Mid-Week InstaNom: Singapore Sling at POT Bar

Here’s your mid-week InstaNom to get you over the hump:

At the newly opened POT Bar at the Line Hotel in Koreatown, chef Roy Choi and mixologist Matt Biancaniello have collaborated to create one bad-ass watering hole. From the gold mylar balloons spelling out “POT BAR” on the ceiling to the uni-infused, nori-flecked tequila cocktail on the menu, everything about POT Bar is bold and playful. Biancaniello’s cocktail program both breathes new life into 80s drinks like the White Russian and Fuzzy Navel and presents patrons with brash flavors like kimchi- and natto-infused soju. During my visit, I wasn’t feeling quite that adventurous, but this fruity Singapore Sling with clove-infused grenadine and colorful flourishes of bitters was just my style.

POT Bar
www.eatatpot.com
The Line Hotel
3515 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90010
(213) 368-3030

Mid-Week InstaNom: Cruller Donut at Plan Check (Fairfax)

Here’s your mid-week InstaNom to get you over the hump:

After chatting about churros and donuts over dinner at Plan Check, my friend and I had sweets on the brain and found dessert looking more and more inevitable. Serendipitously, Plan Check’s Cruller Donut is the perfect hybrid of those two deep-fried delights. The donuts, served in a cast iron bowl, had a crisp, cinnamon sugar exterior with a warm, fluffy interior and were accented by whipped cream and sliced bananas. These delicious, airy donuts were simply meant to be.

Plan Check Fairfax
www.plancheck.com
351 N. Fairfax Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(310) 288-6500

Mid-Week InstaNom: Blondie at Connie and Ted’s

Here’s your mid-week InstaNom to get you over the hump:

At Connie and Ted’s, the East Coast-inspired seafood shack from chef Michael Cimarusti (Providence), it’s easy to fill up on pristinely fresh oysters from the expansive raw bar, lobster rolls overflowing with chunks of plump, snappy meat and mountains of buttery steamed clams. Not saving room for dessert, however, would be a big mistake. Huge. If you did, you’d be missing out on one of the spot’s standout sweets– a rich, moist butterscotch blondie topped with a perfectly round scoop of vanilla ice cream and bathed in a salted caramel sauce. And that, my friends, is worth packing up the rest of your French fries.

Connie and Ted’s
www.connieandteds.com
8171 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(323) 848-CRAB

Mid-Week InstaNom: Pastries at Republique

Here’s your mid-week InstaNom to help you over the hump:

Republique is the hotly anticipated new venture from chef Walter Manzke (Church and State, Petty Cash). The restaurant, sitting in a beautiful space that previously housed Campanile, serves up modern, market-driven bistro fare for dinner (post to come!). Breakfast service isn’t yet fully up and running but, in the mean time, they have a bakery with a mouth-watering selection of pastries. Examples: this Sticky Pecan Bun, Orange Pistachio Strawberry Jam Scone, and Strawberry Corncake that taste as good as they look. This spot is quickly becoming my new favorite restaurant.

Republique

www.republiquela.com

624 S. La Brea Ave.

Los Angeles, CA 90036

(310) 362-6115

Mid-Week InstaNom: Michael Voltaggio’s Monte Cristo Burger for Umami Burger

Here’s your mid-week InstaNom to help you over the hump:

File Michael Voltaggio’s Monte Cristo Burger for Umami Burger under “so wrong, it’s right.” The burger begins with Umami’s signature beef patty, which is topped with prosciutto, smothered with Gruyere fondue and then sandwiched between a custard-soaked, deep-fried bun. A generous dusting of powdered sugar and side of maple syrup top everything off. The gooey mix of sweet and savory totally hit the spot– especially when dipped in the accompanying syrup. I highly recommend splitting this bad boy with a friend (or three) unless your stomach has super strength.

The Monte Cristo burger is available at all Umami locations for a limited time. To ease your conscience about embracing gluttony with reckless abandon, $1 of every burger will be donated to the Los Angeles Mission, which helps homeless men, women and children. 

For locations: www.umami.com

Mid-Week InstaNom: Kuma Snow Cream (Las Vegas)

Here’s your mid-week InstaNom to help get you over the hump:

Kuma Snow Cream in Las Vegas is the brainchild of modern Asian cuisine guru Jet Tila (The Charleston). At the shop, Tila, known for throwing down in the Iron Chef Kitchen Stadium, guiding Anthony Bourdain through Thai Town on No Reservations and serving as the Thai government’s Culinary Ambassador to the US, serves up playful takes on “xue hua bing” or Taiwanese shaved snow. Kuma Snow Cream offers six regular snow cream bases (including mango, green tea and strawberry) plus a rotating menu of special flavors (including Thai tea and milk tea during my visit) to which you can add three toppings and one sauce for free. My Ninja-sized cup of taro snow cream topped with mango mochi, coconut and rainbow sprinkles and capped off with a generous serving of condensed milk was perfectly powdery and creamy, and the flavors of my taro and Justin’s Thai tea snow creams were impressively spot on. I’m not mad at their adorable, tie-wearing spokesbear, either.

Kuma Snow Cream
www.facebook.com/kumasnowcream
3735 Spring Mountain Rd.
Las Vegas, NV 89102
(702) 816-5862

Mid-Week InstaNom: Sweet Rose Creamery Mid-City

Here’s your mid-week InstaNom to help get you over the hump:

“What’s your favorite restaurant in LA?” is a loaded question for me, impossible to answer without factoring in considerations such as type of food, location and price. Answering “what’s your favorite ice cream in LA?,” on the other hand, is simple: Sweet Rose Creamery. With the opening of the shop’s new mid-city location on Beverly Boulevard, getting my fix just became a lot easier.

For the uninitiated, Sweet Rose Creamery makes small batches of artisanal ice cream with organic, fresh and seasonal ingredients. Overachievers in the best, most delicious way, they even make their cones, toppings and sauces from scratch daily. The cheery, old-fashioned shops (their other two locations are in Brentwood and Santa Monica) are owned by Josh Loeb and Zoe Nathan (Rustic Canyon, Huckleberry, Milo and Olive), and its menu of both classic and rotating flavors such as Fresh Mint with Homemade Chocolate Chips and Brown Butter with Lemon Wafers is the brainchild of chef Shiho Yoshikawa.

For my inaugural trip to my neighborhood’s new Sweet Rose, I went with the classic Mint Chip. No artificial green coloring or candy-sweet mint flavoring here– just fresh, natural, homemade goodness. This new location isn’t just game-changing…it’s life-changing…

Sweet Rose Creamery
www.sweetrosecreamery.com/mid-city
7565 Beverly Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Mid-Week InstaNom: Tsukemen at Tsujita Annex

Here’s your mid-week InstaNom to help get you over the hump:

“Let’s go get beef sukiyaki at Tsujita,” said no one ever. Of course, I’m kidding, but it’s not Tsujita’s dinner menu that draws the crowds; it’s their signature tsukemen and ramen served only at lunch. Thankfully, at the spot’s sister location across the street, noodles are served all day. At Tsujita Annex’s counter, tsukemen arrives in a duo of bowls– one with a combination of flat and curly chewy noodles and the other filled with silky, fatty pork broth, bean sprouts, chili sauce, tender char siu and a soft boiled egg. Bring your chopsticks to your lips, and I dip, you dip, we dip!

Tsujita Annex

www.tsujita-la.com/annex

2050 Sawtelle Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA 90025

(310) 231-0222

Mid-Week Insta-Nom: Breakfast Sandwich at Valerie GCM

Here’s your mid-week Insta-Nom to help get you over the hump:

Valerie Confections already has a devoted following for its sweets, but the husband-wife team of Valerie Gordon and Stanweightman Jr. has expanded into the savory realm with Valerie GCM, a coffee shop and lunch counter in the revamped Grand Central Market. In the spot’s Breakfast Sandwich, fluffy eggs flecked with chives, paper-thin jambon, gooey gruyere and sweet onion jam are tucked into perfectly toasted, buttery slices of bread. This sandwich upgraded the standard bacon, egg and cheese but preserved all the messy goodness you want in a breakfast sandwich. 

Valerie GCM

www.facebook.com/ValerieGCM

317 S. Broadway

Los Angeles, CA 90013

(213) 621-2781

Mid-Week InstaNom: Coco Puffs from Liliha Bakery (Honolulu, HI)

Here’s your mid-week Insta-Nom to help get you over the hump:

Simply stated, Liliha Bakery’s coco puffs are like crack. At first glance, the coco puff seems simple; it’s a buttery puff pastry filled with silky, creamy chocolate and topped with a swirl of ever-so-slightly salty chantilly. The result, however, is positively addicting. There’s a reason that Liliha Bakery, a local institution since 1950, sells between 4,800 and 7,200 of these bad boys every day, and I was happy to contribute to that tally over the Christmas holiday. 

Stay tuned for a look at the holidays in Hawaii, full of beaches and ono grinds!

Liliha Bakery

www.lilihabakeryhawaii.com

515 N. Kuakini Street

Honolulu, HI 96817

(808) 531-1651