Los Angeles

If you should find yourself visiting a much-more-hip-than-you relative in the much-more-hip-than-where-you-live section of L.A. called Silver Lake, stop in at a wee restaurant called Sqirl. It’s worth the humiliation of being the least hip person in the neighborhood on a Friday afternoon.

Sqirl is famous for their jams (like Santa Rosa Plum and Flowering Thyme, or Shady Lady Tomato) but the menu rocks with lots of other treats, some vegan, some decidedly not, like the Famed Ricotta Toast, which was my pick. (I loaded it with Snow Queen Nectarine jam.)

I told my daughter I could eat it every day for breakfast. She pointed out that if I did so I would end up the size of a house.

So, no, I won’t be having this every day for breakfast. But I will have it again next time I cross the hipness border into Silver Lake.

One for the Table has never engaged in deliberate snarkiness. I’ve certainly avoided it as I scrupulously adhered to the motto “if you can’t say anything nice…” But, in this economy, I find myself being a bit cranky when certain chefs hold themselves to a particular standard and humiliate others on national television, when they themselves have a restaurant that is pitiful. Gordon Ramsay has set himself up as the arbiter of quality, but after eating at The London twice now, I can tell you The Emperor has no clothes on.

The first time I went there, I was really excited to have the English Breakfast. I loves me sausages. What I got were these dry, jerky-like, lukewarm salt tubes accompanied by a roasted tomato whose flavor was incomprehensibly bad. How can you mess that up?

The second time I went was because my daughter’s admissions counselor for the college she’ll be attending in the fall was staying at the Bel Age hotel where The London is located. Looking over the menu, I felt like a pinball being battered around from bad choice to bad choice.

Sometimes you don’t know a place is missing from a neighborhood until it opens. That’s how I feel about the new Sweet Lady Jane that opened a few months ago in Santa Monica up towards the east-end of the shop on Montana Avenue. I just hadn’t realized before – there really wasn’t anywhere to buy a perfect cherry pie (or a chocolate cake) or a delicious croissant or stop in for lunch and feel like just at the table next to you someone’s having an interesting conversation while you have one yourself accompanied by a perfect curried chicken salad sandwich (not an easy thing by the way) or home-made soup or if you need something cozy, a perfect grilled cheese, and the promise of a perfect cappucino (even though you don’t drink coffee at lunch).

And then, of course, any of their perfect sweets, a heavenly slice of cake, a hefty slice of pie. And you won’t be able to help yourself – you’ll bring something home for dessert that night, too – and if you’re anything like us, place an order for one or two pies for Sunday night (and maybe a chocolate cake) because you’ve just been inspired by Sweet Lady Jane to invite people over for Sunday dinner.

We had planned to spend New Year's Eve with friends and family but the flu and changes in schedules left us on our own. The New Year deserves to be celebrated, so we organized a dinner the first week of January at Il Fornaio in Santa Monica.

We enjoy coming to Il Fornaio for many reasons: their good food, affordable prices, and their Passporto program that rewards diners who come frequently during the Festa Regionale. During the first two weeks of every month, Il Fornaio presents a menu featuring the dishes and wines of a particular region in Italy. January's region is Trentino-Alto Adige, which borders Switzerland and Austria.

We met at the Santa Monica Il Fornaio, our favorite, because of the cozy setting and the friendly, attentive staff. Because the Regionale pairs food with wine, we came hungry and thirsty. Since we had a large group, we could order a good sampling of dishes.