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For any beer enthusiasts out there, this is a good week. Russian River Brewing Company announced the release of this limited, American/Triple IPA masterpiece known as "Pliny the Younger". Not the elder version, for there are more hops and only brewed once a year. Word is that you can find it at some of my favorite beer bars: Verdugo Bar, Glassell Park Blue Palms, Hollywood Father's Office, Culver City Library Alehouse, SaMo and also, at the newly opened, Surly Goat in West Hollywood, also a child of Verdugo Bar's Ryan Sweeney. Stop in for this beer, guaranteed to be a tapped keg in a few days. Here's a review on Beer Advocate . I personally find this beer to be a 36-24-36 kind of beer.

I'm going on my 5th year with this blog and in retrospect, I can't believe how writing about food has changed my life in numerous ways. The most important being the way I viewed other cultures, valued family and friendships and even finding love. I first started writing about places I grew up on and eventually made some dramatic turns. For me, knowing about music, food and art are great cultural values. So I made a point to approach everything with an open-mind and try anything and everything – like Bourdain, who I highly respect. When J and I met, we were eating a lot of street food and affordable ethnic food. Naturally, the more you enjoy food, the more likely you will move from low end to high end meals. We didn't really have our "nice" dinner experience together until we ate at A.O.C. We must have looked like beasts with hooves and fangs at the restaurant, but it was definitely different and out of our zone. From there, we just went on an haute cuisin...

Jeni and I have been eating more in the South Bay area since we started taking some classes over at Otis. She enrolled in a aluminum-foil-based class, Fashion with Foil , and I finally realized my dream in basketweaving, under water . All the blood, sweat, and tears from these extracurricular activities, as usual, leads to a loud, bellowing stomach that can only be shut up by savory food. So on this night, we found ourselves heading to the Redondo Beach pier to eat. Most people come here to taste the abundant offerings at places like Quality Seafood, an L-shaped market that is the modern age smorgasbord for Gods of the sea. You've got steamed dungeness crab, large conchs, about 36 types of oysters (30 which I've eaten in one sitting), shrimp, lobster, etc. While expensive, there's enough to leave any epicurean hot & bothered. And there's the highly-mentioned, Korean-owned Pacific Fish Center & Restaurant , with their admired crab soup. I've yet to tr...

It was a Saturday afternoon and I sat patiently hunched forward with hands crossed on a table with a lazy susan. Jeni was by my side and so was Eddie , Rickmond and Javier . Eddie, also known as the ultimate predator and every animal's/insect's worst nightmare had invited us to a day of adventurous eating. Just before, we had stomached a Filipino duck egg in its nascency – eyes sheathed with very thin veiny skin, claws just firm enough to give you a nice prick in the throat and enough feathers to remind you that you were in fact, consuming a dormant mammal. We had also just finished live spot prawns that jumped out of the pot brought out by the server. About 10 minutes before, they had added a Chinese rice wine and covered the shrimp with a lid, intoxicating them to a lethal state. We picked up the shrimp with our hands the second we their antennaes became limp. We took off their heads, exposing their brain and pulled off its shell. The shrimp was so sweet and fresh, ...