Bikini Body with an Ice Cream Head

Who would hold an awards ceremony in the middle of July? ESPN did on Wednesday night, for its annual ESPY Awards, which blocked off many streets in the heart of Hollywood and snarled my eastbound commute home from work. Clocking in twice as long, with as many detours, my drive allowed me only an hour to chill in my little pad before I had to hop back into my car and battle traffic going in the other direction to cover a party. I usually make it a rule to arrive at a work event where there is an open bar within an hour after its scheduled start. None of the important folks will arrive any earlier. But this time my rule worked against me. Pulling up to the hotel's valet just before 8:30 p.m., I saw the hotel employee cut his throat with his hand. That's the universal valet signal that the lot was full. I checked out two other parking lots on the Sunset Strip. They were also full. Exasperated, I didn't bother to check another garage. Instead, I hightailed it home, where I indulged in some English toffee ice cream and the latest copy of W magazine showcasing the unbelievably ripped abs of Becks, a.k.a. David Beckham. Yes, his wife Posh, a.k.a. Victoria, also pouted on the cover with the soccer stud. But I strategically placed my ice cream bowl on top of her face. Who wouldn't want a bikini body with an ice cream head?

La Casita Mexicana

On the Fourth of July, I called three different restaurants to check whether they were open for lunch. They were all closed. Desperate to appease my growling stomach and to impress JP, I thought that the Mexican restaurants, which might have a love-hate relationship with the gabachos (do they still want California and Texas back?!), would be open on Independence Day. So I pored through the list of eateries in Jonathan Gold's Essential 99 L.A. Restaurants and called La Casita Mexicana in Bell, Calif. Some months back, I had read a favorable review of the "slow food" Mexican restaurant written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gold, a.k.a. Juanito D'oro, in the L.A. Weekly. I thought that it would be fun to visit every single restaurant on the list and answer some basic questions: How yummy was it? Whom would I take there? Any quirks? But the first thing I had to determine with La Casita Mexicana was, was it open. "Are you open today?" I asked the friendly male voice who answered the phone at La Casita Mexicana. "We opened at eight," he said. "So you're serving food now?" I inquired. "Yes, we are serving food now," he responded, a little perplexed. I quickly retrieved directions and drove JP and me there. One wrong turn and about 10 miles later, we pulled up in front of the colorful eatery. Nailed to the walls were giant versions of miniature refrigerator magnets shaped as watermelon and lime slices. There might have been a foot-long sculpture of the chia plant, which served as the source for the gelatinous seeds that flavored our lemonade, but I had no idea what a chia looked like, other than a giraffe or cow as advertised in the late night TV commercials for the so-called chia plants.

Once JP and I submitted our drink order, the server returned with a plastic tray of chips drenched in three sauces and a bowl of salsa. The three sauces made the crispy chips all gooey and soft. That was OK with me because they were yummy. From left to right, they were a chipotle, a mole and a salsa verde.

JP and I decided to order two entrees and shared them. As part of the entree orders, we each received a bowl of the Mexican equivalent of chicken noodle soup. The distinction was that the broth was flavored with fish bones or something from the sea.

Gosh, I always get hot and sticky in the summer. This is me in a vintage summer dress, on hiatus from slurping the yummy soup. The indigo-tinted roses helped my unconscious attempt to be patriotic with a red, white and blue colorway.

This is the chiles en nogada that JP and I shared. The chiles were stuffed with a mixture of ground meat and dried fruit. The white cream sauce was a bit sweet, and the dried berries garnishing the dish added a bit of zing to the palate. For some reason, my chile was still a bit spicy. I think I swallowed a few more seeds than I should have.

Instead of the enchiladas, JP and I tried the enmoladas, which were basically enchiladas drenched in a thick and sweet mole sauce. True to the "slow food" philosophy, La Casita Mexicana touted that it used 46 ingredients in its mole sauce. I have fewer than 20 ingredients in my refrigerator, excluding nail polish and facial moisturizer. Though JP ordered the enmoladas con queso (that's with cheese for the non-Spanish speaking crowd), the server gave us chicken-filled rolls.

JP and I were so stuffed by the end of the meal that we didn't have room in our bellies for coffee or dessert. Still, the kind server brought us a complimentary plate of flan. Perhaps the cooks noticed that I was taking pictures with my digital camera. Or they noticed how out of place we were because we didn't speak Spanish and I was the only Asian chick within a 5-mile radius of the establishment. The custard was the thickest and firmest flan I had ever tasted. It was drenched in a toffee liqueur whose name I didn't quite catch, even after the server said it three times. JP and I ate only two quarters of the freebie flan. But it left enough of an impression that I might jot on the margins of the 2007 Essential 99 List: "Very yummy. Clean enough to take my oh-so-Vietnamese parents and authentic enough to take my L.A. pals. Free flan!!"

We Wore Blue Velvet

In honor of her mother's visit to Los Angeles last week, Eileen invited me and two other close friends to dinner at Blue Velvet, which was the kind of place where the L.A. Law-Ally McBeal crew would have patronized if they had wanted to nosh on trendy Nouvelle Californian cuisine and air their neuroses. With its eco-friendly digs in a refurbished apartment building, the restaurant has too-cool-for-school decor, such as a unisex bathroom straight out of the Ally McBeal set, and a view of downtown high-rises. The royal blue clipboard set on the plate upon diners' arrival seemed perfect for jotting down an affidavit if it didn't already hold the menu.

Like most hip restaurants in SoCal, food seemed to be an afterthought here. I think the owners knew what a good restaurant should be, but they used a bit of a heavy hand in their execution. They thought a good restaurant should offer an amuse-bouche. Even though it was a complimentary pre-appetizer, this amuse-bouche of a fried potato puff served with a slash of some sauce was nondescript. It might have been better for Blue Velvet to offer more interesting bread, rolls or crackers than to serve something unmemorable. I have to note that unlike a lot of Los Angeles restaurants, Blue Velvet had impeccable service. It was a good thing that the servers wore black T-shirts with their matching pants. Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to distinguish them from the customers. The sommelier, for instance, was a floppy-haired hipster who was dressed for the summer in a white blazer and open-buttoned pastel shirt. He didn't seem too into his job. Maybe he became a sommelier only after he hit a plateau with his acting.

Even though she's not a member of The Foie Faction, Eileen is such a good friend that she recommended we ordered the foie gras as an appetizer. Served with triangle toasts, the torchons of goose liver were smooth and rich. We also ordered some mushroom dish to accommodate the sole vegetarian, Bruna. The mushrooms and foie gras actually went together quite nicely.

In tribute to Eileen's mom, who is working as a physician in New Zealand, where sheep outnumber humans by a ratio of 20 to 1, I ordered the lamb as my entree. I didn't mind that the meat was raised in Colorado rather in Hobbitland. Compared to Eileen's ravioli, which was too al dente and smothered in a salty sauce, and the mediocre fish ordered by Colin and Eileen's mom, my lamb was delicious. I tried taking a photo of my dish, but the light was insufficient and I was reluctant to use my flash to draw attention to our table. Hoping to take advantage of a more relaxed environment by the pool, Eileen suggested that we take our dessert outside. I don't quite remember what we ordered. One was a beet financier and the other was a pudding or flan with caramel popcorn. The third choice might have been an ice cream with pistachios. As I said, the food was secondary to atmosphere at this place.

In case of the bathroom, the atmosphere was a mishmash of cultures, allowing men and women to cross boundaries and transgress however much they want. The Zen garden didn't have any sign saying which part was men's or women's. So you entered whichever stall was unoccupied. For a co-ed bathroom, it was very clean, perhaps too much so that it was industrially clinical.

The sensors for the faucets hanging from the ceiling were so sensitive that they turned on when you walked in front of it. The great thing about the bathroom was that it had huge mirrors on the walls, above a shelf where chicks can plop down their purses to touch up their lipstick.

Or, if you're silly Southeast Asians who grew up in the South as Eileen and I did, you'd take pictures of yourself in the reflective glass.

Bruna joined us in our silliness. Don't worry: We didn't get so cheesy that we sang Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet" song. No, our song of the night would have been Amy Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good."