Feeding a Surf Diva

I went to surf camp in La Jolla, Calif., over Memorial Day Weekend. If you didn't know it before, I am now a certified diva. That is, a surf diva. I'm going to frame my certificate of achievement and hang it next to the official notices I received from the Fulbright Board for my fellowship to Japan three years ago and from the Pulitzer Committee for being part of the WSJ staff that covered 9/11.

Surfing is fantastic exercise that whips the upper body into shape. It also makes me hungry. Eileen tagged along with me on my surfing safari. She already knows how to surf, so she rented a board from Surf Diva and ventured on her own while I learned the proper way to paddle, jump and wipe out without hurting my head. We got so hungry after our first session at the beach that I suggested we walk a block from our hotel to a cool restaurant on Sixth Avenue in downtown San Diego. When we arrived at Cafe Cerise's doorstep, Eileen noticed that the restaurant's windows were papered over. I noticed a bunch of tattooed dudes drinking champagne at a sidewalk table in front of the place.

The leader of the pack was Jason, the former owner and chef of Cafe Cerise, who sold his liquor cache -- minus half a dozen bottles of champagne -- to another restaurant for some $500. His childhood pal offered Eileen and me a drink. We gladly accepted and picked the cars that Jason should try to hit with the cork from the bottles of bubbly.

The last time I ate at Cafe Cerise was in January 2006, when I was in San Diego to cover an action sports trade show. My friend Arturo took me there. If we had gone often to feast on the lamb chops and bourbon bread pudding, then perhaps Jason wouldn't have had to shutter his cute restaurant. This was what was remaining of the pop art decor inside.

Even though there has been much talk about the real estate boom in downtown San Diego, Jason said that there wasn't quite enough of a local population and interest to support his culinary dream. That's not to say that he didn't have fans. Besides Eileen and me, six other strangers walked up to Cafe Cerise that evening in hopes of supping on some of his cooking.

Jason offered to cook Eileen and me dinner at his friend's house. But we were too hungry to wait. So we walked the four blocks to Cafe Chloe, which is an old standby of mine in San Diego. I always try to eat there when I'm in town. This is the macaroni and cheese with pancetta, which I had previously raved about.

I ordered the steak frites with horseradish butter. Yes, I know that it's cliched to order this dish at a French bistro. But I've already had the moules frites, and the salad with smoked trout was offered only on the lunch menu. Besides, surfing made me hungry as a lumberjack.

Eileen had the black cod with purple cauliflower. I didn't quite get the bread crumbs but they were useful in sopping up the sauce.

Oh, you have to give credit to to the French for having je ne sais quoi when it comes to style.

Sweet Tooth

Emili went to Estonia to visit her peeps. She came back with treats for her L.A. homies. Knowing my obsession with food, she got me a butter knife carved out of juniper. I'm going to add it to my collection of wood knives that I bought in Sweden three years ago. I had thought that my Swedish cutlery was made of cedar. But after smelling and holding the knife that Emili got me and comparing it to the Swedes' handiwork, I concluded that perhaps the juniper cartel has a lock on arbor-inspired kitchenware in Europe.
Emili also shared some candy. Unwrapped, the candy was as hard as marbles. But in my mouth it melted like snow on a sun-drenched driveway. Emili said the candy was made of pure sugar, with a bit of butter for flavoring. To me, it tasted like the Estonian equivalent of dulce de leche. I liked the drawing of the blue cow so much that I pinned it to my cubicle, under my Parasite Pal.

The Estonian dulce de leche didn't satisfy my sweet tooth for the day. I craved a soy chai latte, but then I remembered that there would be a tea party after a lecture given by a New York fashion designer, that I had to cover a couple of blocks away at a local museum. I figured that I could burn off most of the calories by walking the three blocks to the museum from my office. So I nibbled on a chocolate chip scone with clotted cream and strawberry jam, a puny portion of pecan pie and a yin-yang cookie that the museum decorated in tribute to the Malaysian-born designer's Chinese background.

Oinkster

In exchange for driving him to Alhambra, Calif., and treating him to pho noodle soup last week (I advised him to request the raw beef on the side), Max bought me lunch yesterday at Oinkster in Eagle Rock. Oinkster's slogan is "slow fast food." Its hamburgers are patted by hand from ground Angus beef; its Belgian fries are cooked in hot oil twice for extra crispiness and then served with garlic aioli; its shakes are made with ube, which is the Filipino version of taro. While nostalgia for my Charleston, S.C., elementary school lunches made me order the pulled pork sandwich instead of the burger, I couldn't think of a better tribute to growing up a Southeast Asian, born under the pig sign, in the Deep South than BBQ and ube shakes at Oinkster.

I don't have to remind people how much I like ube. The last time I had it was in August at an ice cream shop in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Calif. This time, I didn't have to worry about Oinkster's shake melting in my hands. But I had to pace myself lest I slurped my yummy shake too quickly and didn't save my appetite for the pulled pork sandwich.

I ordered the BBQ sandwich based on Pulitzer Prize-winning Jonathan Gold's recent review of Oinkster in the LA Weekly. As A.O. Scott and Anthony Lane do in their film criticism, Gold's food writing always makes me giggle and nod my head in "uh-huh" agreement. I've always liked how he thinks outside the four-star restaurant box that imprisons most food critics. Plus, for a white boy, he's got no fear of rolling into the ethnic eats. Like him, I loved Oinkster's ube shake and garlic aioli (I think the fries were just there so that I didn't have to embarrass myself by dipping my fingers into the creamy yet kicky sauce). Unlike him, I thought the pork sandwich was too salty and dry. Also, I prefer my BBQ sauce to be thicker and sweeter, unlike the runny vinegar that Oinkster offered in a plastic squeeze bottle. Perhaps I couldn't appreciate the pulled pork that much because I grew up in South Carolina, and Oinkster's version was supposed to pay tribute to North Carolina cooks. Still, the sandwich didn't do justice to the ube shake.

After lunch, Max and I returned to his place to watch the Tivo-ed finale of "Ugly Betty." I couldn't believe how telenovela the very last episode was. There was a murder, unplanned pregnancy, singing, drug overdose, champagne and, of course, great clothes. Afterward, I met my pal Erin and we went to a pool party in the Hollywood Hills, where there was none of the above except for champagne. But after having enough fashion drama for the day, we drove in a caravan to Beverly Hills for some tea and chit-chat.

Prosecco and Pizza

On a whim, I invited a gaggle of girlfriends to my teeny tiny apartment in Los Feliz for a cocktail party on Friday night to celebrate our friend Heather's latest art collaboration at SciArc. Ten seconds after I sent the e-mail, I realized that the only party food I had in my cupboard was bourbon and beef jerky. Mind you, it's Vietnamese beef jerky made with red pepper spices, sesame seeds and soy sauce by a company that was named after Cho Cu, the famed market in Saigon, whose moniker means "old market" in English. But non-Vietnamese speakers have to be extra careful when they enunciate the accent for "cu." If they're not, they end up saying instead "penis market."

Heather is a lighting director extraordinaire who heads her own company called Luminesce Design. At SciArc, I signed the guest book and was asked how I heard about the event. I had no choice but to scribble: Heather Libonati Extraordinaire.

The architectural installation was titled Dragonfly, drawing inspiration from the simple but sturdy layout that defines the insect's wings. After my friends and I left the exhibit, we were told about the problems that the architect and structural engineer faced in building the single base within the wall from which the gigantic metal wing jutted. I thought it might have been good for us to be warned about the issues with the support before we stood in awe underneath Dragonfly. This is the view of Dragonfly from the second floor catwalk hovering above the gallery. Now knowing about its structural problems and all, I can see the similarities between the sculpture and a cookie cutter ready to slice the humans below.

My friends and I waited patiently until the sun set after 7 p.m., when Heather's genius with lights manifested itself.

SciArc hosted another exhibit at the same time as Dragonfly's reception. Held in the library, the second party honored the architect George Yu. This is one of his sculptures sitting in front of the window on the north end of the tiny library filled with Mies Van Der Rohe-designed leather couches. My friends and I were disappointed that the change of venue didn't mean a different array of snacks. Yu's acolytes were offered the same chocolate-covered pretzels and mixed nuts that Dragonfly's fans were.

At the party in my small but cozy apartment in Los Feliz, I showed up SciArc by offering Adriano Adami prosecco from Silver Lake Wine. I even made some break-and-bake Toll House cookies. Because all the women on my mother's side of the family are great cooks and hostesses, I've been trained to entertain with a sense of humor, a bit of style and plenty of good food. In addition to providing red cloth napkins, I made sure to constantly fill my friends' glasses with bubbly from Italy. It was too bad that I didn't have enough time to pick up the pizza I ordered from Il Capriccio. Such a bad hostess, I had to dispatch Eileen and Erin to the pizzeria located two blocks from my house. Oh, a time like this reminded me how much I need a personal assistant or butler.

I ordered a large pie topped with Italian sausage and another that was described as vegetarian. I usually frown upon vegetarian pizzas because the cooks generally toss any vegetable that didn't make it into the salad onto the meatless pie. Il Capriccio, however, made their vegetarian version the right way. They roasted all their vegetables beforehand so that you didn't bite into a broccoli floret that was still raw and crunchy in the middle. We liked the vegetarian pizza so much that there was only one slice left. It was later eaten by Mathew at the tender hour of 3 o'clock.

I thought prosecco, pizza and cookies might be a little too unhealthy, what with bikini season around the corner. So I also had some cherries on hand.

Erin loved the sock piggy, which nicely complemented her men's wear-inspired vest and striped metallic blouse. As Diana Vreeland would have declared, piggy is the new black. As Isabella Blow would have modeled, piggy should belong on the noggin rather than under the arm.
After Heather and her husband/our honorary girlfriend Mike left, Eileen, Erin and I headed to a birthday party that one of Erin's friends threw in Echo Park. No birthday party in Los Angeles would be complete without a pinata. Since the birthday girl was turning 29, her papier-mache horse was stuffed with adult treats, such as vodka, whiskey, scotch and prophylactics. And the kid in everyone loved the Blow Pops, chocolates and Tootsie Rolls.

Danish Delights

My Viet friends and I are always marvelled by how diaspora disperses natives far from their homeland. My friend Lehang is a cool Viet chick who was adopted by a Danish family and grew up amidst all the Hamlets with a knack for modern design. Now married to a tall, strapping Danish boy, whose architectural career took them to Los Angeles, she owns a boutique called Danmark that sells only Danish labels.

She also displays art by her adoptive brethren, including Trine Wejp-Olsen, who made these ceramic bunnies with floppy fabric ears.

God bless the Danish for their clean lines. I never noticed these chandeliers during previous visits to Lehang's boutique. They are the perfect answer to having form fulfill a function. How they shine on the Danish delicacies of liver pate with toast, rare roast beef on bread with roasted onions and frittata squares garnished with swirls of mayonnaise, which were all served at Lehang's recent bash celebrating her shop's one-year anniversary.

I befriended some Danish folks at the party. All I did was take a look at their cool outfits and neat accessories and ask, "Are you Danish?" One woman who was married to a Dutch diplomat was swathed in gauzy layers of white and a thin tube necklace that reminded me of a 3-D layout of plumbing in a home. She told me that the frittata did not hail from Denmark. I figured it didn't, as the caterer had an Italian name.

But the Danish lady said the roast beef canapes were typical Danish treats. So I gobbled up five of them.

Veggies Galore

Last Friday, I met my friend Max for happy hour at Vinoteca in Los Feliz. I love going to Vinoteca not only because it is within walking distance of my place but also because its prosecco costs only $8. At happy hour, the sparkling wine from Italy is offered for a bargain of $5. Appetizers are also advertised at half of the usual price. Still, Vinoteca's deal isn't quite as good as Edendale Grill's in Silver Lake because the latter, a firehouse that has been converted into a bar, posts happy hour also on the weekends. Heck, the entire weekend should be construed as a long happy hour.

At least, I always think of it so. I spent the entire Sunday with Eileen, who invited me over for a breakfast of pancakes with strawberries and bananas. I fried up some turkey bacon and fakin' bacon and we sipped champagne with two other friends on Eileen's deck. After a hike in Elysian Park, Eileen hosted an impromptu BBQ, for which I invited some friends and whipped up a cream cheese pudding pie. This is the grill with turkey biggers lovingly formed by Eileen and a colorful cornucopia of veggies provided by Mathew.

We're Alive!

On Tuesday, a fire raged in Los Angeles' Griffith Park, about two miles north of my home. Firefighters had a tough time containing the blaze. They defied city rules by using helicopters after sunset to dump water and fire retardant on the flames. By the end of the night, only about a third of the area was under control. Some houses north of my street were evacuated. I didn't have to leave, but I was too scared to stay. It's a good thing that I'm a child of refugees. It took me 20 minutes to pack my passport and other important documents, family photos, my jewelry, some clothes, the sock piggy that my sister made me for my birthday last year and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot that I already had chilling in the fridge. I dragged my small suitcase to Eileen's house in Echo Park, which is on the other side of the hill from Los Feliz. We celebrated being alive.

A friend later told me that it was very Audrey Hepburn of me to consider champagne a necessity in an emergency like this. I was thinking more of Isabella Blow, RIP. While the late British stylist famously donned lobsters on her head and around her neck, I pragmatically store my jewelry in a cloth bag decorated with a lobster.

Eileen's dog thought my sock piggy was real. George sniffed the toy's booty in animal camaraderie.

I look very safe and relieved in Eileen's air-conditioned house with my pig.

Then I got drunk on champagne and watched "Ugly Betty" and "Entourage" when the TV news reporters started interviewing Scientologists on the streets.

Kimera Kuisine

Tonight I had dinner with a bunch of O.C. bigwigs. They included a mayor, two entrepreneurs, a ceo and a journalist. Our chosen watering hole was Kimera, a week-old restaurant that fuses California seafood with Asian and Mediterranean spices in the middle of two modern buildings housing tech geeks. Though Kimera could have easily gone minimalist to resemble an airport hangar as The Slanted Door does in its new digs in San Francisco's Ferry Building, it instead decided to look like a beach shack turned opium den. The red walls were splattered with abstract paintings and gold flecks. The bottoms of colorful glass bottles protruded from the walls. Bamboo rods hovered above our heads, as if a giant shark had overturned a sea raft, trapping us below the blood-tinted water. The hostess led us to the back for some privacy. She could have stuck us smack in the middle of the restaurant because the joint was only 5 percent occupied. There were still some kinks to work out, such as buying whole lychees to garnish the sweet lychee martinis. But I liked the uniforms, which the ceo who invited me to the dinner had designed. The black caftans with asymmetrical hems were intended to evoke Issey Miyake on the beach, she joked. Wearing the mod outfits, the servers quietly stepped in and out like ninjas to serve our food.

I had the hanger steak with a Manchego cheese fondue and grilled sweet corn. The steak was seasoned generously with paprika, salt and pepper. One of my dinnermates who tried the steak thought there was a touch of bacon as well. But I think the meat might have been cooked over a wood-fueled fire for a bit of smokiness.

Because I took photos of my food, the other journalist at the table said the restaurant was going to think that I'm a food critic for a major paper and will treat us to a plethora of free desserts. Sure enough, after our dinner plates were cleared, an army of ninja servers carried out tray after tray of sweets. This is the peanut butter and chocolate mousse.

This is the blueberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream and sugared ginger slices.

This was my most favorite dessert: a cheesecake with a toasted coconut crust and mango jelly topping. The journalist who sat across from me was getting into my food blogging. She even turned the plate just so that I could get a good angle of the sugar spoon. The entire table helped her figure out how to take the edible kitchenware home to give to her 5-year-old daughter. For our post-dinner entertainment, we went to the parking lot and the mayor and I compared our Priuses. I told him that next time he and I should go drag-racing.

Uno Dos Quatro Cinco de Mayo

Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo and today is my friend Mathew's birthday. So feliz all around! I faced an unusual challenge on Saturday when I had to figure out how to make cupcakes for Mathew's afternoon poolside party and cover a black-tie gala for work later that night. I had to alternate errands and obligations. Mani-pedi, frosting, lip gloss, sunscreen.

Coincidentally, the nail polish I chose for my toes had a food theme. Dubbed "Bloody Mary," it was made by a company called Nailtini that uses a martini glass for its logo. I thought it went quite nicely with my sunny yellow apron speckled with black olives.

Because Mathew is a creative writer and drinking buddy, I thought it'd be fitting to incorporate booze into his birthday treats. Though I cheated by using a Duncan Hines cake mix, I substituted Maker's Mark for the required water. Realizing that the corn syrup in my pantry had gone bad since the last time I used it to make milk chocolate frosting, I was sent into three minutes of cooking chaos. I didn't have time to run back to the store to buy the essential ingredient, and there was no way that I was going to waste 1.5 pounds of Ghirardelli chocolate. Fortunately, I watched a lot of MacGyver when I was a kid and aced AP chemistry in high school. So I mixed enough sugar with Maker's Mark to produce the necessary 1/4 cup of corn syrup. Because the alcohol was cooked off, the bourbon didn't overwhelm the cupcakes and frosting, which went well with the other drinks served at the birthday bash.
While other revelers sported T-shirts and shorts at Mathew's party, I gussied myself up in a dark purple silk frock by Michelle Mason, one of my favorite local designers who gives her elegantly tailored dresses, suits and pencil skirts a punk edge, without having to resort to skulls and crossbones. I think she creates all her clothes so that they can go well with ankle boots. At least, I always rock her stuff with my Ferragamo boots. I had warned the birthday boy and other friends that I had to leave the party early to head directly to my black-tie event in Beverly Hills. But they were still surprised when I showed up in my party dress. My friends know that I work for a fashion newspaper, but I don't think it registers with them that part of the job of being a style writer is having style and getting glammed up. Maybe they are too used to seeing me in shorts and capes. Or they think that I'm really an operative for the CIA and my "cover" is being a fashion reporter. Anyway, it was a late night as my photographer and I had to edit a lot of photos that suffered from the dim theatrical lighting used at the fashion presentation. So I missed the 1234567 celebration that Mathew had been planning. At 12:34 a.m. on May 6, 2007, the clock and calendar were cosmically aligned, for the first time in some 20 years. It'll be another decade or two before the numbers line up as such again. The upside for missing this historical moment was that I got edible swag from the gala: Boule's Camargue caramels made with fleur de sel from Brittany, France. I was especially happy to get this treat because one of my summer projects, other than growing lemongrass, is to master making caramel with fleur de sel. So the candylady from the Cheese Store of Silver Lake can take her maternity leave as long as she wants!