquid nitrogen. Tzvi had a negroni that was made with none of the ingredients that are normally in a negroni, but somehow still tasted like one.
I think it makes sense to just list out all of the dishes we ate now (with all of the crazy names from the menu):
- Jicama wrapped guacamole
- Organized Caesar salad
- Cheese plate with house preserves, marcona almonds and toasted bread with tomato jam
- Tortilla de Patatas “New Way” (potato foam, souvied egg, carmelized onions)
- Mushroom ramen with quail egg, nori and fried garlic
- “Hilly Cheesesteak” (air bread, cheddar, mushrooms)
- Brussels Sprouts with lemon pure, apricots, grapes and lemon air
- Eggplant tempura with honey foam
So that was dinner. They were all small plates but we were really full. Also, the hotel sent us the guacamole, cheese plate, and cheese steak as part of the sorry-for-the-inconvenience package.
When we were done with dinner we were led to the “Dessert Room” which was just the other side of the restaurant. First we got to see almost all of the dessert on the menu on display on the dessert table. Everything looked amazing, but the pastry chef explained that a lot of things either had nuts or gelatin. We still managed to find a bunch of great desserts. We shared a Café de Olla (coffee cinnamon ganache and some kind of whipped coffee cream), mille-feuille (with caramel cream and salted caramel), a chocolate chip cookie, and a cookies and cream white chocolate tablet. All were delicious. We also shared a latte. I took some of the fancy not-nut-free chocolates to go and ate them later in the room. They were good.
When we were done eating we walked around and saw all of the strange things on display, including a haggadah. Then we stood around near the bar for a few minutes watching people dancing and making fools of themselves. The bar turned into a total club scene with a DJ. It was fun.
Then we went back to our room, took a bath and went to bed.
