I arrived in LA on Monday, after taking an ungawdly early flight. Oh yeah, $5 breakfast box on United… blah. I wasn’t feeling particularly go-getter for lunch, but it was unbelievably warm outside (or even hot) so I decided to go for a stroll and grab some vittles near the office.

I stopped by Lemon Moon, which is in this big office space nearby, because I’d been there before and liked it, and because I could easily walk to it. The place is big and bright and airy and very happy. They have a proper menu of hot foods, but they have tons of cold salads to-go, which are easy and quick.

I’ve never eaten inside or outside of this place, but I think the best thing is the outdoor dining. Even though it’s on a busy street, there’s plenty of foliage strategically placed to make you think that you’re in some woody sanctuary, and not off the street in West LA.

I got some vermicelli salad and a kiwi lemonade. The lemonade didn’t taste very kiwi-y. It had the faintest hint of kiwi. In reality, it was just plain lemonade.

I like this rice vermicelli quite a bit. It’s light and fresh and has big simply cooked shrimp… and is loaded with veggies, eggs, and a light sauce. I’m a big fan. I want to figure out how to make this. They also give you two honkin pieces of some sourdough bread, which was also quite good. It’s a quick, simple, and tasty lunch.

Have y’all heard of this Pinkberry? It’s all the rage in LA and NYC. They keep yammering about all the celebrities and how they’re all going to Pinkberry and the paparrazi snap pics of all them scarfing down this stuff, which they’ve dubbed crackberry. It’s spawned dozens of copycats, even though Pinkberry itself was a copy of South Korea’s Red Mango. And since I was in LA, I had to try this crack myself.
The place is decorated all mod and space age. Clean and white with ice cream related bowls and utencils for sale. All which no sane person would ever buy. The concept of Pinkberry is simple – frozen yogurt with toppings of your choice. There are only two kinds of yogurt – original and green tea. There are three sizes. You can get as many toppings as you like for 95 cents, but the best deal is for the medium, as you get three toppings for about $5. That tends to be what everybody gets.

So it is frozen yogurt, but definitely not in the TCBY sense. It’s literally frozen yogurt, as in yoplait, dannon, stonyfield farms. It’s not like ice cream at all. But unlike plain yogurt, it’s just made in a frozen yogurt/soft-serve ice cream machine so it has that soft serve ice cream texture, but even more incredibly smooth and rich. The toppings are either fresh fruit or sweets/cereals/nuts. I didn’t like the idea of putting crunch berries or oreos on my frozen yogurt, so I went with the fruit. Heck, I always go with fruit. The fruit here is great. It’s not frozen, it’s not canned, it’s not unripe. It’s the sweetest and most fresh fruit you can imagine. I think that’s one of the keys in why this place is so popular.

I went with kiwi, blackberries, and pomegranate, which is seasonal. And you know what? I really liked this. The yogurt itself is tart and tangy and it’s a wonderful contrast to the ripe and sweet fruit. And it’s just fresh and natural tasting. It’s not overly sweet like ice cream would be. But did I become addicted? No, but I did enjoy it. But I see it as being a fad until the next big thing comes around. They do have Pinkberry in NYC. S joked that I should open a Pinkberry in Philly. I’m not sure how that would go. It’s definitely seasonal, so competing with the existing ice cream, water ice, and gelato places around town could be hairy. But heck, if somebody else opens one up, then I’d happily patronize it every now and again during the summer time. But only if you can wrangle me away from Capogiro.

After my giant pinkberry, I wasn’t really hungry, but S was. So she took me to Koreatown, as she’d been raving about these korean style spicy chicken wings for months. Koreatown is fairly sizable, but in a rather sketchy area of LA. You don’t go Koreatown because it’s an attractive neighborhood, you go there for the food. We went to OB Bear, which is an extremely casual and low key spot. We were there on a Tuesday night, but the place was packed. Who knew?

I had a very short trip to LA earlier this week. On our first day there, we lunched at the Santa Monica Promenade, since it was walking distance to our hotel. J picked Border Grill, which is the mexican joint from the chicks who used to have the Too Hot Tamales show on the Food Network. I’ve never watched it. We’d been flying all morning and a good amount into the afternoon. By the time we got here, it was lunch time in LA, but to us it was nearly dinner time. We were beyond starving.

They brought out complimentary chips and salsa and we started inhaling. The chips were excellent, not greasy at all. The salsas were all pureed, not a chunk of anything to be found. We thought it was a bit weird, but they still tasted fine. But it wouldn’t have been that bad to have bitten into a tomato chunk or two. We also go guacamole. You could taste how fresh it was and at least the guacamole had nice chunks of tomatoes and onions.

We all went with tacos for lunch. J and J both got the pork carnitas tacos. It came with two tacos on a corn tortilla that was topped with everything. You couldn’t really pick it up and it it like a taco. It was definitely a knife and fork taco. Two different rices were served along with refried black beans. I got the grilled fish tacos. Again, way too much fixins were on the tacos. I liked the tacos, but I found the fish a bit too fishy-y. The smell was quite strong. Both the rices were fine, but nothing exciting. The beans though, oh, these beans were excellent. I was thoroughly impressed.

We were so stuffed that we couldn’t even think of dessert, even though we really wanted to. We saw the desserts in the fridge right when we came in and we started salivating right there. The service here is attentive and quick. The ambiance is dark. The walls and ceilings are painted black and have colorful art all over them. On a non-food related sidenote, just as we were finishing up, we all swear that Natalie Maines (of Dixie Chicks), came in to dine with a companion right behind us. We think it was her, but couldn’t confirm, as it looked like she’d lost about 30 lbs. But it definitely looked just like her and sounded like her. She’s also married to Adrian Pasdar who graduated from the same high school as me. Shout out MNHS!