Barney's Beanery

If you are bearing the promenade anyways, this is a great place to grab a casual bite to eat. The menu is huge and presented like a newspaper. There are about 20 different types of potato skins alone! 20 different burgers and as many different sandwiches. We went for a specialty pizza--don't remember the name, but it had chicken, peppers, full-flavored mozzarella, tomatoes, red onions, and cilantro (yes, I hadn't been to Wahoo's yet this week and was lacking in the green sauce category).

At least, yes, 20 beers on tap. I chose the Barney-made brew--an amber ale. Pretty good, but nothing special. What's cool about the beer list is that it's sorted by country and state--even non-eventful beers like Miller's are sorted under Milwaukee.

A heated patio and comfy decor make this a great little place to get OUT of the way of all the people meandering around and relax.

Boa

So much for no pretentious places. But first date with a guy that seems to have some potential...how do you get out of going some place you know you'll likely feel uncomfortable? Very typical combination of delightfully thoughtful details and excessively trying-to-look cool but very uncomfortable details. For example, the beer glass (yes, I ordered beer--Fat Tire to be specific) fit perfectly into your hand. It was curved in such as way that your fingers comfortably wrapped around it. Counter example, one side of the table at the bar had a very low bench seat that put the person sitting in it a foot below the person sitting on the other side. Outcome, we sat on the same side of the table which was actually quite a nice change of pace. But if you were with 4 people you'd be screwed.

The food? Delicious. I ordered the petite filet mignon with horseradish sauce (an extra sauce costs an extra $7--couldn't they just give you 2 to try, it would've been so fun!). The steak melted in your mouth and you didn't really need any sauces at all (still--it's about the fun of trying them, not needing them!). We split a large side of mushrooms--mix of all kinds cooked perfectly. The steak was served with an entire head of roasted garlice. I wasn't quite sure if you were supposed to eat it, but small bites complimented the steak well.

Overall? A little awkward with the prices being so high and everything being ala carte. Check it out for some special occasion when you can afford to do it up right. The steaks were that good.

Jaxx

Second dates always have the potential to become predicaments, but this was a great place to get our bearings. The best way I can think of to describe this place is a deli with beer. Not that it's really a deli, as the menu has sandwiches, salads, burgers and pizzas (including one called Yada Yada Yada) but there is a counter and it sort of has that feel.

Above all, Jaxx serves a beer called Doggie Style (which is a soft amber ale and very good and fun to order). The waiter gave us Road Dogg first by mistake, so we ended up with a table full of plastic mugs (two beers each, two waters, and an ice tea). We both ordered the chicken club which somehow became a chicken sandwich with melt-in-your-mouth smoked apple bacon. We never really figured out if it was us or the waiter that screwed the order up. It really didn't matter.

Jaxx has a neat little upstairs (which, at the time of my arrival was undergoing remodeling) with velvet booths and artwork adorning bright colored walls. For being in an area of L.A. which appears on the surface to be anything but touchy-feely, this place has a truly personal feel. Not that I'm an expert on Hollywood, but potentially a place to escape from the madness and dig into some good grub.

Joy Mart

Holding my breath....east of the 405....holding my breath....we're still going....holding my breath....we're off the freeway and things in L.A. are strangely reminiscent of Detroit....holding my breathe and we arrive at a quaint little village in the midst nothing and freeways and chaos. This was my first trip to Little Tokyo and we went to Joy Mart for dinner. Reservations turned out to be unnecessary as we were, for a blissful hour, the only customers in the place.

This place has rolls that can only be described as kick-ass. We started out with a shrimp tempura roll that wasw wrapped with carpaccio (slightly seared, thinly cut beef). there were so many flavors going on with each piece that you felt you needed to turn it around in your mouth over and over again to take it all in. The spicy scallop dynamite was next. This literally melted--there was no way not to break into a smile while putting one of these in your mouth. The Ahi Tuna sashimi was crusted with cracked pepper and sesame seeds. This was the one thing that looked better on the menu than it tasted in reality. Not bad, just not blowing your expectations out of the water either. Finally, a spicy yellowtail maki roll to which we added avocado. Ten pieces served spaced like seedlings on a long, thin sushi dish. The presentation of this was the coolest part. Very good, but so, so full.

For dessert, blue potato ice cream. This was more like a purple color and served with whip cream and a surprise treat of cornflakes at the bottom. Strangely enough, the combination went really well together. Despite my general protest against dessert, the ice cream helped smooth out all the flavors gobbling together in my tummy. The accompanying paper umbrella may prove useful in a collage someday as well.

Hakata

Bland and boring, this sushi place on Wilshire (somewhere in between 14th and 26th) has new owners with an old look. OK--I have been to places with worse decor but better sushi but this place is as strange as they come. Nice, "Denny's"style booths (not really that unlike Isshin which is one of my favorite places) were strangely complimented by sports and beer paraphernalia all over the walls. The bar had 4 TVs all with different sports games on -- very well set-up. The tables had white table clothes covered with glass counter tops and pink napkins. The walls were blue. The bar stools has bright purple cushins. I'm not seeing any sort of theme.

But the food! I ordered seared albacore, which was a little dry though the ponzu sauce was very good. The salmon was a little tough and I made a mess trying to bite off half of it. Cucumbers made their way into my yellowtail scallion roll which was otherwise very tasty. A 12 oz Sapporo was a little expensive at $5. After I ordered, I noticed some specials hanging on the wall over the sushi bar -- I could have gotten fresh albacore or tried some more toro.

The treat of the evening was a complimentary Sojourn (from the "new owners" who were conspicuously absent or hiding among the waitstaff). Nice after dinner drink to sip on. I wish I had taken a little more time sipping. I somehow confused the place by choosing the pay for my drinks and food with the same credit card. Between getting my food bill from the waiter and getting things racked up on my credit card I had an eternity to ponder the meal and notice more and more oddities about my surroundings, such as a Christmas-tree looking aloe plant included--three feet of perfectly placed aloe stems with a bow on top. It was one of those times when you expect you could write a detailed second-by-second recollection of what happened that would somehow manage to be amusing when the 10 minutes that passed seemed like an hour. Those moments included the waiter breezing by which stacks of food and other people's bills, the bartender trying to figure out how to pour saki from one of those large containers, a seemingly non-sushi couple sitting down, knowing the bartender, and asking the difference between the $9 and $15 bottles of saki, as if they were used cars, the sound of a manual calculator going to add up orders, a sushi chef paging through a magazine, and the bustle of 3 people looking at my bill as if to figure the whole thing out--geez it was only $20!

The Shack

Yes, I've been here before, but this time I had company which made it more entertaining. This place really has the feel of a shack. There always seem to be kids running around and scratching up the pool tables. I've never been there for a Philadelphia game, but I'm sure this is THE place to be in L.A. to see the Eagles.

Reasonably priced beer is paired with a decent menu. I was stuck between a Philly Cheese Steak (come on!) and a turkey sandwich--available with smoked gouda and mayo and tomato and on sourdough bread. I was a little disappointed that the cheese was not all nice and melted, but the sandwich was soft and flavorful anyway.

Great place for an after-beach snack. They also have an outdoor patio in the back--overlooking the parking lot, but hey, outdoor seating (especially offstreet) is kind of difficult to find in L.A.

Mio Babbo's

A nice little mom and pop shop on Gayley in Westwood Village, this Italian restaurant made way for our 16-person L.A. Link Up group. The dinner was awkward, but hey, very few people knew each other. I had the mixed blessing of sitting across from both the strangest and cutest guys at the table. Lucky for me they were two different people. Unlucky for me, the cutest appeared to be half attached to an industry chick (OK, she was nice, but talked way too much about movies and tv and scripts and talent and everything else I hate about this damn place), but he was also not too into movies, so you never know what the next link-up event might bring. ;-)

The service was slow, but it was such a large group. Still there were moments when you were like, couldn't you please take our order or bring us our bill like 5 minutes ago? Still, they took special reqests, giving me my shrimp and scallop pasta with linguine instead of penne. The sauce was a little heavy with the spinach flavor (as opposed to the creamy vodka flavor I was expecting) and the scallops were a little dry (ahh!), but the portabello mushrooms were savory enough to make up for all of these downfalls. The caesar salad lacked great croutons and was small, but the dressing was a delight. Complimentary pesto/cheese/pepper on toasted crackers was a nice treat. House wine was good but a little pricey. Fresh roses on the table and in a dish on the bathroom was a rare, luxurious-feeling treat.

All in all, a nice little find for a quiet dinner if you don't run into a big random group like us. I probably could have ordered a little better. The ravioli looked amazing and there was actually enough to make it look like a real meal.

Asuka

You can't get better service than someone staking out a parking spot right in front of the door and feigning a knee injury to keep other would-be parkers away. But then again, this guy did not work for the restaurant, but he make a good choice in picking it.

Asuka is on Westwood, just south of Wilshire. Friendly sushi bar. We had all kinds of different rolls -- spicy tuna with avocado, spicy crunchy albacore, and (my first time) torro with scallions. I had no idea sushi could feel so decadent. Torro (fatty tuna) is like getting that really juicy piece of the filet of a steak, but it's tuna! Ah!

For true sushi, we had Spanish mackerel--another first for me. The seared albacore could not rival that of En or California Roll, but the young yellowtail was phenomenal. Skip the endame here. Choose beer over wine (like anyone else but me drinks wine at a sushi bar anyway). Complimentary oranges for dessert.

The lowdown: Good place to try some different, yet authentic feeling dishes without breaking the bank.