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Bow & Truss {opening week} | North Hollywood

friday we decided to make reservations to bow & truss, which opened up earlier this week! so this restaurant is brought to you by morgan margolis of knitting factory entertainment (same guy who brought us the gem also known as the federal bar in noho). theme: spanish tavern. this is a tapas-style establishment so bring your amigos. the architect and design here is pretty awesome. think: modern car garage/studio and then insert two bars (inside and out) and large booth seating. boom.

our waitress and staff there in general are pretty friendly & awesome. the waitress warned us that the small plates come out at different times (thanks for the warning) so it was a little hard given that most of us were starving. my favorite things were lobster ceviche and the tacos.

food: food here was disappointing. don’t get me wrong, none of it was bad by any means but very unremarkable. i was hoping the paella would be great (presentation was great) but it was not very flavorful. we thought the tacos were good.
ambience: i want to come back here just to hang out at the outside bar.
service: slow but they did warn us that food comes out randomly and in no given order.
parking: street parking. valet is also an option… but you can probably find something on magnolia. you may have to walk a little… but you will find a spot.
overall: nothing i can really rave about except for the concept and the bar (inside and outside). i’m grate there is another spot that opened up in our neighborhood. i just wish it was better than what we experienced.

photography: so our reservation was at 7:30pm. we didnt really order until 8pm. i was struggling with a few of the dishes that came later since there was barely any light coming from the skylight. (i had to use some of the light coming from that tiny little candle). note to self, if thinking of taking pictures with DSLR, make a slightly earlier reservation through the summer or order immediately!
Bow & Truss
11122 Magnolia Blvd
North Hollywood, CA 91601
Neighborhood: North Hollywood

By vivilinh | July 14th, 2012 | Food, Restaurants | 0 Comments

3-Day Juice Cleanse

so as many of you know and have read, we went a little crazy in nyc with our food binge. feeling unhealthy and to be quite honest, heavy and sluggish, we decided to try a 3-day juice cleanse. our friends have done different ones (there are so many of them out there, blueprint, ritual, master, etc) and have said that #1) it was hard, #2) its rewarding in the end, #3) you arent really that hungry through the whole thing and #4) the juices aren’t bad. we went on this advice and bought a deal on thrillist.com for kreation in beverly hills for a 3-day juice cleanse for $99. (this might seem steep but it actually is a huge discount of the original price and compared to other juice cleanses!) here are just a few of our thoughts. keep in mind that this comes from two people who love to eat too much and me, someone who has little to no will power. (spoiler alert: this is not going to be motivating)

HARDEST THING I HAVE HAD TO DO…IN MY LIFE. the thought of it now makes me want to go into my fridge and eat a creamsicle right now. so the only thing that was true about our specific cleanse was #1. yes, this was very hard. all we could think about all three days was food. anything and everything. kyle would like to smell food he could not eat and then drink the drink pretending it was food. i could not be around any smell of food or else i would just quit. everyone has their quirks. we did not think this through when we decided to start the cleanse because we did it on a weekend! we were surrounded by food AND it was $1 chicken sandwiches at burger king. fail.

my opinion on the hunger part: there was always and empty feeling. i dont think i even felt satisfied or full by any means. it may be because i opted not to drink 1 of the 6 juices i was supposed to finish that day (the third one).

the first juice, a green one with lots of green veggies, like kale, was actually okay.
the second juice was pretty much the master cleanse (lemon, agave, cayenne pepper).
the third juice was the worse (we thought that the juices would get better as the day progressed…it didn’t) it was called 12 unity. all i know is that it had all of the ingredients of the first one plus carrots, ginger, lemon, and cayenne. this was the worst.
the fourth juice was another green one. again, not too bad.
the fifth one contained beets…ehh.
the sixth one was literally called chlorophyl. water+chlorophyl that you had to drink all throughout the day.

day 1: i felt very weak all day. it didnt help that we were running errands all day.

day 2: i slept all day because i had no energy and felt really hungry.

day 3: starting feeling sick, my tongue was white, my taste buds gone. it was time for me to stop. i had to eat dinner that day since i felt like i almost couldnt be at work because i was a wreck. (i didnt make it through the whole day three).

did i feel healthier? not really. did i lose weight? yes, but not a sustainable weight (we knew that going in). would i do it again? i am confident when i say never. i have a great appreciation for those who do/did it for as long as you did without complaining as much as me. anyway, things are back to normal and we have been on plenty of food adventures since then (to be posted soon).

happy monday!

By vivilinh | July 9th, 2012 | Food, Life | 5 Comments

Mr. Pizza | Koreatown, Los Angeles

hello friends. its been a short, yet rough week for me. today’s post is a long overdue post on our food adventure in koreatown. i’ve been hearing so much about mr. pizza from our friends both from LA and out of towners. we finally tried it! so this place is known for their pizza crust filled with sweet potato mousse (sounds weird right?)…i didn’t understand how this could be good.

we decided to order:

bulgogi pizza
bbq chicken pizza
teriyaki pizza

verdict: it is delicious!! potato – awesome. bulgogi – double awesome. genius. this place makes LA pretty awesome. (that last line is for a certain someone who we are trying to convince to move down to los angeles from norcal) anyway, please go to mr. pizza and try this yourself! you’re looking around $24-30 for a large pizza…or you can also say $24-30 for happiness. either way, i would recommend the bulgogi pizza! tell me what ya think!

happy friday!

Mr. Pizza
3881 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90010
Neighborhood: Koreatown

By vivilinh | July 6th, 2012 | Food, Restaurants | 6 Comments

nyc part IV – food adventures

on monday we panicked since we realized there were still so many places we wanted to try. so we woke up at 7am to go to russ & daughters on the lower east side. yelp: 463 reviews. 4.5 stars. top tips: scallion cream cheese, smoked salmon and bagel. we had to try it since last time we loved murray’s bagel (best bagel we ever had). it was pouring outside and our taxi didn’t drop us off right in front of the bagel joint so we had to run about 4 blocks. drenched. verdict: totally worth it. the smoked salmon with scallion cream cheese – delicious! however, the bagel itself was a little hard (the bagel at murray’s is better). this place is a a market so there was no where to sit and enjoy the bagel so we had to eat it outside in the rain! we were still happy campers.

our next stop was katz’s delicatessan. from what we heard, best pastrami in the city. since it was down the street from russ & daughters, we stopped in there. last time we ate at carnegie’s deli so wanted something to compare it to. yelp: 2651 reviews. four stars. we got:

matzo ball soup
pastrami and corned beef on rye with mustard (we really wanted to get it with mayo but didnt want to be yelled at)

according to kyle (pastrami lover and lover of all meats), it really was the best pastrami he has had. mission accomplished. after our two-part breakfast, we walked around soho to do some shopping and visit dean & deluca for a nice cup on coffee.

it’s like we never stop eating. we met up with katy to grub at clinton st. baking company on the lower east side. (recommended to us by lauren) this place apparently is always packed and that was no exception on a monday. our wait was an hour and 45 minutes. we were fine with the wait since 1432 yelpers gave it an average of 4 stars! another need-to-try-for-ourselves place. since we had so much time to kill, we decided to grab some snacks in chinatown!

vanessa’s dumpling house. 881 yelp reviews. 4 stars. (why does new york have such great food?) we got some steamed dumplings and a roasted pork sesame pancake to go. since katy used to live down the street from this place, she ordered for us. her favorite thing to get was the sesame pancake. this was amazing and its only $2.50! the dumplings were also good but overshadowed by the awesomeness known as the sesame pancake. since i was also craving some milk tea, katy took us to quickly to get some boba! as you can imagine, we were starting to get full after eating vanessa’s and drinking the tea.

the time came when we got seated. we got:

clinton st. omelette with biscuit
fried chicken sandwich
fresh strawberry layered cake

the fried chicken sandwich is a really, really good sandwich and i would definitely recommend. is it the best? no. i think the fried chicken sandwich is better at son-of-a-gun in los angeles but this one is up there with my favorites. i cant opine on katy’s omelette because we dont really like eggs but the hash browns were really good. they both agreed to get the strawberry layered cake for me since i dont eat chocolate. it was good but the frosting was way too sweet.

by the end of the meal i think we all felt like complete food coma. we walked through little italy and ran into lombardi’s pizza (a place that we wanted to try but when to artichoke instead). we didnt have the stomach to get a slice. next time!

dont worry we definitely continued this food adventure into dinner at boukies, drinks at maya, then dessert at max brenner and then midnight snack at halal cart. since it started raining, we decided not to bring out the dslr. why is food in nyc so good? we will definitely be going on a diet after we get back to los angeles.

By vivilinh | July 3rd, 2012 | Food, New York, Restaurants, Travel | 4 Comments

the city.

we spent all of sunday walking through manhattan. two things we really wanted to see: 911 memorial and high line. for dinner, we grabbed dinner with his cousin at artichoke and then dessert with my cousin at chikalicious!

i had to post this picture of me trying to hail a cab because #1) i have ever done this, #2) it’s more intimidating than i thought and #3) i obviously did not pay enough attention to sex and the city where this was done ALL throughout the show. i used the “i need a ride” hitchhiker thumb signal! mistake. kyle was mortified. lesson learned.

artichoke pizza in the east village. we ordered a medium artichoke pizza. flippin’ fantastic! highly recommend.

we joined my cousin at night for some dessert at her favorite spot, chikalicious in the east village. absolutely delightful. chikalicious is owned by a japanese woman named chika and her husband (who wears bow ties)! for $16, you get a pre-fixe with an amuse, your choice of dessert, and assorted petite fours. we got:

fromage blanc island “cheese cake”
toasted almond ice cream with poached cherry and warm almond cake
seared pluot on creme anglaise with basil sorbet and sweet basil seed
yogurt panna cotta with pineapple sorbet

(more…)

By vivilinh | June 29th, 2012 | Food, Photography, Travel | 12 Comments

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