When you've had your fill of turkey and family, here's what you can do on Thanksgiving weekend.
And if you conveniently missed your holiday dinner with relatives, many clubs and bars are offering a special holiday menu.
Umami Burger owner Adam Fleischman confirms that the third outpost of his savory Japanese burger joint, this one called Umami Urban, will open Friday at Space 15 Twenty (which is also home to an Urban Outfitters store) in Hollywood. There will be an attached full bar called Chu-Hi, which will specialize in Japanese cocktails.
Considering that it's half a block north of Sunset Boulevard and right across from Amoeba Music and the ArcLight, it's a safe bet the restaurant will make for many a happy hipster.
Umami Urban is large, featuring 70 seats both indoors and out. The menu will feature classic Umami burgers, sandwiches and daily specials. The venue is also equipped with a space for private parties, movie screenings, art exhibits and concerts with Umami food and drink on offer. (If you're familiar with the space, there is a courtyard where bands occasionally play.) For availability, contact info@umamiburger.com.
Eat your heart out, Hollywood.
Umami Urban, 1520 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Los Angeles. (323) 469-3100.
-- Jessica Gelt
Photo: An Umami burger and hand-cut fries. Credit: Ringo H.W. Chiu / For The Times
Shaken and stirred: Join some of the city's best bartenders for a spirited (pun intended, thank you) mix-off featuring three rounds of competition: best classic, freestyle and homemade cocktail (an established cocktail chosen by the bartender and made using the ingredients given). This is the second installment of the Raising the Bar event that started last month at Joe's in Venice. Mixologists from Joe's, Comme Ca, Church & State and Boa will compete using Elijah Craig bourbon, and four judges will choose the winner (who has to settle for the prize of "bragging rights"). Comme Ca's menu will be on offer during the event, which runs from 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday. 8479 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, (323) 782-1104, www.commecarestaurant.com.
The happiest massage ever: Thanks to LeSpa at the Sofitel Hotel, there is finally a fitting option for those of us who like to mix our relaxing massage with our relaxing after-work drink and nibble. Today the spa introduces its first happy hour, featuring bites from Simon L.A., a spa sampler menu (which offers 15-minute treatments for $15), and 30% off everything on the spa menu. This means deep-tissue massage, facials, detoxifying body scrubs and something called "liquid pearl bath service," which I am about to make a reservation for based on the name alone. Happy hour lasts from 5 to 9 p.m. 8555 Beverly Blvd., L.A. (310) 228-6777, www.lespala.com.
At the end of a dreary day: More happiness for you, thanks to the Cameo Bar at the Viceroy Hotel, which just announced a new happy hour called "5 to 9." It features $5-to-$9 specials from, yes, 5 to 9 p.m. On Thursday nights, the whole 5-to-9 premise flies out the window as the bar offers specials from 5 p.m. to close. Menu offerings include Key lime martinis, shrimp tempura with chile mayonnaise and citrus soy sauce, and beef sliders with cheddar cheese and tomato jam. 1819 Ocean Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 260-7500, www.viceroysantamonica.com.
-- Jessica Gelt
Photo: The making of a classic gin martini at Comme Ca. Credit: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times
Dim sum for dessert:The Peninsula Beverly Hills puts a spin on a tribute to its Hong Kong roots with chocolate dim sum -- yes, chocolate. The dessert dumplings, created by executive chef James Overbaugh and executive pastry chef Miguel Torres, are being offered in the hotel's Club Bar and the Living Room (where resident pianist Antonio Castillo de la Gala performs, 7:30 p.m. to midnight Tuesdays to Thursdays and from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays). The warm, crisp, sweet dumplings are filled with either dark or white chocolate and citrus cream cheese. They're dusted with powdered sugar and served with three dipping sauces -- passion fruit, orange-raspberry and ginger-caramel -- and green tea ice cream. 9882 S. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 975-2736, www.peninsula.com.
Sausages-n-sauerkraut: Nothing says "Alsace!" like a platter of choucroute garnie. Bistro LQ chef-owner Laurent Quenioux will be serving the traditional French-German dish on Nov. 24 and 25. His includes sauerkraut poached in Riesling, jambonneau (cured pork knuckle), Morteau sausage, apple wood smoked bacon, pork shoulder, ham hocks, boudin blanc, Strasbourg sausage (wieners), blood sausage and steamed potatoes. The three-course menu also includes herring with quail egg as a first course and dessert and mignardises. $40 per person. 8009 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 951-1088, www.bistrolq.com.
The last Radio Room of 2009: Tonight's Radio Room at the Edison downtown features guest bartenders from New Orleans' Cure, which owner Neal Bodenheimer opened this year, hiring a crack team of bartenders, including Richard Gomez, Kirk Estopinal and Danny Valdez. Gomez, Estopinal and Valdez will be "behind the stick" tonight at the Radio Room, the last one for this year, along with Plymouth gin brand ambassador Simon Ford (expect plenty of gin cocktails). Tickets for the 8 p.m. event are $10; proceeds will benefit the Los Angeles chapter of the U.S. Bartenders Guild, the Sporting Life and the Museum of the American Cocktail. 108 W. 2nd St., Los Angeles, (213) 613-0000, www.edisondowntown.com.
-- Betty Hallock
Photo: chocolate dim sum. Credit: Peninsula Beverly Hills.
-- How to open a bottle of wine in France: For those times when you've been up all night, you're drunk and all you want to do is drink another bottle of wine, but you're in the street, you have no corkscrew and the stores aren't open yet. Happens all the time. YouTube-- Elina Shatkin
-- Speaking of which ... 7-Eleven's making its own wine. Oh, thank heavens. Dallas Observer
-- Hotel and nightclub impresario Sam Nazarian slams into ugly financial reality. Could this be part of the reason behind SBE's recent split with Brent Bolthouse? Wall Street Journal
-- Auntie Em's tops list for best cupcake shop; Sprinkles left out. LAist
-- A $47,000 lunch tab from Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. Buzzfeed
-- In the ongoing Tavern on the Green saga, the venue hosted the Halloween party from hell, say booted patrons. New York Daily News
-- BBC's "MasterChef" cooks critically endangered eel. Oops. The Telegraph
-- It's cloudy with a chance of record-setting meatballs in New Hampshire. Yahoo! News
-- Tasting ecstasy and agony at Le Cordon Bleu in Ottawa. New York Times
-- 70 cases of brat pizzas stolen from Wisconsin company. Sheboygan Press
-- A preview of the apocalypse: Boston Markets will all run dry. Consumerist
The 'Bu seems an unlikely spot for a new branch of Cafe Habana -- a New York-based mini-chain of hip Cuban cafes located in Manhattan's Nolita and Brooklyn's Fort Greene. But the way partner and bar impresario Rande Gerber (Whiskey Blue, Stone Rose) sees it, he and his family -- including wife Cindy Crawford -- needed a place to eat besides Giorgio Baldi.
"I live in Malibu and have always wanted to open a restaurant here in the neighborhood for my friends and family," says Gerber. "Something casual, family-friendly, a place you can go on a date, or with the kids at 6 o'clock, or for a late-night meal.
"I think there are a few good restaurants in Malibu, very few. You can have a great Italian meal, there are a few places for sushi, but no place you'd really want to go more than once a week."
So Gerber approached Cafe Habana owner Sean Meenan, who says he jumped at the opportunity. "Rande had been to the restaurant and dug it, and he found the space," Meenan says. "There had been a few other offers, I'd been thinking about the Country Mart in Brentwood. I wasn't in the right mindset. But I'm so excited to be opening up in Malibu." The Malibu Cafe Habana, at the Malibu Lumber Yard shopping center, is set to open "at the very beginning of the year," he says.
Meenan has a place in Venice and calls the drive from Venice to Malibu "one of the best drives in the whole world, especially for a New York guy; it's like 'Wow, this is God's country.' " Expect a Venice Cafe Habana to follow.
-- Betty Hallock
Photo credit: Cafe Habana
Jones Hollywood, the bar at Santa Monica Boulevard and Formosa Street where you've probably spent at least a few (or maybe hundreds of) blurry nights, celebrates its 15th anniversary today.
From noon to 2 a.m., Jack Daniels, Herradura and Finlandia cocktails are $5; select beers and wines by the glass are $2 and $4, respectively; and 15 menu items such as pepperoni pizza and spaghetti and meatballs are $5.
Jones opened when owner Sean MacPherson was still operating the erstwhile Olive and "was kind of meant to be a cross between the Rainbow and Dan Tana's," he says. "Kind of a rock 'n' roll pizza joint, sort of an homage to 'real Hollywood,' not the movie star Hollywood but people living in Hollywood and living that rock 'n' roll life."
There are the black-and-white photos from the '70s and '80s collected by MacPherson (such as Janis Joplin drinking JD), the not-a-bad-seat-in-the-house booths, the big sound system, the quasi-Italian food (the current menu was created by John DeLucie of the Waverly Inn).
The key to its long-lived success? "It's a comfortable place, a fun place, a lively place," says MacPherson, who also is behind Small's, Swingers, Good Luck Bar, Bar Marmont, El Carmen, Bar Lubitsch and the Roger Room. (An aside: MacPherson now has plans to take over Orso restaurant on 3rd Street. "The running name is Ortho, in homage to nearby Cedars-Sinai, but it probably won't be that," he says. "I hope it will have exceedingly good food and be somewhere I'd like to eat most nights when I'm in L.A. I don't have that right now.")
Jones "very much caters to the community, is really a part of Hollywood [in a larger sense because it's actually in the city of West Hollywood] ... It was designed to last. Fundamentally, it's the same place it was when it opened."
Jones Hollywood, 7205 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 850-1726.
-- Betty Hallock
Photo: Jones Hollywood
On Saturday afternoon in Newport Beach, if you're so inclined, you'll have the perfect excuse to get dead drunk. Go ahead, stagger from bar to bar, moaning and drooling on yourself. Tear at your clothes and scream "braiiiins" if you feel like it. No one will stop you.
That's because it will be Zombie Pub Crawl day, the one day of the year that you can act like a hopeless drunk without actually being one.
Organized by the website localhipster.com (which devotes itself to the noble pursuit of curating and highlighting happy-hour specials in Orange County), the inaugural Zombie Pub Crawl represents some definite Halloween event-planning synergy. Zombies are very much en vogue this season, and alcohol never goes out of style.
Better yet, though, the parallels between a zombie and a besotted human are uncanny: a lack of motor function; an insatiable appetite; a tendency to groan indecipherably; a sallow, jaundiced appearance; disheveled clothing marked by stains of an unknown provenance; bad breath; and a generally uncouth countenance are just the beginning.
To read the rest of Jessica Gelt's story, click here.
Photo: Headed to the bar. Participants in a Zombie Pub Crawl in Minneapolis. Credit: Amy B. Nelson Mingo.
There comes a point in every forward-thinking person's life when it's time to stop worrying about the party and start eating. That's what happened to nightlife impresario David Judaken when he decided to open East Restaurant & Lounge instead of adding another nightclub to his impressive list of Hollywood properties (MyHouse, Opera/Crimson and Mood).
"I've evolved," says Judaken, 39, with cool confidence. "Nightclubs are dysfunctional for me, I no longer hang out in my own facilities. Restaurants will be my focus from here on out."
If Judaken stays true to his word, that could be a good thing for the dining public. East, a sophisticated Asian- inspired retreat in the heart of Hollywood, was built with the same razzle-dazzle sensibility of a club but without the prowling-for-a-hookup scent of desperation.
Designed by Dodd Mitchell (Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Teddy's, Thompson Beverly Hills Hotel), East is an exercise in texture and shadow. A cross between a Tibetan monastery and the Bat Cave, it features sloping walls of white faux-stone; leafy trees beneath a peaked 65-foot industrial skylight; flickering 4-foot cream-colored candles suspended from the ceiling and recessed booths sheltered by stalactite-like drippings.
To read the rest of Jessica Gelt's story, click here.
Photo: Fresh scallops on a half-shell, with a lemon grass sambal, wasabi creme fraiche, shiso dust and cilantro served at East Restaurant & Lounge. Credit: Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times.
Wine and women: File this under weird: Pourtal Wine Tasting Bar has teamed up with Playboy.com nightlife columnist Dan Dunn (fondly referred to as "the Imbiber") to present a navel, I mean novel, wine-tasting tour called "the Imbiber's Ultimate Playmate Fantasy Wine Tour." The tour (which feels more tacky than sexy to me, but who am I to judge? I have very little testosterone.) features eight wines picked because they prompted Dunn to dream of a particular Playmate when the glass touched his lips. A 2006 Plumpjack Cabernet Sauvignon? Marilyn Monroe, of course. Jenny McCarthy? Only a 2006 Maverick from Four Vines will do. The list goes on, but you get the idea. And maybe it is just good clean fun, but having been in the Playboy Mansion grotto at least twice in my life, I seriously doubt it. The program debuted Tuesday and lasts through the end of the month. Pourtal Wine Tasting Bar, 104 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica. (310) 393-7693. www.pourtal.com.
Flight Club: The first rule of Flight Club is, well, stop making bad jokes about Flight Club. Sorry, I can't help it. Rustic Canyon Wine Bar & Seasonal Kitchen just launched a regular Monday night program called Flight Club. On offer: a flight of wines selected from various regions around the world paired with a dish created by chef Evan Funke to complement whatever region the wine hails from. This Monday's Flight Club (I just can't stop writing Flight Club. Flight Club. Argh.) featured Old versus New World Chardonnay paired with apple risotto. Flight Club! Rustic Canyon Wine Bar & Seasonal Kitchen, 1119 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica. 5:30 to 10 p.m. Mondays. (310) 393-7050. www.rusticcanyonwinebar.com.
I've got four on it: The Checkers Hotel downtown is in the process of reinventing itself. It's going for a bit younger, a bit hipper, but still classy. (Funny, that's what I'm going for these days too.) Anyway, every Thursday night through November it's hosting a pairing event called "Four." Here's how it works: The kitchen whips up four special-recipe cocktails and four small plates that complement them, then you chose which pairings you'd like to sample. Try one or try them all. Cocktails go for $4 each and tapas for $4 to $6 each. Checkers Downtown, 535 S. Grand Ave., L.A. 4 to 8 p.m., Thursdays. (213) 624-0000. www.hiltoncheckers.com.
UPDATE: A previous version of this post said reservations are required for the Hilton Checkers pairing event called "Four." In fact, reservations are not required.
-- Jessica Gelt
Photo: Marilyn Monroe on the cover of Playboy. Credit: Chronicle Books
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