Happy birthday A, my dear FIL, and happy fifth anniversary to Grace restaurant! We had a short but quick, a'hem, happy ending, to celebrate A's birthday and while there we chatted up the bartender about the upcoming fifth anniversary tasting menus that start next month and will run for several months. 5 courses, $55 bones.
One of the things that makes the ambience of Grace lovely is the way it invites the Los Angeles environment into the restaurant via the huge picture windows in the bar and the many skylights in the dining room. What does one think of when one thinks of Los Angeles? Without a pause, traffic and sunshine.
While I didn't want to take exhaustive photos during a 74th birthday celebration, I did want to capture the highlights. My appetizer was excellent. Morel mushrooms on asparagus with a beautiful green garlic flan. I have been obsessing over green garlic for a couple of days, thanks to Orangette's post about spinach and green garlic soup.
http://orangette.blogspot.com/
(Excuse the flash, it was too dark for details flashfree by the time appies arrived.)
We ended our celebration with desserts...Grace is famous for their housemade donuts. I remember these as jelly donuts, but last night they were served as something akin to a dulce de leche donut with a lot of thick, brown, sticky sauce oozing out. I am not a dessert person and this was a little sugar heavy for me.
The most important, happiest dessert was a chocolate and coffee parfait with one perfect little candle. Thich was, I think, said flavors of ice cream layered over a crunchy/sticky chocolate cookie. Strangely the flavor was much like the flavor of the donuts. Someone is going hog wild back in the kitchen with evaporated milk. Everyone else gobbled til the plates were clean though, so clearly I am not a good judge of what is and is not good dessert wise.
Despite the sweets, I cannot wait to get back to Grace for the anniversary prix fixe. I already know who I want to go with. We have a friend who takes more food photos than I do, so I can unabashedly shoot away. And I already know what desserts I will not be eating.
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1 comment:
aha - you do have recipes in your other blog! hooray!
I love your vacation pictures, especially of the prawns and crabs. So I had to go out and get some, but I doubt they were anything like yours.
I propose more vacation pictures!
(Also, the conspecific wanted to know if all my new internet friends are 20 year olds. So um, what is your secret for being angry while not upsetting your forehead?)
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