4 Events: Ray's and Stark, Chaya, Golden Road Brewing, Papilles

Birthday party: On March 5, Ray's and Stark Bar at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is celebrating its first year with a party. Executive chef Kris Morningstar has devised a menu featuring the best dishes of the year, such as chile with chorizo, dates, local goat cheese and almond sauce; squid ink pasta with garlic, chile, mint, opal basil and bottarga; and crispy pork belly with black vinegar sauce.   Sommelier-barsmith Paul Sanguinetti and general manager Martin Riese will DJ throughout the evening and guests will be able to participate in free screen printing on the patio. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 857-6180, www.raysandstarkbar.com.

Good things come in threes: To commemorate Chaya Downtown's third birthday, the restaurant is featuring a three-course prix-fixe menu ($33 per person) and $3 happy hour specials during March.  The menu will consist of roasted heirloom beets with baked cana de cabra cheese, arugula, fennel and balsamic must, grilled Wagyu flank steak and sweet potato frites, with Belgian chocolate fondant with raspberry coulis and mascarpone ice cream for dessert. For happy hour, guests can savor bar bites such as the spicy tuna hand roll, buttermilk-poached chicken skewers with soy glaze and seven spices, and a flat bread of the day with a chef’s choice of marinara, olives, asiago and arugula.  On March 16, the official anniversary date, Chaya Downtown will host a “Flights and Bites” wine tasting with Chateau Ste. Michelle for $33 per person. 525 S. Flower St., Los Angeles, (213) 236-9577, www.thechaya.com.

Beer for benefit: Golden Road Brewing is teaming up with the Whole Planet Foundation to raise money for the organization by hosting a beer festival on March 11.  Attendees will be able to sample the brewery's signature beers, including the Point the Way IPA, Golden Road Hefeweizen, Either Side of the Hill (strong ale) and Get Up Offa That Brown.  Food will be provided by Whole Foods Market and local vendors.  The foundation is dedicated to alleviating poverty in the developing world by providing families with the tools to expand their home businesses.  Tickets for this event are $20 per person and can be purchased online. 5410 W. San Fernando Road, Los Angeles, (213) 373-4677, www.eventbrite.com, www.goldenroad.la.

"Off the Clock" wine tasting: On Sunday, wine aficionado Santos Uy will be highlighting five wines along with a myriad of sweet and savory bites from his new restaurant, Papilles, at local wine shop Domaine LA.  The featured wines will include a 2010 Batic Pinela and 2000 Lopez de Heredia Rosado. The tasting is capped at 25 guests, with tickets ($15 per person) available for purchase online.  6801 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 932-0280, www.domaine547.com.

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Photo: Chaya Downtown. Credit: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

Handsome Coffee is open downtown

Handsome Coffee, the roastery and cafe, opened Saturday morning in downtown's Arts District in an airy former print shop converted by owners Michael Phillips, Tyler Wells and Chris Owens. The streamlined menu includes espresso or espresso with milk in 3, 5 or 10 ounces (they've skipped the Italian nomenclature, but think macchiato, cappuccino and latte, respectively). There's also brewed coffee, pastries from Proof Bakery in Atwater Village and plenty of seating. (Take note: There's no sugar for your coffee here, and Handsome doesn't serve decaf.) 

582 Mateo St., Los Angeles, (323) 606-3593, www.handsomecoffee.com. 

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When is a shrub not a bush? Hint: when you can drink it

I had never heard of shrub until my friend Patsy brought me a bottle of raspberry shrub she’d made from an old family recipe. It seems to be a New England thing, dating from colonial times, made from an extravagant amount of raspberries cooked with sugar and when cool, dosed with vinegar. A gorgeous raspberry red, it made a wonderful drink with a little gin and sparkling water. I even poured a little of the vinegary sweet-tart syrup over ice cream. Patsy tells me she likes it on blintzes and in her yogurt.

I just came across the sweetened vinegar-based drink again -- at Bäco Mercat -- where chef/owner Josef Centeno makes his own shrubs aka "drinking vinegars." They’re used for his alternative to Coca-Cola, namely “sweet and sour soda.” And also cocktails made with a variety of spirits. Centeno creates his shrubs with whatever’s in season — Meyer lemon, red grape, black mint, etc. He’s even made a chile-lime vinegar for their version of the margarita.

 As customers get into the idea of drinking vinegar, he’ll sometimes give them a small bottle of, say, tangerine drinking vinegar, enough to make two sodas. Those sweet little bottles are not for sale yet, but maybe soon.  

Blue Cow opens in downtown Monday

Blue Cow opens its doors Monday in downtown Los Angeles. The restaurant is a partnership between Mario Del Pero and Ellen Chen of Mendocino Farms, which pays homage to the sandwich. They envision the shop to be a good neighborhood restaurant: "We are doing creative sandwiches for people who appreciate that," Del Pero said. The restaurant will serve lunch, dinner and cocktails.

Chef Joshua Smith, together with corporate executive chef Judy Han and the owners, have devised a  menu with dishes that they classify as "new American." Diners will find the classic chicken sandwich reinterpreted as the Spanish chicken tartine with piquillo peppers, romesco and aged Manchego cheese. The tandoori turkey club is the next generation of the turkey club made with Indian spiced char-grilled turkey breast, housemade naan and candied jalapenos. Other menu highlights include the roots and berries salad with shaved beets, roasted carrots, cranberries and wheatberries; housemade sausages (turkey and lamb) in a buttermilk roll; and ploughman's platter made with a selection of sausages, deviled eggs, pimento cheese toast and more.

In addition to an extensive menu, Blue Cow has a full service bar featuring specialty cocktails, housemade sodas, and a "hopefully intriguing beer list." The cocktails have quirky names like "Jack and Coke's cousin on his dad's side" consisting of housemade winter cola and Old Forrester whiskey or the "gin and tonic experiment" made with orange, cucumber, black peppercorn and red pepper. The bar also has a praline-infused "old-fashioned" on tap.

350 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 621-2249, www.bluecowkitchen.com.

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Excalibur restaurant jousts for downtown's ren-faire crowd

Have you ever been to Medieval Times in Buena Park and thought, "Wow, I really enjoy gnawing on this roast chicken thigh, but the weird, bearded actors in this jousting show are giving me the creeps"?

Me neither. But if you have, a restaurant has opened in downtown Los Angeles that you might really enjoy. It's called Excalibur Medieval Restaurant and it features the kind of Renaissance Faire vibe that you either participated in or cringed at when you were in high school and walked past your local public park on a sunny Saturday. The kind of knights-in-bad-velvet role playing featured to great comic effect in the fabulous Paul Rudd comedy "Role Models."

I must admit that I thought theme restaurants went out of style with the garlicky calcification of the Stinking Rose on La Cienega. But then when I was in Las Vegas over the weekend, I realized that a Heart Attack Grill had opened on Fremont Street downtown. I peered through the front windows with glazed bug eyes at the overweight people dressed in hospital gowns, and watched a lanky blond in a hot nurse's uniform paddle a man before he sat down to his 8,000-calorie quadruple-bypass burger.

Having stared into that lardy theme-restaurant abyss, it didn't much surprise me to read about Excalibur, which provides in-house costumes to its guests, who can then tuck into family-style meals of whole chickens with livers wrapped in bacon; sausages; ribs; roast pork and smoked pork leg.

Apparently the place is a spin-off of a restaurant first founded in Transylvania in 2006. Dracula must be rolling over in his coffin. I, however, am dusting off my goblet. OK, just kidding! But, it would be kind of funny to go, right? Or maybe just depressing.

Excalibur, 1248 S. Figueroa St., #101, Los Angeles; (213) 749-7751; www.excaliburrestaurant.com. 

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Photo: Danny (Paul Rudd), left, and Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) fight to the death with fellow medieval role players in "Role Models." Credit: Sam Urdank

Drinking (and making) Scotch on Robert Burns Day

Celebrate the birthday of Scotland's favorite son  Wednesday, also known as Burns Day, after the 18th century Romantic poet Robert Burns. Known for his lilting lyricism, storied love affairs and fondness for haggis, Burns also enjoyed a good glass of Scotch. To pay tribute, downtown whiskey bar Seven Grand is offering a special concoction that day called the Bobby Burns. A perfectly metered mix of Scotch, sweet vermouth and Benedictine, this cocktail will have you singing "Auld Lang Syne" in no time. (The recipe is after the jump.)

The Scotch used in the Bobby Burns is the Glenrothes Select Reserve, a distillery that claims Ronnie Cox as its director -- a man so charming in his aristocratic yet buttoned-down appreciation of Scotch that you actually believe he must drink it every day by a fire in a vine-covered Scottish country home with a Scottish terrier dressed in a tartan by his leather-slipper-clad feet.

Click on the video linked here to watch Cox explain the rules for a competition the Glenrothes is currently holding to choose four U.S. winners to fly to Scotland to help create the newest Glenrothes vintage. Hint: It will require that you write about what Cox debonairly refers to as a "vintage moment," the perfect combination of time, place and people where everything comes together to remain in the memory forever.

Cox has a vintage moment every night after dinner. Of that I am sure.

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Photo: Robert Burns clearly in the midst of a vintage moment. Credit: LAT file photo

Royal Clayton's Pub to reopen in downtown LA

Royal Clayton’s, a favorite downtown watering hole that served chilled pints and traditional fish and chips, just reached a deal to reopen at the Spring Arcade Building at 6th and Spring streets.

The pub closed its doors in 2010 after being open for four years in the Arts District.  The new Royal Clayton’s will be replacing an electronics store on the Spring Street side of the space.  According to co-owner Tony Gower in the Los Angeles Downtown News, the company is hoping to reopen the pub by the end of the year although the official timeline is still undecided. 

The owners would like the new Royal Clayton's to be as close as possible to the original.  However, if the city permits, they would like to add outdoor seating.

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Water Grill due to reopen after a month of renovations

Water Grill, the seminal downtown L.A. seafood restaurant that opened in 1991 and blazed a trail on Grand Avenue long before the current nouveau restaurant-and-bar invasion, closed down in mid-December in order to renovate its dining room and kitchen. It will reopen in the next few weeks with an entirely new look and a fresh, updated menu.

I stopped by for a hard-hat tour on Thursday and was amazed by what I saw. There's little doubt that the restaurant will remain a fine-dining destination, but the place has been updated to allow for a certain casual breeziness. An original wood ceiling was uncovered; old murals were repainted (some were removed); the bar has been moved to a dominant spot in the middle of the room, surrounded by raised booths and augmented with a sleek new raw bar; and the kitchen has been opened up, creating a welcoming flow throughout the space. Lobster tanks are now visible to the dining room and casual bar bites like classic fish and chips have been added to the menu.

It's still very much a work in progress, but the construction has moved at a breakneck pace and Water Grill should be ready to dive back into business in about two weeks. 

Water Grill, 544 S. Grand Ave., L.A. (213) 891-0900; www.watergrill.com.

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Photo: The new open kitchen at Water Grill. Credit: Jessica Gelt

Celebrate the Year of the Dragon with onigiri

Get into the firey spirit of the Year of the Dragon with a mochi-pounding demonstration and an onigiri contest at the Japanese American National Museum on Sunday. It's all part of a day-long festival called the Oshogatsu Family Festival, which also includes plenty of arts and crafts, entertainment and cultural activities.

From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. you and yours can learn how to make onigiri rice balls and enter the contest, which is sponsored by Common Grains, an organization that celebrates japanese culture and food through grain education.

Here's how it works: Participants will be given a cup of cooked rice to make a tasty onigiri in 10 minutes or less (after you've been taught how to do it with style, of course). Everything you need for the contest will be given to you, so no smuggling in some magic ingredient.

When you finish, Los Angeles Times Food editor Russ Parsons, joined by judges including food blogger Lynn Chen and Sunny Blue shop owner Keiko Nakashima, will judge the results. Six winners will be crowned victorious in both children's and adult categories, and prizes will be awarded accordingly.

Also on the menu of the day's events are artisanal rice and soba workshops, a rice exhibition, a soba restaurant event, and at 2:30 and 4 p.m. a traditional rice cake pounding ceremony (called Mochitsuki) demonstration and performance by Kodama Taiko.

Sunday, January 8, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free. For more information go to: www.janm.org/events.

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Photo: Salmon onigiri. Credit: Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times

Handsome Coffee to open flagship in February

Handsome Coffee, the downtown L.A. coffee roaster headed by Michael Phillips, Tyler Wells and Chris Owens, announces plans to open its flagship coffee bar in February. The three are converting an Arts District warehouse that once housed a print shop into a roastery and coffee bar serving a streamlined menu of espresso and brewed coffee along with pastries from Proof Bakery of Atwater Village.

The space was designed by architect Kari Richardson of Venice and WoodSmithe of Los Angeles, featuring maple cabinetry, subway and laser-etched wood tiles, and copper accents. There will be individual seating and a community table. 

The coffee bar will be partitioned by glass walls to reveal the roastery and wholesale business. "It was always my plan to have the roasting a show piece. Handsome is all about removing barriers between us and the customer,” said Handsome’s master roaster Owens in a release. “We want to invite them in … to see our process, our craft…. This is our Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory."  

Handsome Coffee’s expected hours are 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.

582 Mateo Ave., Los Angeles, www.handsomecoffee.com. 

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Photo: The "before" at Handsome Coffee's warehouse; see updates at twitter.com/handsomeroaster. Credit: handsomecoffee.com.