World of Wayne

Look Up for Good Food [Wayne's Blog]

Wayne — Tue, 22 May 2012 07:39:43 +0000

I love finding what feel like hidden or undiscovered restaurants when I go out to dine. You know, that place that is up a set of stairs, in an alleyway, or looks ramshackle on the outside but is frilly and frou-frou on the inside. These days in Manila, I spend most of my time chasing big-name restaurants that are working hard to open up multiple chains across the city and that serve underwhelming food at classy prices. I mostly expect the same from my restaurants in LA, and even more so from restaurants located inside hotels. Thus, I was really pleasantly surprised by "Second Story" in the boutique Hotel Belamar in Manhattan Beach. I've probably driven past the hotel dozens of times in my life. It's essentially at the corner of PCH and Rosecrans, right across from the Fry's and the Manhattan Beach Mall. I have never noticed it though. Thus it was pretty surprising to find that a restaurant located inside this hotel was rated pretty highly online, just as it was surprising to find such a nice looking little boutique hotel right under my nose all this time. Perhaps a bit uncreatively named, Second Story is located on the second floor of the hotel, right off the lobby. It's split almost evenly in half, with a long bar curving left and behind as you walk in, and the dining room spreading out in front of it. Dim lighting, dark wood, muted colors are married with a subtle retro vibe and the Brady Bunch on screens by the hostess stand. We were seated at the front of the restaurant, with a view of the parking lot. There were a few other tables occupied, some with tourists, others with people who looked to have gotten off work early, but the place was mostly empty, and mostly quiet. Granted, this was a Tuesday night. Even mostly empty though, the menus took a while to arrive, and placing our orders also required some patience. The menu was comprehensive, covering most of the major food bases, but not overwhelming. The alcohol menu was likewise. We arrived at six pm, which gave us access to an incredibly fair happy hour promo which offered a selection of appetizers and entrees as half price. We started with a plate of Sicilian Meatball Sliders. I typically am not a huge fan of sliders, because I feel like food that comes in such a compact package should pack a flavor punch and am often disappointed with how bland sliders end up being. These Meatball Sliders were pretty good though, with a zesty tomato sauce dripping off a tasty meatball on a soft bun. I had the Pork Tenderloin, with coleslaw and blue cheese mashed potatoes as sides. I would have liked the potatoes slightly more moist and slightly less blue-cheesey, but that's just personal preference. The portion sizes generous. We finished off with the Warm Bread Pudding, a delectably rich, gooey, and sweet concoction that went perfectly with the side of vanilla ice cream. Second Story isn't a cheap restaurant by any calculation. Expect to pay at least 25 dollars a piece for a shared three course meal with drinks. Even with happy hour, we ended up paying over 40 dollars for two. Yet, given the entire experience, it's still a no-brainer for a dinner if you're in the area. It's also not so far from LAX, so it makes a perfect venue for a meal before seeing a friend off. If you can get there before happy hour ends at 7pm, all the better - save yourself some money or eat more. Second Story at the Belamar | 2nd Floor, The Belamar Hotel, 3501 N. Sepulveda Boulevard, Manhattan Beach, CA, 90266 | 1.310.750.0312 Apologies again for the quality of the pictures!
Sicilian Meatball Sliders

Pork Tenderloin

Bread Pudding

How now Blue Cow? [Wayne's Blog]

Wayne — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 09:42:37 +0000

I remember thinking that Casa was a really cool spot in the middle of Bunker Hill in Downtown LA when I went last year for dinner with a friend. One of the few places in the neighborhood that was still open and alive, sitting outside in the open air surrounded by Bunker Hill's skyscrapers was an experience I hadn't had before. Unfortunately, I don't remember any of what I ate. It just wasn't very good. However, when faced with the dilemma of taking a visiting friend out for a LA meal in Bunker Hill again, Casa seemed like the only choice (Starry Kitchen, which is a pretty decent restaurant that should be tried, just didn't have the ambiance I thought a visitor would be interested in.) I was surprised to find that Casa had been replaced by Blue Cow Kitchen - a new venture by sandwich makers Mendicino Farms - which promises to bring fresh, local foods to my table. I've always wanted to try Mendicino Farms for lunch, so going to its swankier sibling was a no brainer. The outside patio seating area looks much as it did during Casa's time, but the interior is now an electric gathering of eclectic pieces, melding a natural wood look with a modern (dare I say postmodern?) metal and plastic industrial thang and accented by random mementos from who knows where. You could be forgiven for thinking it might not work, but somehow it does. I'm convinced it's the cool blue accent lighting throughout. The menu is modest, but detailed. You get to know what you're going to eat and often where its coming from, in line with the farm to table idea. We decided to go with Blue Cow's Roots and Berries salad, the Butternut Squash soup with pumpkin seed oil and pistachios, and the 90s Wedding Chicken with mashed potatoes and veggies. Note though, that the menu rotates seasonally, in line with sourcing of local foods and the collaborations that Blue Cow Kitchen is doing with visiting chefs, so you might not find these dishes on there. The salad was delectable, a smorgasboard of roots like carrots, beets, and radishes, sweetened by the berries and given some oomph with a saffron vinaigrette. The soup was bold and creamy goodness, a welcome dose of warmth on an unusually cold LA night. The chicken came in a generous portion, definitely enough to share. Tender, if a tad on the bland side, it was still a satisfying entree. The only problem was the grossly over-salted mashed potatoes. In Blue Cow's defense, the manager was not only apologetic about it, but thankful for the feedback. Having just opened officially a month ago, the dose of salt in my mashed potatoes can be forgiven. The rest of the meal was good enough that I'm really excited about seeing what Blue Cow does going forward. It's not cheap, but what trendy farm-to-table restaurants these days are? Regardless, it's a welcome addition to the Downtown LA food scene; a place in Bunker Hill to hang out, and also where you can get a pretty good meal and feel good about it too. Sorry for the poor quality pictures, only had my old phone with me that night!
The Roots and Berries Salad

Butternut Squash Soup

90's Wedding Chicken

Interior of Blue Cow Kitchen

Blue Cow Kitchen and Bar | Lower Plaza Level, Two California Plaza, 350 S Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90071 | 1.213.621.2249

Reflections on the Past [Wayne's Blog]

Wayne — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:41:49 +0000

My most recent trip to Beijing did not start out very auspiciously. I spent most of the 4 1/2 hour flight curled up in a fetal position on the plane, suffering from a low grade fever, alternately sweating and shivering. I imagined myself getting pulled aside at the airport and being quarantined. I wondered if I would have to pay any fees if I were quarantined, and thought that given how expensive hotels had gotten in Beijing that it might not be a bad thing to get a free place to stay in the airport, even it if it was to prevent me from transmitting some horrible infectious disease to the masses. In one of the more lucid moments of my haze, I thought about how irresponsible it had been for me to get on the plane with my fever. I had recently finished a book about SARS, that chronicled how the epidemic was spread by unsuspecting but irresponsible travelers who got on their flights despite feeling terrible. I was one of those irresponsible people. I could be responsible for infecting 1.3 billion people. They would trace the vector back to me, I would be the super-transmitter. Instead, no one paid attention to me as I walked through the airport, passed immigration, and pushed my bags out of customs. It was past midnight and the old terminal in Beijing was crowded, but mostly dark. KFC was still open, and I realized I was famished. It was too late to catch the Airport Express into town, and my attempt to get on the bus was thwarted by me being too polite and not pushing on in time. I got left outside with a Filipino girl and two other patient Chinese people. When told that the next bus would leave in an hour, we all balked, turned our tickets back in for a refund, and decided to split a cab. One of my grad school classmates was nice enough to offer me her couch for a couple nights. Although I had been there before, both the taxi driver and I had trouble finding it. It was in the southern part of town, away from the most rapidly developing areas but right off one of the newest subway lines. Housing prices were rising, but it was still an older neighborhood, mostly nondescript and without much in the way of recognizable landmarks. Not that I would have been able to spot them. I don't know if it was the fever or the changes to the city, but I found myself looking out the window of the taxi almost the entire way, thinking, "where the hell am I?" It was disconcerting; Beijing changes quickly, but normally I'll at least know what direction I'm going or recognize some of the buildings I'm passing on my way from the airport. That night, I was lost. Every time I thought I knew where I was, I'd pass a slew of things that looked completely unfamiliar. Not being able to find my friend's apartment, even though I'd been there, felt like a continuation of this strange sense of displacement. Eventually, the taxi driver got tired of circling around and just dropped me off at the gate of the development. It was already 2am, and I finally wandered into my friend's apartment a bit dazed and extremely apologetic. She had to get to work the next morning after all. I promptly fell asleep and stayed asleep until the early afternoon. I still felt bad and a bit dizzy, but I was hungry enough - a good sign I thought! - that I ended up wandering out for lunch and then, later, dinner. It was comfortably crisp with a slight breeze, as Beijing summer nights often are, as I searched for a pharmacy and some medicine. I ended up exploring her neighborhood and eating at a local restaurant. People were sitting at tables outside, the streets were small, and I caught sight of a few tubby older men loitering with their wife-beater tank tops pulled up to their chest, letting their bellys air out. It reminded me of a Beijing from years past, the easy, lazy summer evenings I experienced when I first moved to Beijing, where I'd gather with a group of friends to buy a watermelon from our local fruit vendor and sit on tiny stools by the side of the road, eating juicy slices, spitting out seeds, and shooting the shit. Paying for my food, triple what it would have cost in years past, snapped me out of my reverie, but it was still a reminder of a Beijing that - suddenly - I realized I missed. I could again blame it on the fever, or just on the fact that it took some distance from my experiences here in this city, but I think I finally realized how much I had enjoyed that simple life I led when I first went to live in Beijing. Riding bikes, saying hello to the local crew of senior citizens playing mahjongg on the side of the road, knowing the owners and waitresses at my local restaurant, kicking up dust on a side alley, popping into random little stores while walking home. This is the Beijing I remembered, and the Beijing that... (can I say it? Can I admit it? Is it possible that it's true?) ... that I might have fallen in love with. It's strange to feel nostalgia for a city when you are smack in the middle of that city, but this is how I feel about Beijing now. I went back to read some of my first e-mail journal entries that I wrote about Beijing in 2002. One, an extraordinarily long and convoluted e-mail was devoted entirely to biking. Something so central to my Beijing experience then, and to everyone's Beijing experience actually, has in the short nine years since, become a piece of historical documentation, an observation of a society that no longer exists. I have often decried the headlong rush to modernize in the city. The results have been priceless old neighborhoods torn down, historical relics and places converted into tourist traps, and the genericizing (if I may take the privilege of making up a word) of a city. Yet, I have given short thrift to what is really sad about Beijing's "development" - the loss of its soul. It is not just the destruction of tangible structures or traditional city planning - it is the elimination of the communities that called these places home. Cities are, above all else, places where people live. They have the ability to support lifestyles or to dictate lifestyles. Traditional hutongs developed to support a way of life. Roads and paths were put in place to facilitate an approach to movement. Buildings and neighborhoods encouraged a sense of community. Using a technological analogy, in essence, the "hardware" was in place to allow the "software" to run. The wholesale destruction of the hardware has forced the software to change, and this software - the culture and soul of the city - has been lost. What is intriguing is that this disconnect - between hardware and software - manifests itself in numerous ways. Last year, I got into a physical fight with a guy who almost ran me over in his car. This year, I found myself screaming at a guy cutting in line in front of me at the check-out counter of a cheap ass Ibis Hotel. These incidents are also symptoms of a culture lost in a new city. The city may look new and modern, but the lifestyle and societal norms are having lots of trouble catching up. I've written about these things in the past, but I think my ideas only fully crystalized on this trip. The beauty of Beijing before was that it was a collection of little communities and neighborhoods and areas. It was large and spread out, requiring long stretches on public transport to get to other parts, but when you got there, you could once again walk aimlessly around, exploring the local flavor and character. No doubt, even when I moved there, some places were already Westernized while others were less unique. But I remember a trip to the Lufthansa center as a trip into the west, where as taking a bus to Xinjiekou meant a day of eating street food, dodging cars, and buying bootleg movies. I could hang out with the Koreans and the students in Wudaokou, shop for electronics in Haidian, or do some serious shopping at Xidan. Wangfujing was reserved for tourists, cheap goodies and sketchy alleys could be had at Qianmen, and the best fake goods were at Hongqiao or Fuchengmenwai. Each place was distinct, but more importantly, when you got to each place, you had the option to walk around and discover. The city offered endless possibilities and layers. Like an onion, you could peel and peel and peel, and while it would sometimes make you cry, you would still keep going. Put it another way - Beijing used to be a big city made up mostly of small, distinct neighborhoods designed for walking and living. That has changed, and changed drastically. Incredible automobile growth has dictated that roads are bigger, parking lots more numerous, and that places become shopping destinations. Even subway growth has encouraged this hub feel by encouraging large-scale developments above major stations. So today, I meet my friends at one of a couple dozen large malls, to eat at clean but non-descript chain restaurants, before window-shopping at chains that I can find everywhere in the world. Often, we'll never step foot outside, and if we do, we might get stuck walking along huge roads that are guarded by mammoth, non-human scale buildings set far back from the sidewalk with little to nothing to look at. From a place that encouraged community and interaction, much of the developed parts of Beijing today feel like any modern conglomeration of consumerist suburbs. That is, you drive somewhere, go about your own business, and drive home. It is when I get out further into the less developed parts of the city, like where my friend lives, that I am reminded of what Beijing used be. Yet, I feel it necessary to state that I am not a hopeless romantic, selfishly wanting to drag Beijing back into a past that I felt more comfortable in. I asked a friend what she thought about the changes in Beijing, and she said she thinks its great. Her reason? "I can get anything I want here now, we have all the brands, all the stores, everything." It's a fair enough assertion, and true. There were alternatives though. A city like Hong Kong, Taipei, or even Tokyo shows that you can have a hyper-consumerist city, but still retain character, personality, and distinct neighborhoods. It is what makes these cities interesting, what makes them engaging, what makes them addictive. I have been to Hong Kong dozens of times, and I know it like the back of my hand, but I never tire of walking its back alleys, of soaking up the atmosphere in Sheung Wan, Wan Chai, or Yau Ma Tei. I spend a good deal of time in malls in Hong Kong too, but when I do wander outside, which is often, I find myself engaged and enthralled. No, Beijing has done too much, too fast, too similarly - with little thought given to anything other than profits and pride. There is no doubt that Beijing is more "modern" than most cities in the world now - people from around the world leave the city with their eyes glazed over from how different the city looks in reality compared to what they pictured in their minds. Certainly, as my nostalgia suggests, the city looks and feels almost nothing like I remember it. It boggles my mind when I consider that I first moved there less than a decade ago. The entire place has been flipped on its head, in less than half a generation. It is incredible, unimaginable, and a bit incomprehensible. Modern doesn't mean better though, and the impressions left by a one week trip on foreign tourists doesn't make the city any better, even if it gives people something to feel proud about. Yet, Beijing is what it is today, and it is most definitely not going back. More subways, more neighborhoods torn down, wider roads, and more skyscrapers and malls going up - this is the direction of Beijing, and it is not changing, not even with the time and luxury to reflect. I think this time back, I realized that. In doing so, I also realized that I miss Beijing, the old Beijing, my Beijing. It is true, sometimes you never know what you have until it's gone.

The Unfulfilled Promise of Louie [Wayne's Blog]

Wayne — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 15:50:48 +0000

Bottega Louie lords over 7th and Grand in downtown LA from its magnificent white-walled, heritage space on the southeast corner. Marked only with LOUIE at the corners of the building in bold, gold letters, the restaurant, with its soaring ceiling inside and marble-everywhere space filled with the fashionably dressed, is as much a statement of Louie's self-assured presence as it is the return of trendy destination restaurants to the once maligned area. The extensive patisserie at the front, filled with incredibly delectable-looking cakes, macaroons, and other forms of sugar, gives hope that Louie is all that you were expecting and more. Unfortunately though, Louie does not end up delivering on this promise. In its attempt to offer a little bit of everything for everyone (in addition to the patisserie and restaurant, there's also a bar, a deli market, and to-go coffee for the office set) Louie ends up doing a whole lot of things just so-so. The bar feels strangely out of place next to the market, and the market strangely out of place during dinner hours. The crowd is also mixed, with young professionals sitting next to women dressed as if they were practicing the world's oldest profession next to a group of raucous birthday revelers, all in a dimly lit interior that ends up feeling like a cold cavern fronted by floor-to-really-high-ceiling windows that are too showy. All of this would be forgivable though if the food - which sounds so good on the vaguely all-over-the-map menu - ended up being better. Louie offers traditional American-infused Italian fare, updated with a little bit of modern flair. Ask anyone who has been, and they will likely tell you to have the Portobello fries, huge strips of Portobello mushrooms deep friend with batter. Other starters sound equally rich, and the exhaustive list of mains are complimented by a large selection of pizzas straight out of the wood-fired show ovens at the back of the restaurant. While none of the food was bad - it all ended up tasting a bit the same. Louie offers food that have heavy, over-the-top flavors that lack not only subtlety but also depth. The end result is food that tastes eerily similar, regardless of the dish, that gets old rather quickly. While a large party ordering a slew of starters might end up with a decent meal, it's a much harder place for a pair or group of 3 to go and share. The unfortunate and perhaps unfair comparison for Louie, given the extensive pizza and starter menu and similar prices (expect to pay at least $20-30 a person at Louie also), would be Pizzaria Mozza. However, as I've mentioned already on this blog, Mozza is stunning. Louie is not. In all fairness, the promise of Louie is not necessarily an amazing meal. It seems clear the owners are more intent on providing the culinary wasteland that has traditionally been downtown LA with a hip and hot spot to see and be seen, to have a space that offers the brave folks who live downtown an alternative to driving west to get their macaroons and fresh deli meats. In this, perhaps Louie has succeeded. Since I am more interested in food than any of these other things though, I don't think I'll be dropping my dimes at Louie again anytime soon. Editorial Note: Review written at the end of 2010. The menu and context may have changed since. I have not been back. Bottega Louie | 700 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90017 | 1.213.802.1470

We Innovate... Don't We? [Wayne's Blog]

Wayne — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 07:03:31 +0000

A quote in a recent Businessweek article about the latest tech bubble really struck me. Hands waving and voice rising, he says that venture capitalists have become consumed with finding overnight sensations. They've pulled away from funding risky projects that create more of those general-purpose technologies - inventions that lay the foundation for more invention. "Facebook is not the kind of technology that will stop us from having dropped cell phone calls, and neither is Groupon or any of these advertising things," he says. "We need them. O.K., great. But they are building on top of old technology, and at some point you exhaust the fuel of the underpinnings." I've been thinking quite the same thing for some time now. I think you can throw in the move to a service economy (and thus, away from manufacturing), as well as our focus on finance as a major "industry" into this mix of why our economy is tanking. All this talk about "American exceptional-ism" is truly misleading. There was an op-ed columnist in the New York Times who mentioned the same idea - that by focusing on this idea of exceptional-ism, we're actually taking away from the reality of what it took for us to get here. Hard work, ingenuity, a penchant for risks, and a belief that if you believe and devote energy to something, you can get it done. Brandying about our "exceptional-ism" doesn't automatically make us more productive as modern Americans (and politicians) want us to believe. In our generation of instant gratification and entitlement, we have misunderstood what truly makes Americans exceptional - the marriage of belief and hard-work. That is exceptional. Being American... that is not. As long as we shy away from the hard work that is needed to be the best, we will continue to falter. But, I digress. This post should be about the tech bubble, or more specifically, this idea of "old technology" and current innovations. We are truly living off of our past at this point. Think about all of our "innovations" and how many of them have really been from recent funding, recent research? Everything Internet related can be traced to huge amounts of defense funding in the 50s and 60s. Much of our basic medicines come from research that led to penicillin and related anti-biotics in the first half of this century; super bugs today are immune to our anti-biotics, and despite numerous drugs having been developed for guys to stay hard longer and into older age, we have had virtually no new anti-biotics. Cars today are largely the same as cars 100 years ago. Even our "new" hybrid and electric technology is just built on research done in the past. EV1 anyone? Many of my friends in academia bemoan the funding situation there, and it speaks to what is wrong with our system today. Basic research - those things that might open up doors to amazing new technologies and discoveries later - is essentially no longer funded. Instead, everything is judged against its commercial applicability. Can it make money, or not? And if the answer is no, we don't fund it. The current budget debate is being framed as a "tax" versus "spend" issue. The common boilerplate for the Republicans is that "we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem." What both groups can agree on, is that we want greater growth. That's a topic for a whole other post, because I sort of think this chase for growth is what is getting us in trouble in the first place, but.. again, I digress. No, the truth is, we have both a tax and a spend problem. We tax too little, and we spend too much. End of story. Or is it? Perhaps we should stop simplifying things so much and dig a little deeper. Perhaps we don't tax certain things enough (oil, pharma anyone?) and we don't provide enough tax incentives elsewhere. And perhaps we spend too much on certain things (defense??) and not enough on others. In essence, it's a matter of priorities, of investment, of planing ahead. Basic research into things that may not be commercially viable, ever, could turn out to be the building blocks for the next great human innovations. By not funding basic research, aren't we eliminating the potential for Americans to really be exceptional. At what point do the fruits of our past exceptional-ism and investment wither and run out? It's great to talk about wanting growth and wanting to put our country on a sound footing. But without investing in the things that will put us in a position to compete - education, research, health - can we actually expect to get there?