Small Bites: Rockwell, VT kicks off weekend brunch, Street gives away $20 gift cards

'Tis the season to give: Business must be booming at Street because between now and Dec. 23, every time your bill totals at least $50, you'll get a gift card for $20. That should keep you rolling in Kaya toast and Turkish doughnuts. 742 N. Highland Ave., L.A. (323) 203-0500, www.eatatstreet.com.

Weekend brunch and daily drink specials: Starting this Saturday, Rockwell, VT in Los Feliz is offering weekend brunch (10 a.m.-3 p.m.) featuring steak and eggs, lemon ricotta pancakes and lunch fare like Kobe beef burgers. They turn up the volume on Sundays with 10 Bloody Mary concoctions and a DJ. All that should help you recover from the weekly drink specials Rockwell also just rolled out: Margarita Madness Mondays, with specialty margaritas for $7; Ladies Night Tuesdays, with 10 different Cosmopolitans for $7 each; $7 martinis and mojitos on Wednesdays; and caviar Fridays featuring a complimentary caviar bar and an array of specialty vodkas and champagnes. 1714 N. Vermont Ave., L.A. (323) 669-1550, www.rockwellvt.com.

-- Elina Shatkin

Photo: Turkish doughnuts simmered in cardamom rose syrup at Street. Credit: Stefano Paltera / For The Times.

Audrey Saunders on the Tar Pit: cocktail flights, housemade sodas, Sunday brunch (served all day because Saturday nights can be long)

Now that New York bartender extraordinaire Audrey Saunders of Pegu Club has teamed with Mark Peel and Jay Perrin of Campanile to open the Tar Pit, what's in store? Cocktail flights, food-and-drink pairings, Sunday brunch, housemade sodas and more.

And if you thought the name Tar Pit made it sound, well, dumpy, there's a reason (besides the reference to the La Brea Tar Pits).

"We drew inspiration from the old black-and- white movie 'My Man Godfrey,'" said Saunders. "William Powell is homeless and living on the city dump. He goes to work for Carole Lombard’s crazy family as the butler, rebuilds his fortune, then returns to the city dump to open the Dump -- a nightclub. When someone enters the Tar Pit for the first time, they'll be able to connect the irony in what the name represents, as opposed to the actual feel of the space." This place is no pit.

"The beverage program is neoclassical and tips its hat to the 1940s Hollywood bar scene," she  said. "It will encompass everything from old classics to new creations. We will also be developing an in-house carbonation program for housemade sodas." 

Cocktail flights also will be offered, in which you pick any three drinks from the cocktail menu and create your own flight (each is half the volume of a standard drink).

And get this:

Small Bites: A mixology mix-off at Comme Ca; LeSpa's happy hour; Cameo Bar's new deals

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

Small Bites: Chocolate dim sum at the Peninsula; choucroute garnie at Bistro LQ; bartenders from New Orleans' Cure at the Edison's Radio Room

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.

Raising a glass to Brazil's national cocktail, the caipirinha

Now that Brazil is slated to become the first South American country to host the Olympics, maybe Americans will pay more attention to one of its finest exports: cachaça. Made from fermented sugar cane juice, the clear, fiery liquor puts the defining kick in Brazil's national cocktail, the caipirinha.

Made with cachaça, muddled lime and sugar, a caipirinha is a profoundly simple beverage that perfectly captures the restless, vibrant spirit of the nation that loves it. Unfortunately, though, we don't seem to have much of an appreciation for it in the States.

"I'm still amazed how challenging it is for people to say caipirinha and cachaça," says Steve Luttmann, the founder of Leblon Cachaça, one of the new boutique brands that have been making inroads in the U.S. in recent years. (Don't be one of those people. Say kye-peer-EEN-yah and ka-SHAH-sa.) Luttmann cites a study by BuzzBack Market Research in New York indicating that awareness in the U.S. of the caipirinha among cocktail drinkers is 30%, compared with 85% for the mojito, the caipirinha's closest cousin.

As someone who quit her job and moved to Rio de Janeiro for a month because she loved caipirinhas so much (OK, I also loved the beach, the music and the churrascarias), I am here to say: You're missing out, America.

To read the rest of Jessica Gelt's story, click here.

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Photo: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

Jones Hollywood, 'a cross between the Rainbow and Dan Tana's,' celebrates 15 years

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

Chef Remi Lauvand revamps menu at Cafe Pierre in Manhattan Beach

Chef Remi Lauvand (Citrus at Social, Miró, Sevilla, Montrachet), who popped into Breadbar last month as part of the Hatchi Guest Chef series, recently overhauled the menu at Cafe Pierre. Longtime friends Lauvand and Guy Gabriele (Zazou), Cafe Pierre's founder and owner, have worked together before, most notably when Lauvand tweaked a few items on the menu for the restaurant's 30th anniversary.

This time around, Lauvand is executive chef, and he's made major changes. He's trimmed Cafe Pierre's long menu to retain only a handful of dishes and made several additions including house-made jars of foie parfait, duck rillette, pig trotters, head cheese and bavette cuts of beef tartare. The menu also features a nightly three-course, prixe fixe market-driven dinner for $35.

On the libations side, Gabriele has hired Tristan Price, who previously poured at Pastis, Milk & Honey and Balthazar in New York, to revamp the cocktail menu and serve as head bartender. Price's custom cocktails include the French Pearl (Plymouth gin, pernod, simple syrup, lime juice and fresh mint) and the Badminton Cup (Gordon's gin, lime juice, simple syrup, fresh mint and cucumber), among others.

Gabriele and Lauvand are already scouting locations for a joint restaurant, possibly in Pasadena but potentially anywhere in the greater L.A. area.

--Elina Shatkin

Photo: Remi Lauvand / Fran Collin

Fight for your right to drink cachaca -- last-minute notice

If you're a fan of the delightful Brazilian drink known as the caipirinha (muddled lime, sugar and cachaca -- the national spirit of Brazil), then get yourself down to Asia de Cuba at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood by 4 p.m. There you'll find a bunch of fanatical cachaca drinkers who, at the behest of Leblon-brand cachaca, will be marching to "legalize cachaca."

Keep in mind that this is a bit hyperbolic; cachaca is definitely legal in the States. (I for one drink it openly, and all the time, at restaurants and at home. I may even be drinking it here at my desk right now. Shhhh.) It's just that for some crazy reason the U.S. is the only country in the world -- claims Leblon -- that requires cachaca to be categorized as "Brazilian rum." They argue that like tequila, Champagne and cognac, cachaca possesses its very own character, culture and historical significance.

I second that emotion. If you've ever had a sip of cachaca, you know what I mean. It's definitely not rum. But since it's distilled from fermented sugar cane, it gets the rum rap. Its flavor, however, is wildly different. If you buried a shot glass covered in cheesecloth under a field of sugar cane and let rainwater filter through the earth into your glass and then magically turned the liquid you captured into a fiery liquor, you'd come close to knowing what cachaca tastes like. Or you could just buy a bottle at your local house of spirits.

The march to "legalize" cachaca begins today at 4 p.m. at 8440 W. Sunset Blvd., at the Mondrian.

-- Jessica Gelt

Illustration: Sarah Cline / For The Times

25 delicious deals

There are deals, and then there are delicious deals. But at a time when restaurants' offers of "buy one get one free" and "half-price on Wednesdays" are as commonplace as tuna tartare or beet salad, sometimes it’s tricky to distinguish the two.

This is definitely an eater’s market — but just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean it’s a bargain. If a $5 cocktail isn’t well-crafted, or an appetizer that costs less than a cup of coffee fails to excite your palate, then it’s not a delicious deal.

So, wading through the low-price hype, L.A. Times Food section writers found 25 of the best values around, including $1 specials at a favorite San Gabriel Valley noodle house, a 10-course Indian thali feast, a $14.95 lobster dinner with a million-dollar view, the happiest happy hour and our top spots for all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue. Check it out:

Photo: At the Beachcomber in Malibu, the $14.95 lobster dinner special is too good to pass up, especially since they throw in the million-dollar view for free. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

 

The Enabler: Tony's bar and the tale of the mighty Manhattan

Bar designer Ricki Kline, a Vietnamese general and Miss Senior America walk into a bar. Or rather, Kline walks into a bar — Tony’s, his 3-month-old Cedd Moses collaboration in downtown’s warehouse district — effusive about the story of how he had recently met both of the latter at a party.

“It was in deep Orange County,” he said, and his drinking companion nodded knowingly. Kline pulled out his digital camera to show off a giddy picture of himself with Miss Senior America, a silver fox if the Enabler ever saw one.

The Tuesday night scene was surreal in that distinct L.A. way in which various strains of humdrum collide into something majestically weird. But it befits Tony’s, which is surely the only nightspot serving quarter-cask Laphroaig Scotch within earshot of the Amtrak lines running along a desolate stretch of the L.A. River. Tony’s is a far-flung province of Moses’ downtown archipelago — the walk from the historic core quickly turns from noirish to genuinely spooky, and except for nearby American Apparel employees and the Downtown Rehearsal rabble, it’s a lonely hike.

But as anyone who’s fought through packs of handsy USC bros at the Golden Gopher lately can attest, its remoteness could be an asset. It also might be Moses’ best bar yet. A barely-lighted Chandlerian fever dream of unpronounceable whiskeys and wood trim, Tony’s renders the recent spate of hyper-male bars as pimply, furtive teenagers by comparison. This may be in large part due to bartender Skyler Reeves. With his close-cropped black hair, 10 o’clock shadow and jungle-cat muscular form, he cuts a visage that could melt the rocks in your bourbon. He knows his whiskey and Scotch lexicon, and can recommend something “peaty and earthy” or “sweet with a quick finish” faster than you can say “Um, both please, if you’re serving them.”