Los Angeles

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.

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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It’s 4 o’clock on Sunday afternoon, and like any well-adjusted twentysomething, I’m eating breakfast.  More specifically, I’m having brioche french toast and cappuccino at the Little Next Door on 3rd with my friend Gloria.  After living in LA for six months, I have determined that breakfast in the afternoon is exactly the sort of reckless behavior Sundays demand.

Typically in New York, Sundays amounted to consumption of greasy brunch complemented by mimosas and black coffee.  Following brunch was an inevitable headache, followed by more consumption in the form of excessive window-shopping, followed by an indulgent nap upon what appeared to be a laundry pile, but was in fact my bed.

It was the day after Christmas, we’d had too much sugar and a fair share of post-modern stress so, it was probably a bad idea to try to go “sale” shopping. 

We couldn’t even get into the parking lot at Saks, it was 5 of 11 and the 70% discount ended at noon and neither of us had even had a cup of coffee.... (I sometimes think my daughters and I should wear signs around our necks that say “Please feed before attempting to interact with us.”) 

And then sort of Saks was off the table but we were already out and we poked our heads into a shop on Melrose Place which was too expensive and besides the point and Anna said she just wanted to go home.  Neither one of us had really had coffee.

“No, let’s take a walk,” I insisted.  “We’ll find someplace to eat.”