Claw and I decided to try San Diego Restaurant Week at Nobu inside the Hard Rock Hotel tonight. I don’t even know why I bother with this bullshit because I know damn well I am going to go in there and order whatever the fuck I want rather than the 4 items they give me to choose from. I do this every time. Restaurant Week is fine for people who aren’t picky and who don’t know better about their choices in dining. They do it twice a year and EVERY SINGLE TIME I fall for it. And the worst part is that the restaurants are usually packed with rookie diners and the kitchen gets backed up and they fuck something up. So, being a food snob like myself…Claw and I sat down at the sushi bar and had the chef make us whatever he felt like whipping up.
Tuna tataki with artichokes and some other yummy stuff. Sprouts and stuff I think. It was so long ago that we went I don’t really remember what was on there except that we both agreed that it was freaking amazing. It didn’t even matter that we were burping it up for the next 4 hours. It was delicious. And it wasn’t on the menu so I can’t really tell you what was in it other than tuna and a special kind of olive oil that was really good.
We told him to make whatever and he gave us this giant mound of eel. It was too much. Eel should be served small in my opinion. Small bites and then you don’t get so freaked out by the hard things that feel like bones. It was tasty but I would rather have had it in an actual sushi roll or a hand roll.
And one of the dishes that is on the list of Top 50 Things to Try in San Diego Before You Die: yellowtail with jalapenos! (I have to give the tuna best dish award for the night though.)
I was breaking in a new pair of hooker boots to take to SF for the weekend and was ready to hit a couple of bars, in particular Searsucker but Clawsy pussed out on me. As I was walking home my friend Andrea screamed “Hey hooker!” from her car a block and a half away. It was hysterical. As soon as I got home he sent me a text saying he should have gone out with me. Dork. It’s all good as I have a ton of stuff to do before leaving town. I am making the recently unemployed Tommy 5tone run errands with me all day
There is no music. I don’t even have enough information about music in my tiny little head to suggest a song. I found this video on a site called Soul Pancake owned and/or operated by Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office.) He suggested Arcade Fire. It works.
I met George for brunch at a cute little French place by the hotel called Comme Ca. They have some amazing looking cocktails but I was about to drive home and hit the 4:30 yoga class, so that would not have been smart. Next time for sure. The bartender was muddling up some yummy sno-cone looking drinks. I ordered the quiche which was a little too creamy for me. When I eat quiche I expect a light fluffy eggy pie. This was too custard-y in texture.
George’s hockey puck of a burger that he did not offer a bite of. Hmmmph.
Later when I got back to SD I got a text from my friend Mike from high school who lives out here in La Jolla. He moved here a few years ago and we have seen each other a few times, but hadn’t spoken in almost a year. So dumb…he’s a great guy and a lot of fun. We really need to hang out more. What needs to happen is he needs to set me up with some of his single hot successful friends.
We met at Dublin Square and immediately left when a party bus full of people in their late 40′s showed up. Eww. Then we went to Funky Garcia’s where I ordered the Funky Roll: a chicken burrito sushi thingy. It was the right idea in concept, but it wasn’t rolled tight enough and of course any amount of spice is too much for me.
This was entertaining. They passed me before I could get the camera on though.
I was shocked to see that the Gaslamp has it’s own directory like the mall. lol so funny to me.
Before heading to Star Bar to investigate a vicious rumor that they cleaned the place up and that they got rid of all the Asian hooker bartenders, we stopped at Quality Social for a pickleback. Or two. These guys were dancing up a storm. I sent out a tweet with the following photo that said:
“OMG Celebrity Party: Ziggy Marley, Jesus Christ and Jay from the Kevin Smith movies!”
I really wanted to show this tweet to Jay, but he had gone home drunk. I found Ziggy and he laughed his ass off. I showed Jesus Christ and he didn’t even know what Twitter was.
oh and ps: The Star Bar is exactly the same. Phew.
In line with yesterday’s post I would also like to share with you a guy named Mastin who runs a site called The Daily Love. I love his tweets and I subscribe to his daily emails. This is from his email today:
“Life ends not when you die, but when you stop believing in your true calling. Your true calling isn’t something your friends, parents or lovers want you to become. Your true calling isn’t living vicariously through someone else. And most certainly your true calling isn’t working just to “make a living” and “get by”.
Your true calling is that soft voice within you urging to be creative. Your true calling is the visions of a better life that you have. Your true calling is your Creator whispering to you who you really are.
One day we will all breathe our last breath. The only difference between those of us who will live a fulfilled life in the flow of their true calling and those of us who don’t is this: know that you are already dead, die to your fear and give up everything except what whispers to you in the quiet hours.
Follow your vision, do what makes you happy – it is your birthright to live in joy. But it is 100% your choice whether you do or not.
Say no to your fear. Live your true calling. Set sail and don’t look back.”
A few months ago I was blogging about apologizing and my sister sent me an email that she had received called “Thought for Today” about forgiveness. It shed some light on the subject for me and I decided to subscribe to their daily inspiration. Some of them don’t really apply to me and are about God, but some really make sense and arrive in my inbox with impeccable timing. info@thoughtfortoday.org.uk
Summer’s End
Summer, it’s a time of abundance, to enjoy the summer sun, flowers and fruits … but, summer, like everything else, doesn’t last forever. If summer was forever, all the energy and potential would reach its limits and inertia would set in. And so slowly but surely, the cycle turns; everything moves on. Everything has it’s own time; it’s own season. Remember, the end of something good, means the start of something also good. All you have to do is be connected and in tune with the natural flow of nature’s energies.
I was undecided whether to stay in LA for the night or to just head back to SD and enjoy my weekend at home. A few phone calls to my LA gays and that was decided pretty quickly. I made plans with Justin Martindale for lunch and then we had plans to meet up with George Jaramillo. I got a cute room at Le Parc in West Hollywood…the basic suite (unless they upgraded me and didn’t tell me) was a huge room with a mini kitchen, a living room, dining area and a quaint balcony. It was probably bigger than most NYC studio apartments. I tried my favorite place (to hate) The Hollywood Standard but they were sold out and The London was close to $400. Ha. Funemployed Laura was tempted but logic took over.
So let’s get to Fashion’s Night Out and how we drank for free all night! Basically FNO was a 16 country event (I don’t even know how many cities in the US participated…a lot! And I don’t really know how many shops in LA… I think George said 300 shops were involved) to stimulate the economy in over priced boutiques that I can’t even afford to stand in. (Picture Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman) Most of the places we stumbled around to in LA had dresses in the $500 range and it was all I could do to not spill my drink on them and then have to high tail it out of there.
First we had to stop and get a bite to eat so we went to a place called Chaya for some really yummy Kobe Beef Bolognaise with white truffle oil. It was quite amazing but it would have better with a dash more truffle oil for sure. I didn’t think to take the photo til after we dug into it, so I apologize for it looking like a pile of puke.
George was our sober driver for the night so Justin and I didn’t hold back at all. We were not shopping, just cashing in on the free bars at each place. We were pretending that Justin was Lars Voldemort the legendary German Supermodel. (yes, it’s made up) He does a great German accent and I make a great bitchy agent.
That’s right. Stand there not making eye contact with anyone and act like you are too hot to speak to anyone.
And the winner of the Best Dressed Award goes to this little Asian lady. What up with those shoes?? She’s trying to figure out how to text someone. lol.
This poor woman was outside cooking hotdogs on the grill in her gown to lure people to her shop.
Look at this creepy statue that I need for my eclecticly decorated loft.
If I was a child I might be afraid of this Twister artwork. We went to the Andrew Christian underwear store in hopes of seeing their models playing Twister, but when we arrived they weren’t actually doing it so we didn’t stay very long. Not to mention they were serving FRANZIA BOX WINE. What self respecting gay would do that!? Gawd!
Converse Crocs? Gross.
Justin has residency at The Comedy Store so we headed over there and snuck into a private benefit party and mooched booze off of them. LOOK! He’s a legit comedian! Too bad my camera is on it’s last leg and every 5th shot is blurry.
I mean… he is for real a Comedy Store regular! Congrats! Pretty impressive being on the walls with all of the great legends of comedy.
I got a little stand-up-star-struck when I saw his friend “Fortune Feimster.” We caught the tail end of her act and then went and said hi to her. Please click on her page and watch her doing a character called Darlene Witherspoon. HILARIOUS! If you have some time look at these other ones: Dawn Calicio, Katina, and a Rachel Zoe parody. I love her.
George went home and Justin and I stayed out so we could go check out the screening of his Logo.tv special at a bar called East/West. Check out Justin Martindale being awesomely funny! I have asked a lot of you today, but please watch this one for sure I beg you.
I love hanging out with Justin because we just laugh the whole time. I want to bottle him up and carry him around all the time.
You remember my day in NYC where I ran around in flip flops looking for an hour in a torrential downpour for a Korean BBQ food truck? Well, I decided to attempt the same thing in LA…at least I wouldn’t have weather issues to deal with AND I have a vehicle. First I googled “la food trucks” and found this site. The problem is that a lot of the trucks don’t tweet until they are at the location. Or they tweeted like 2 days ago. If I owned one of these things I would be tweeting all morning so that my followers could plan ahead and make sure they knew where to go. Maybe I am missing something. I guess the trucks may just have their regular spots and regular customers…maybe they don’t need any new business. But here you have someone like me who is totally jumping on this food truck bandwagon and I cannot find one to go to. I have all the time in the world and a car and I only found one on Spring St that I wanted to try… I had to bring Christian to his car downtown anyways, so we went out in search of a BBQ truck that was offering pulled pork sandwiches. What I didn’t look at was what CITY in Los Angeles. Hahaha! So here we are searching for a BBQ truck in downtown Los Angeles on Spring St and the actual truck is on Spring St in HERMOSA BEACH. #fail.
The ironic part is that there is another truck on that same block on Spring St downtown and we were both starving…so we gave it a shot.
It offered tacos, quesadillas, burritos as well as Korean BBQ bowls. The grumpy man in the window barely acknowledged us as we approached. Like I literally said “Hi” and he just looked at me. Alrighty then. Here is their site.
We dined on our yummy food in the comfort of the Prius. lol
I had the short ribs…. excellent and fatty and a great sweet sauce to drizzle.
Christian had the steak bowl with the extra kimchee which I clearly avoided.
I swear I will get the hang of this food truck thing one day. Stay tuned.
I hung out in Lisa Ann’s home office all day shooting the shit with her and trying to get some emails/blogging done. We were being picked up by Nikki Benz for dinner and meeting Brett Brando, who I hired back in 2004 to be my director for NA. In 2008 Brett parted ways with NA and we haven’t really seen each other except in passing at tradeshows. It was a little bit of a messy breakup but now that I don’t work there anymore it was time for us to bury the hatchet and be friends again. It was great to see him!
Nikki chose the restaurant and I was very excited as this is one of the places that’s been on my list for a few years. Gordon Ramsay (the psycho British host of Hell’s Kitchen) has several restaurants….this one is inside The London in West Hollywood. The decor of the inside of the hotel is slightly gaudy, but in a classy timeless kind of way, if that makes sense. Like the stuff might belong in your Grandma’s house…provided your Grandma had an amazing sense of style and fashion.
They brought us little cracker thingys with a truffle aoili which I wanted to rub all over myself.
Lisa and I went for the 5 course tasting while Nikki and Brett decided on the 3 course. (Pussies!) For my first course I got the Foie Gras and Potato Dumplings…they were pretty amazing, but after my foie gras experience from last night, this was just your average foie gras dish. It was seared in small chunks and served in a slightly oily pool with thick small dumplings. It was delicious, don’t get me wrong. I forgot to ask what the foam was made of.
Right after our first course the hostess came to our table with a bouquet of roses for Lisa and 4 glasses of champagne. Apparently a guy came up to her at the gym a few days ago and they exchanged info (BBM)…she was messaging him earlier in the day and told him where she was eating and that she was joining 3 friends. So….in a very slick attempt at getting in her pants quicker he wrote a sweet poetic card and sent her roses and champagne for all of us. It was quite a spectacle at the restaurant. Very sweet, though.
The waiter made a special point to tell us that the Chanterelle Mushroom Risotto w/ Mascarpone Cheese and Tarragon was the best thing on the menu and that it was absolute “perfection.” I need to tell you that it was my LEAST favorite dish of the night, and I tried everyone’s of course. It was bland and flavorless….I know risotto is usually a little stiff but I think this was a bit undercooked. The black shaved truffles on top were average as well. Not very truffley. Can you believe I didn’t even finish it??
For my main course I had Pacific Halibut w/ Baby Fennel, Tagliatelle Pasta, White Beans and Chorizo. This was also really good, but I have had better cooked fish before. I think it was slightly overdone. AGAIN THIS IS MY HUMBLE OPINION. lol! There was like a chunky roasted red pepper tomato sauce over it that was a nice sweet surprise and the white beans were cooked properly, so all was not lost. I liked it, but it wasn’t Lick the Plate worthy or anything.
Your basic cheese plate.
And for the winner of the night: the Napoleon! It had raspberry and strawberry and a very yummy sorbet made of Thai Long Pepper Mint! Soooo f’ing good.
