Gotham Gal

Last day on Abbott Kinney

More new stores and places to eat on Abbott Kinney.  You really can't go wrong walking the long street.  We do it every time we come to Los Angeles and enjoy how much it has evolved into a really incredible spot.  We began breakfast at 3 Squares.  It was good not great. 

As we continued to walk down the street I might have stopped in the New Cafe for granola instead. 

Here is the granola.

Nothing opened until 11 so Josh and I just walked until we hit Gjelinas new take-out place next door to the restaurant.  Everything looked so good.  Natural sodas are big out there and Josh really got into the ginger ale.  I had a limeade which was seriously tart.

I hooked up with Emily and Jess before doing some damage once the stores opened.  Josh and Fred took off for another area to do damage in another part of town.  Last stop was Intelligentsia which is a sweet coffee shop. 

We drove back to Santa Monica stopping at Tender Greens to have lunch.  I wish there were more places like this in NYC.  All fresh ingredients.  You can order the salads they make or make one up on your own. 

I had the Santa Monica farmers market raw salad with steak on top and a balsamic vinegar on the side.  Really excellent.

Fred and I drove over to Brentwood to the Country Market hoping we would find stuff to pick up for dinner but it is just a grouping of cute stores and eateries.  We ended up going to Whole Foods and then back to the hotel for a drink to watch the sunset before heading over to my brothers for dinner.

Such a great couple of days in Los Angeles.  I really love it out there. 

 

Tasting Kitchen, Los Angeles

We had dinner at the Tasting Kitchen this past week in Los Angeles.  You could either do a 3 course or 5 course because we were over 10 people.  Figuring 3 was plenty as the week of Thanksgiving tends to be an overload of food. 

We sat upstairs in a loft area that overlooks to below.  Big glass window on to the street with a large table in the middle set up for wine and serving.  The wood, the modern vibe is very of the moment. 

I particularly love that an entire wall is devoted to cookbooks. 

The bread comes out piping hot.  You can see the steam when they put the bread down.  So good.  Crispy crust and a soft airy middle with butter on the side.  What could be bad?

Oysters were just an added bonus to our meal.  We all love oysters and these were worth indulging in.

When the fries came out we all grabbed one.  Salty, crispy and piping hot. 

A broth of clams and chorizo.  Really tasty, spicy and the perfect spot to dip the bread and fries.

Simple layer of greens with a rich dill blue cheese dressing

Always a fan of the charcuterie plate.  Not sure where they sourced their meat but the prosciutto was off the charts.

Pasta is one of the special here.  This was a veal based sauce with chunks of meat.  A little garlicky for my taste but rich and tasty.

Super spicy seafood sauce that was cream based on linguine. I really liked this.  LIttle piece of seafood throughout.

Roasted whole fish.  Might have been some butter on this one.  The meat was perfectly cooked and full of flavor.  I like how they pulled the skin off and topped it with a melange of mushrooms. 

Rare pieces of steak coated with a balsamic glaze.  Nice.

This was a killer plate of sweets.  I am a sucker for bread pudding.  Maple glazed like a honey bun and then made into a bread pudding.  Woah.

Not exactly a light meal before Thanksgiving day but a little bite of everything did go a long way.  Oh, the red wine was a Sagratino de Montefalco.  One of my favorite red wines.  Will return to the Tasting Kitchen when I return to LA. 

Thanksgiving...looking back at the dishes

My brother brined one of the turkeys with lemon, onions, carrots and thyme.  This one was stuffed with stuffing and roasted in the oven.  The other turkey we put on the grill outside on the rotisserie.  We learned alot. 

Here is the finished product on the rotisserie.  It was perfect.  The turkey cooks evenly throughout.  I really prefer this method.  I like the whole concept of putting anything on the rotisserie.

Here is the turkey we roasted in the oven.  Here is what we learned and hope to recall next year when we do it again.  Stuffing the turkey is beautiful but it doesn't allow the turkey to cook evenly.  At one point you have to be willing to put up with some parts dry or others just not done yet.  There needs to be a compromise.  Although the stuffing is incredible tasting after being pulled from the turkey, you could pour a little drippings over it and mix to get the same effect.  Next year, no stuffing in the turkey.  We will bake the stuffing in a separate bowl and leave the turkeys to roast by themselves.

We separated the turkey by plate.  One said brined, one said rotisserie.  The taste was absolutely different.  You could taste the lemon thyme flavor in the brined turkey.  Interesting.

We even separated the stuffings.  The brined stuffing definitely had a lemonish flavor.  Bottom line, all stuffing is good.

Brussel sprouts could have been a little more burnt but lots of food for many people with 2 ovens is an effort in itself.  We served these brussel sprouts with sauteed leeks and pancetta.  We shaved a little bit of lemon rind over the top before serving.

This is one of my all time favorite cranberry chutneys.  Recipe here.

Roasted carrots with thyme and olive oil.  Warmed them up in a pan before serving with pistachio nuts, fresh thyme, drizzled olive oil and balsamic vinegar. In the background was corn pudding that someone brought.  Yum.

Sliced purple, orange and white yams that were so sweet and good.  I would have liked them a little crispier but again, only so many places to cook.  We topped them with drizzled maple syrup and pomegranite seeds.

There were pumpkin pies from a budding young chef.

Apple pies.

I made two bourbon pecan pies.  A once a year treat.

A beautiful table.  Lots of family and extended family.  A really nice day, an over the top meal and the perfect way to celebrate Thanksgiving. 

 

Mauria Finley and Claire Hough, Women Entrepreneurs, Citrus Lane

I really enjoy talking to all the women entrepreneurs that have crossed my path over the year.  Speaking with Mauria and Claire was like taking a trip down memory lane.  Although our paths had never crossed before, they were involved in the dot.com world in the bay area from the mid-90's so I knew the companies they worked at, the story behind many of them and the feeling of exhilaration that we all had at that time.  To hear their stories and their eventual departure from that world to create their own start-up after all that experience under their belt makes me want to give them a high-five.  What is also an added bonus is that these two women, in the tech world who used the internet as their platform to launch an ecommerce business called Citrus Lane and were funded by Greylock.

Mauria was raised by a single Mom in Texas making her way to Stanford as a computer science major.  She did a lot of teaching on the side when she was there.  After graduating Mauria embarked on a journey around the world returning back to the bay area when her trip was over where she took her first job out of college at Netscape as the product manager working on the browser.  Next she jumped ship to AOL to become the manager of communities which was a totally fun experience where chat was just starting to ramp up.  Next stop was Good Technology that built mobile hardware for mobile devices.  There were ten people when she got there soon becoming 250 before selling to Motorola which in turn sold to Visto.  It was 2001 and hardware for software was cutting edge stuff. 

After three jobs and a nice exit she took some time to travel again coming back to the bay area when her journey was over.  She went to work at Paypal working in the consumer management area where she launched the daily deal.  Mauria also had a board seat at Say Now which was eventually bought by Google. 

Claire lived in Korea until she was 14.  For political and education reasons her Mom wanted to educate her children in the US.  They didn't speak a word of english and landed in the Berkeley area of California.  Soon figuring it out she went to Berkeley doing her undergraduate and graduate work there.  Claire worked in semi-conductor companies after graduation where they were in need of analytical software system to track their floor systems.  Although she was doing software her degree was in operations research with a slant towards optimation engineering.  At her job she ended up doing lower level back end software for a data base company for seven years before getting recruited to Netscape in 1995. 

At Netscape all the engineers were on one floor eating lunch and dinner together everyday.  They wanted to base their business on service and tool products.  Those were the days when manifestos would show up on her desk and she would have to figure out how to build those products.  They would release the product and 20,000 people would download it in 12 hours and then they would be on to something else.  She finally ended up running the security area at Netscape before it was sold to AOL. 

After AOL bought Netscape, Claire went to work for Sun Microsystems.  Really hard work and very bureaucratic.  It was interesting but she went with the theory that life is too short and she was too entrepreneurial to deal with the bureaucracy and jumped ship to Napster.  Berteslmann was in the game at that point and she helped re-architect the business and security system to productize the model to create revenues.  They built it and were told not to launch it instead they declared bankruptcy.  Claire helped them sell what was left of the company before moving to Blue Martini software. 

In 2000 Blue Martini went public and then collapsed in 2001. It was the time of the big bubble.  It was an ecommerce play.  The company moved to Nexttag and she stayed on for another six and a half years.  Claire did a variety of jobs including general manage and president of the travel and education business before it was sold and they brought in a new ceo.  It was at this time she wanted to do something new.  She was married with two teenagers.

Mauria had this idea for Citrus Lane, a highly targeted, curated specifically for each customer baby and childrens products delivered monthly to your door.  Mauria has two kids of her own who are four and 22 months.  She was looking for the right partner to do this with.   Claire was introduced to Mauria through a guy that had worked for Claire at Netscape.  He didn't think Claire would want the job because she had hired over 500 people for an executive team in her past but they met and totally hit it off.  Their lives have changed from working in these large companies to becoming real entrepreneurs, creating a market, a brand, a product to doing support work for the staff and even cleaning the toilets.  You know what, they love it. 

They raised capital after 3 1/2 months of proving their model with a seed round.  Greylock invested.  Citrus Lane are care packages for parents.  They send a new package every month that has a theme in the box with really well researched products geared towards the age of your child.  They try to maintain value and people really appreicate it.  You get full on products from a bib to a sippy cup to a diaper cream.  3/6/12 month packages.  They are finding that not only are people buying them as gifts they are buying them for themselves.  They both know from their past careers that listening to their customers is key. 

I seriously love this story.  Two super smart women who have worked in some of the top companies in the bay area who got off that track to create their own.  I am seeing more and more women jump off that track and be their own boss.  These two women are role models for the next generation of women entrepreneurs. 

 

Venus in Fur

We went to see Venus in Fur Saturday afternoon.  Thinking we will do more afternoon theater this year. I like it.  

The show is being put on by the Manhattan Theater Club.  The play is dark, funny and sexual all wrapped into one.  An budding actress shows up hours late to an audition to find herself alone with the playwright.  Eventually they act out the play over the course of the production as their interaction swings back and forth from the play to the present.  Both almost become the same. 

There was a recent article in the New Yorker about the young woman, Nina Arianda, who plays the main female character.  The article was about how what a gem Nina is and the talent that literally oozes out of her body.  I can confirm that article.  I felt like I was watching a star being born.  She not only has a killer body she is confident, funny, sexy and honestly just brilliant as an actor.  Hugh Dancy who plays the male lead is no slouch himself.

I didn't love the play as much as I was just wowed by the performances.  I am sure that years from now I will say that we saw Nina when she first came on Broadway.  This woman is going to be a star. 

Sasabune Sushi

The sushi in Los Angeles is like no other.  You can get spoiled.  We flew in to Los Angeles, dropped off our bags at the hotel and drove over to Sasabune for dinner.  We went with the omikase as making a decision at that point was way over anyones bandwidth.

I don't remember everything we ate but here goes.  We began with tuna sashimi.

Yellowtail sashimi both drenched in a soy sauced based sauce.

Out came a variety of sushi.  This was two types of tuna.  One with sauce, one without.  They tell you that you can dip one of them in soy sauce and which one that is.

White fishes

Oysters two ways.  One with a mignonette sauce and the other roasted with an egg mixture on top.  Unbelievable.

White and orange salmon.  The sesame seeds really took the salmon to another level.

Two more fishes

Roasted butterfish with a rich sauce over the top.  Wow.  

Hamachi and tuna

Two rolls that were almost the size of handrolls.  Chopped fatty tuna was one and the other was California crab meat.  So good.

Josh and I topped off the meal with a piece of uni which I forgot to take a picture of.  Incredible.  We also had a few pieces of mochi too.  Mango, strawberry and green tea. 

Amazing meal, as always. 

saying good-bye

On Thanksgiving morning we spread my Mom's ashes at a beach near Marina del Ray.  The sun was shining, the views of Los Angeles were beautiful from there as you could see the mountains surrounding the waters edge in the distance. 

The beach was long and wide and lined up at the top of the beach are a mixture of adorable homes you find on many of the beaches in this area. 

We all walked down to the beach and laid her to rest at the shore.  After all, she was a California girl at heart.  Growing up in Bakersfield and going to college at both Berkely and UCLA.  Settling down in Bel Air when she was pregnant with me. 

You never know what to expect in life.  It is a long road that takes many strange turns.  If it wasn't for my father, there is no doubt that my mother would have never left California.  She would have raised all of us in Los Angeles and I am sure we would be very different people today.  But it didn't turn out that way, my father got a job at University of Michigan after getting his PHd at UCLA and off we went to the cold town of Ann Arbor that had many inches of snow on the ground when we landed.  I am sure that was the beginning of the end of their marriage.  It wasn't what she expected and the culture shock of being a professors wife in the midwest was not exactly what she had in mind with 3 kids in tow 

We continued to move east never returning to Los Angeles to live although there was always an underlying threat that we were going to move back although we never did.  Maybe that is one of the reasons I never felt connected to the DC area where we settled in when I was about 10.  My parents got divorced, my mother remarried to an old time Washingtonian and that is where she stayed. 

The good news is that I spent six months in Los Angeles doing an internship in college.  My grandmother lived in Laguna Beach at that time.  My sister came out to Los Angeles to work in the record business for many years at one point.  My brother ended up moving out here about seven years ago with his family.  I love having the connection to Los Angeles.  I always feel at home here. 

It has been almost a year since my Mom left us.  The aftermath of her death is interesting for everyone in our family in a very different way.  Not surprising as we all had a different relationship with her.  My Mom always felt connected to California.  Getting together on Thanksgiving which was her favorite holiday of the year is a must.  It was the one holiday that she owned after my parents got divorced and she owned it in until she left us. 

Going to the beach, on Thanksgiving, as a family and spreading her ashes into the sea on a pretty perfect California sunny day could not be a more fitting way to say goodbye. 

wednesday before thanksgiving

My brother dropped off my niece at our hotel around 730 while he went to work out.  We walked up the street to Cora's Coffee Shoppe and Josh joined us too.  There is a counter inside and two tables.  The rest of the seating is outside underneath an awning with heat lamps.  Everything is fresh and sourced from the farmers market.  The coffee and fresh squeezed juices are really good. 

Josh had the scrambled eggs with chorizo, onions and peppers with tortillas on the side.  I was boring with just two poached eggs and toast so I didn't bother with that pic. 

My niece had a prosciutto egg panini with tomatoes. 

Fred had the huervos rancheros with white beans.

Before heading over to to meet my brother we walked down to the beach.  I love this picture of Josh and Ruby.  We have taken them over the years and Josh is always bigger but now he towers over her. 

The farmers markets in Los Angeles are amazing.  I met my brother at the farmers market on the promenade in Santa Monica at 9 to figure out what looked good for the vegetable side of dinner.  Josh and my niece were in tow after breakfast.  There is one center booth and then four streets off of that filled with vendors. 

These lemons were amazing looking which we added to the brine and topped off the brussels sprouts with some grated rind.

We picked up carrots to roast and top with some pistachio nuts, balsamic vinegar and honey.

Yams of 3 different varieties.  Purple, orange and white.  We sliced them and roasted them and topped them with a little maple syrup and pomegranate seeds.

These are just wild.  Small limes with these tiny pieces inside that easily come apart and then you can pop them in your mouth or put over oysters.  Didn't pick any up but interesting.

Brussel sprouts.  Roasted in the oven and finished off in the pan with pancetta and leeks.

Beautiful squash. 


Loved this guy.  Totally mellow man who makes beautiful moisturizers.  Josh and I picked up a few of those.

Got to get the appetizers.  A mixture of olives all brined with just sea salt.  One of the olives was stuffed with a piece of lemon rind.

Dried oranges, lemons and tangerines

Here are our pistachios.

Flowers were the last grab before we left.

The girls all went over to the Annenberg Space for Photography located right next to the CAA building.  What an exhibit! 

The exhibit is called Beauty and Culture.  It begins with a 20 minutes movie interviewing a variety of women in fashion, photography and acting.  The film encourages the viewers to discuss the viewpoints and stereotypes on beauty and sexuality.  Our culture is highlighted in the media with models who are manipulated with photoshop and don't even represent reality but are reveered as beauty.  Really fantastic exhibit. 

We drove over to Barneys for lunch where I had the Chinese Chicken Salad.  The classic Los Angeles salad which is everywhere. They know how to make a salad in Los Angeles.

Drove back to my brothers and sister-in-laws house to prep for the day ahead of us before making our way out for an early meal. 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has always been one of my all time favorite holidays of the year.  It kicks off the holiday season which now turns out to be the entire month of December.  There is something very cool about knowing that every American is sitting down to a dinner (I know that not everyone eats turkey) to celebrate the day. 

For us, it is the one constant in my family every year where we all get together.  The menu pretty much stays the same except for a possible new twist in the vegetables.  We only eat stuffing like this once a year. 

This year we are in Los Angeles where my brother lives with his wife and kids.  Going full circle considering all my siblings were born in Los Angeles we have continued to have ties to this part of the country throughout our lives.  It is really nice that one of us lives out here.  I can see my brother owning this holiday as we will make the annual pilgramage to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving again next year. 

Thanksgiving is also a time to reflect.  What am I thankful for this year?  The list is endless.  Most of all I am thankful for my family and each individual relationship I have with them and that extends into my friends and each person I have the opportunity to work with every day as well as the community that continues to come back to this blog everyday.  My happiness and optimism reflects my thanks. 

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone....and no matter what you choose to eat today, enjoy the day. 

do I not add any value to the conversation?

I was talking with my friend the other day about something that had happened to me recently in regards to a development person.  Development is the department that raises money for institutions. 

I was standing with Fred and the development person was gushing over him.  How he was so incredible and how they were so lucky to have him part of the institution, etc.  I just stood there.  When we left the event, Fred turned to me and said that conversation was really bad.  I hope that doesn't happen with other donors.  When I told this story to my friend she said that happens to her all the time and it is unbelievably annoying.  Do I not add any value to the conversation? 

What is interesting is she remarked that she thought that women are the worst culprits.  In the year 2011, you would believe that if you are talking to development officer that they would at least be politically correct.  Just because a woman might have got off the gravy train for a period of time to raise the kids doesn't mean that she isn't as accomplished as her husband.  After all, is there a particular rating curve that defines success?  More than likely that woman had raised the kids, filled the refrigerator, prepared dinner every night, kept their schedules (kids and husband), kept the whole family company going, volunteered some of her time, paid the bills...need I go on?  More than likely that woman is one of the reasons that her husband/partner is where he/she is. 

I have no interest in being gushed at but I do expect that when people speak to both Fred and I, that they speak to us at as a unit.  We are and have been for over 30 years and Fred is as much as the reason for many of my personal successes as much as I am the reason for many of his.  There is a reason for the 50/50 rule.  There isn't a rating system for each individuals financial success because in the eye of the legal system, after so many years everything is split 50/50 because it takes two.