Alice "it's all about the experience" Y.'s Profile

salt ramen with kimchi. best damn ramen on this freakin planet. if you do not agree we can never meet. i may end up strangling you.

Looks like a lot of Koreans are here professing their love for this place. If you're looking for some a-mazing noodles, this is it!  Kalguksoo is the comfort food you've been looking for!  Not only does the anchovy based noodle soup rock (homemade noodles, not overcooked), this place has some bomb-diggity kimchi left right at your table and the best steamed dumplings I've had outside of my grandmama's kitchen.  (RIP, grandma.)

When my husband and I crave some Korean food and don't want to eat it out of a trendy taco truck (Kogi), a sheesheefoofoo restaurant (Wharo and Gyenari) or where the late night clubbers hang (Hodori or Nakwon - damn, I'm too old for that), we head to this place.

Decor? A mish mash of golf posters, Jesus pictures, and hanging plants. Like your Korean aunt's house, you know, the one's house smells like dang-jang in that strange but yummy sort of way.

I wanted to give this place 5 stars, really I did.  This modern mecca almost had it all - delicious cebiche (as spelled on the menu, aka ceviche), warm empanadas, lomo saltado that made my mouth water.  But what's with the crappy service?  Our waitress forgot about our requests (a few times) and she was trying to push extra orders down our throats (lady, we're sharing - it's called family style!  that's how Asians do it!)

Oh the cebiche, though!  Holy hot mother of God, I thought I'd died and gone to an underwater heaven.  The only way that tuna would have been fresher would be if it swam directly into my mouth.  Come here fishy fishy!  Get the cebiche nikei (the tuna one)..you'll be licking that bowl clean because the sauce is that delish.

What was the best part?  My friends...it was the sauces.  The three sauces that came with your sweet potato chips and regular potato chips all had a unique and distinct flavor.  The hot one was my personal fav.    Then there's the sauces you get with your empanadas and salmon skewers.  All...perfecto.

Loved the pops of color against the white furnishings.  A bit on the pricey side (lomo saltado was how much?  $27 for lunch and it wasn't that much better than Mario's!)  Overall experience was pleasant.  Nothing beats eating family style with your friends, enjoying the beauty of San Francisco. I'll definitely be back!

Don't hate...this place is great!
Hubster and I went here a few weeks ago and I've been meaning to write a detailed review of this place ever since.  

Quickly:  
Bad:  Busy as all hell.  Good luck finding a seat, go at weird times or you'll end up eating at the oyster bar.  (We did.)

Great:  Seafood was super fresh.  The oysters were some of the biggest and freshest I've ever had.  Hubster even had some and didn't get sick.    

Tried the cioppino (a healthy helping of seafood, great tasting tomato broth), the crab louie salad (huge, gave lots of crab), steamed clams in a delicious garlic butter sauce, and the oysters.  Bill came out to a benjamin (for the two of us) but then again we had so much food in front of us people thought we were crazy.  (In fact, we're just giant Asians who love to eat.)

Understand that this place is less restaurant and more fish house.  I loved the look and feel of this place - high ceilings, loud and semi-chaotic - because it reminded me of San Francisco.  If you want nice, calm ambiance go to Ocean Seafood instead.

Fishy fabulous!

The best homemade tortillas I've ever tasted.  Warm, perfect thickness, they'll kick Mission tortillas ass.  It's all about those tacos, baby.

Look around and you'll quickly discover that this place suffers from the Yelp effect.  Hipsters and Asians have taken over this authentic joint.  They've found the holy tortilla and they're never going back!

You'll have to order at least 2-3 tacos to get full here but that's ok.  Try the carne asada and the carnitas, get a side of guac and sour cream and then make sure to pick up some extra salsa cups and pour yourself some beans (black pot next to the salsa bar).  

Small place, not lots of parking, but those tacos...oh those tacos.  I'm in Tacomiendo heaven.

Last time I went here was when they were relatively new.  I'm bumping this place up to 4 stars after my experience with sugarFISH today.  Yippee!

Sushi Nozawa selects only the highest quality fish and the fact that he makes you "trust him" with his pre-fix menu doesn't mean he's giving you the crappy leftover fish, in fact it's quite the opposite - he only wants to give you the best fish out there.  You can taste it with every bite - nothing's quite as heavenly as his salmon sushi with a sprinkling of sesame seeds on warm rice.  

Think of this place like the younger, hipper, more modern version of Sasabune. It's the Coldplay to U2 ..the SLS to St. Regis...In fact, the waiter even told us that Nozawa is Sasabune's teacher!  Voila!  Makes perfect sense.

Trust Me gets you everything from sashimi to sushi to their new hand rolls.  Perfection lies in their crab hand roll.  Warm rice wrapped in seaweed with real crab.  Slap me silly, I'm in heaven.

Get over the Pinkberry feel and enjoy the sushi.  Trust Nozawa, trust me, and then trust yourself.  This place is the bomb.

I wanted to like this place. Truly, I did. But when you have the most absurd line situation I have ever seen, where my husband ends up feeling like a criminal, you've got a problem!

Huckleberry is an American cafe/bakery that opened last month in Santa Monica. I went there with my husband, my BFF and her husband for what I thought would be a nice Sunday brunch. Hubster and I enter through the front door, he grabs a seat, I stand in line to order our food. The place is packed. I fall in love with the decor, it's modern Americana with wood tables, red chairs and a chalkboard menu. It feels like a San Francisco cafe that was gently picked up and moved to sunny Santa Monica.

But then...the love bus comes to a screeching halt once I start noticing the red flags.

More at http://www.mymodernmet...

I'm going against the grain here - this place is whack.

Had dinner here tonight with an old high school friend.  Outdoor patio rocks but I wasn't digging the communal style seating, all sitting around the pit makes for strange, unintentional eavesdropping, hot faces (if you sit too close to the fire), and cramped seating.  Reminded me of Beachwood with sushi instead of sweet potato fries.

Food was mediocre at best - you don't come here to chow down on the best sushi, you come here to take your hot date (mind you, it was 100% couples..all around that kumbaya pit).

We ordered the cod (tasted like cheese, weird), scallop dynamite (i like creamy but this was WAY too creamy, easy on the mayo boys!), lobster miso soup (delicious but hard to eat, should have figured, had legs and all), garlic clams (not that strong tasting), yellow tuna roll (could have been from mitsuwa), albacore sashimi (not the highest quality) and fried oysters with guac (their saving grace).  Even the plum wine tasted like Robitussin.  'Tussin, I say!

If you need a place to take a date and you want to be amongst people (ehem, eHarmonites/Matchers) - go here.  If you want mackin' food - take that benjamin you're gonna spend on the two of you elsewhere.

Din Tai Fung...FTW!

Our good friend Gary took us here today and all I can say is that I'm dreaming of those delicious little pork dumplings!  (Literally, dumplings are dancing in my head!)

Gary Z ordered 30 for the 3 of us, which I thought was going to be way too much but actually turned out to be perfect.  Imagine hot steamed pork dumplings that burst in your mouth with warm juice.  Out of this world!

We also got the pork sticky rice, the mixed vegetables, the sweet and sour soup and the pork fried rice.  All satisfied but you don't come here for that stuff - you come here for the most mackin' dumplings you'll ever taste.

Decor was modern, line wasn't too long for us (15 min), and service was prompt.  

You know what that means?  5 stars babyyyyy!

(Tip to avoid lines: Go when they first open or when they're just about to close.)

I will be back...and this time for 100 dumplings...just for me!

Blue Dahlia is one of those beautiful gems in LA - they have a burger that rocks your world, modern decor that makes you feel like you're in a cool ass comfortable loft, and an outside patio where you can smoke a ciggi and take in the warm winter nights. Like Bodega Bar in Santa Monica, it's more of a sophisticated wine bar than a rowdy college hangout, a place to kick it with your old buddies and reminisce about the good old days.

More with pictures: http://www.mymodernmet...