I just returned from a crazy weekend trip to L.A. to visit my high school best friend and celebrate our 40th birthdays in a glorious way that would have made our teenage selves proud! We stayed at a boutique hotel on Venice Beach, shopped at The Grove and ate at rock star chef restaurants. We visited the Burbank farmers market, drank Intelligentsia coffee, ordered one too many cocktails and talked about everything and nothing for two solid days – a luxury we haven’t had since our children began constantly interrupting our cross-country phone calls.
Now I’m home – and I have a book to write, a Luscious release party to plan and a zillion other things to do. But before I dive into the usual, I’m going to enjoy my memories one more time with you…


We had fantastic pastries from Porto’s for breakfast – guava strudel, mango empanadas, meat pies and my favorite, potato balls. Think shepherds pie, deep-fried! For lunch, we went to Mozza, a restaurant partly owned by the great bread and pastry guru, Nancy Silverton. Unbelievable.



After some beach walking, we were ready for a cocktail. Not just any cocktail. This:

I didn’t take a picture of dinner but I’ll paint a picture in your mind: goat cheeseburger with tomato marmalade and bacon caramel. Oh yes, I did. We keeled over after that.
The next day we started with window shopping in Venice Beach and this:

Lunch at Surfa’s. Flowers in my salad! Shopping in Hollywood, then dinner at Red O, Rick Bayliss’ restaurant. I got the molé enchiladas because Gia is making mole in the book I’m writing now. Delicious! I was running out of room but it didn’t diminish my pleasure in the beauty of my corn and goat cheese tamales, my spicy pomegranate cocktail or the habanero salsa that blew our heads off. (And when I looked out the window, would you believe I saw that my childhood friend Hal Sparks was headlining at The Improv across the street?! Los Angeles is huge but the world is small.) The molé looks a lot simpler than it tastes.

My dear friend of my heart showed me her city in food. We’ve known each other for more than half our lives now but most of those years have been spent apart – college, culinary school, living in different cities, marriage, children, jobs…life. It was amazing to catch up and be able to integrate our now-selves with our then-selves and carry our friendship into the next half of our lives. Shining our hearts forward. Living…learning…and eating!
Looks so so tasty!!!!!!! Glad you had a fab time!!!!
Sounded like a heavenly and memorable trip! Nothing like re-bonding with a great friend over great food!