Our host was the awesome and magnificent Jon Lee, who I've known since college through my attempts to become more culturally aware. The best part about hanging out with Jon in his town is that he knows the delish food spots.
We got in late and Jon whisked us to a great Korean place, of which no pictures exist, because we demolished the food - some short ribs, some delicious fish, which I can't recall the name of right now (mackerel?), and of course the requisite small plates that you get with the meal (if I were a more Asian Asian, perhaps I would know the name to these, regardless, they included kimchi). We stopped for dessert in Chinatown, where we got a tapioca drink, a Mango shaved ice, and through some weird English translation (red bean rice balls), a giant bowl of hot red bean soup with these sweet rice balls in it filled with black sesame. Our first bowl came with a hair in it, but don't worry, the second one was all clean.
The next day, on Christina's tip, we went to Silverlake to get coffee at Intelligentsia. All barbs at hipsters aside, these baristas know how to make some delicious coffee. We then met Jon and Anna (just in from Oakland) for lunch at Porto's in Burbank, which is this insanely gigantic Cuban bakery and eatery. Between the four of us, we split potato balls, a tamale, a Cuban sandwich, a roast pork sandwich, a giant salad with supplemental Tapatio hot sauce as dressing, and even though Jon claimed to have "restrained" himself, like half a dozen cheese rolls and various other baked goods. Needless to say, we were stuffed after that.
Timmy and I then checked out Chuck Jones:An Animator's Life from A to Z-Z-Z-Z at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A lot of amazing backgrounds and original sketches were there and it was really great. Plenty of old cartoons that you would certainly remember if you saw the storyboards. No pictures were allowed, unfortunately.
Then, in true LA fashion, we did some shopping, checking out various furniture and design stores, and the giant Opening Ceremony after being shut down at Huntington Gardens, who had run out of tickets for the day
We headed back to Jon's where hours flew by because we were mesmerized by the Mall Cops show on TLC. Before we knew it, it was late and we were hungryyyyyy. We decided to go to Daikokuya, which Jon said is one of the best ramen joints in LA. It was like 9 pm on a Tuesday and we figured that it wouldn't be crowded... totally wrong. We get there and they tell us it's going to be an hour and a half for a table of four. Bummer. So we instead go to another ramen place in Japantown with decent ramen and delicious fried rice. As we are sitting in this ramen joint, Jon says that we should go back to Daikokuya. Basically, all of us called the idea stupid and then immediately started thinking about going. So we get back to Daiko and our names are at the top of the list. What else would we do? So they called our name and we went inside to get our second batch of ramen in less than an hour.
MMMMMMMMM
Notice the only person to look upset at all that ramen is Tim. Happy and wayyyy too full, we went home, where I got to see my old junior high friend Kiran for a few minutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment