Los Angeles

Against all odds, not one, but two excellent hotel restaurants have opened in the last few months. First, we had the Bazaar by José Andrés, the dynamic tapas restaurant in the new SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills. And now we have Fig in the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica.

OK, there's no ocean view: all the better to focus on chef Ray Garcia's cooking. Never heard of him? You will, because this young chef is doing something very interesting at Fig, a restaurant that doesn't feel like a hotel restaurant. Fig is not only convincing guests to stay in: Garcia is also drawing a local crowd for his bright California cooking.

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Huckleberry, Sweet Rose Creamery and Rustic Canyon touched a foodie sweet spot with locals in Santa Monica and West Los Angeles. Husband and wife co-owners, Josh Loeb and Zoe Nathan proved again and again that they understood what the upscale community wanted: farmers market fresh food served in casually artful settings.

Mid-range pricing means they can afford to use high quality ingredients and indulge their flair for visually engaging food. Walk past Huckleberry's bakery display and you'll be hard pressed not to take a photograph. The scones and muffins are gorgeous.

Their forte is creating exceptionally well-prepared comfort food.

That is definitely the focus of their newest restaurant and bakery, Milo & Olive located at 2723 Wilshire Blvd. at Harvard on the eastern edge of Santa Monica and open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, 7am-11pm.

I recently joined Facebook and that is another story for another time, but its relevant to what I’m telling you because I’ve never made a friend this way until recently.

I was reading my favorite magazine, The Believer. I always turn to Sedaratives when I first get it and this month it was written by a girl named Julie Klausner.  It was very funny and caused me to look up her web site where I read some of her other material. Even funnier. I wrote on her “wall” telling her how much I liked her writing. One thing led to another and I was taking her out to lunch because she was here from New York on a book tour. Her book, I Don’t Care About Your Band, had some of the funniest things I’d ever read about relationships. 

When trying to figure out where to eat, she assumed that I might have that “California” thing and be all ‘food restriction-y”. I told her I was a native and that kind of crap was usually behavior adopted by people who move here. One thing we got out of the way right immediately was that neither of us was a vegan or vegetarian. We had some really arch things to say about people who are, but I’m not going to repeat them because you never know, right?

So, I thought, “Burgers!”

"How many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"
"It's a really obscure number. you wouldn't have heard of it."

Since starting my dance company, my affiliation with hipsters has grown exponentially (and it wasn't exactly non-existent before). So instead of fighting it, I've decided to fully embrace all the customs and habits of this (increasingly less) rarified group of moustache sporting, shower shunning, flannel-wearing, beanstalk-bodied ugly ducklings. To accomplish this, I consult my sister, who, while she is much too beautiful to need to hide behind hipster affectations, is an expert on all things Eastside and off-the-beaten path.