Happy Shabu-ween

We have a lot of detoxing to do -- it's been a very unhealthy couple of weeks. So we decided to skip the Halloween candy and witch's brew and have a nice, wholesome dinner instead.

 Fresh veggies and tofu (thanks, Korean market!)

 Dipping sauces and our fondue-turned-shabu-shabu pot

 Everybody in the pool!

After dinner, we checked out the Carnavale festivities.

It was busier than our shabu-shabu pot!

Love Is Sweet

We are so happy and excited for our good friends C & N, who recently got engaged. And what better way to celebrate than with our most fave triple berry shortcake from Sweet Lady Jane?

Congratulations, you two lovebirds!!! It is because of your love and commitment that we were able to eat this cake. ;P

Wednesday Night Steak

With garlic-shallot asparagus and mashed cauliflower with herbs.

K-town Adventures

So we were on a major Thai food streak for a while, but Koreatown beckoned us with the promise of exciting new eats.

We'd been in K-town before for hot tofu soup, Asian fusion burgers and...Peruvian chicken?!?! All absolutely delicious. And our new discoveries didn't disappoint:

Olympic Noodle
Every meal starts out with pickled radishes and a huge vat of delicious kim chi. Follow it up with your choice of massive bowls of hearty soup with knife-cut noodles or flat rice cakes, huge pans of steamed, boiled or frieds dumplings, or stone pot rice. Customize to your heart's content with the little tray of condiments and special sauces.

Yogozone
Their frozen yogurt is just fine, but their big sell is the DIY unlimited toppings bar for $1 extra.

Note: if you do go for the toppings, they'll give you so much yogurt that you can barely add any toppings.

Green tea (without toppings upgrade) vs. regular (with toppings upgrade) 

Soowon Galbi
We were in the mood for Korean BBQ...and boy, did we have some Korean BBQ. The 50-minute wait wasn't fun, but it was worth it. It wasn't just any meat, but marbled, thick-cut, marinated slabs meat grilled over tabletop charcoals and served with amazing side dishes.

 A delicious bite

A sweet, cinnamony, gingery dessert soup

Thanks for being so good to us, K-town...can't wait to see what else you have in store!

The BIG MACro

What's almost as good as a hamburger you can cherish for six months? The Big Macro at M Cafe.

Fully loaded = with avocado & tempeh bacon

The Big Macro combo comes with your choice of regular or sweet potato fries, and mint green tea or lemonade. SO MACROBIOTICALLY DELICIOUS!

Dancing Ourselves Clean

There's no better way to say goodbye to summer than an outdoor dance party in the misty white air, with Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem. We'll leave the details to the experts, only to say it was an absolutely amazing show.

No visit to the Bowl is complete without a picnic, so we toasted with some white sangria, then dug into awesome sandwiches from the newly opened Fresh Bites in WeHo.

You can get "healthy" sides like grilled veggies, couscous, steamed spinach, etc.

For dessert, we indulged in a slice of Fresh Bites' coconut cake — delicious, and better than Magnolia Bakery's, even — but not as good as our requisite cream puffs from Beard Papa's (now available with a seasonal pumpkin filling)!

However, even with our double desserts, we didn't have the best treats in the house — not by a long shot. The award goes to our neighbor and his special cake...

...Because random strangers kept coming up to him and asking him if he had any more.

LA Restaurant Week...er, Night

We had big plans for Restaurant Week that involved lots of stops, reservations months in advance, all kinds of strategic scheduling and scrupulous menu planning. In the end, we only made it to one Friday night date, but it was an epic meal that totally made up for anything we may have missed.

BLT Steak isn't far from home and the walk there helped us work up an appetite. So when their signature amuse bouches and popovers arrived to kick off our meal, we dug right in.

Warm pate and fresh-from-the-oven gruyere popovers

Then came our entree-sized appetizers, which left us pretty full...

 Filet tartare and steamed mussels

...Until our proteins came out and we got a second wind. Powered by a huge greasy tower of onion rings (not shown).

 Scallops and steak

By time we had eaten that last bite of steak, we were stuffed. But BLT Steak wasn't done with us. Out came some mignardises, tiny caramel-y cookie bites that would've been the perfect end to our meal. But they were quickly followed by  warm donuts and coffee ice cream, and some chocolate bread pudding.

We finished the ice cream but didn't touch anything else 

We looked forward to our nice, cleansing walk home. As we waddled back, we were overtaken by a bajillion cops (and bike cops, security guards and a helicopter) storming Sunset Plaza...to settle some sort of lovers' spat in the parking lot. 

Fortunately, we — and, most importantly, our doggie bags — got home safe and sound.