Lunch at San Sui on Hillhurst is always a delight. First of all there are the delicious bento boxes:
In addition to the culinary delight one steps into a little haven of peace and quiet with a lovely view:
After lunch one feels restored, not only in body, but in mind too.
They don’t even charge for the restoration of the inner being. It’s all included.
…said the tiger, “and thanks for the pumpkin.”
It only took about a year of gentle coaxing by a dear former colleague until we finally stepped through this door
to find out that behind it there hides a real honest-to-God supper club with an amazing offer in Jazz music.
Our introduction to Jax was made all the more pleasurable by Mike Gurley and the Night Caps. If you want to swoon to music a bit strangely called “cocktail music”, go there. It is well worth the time; those musical cocktails are tasty with a distinct modern edge.
How good is this place? Well, we stayed until midnight. That should say it all and is our stamp of approval.
All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.
On October 9th, 2009, the International Olympic Committee finally voted for Ruby to be included in the Olympic Games again. 2016, in Rio de Janeiro, Rugby will be played, 92 years after the last time at the Olympic Games in France in 1924. Way back then the US won Gold (just like at the games in 1920), which did not go down well with the French audience, seeing its team defeated. The following ruckus on the pitch did not help the sport at all and it was removed from the Olympics.
Now Rugby is off to a new start. Even though only Sevens will be played, which might sadden some hard-core fans, for a spectator sport this probably is a good choice. Of course there will be male and female teams – a big difference to 92 years ago. Women teams today are not rare at all and they do exceedingly well.
Maybe even a few of the young women on these teams I watched two weekends ago will be in Rio at the Olympics. Plus my favorite female referee, I hope!
That’s the lovely sound I heard this morning at 10 minutes past 11 – tires swishing on wet street surfaces.
The rains have started. Finally. On and off, all day long, gentle showers came and went.
Time for the happy dance again!
Since yesterday all signs point towards the most important event of the season – the first day of rain. Temperatures dropped a bit, the (nearly) eternally blue sky has taken on a grayish hue and we are waiting… waiting…
Not to be caught unawares by this change we decided to accustom ourselves to the sound of splattering water drops – in short, we went into rain training camp and settled down with some coffee at the Shea Terrace at Loyola Marymount University.
Enjoying the sights and sounds of the water sculpture was made twice as sweet by the knowledge that LMU was selected as the 2008 Recycled Water Institutional Customer of the Year by the California WaterReuse Association. Water is “liquid gold” in drought-ridden California; those people at LMU are well aware of it by using sophisticated water-saving techniques and using reclaimed water for all their fountains on campus and for landscape watering.
So we got used again to the sound of falling water. Now the “real” stuff should make it’s first appearance.
The plan was – go out, have some Mexican food and then go for a hike in the park. As it sometimes happens with plans, this came to naught because we passed a banner saying “Lithuanian Fair.” How could we resist? We parked the car, paid our entry fee and wandered in. First some food, very yummy. Then we were treated to a speech opening the fair. The speech was not too lengthy, which was good, because it was given in Lithuanian. After some songs by two choirs a folk dance group took the stage.
That was some spirited dancing! Such a pretty sight, these lovely young women (later joined by some equally good looking young men) in their colorful traditional costumes, showing off their skills.
Anyway, we still wanted to do our hike, so we checked out the stalls at the fair after the dance performance at a pretty fast clip before leaving. It struck us as slightly strange that at each and every stall we were first addressed in Lithuanian and only upon signaling that we were not able to understand did the very friendly stall operators switch to English. Upon arriving back home my curiosity got the better of me and I checked out “Lithuanians in Los Angeles” on the Internet. It turned out that by pure chance we had stumbled upon the largest Lithuanian fair outside of Lithuania. With only 10.000 people of Lithuanian descent living in Los Angeles, of which only 2.000 still speak their native language, for 60 years this fair has been the annual highlight of this smallish community.
So they do keep up their traditions. They also try to keep up their language with a school of their own which operates on Saturdays. But – they also live completely in the here and now, as is amply demonstrated by this photo from the sidelines:
Last week we had to go down to Santa Monica to the Broad Theater. With triple digit temperatures outside we did not look forward to the ride, but decided to go anyway and early to have some dinner before the event. We parked the car at the theater and wandered off in search for food and found Warszawa on 1414 Lincoln Boulevard.
Nice, we thought, not L.A. at all.
That was not all; on reading the menu I started swooning. Cold Borscht! Just what one needed on a sweltering hot day.
But the surprises did not end there – they had Steak Tartar! Steak… Tartar…
It was incredible, goodness on a plate, paired with chopped onions, mushrooms and pickles. I’m afraid I bored William to death with my stories about this dish, where I had eaten it all over Europe and how much I had missed it. That, by the way, was the funniest side-effect of discovering this restaurant – it awakened a culinary homesickness in me I did not know I had.
The others dishes were good too – a perfect broth with little lamb ravioli (what a delicate taste) and Gnocci afterwards. But the Steak Tartar… I am drooling while writing this.
After a perfectly divine meal, finished off with some Espresso, we toddled back to the Broad for an equally heavenly lecture on Richard Wagner’s “Ring” cycle.
Food for body and mind – what a delightful evening.
“If it is not a cat toy, it is a cat bed.”
Thanks, Karen, for reminding me.