Black Hogg

There are some restaurants in Silverlake/Echo Park/Los Feliz area I've been wanting to try for a while now.  The problem is, these places are somewhat far or troublesome to get to because it usually requires traversing through DTLA and it's better to have DTLA be your final destination given the horrific traffic. So it can be hard to gather any forces to conquer these places in, but luckily Ho Bag, and two new diners making their debut on the blog, Fat-Skinny-Fat-Less Fat (whose name will probably be in flux as he continues to drop weight for the upcoming bikini season) and Hates Food Porno, readily rallied to my side to check out Black Hogg.  Ho Bag will eat just about anything I suggest, having an unwavering and unquestioning trust in my food judgement.  When it comes to food relationships, I wear the pants, and very rarely does anyone try to fight me on that.  Hates Food Porno probably only came because Ho Bag dragged her.  I don't read minds, but I know she was cursing me under her breath with ever click of my camera, and every "wait wait! I'm not done yet!"  

Uni Toast san diego uni, plugra butter, maldon salt, chives

My name is all over uni anything.  It's such a stark contrast to a few years ago when uni anything made me gag.  The flavors were subtle, but the sweet butteriness of uni was brought out by the fancy buttery and complimented the crunch of the toast.  We split each in two, but I woulda been happier with a whole toast to myself.

Brussels Sprouts Hash twice cooked brussels, yukon golds, bacon vinaigrette, poached egg
It is a FACT.  Every restaurant this side of 2008 has their version of brussels sprouts.  These were pretty good.  I liked the incorporation of the soft luscious potatoes.  The bacon flavor was pretty subtle.  I'm sure the brussels were fried, and so the yolk added only another layer of decadence.

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Son of a Gun

Son of a Gun is one of those rare restaurants that really wowed me the first time I dined there.  I've recommended this place to numerous friends visiting LA, looking to have the best LA dining experience.  After my first visit, I concluded that Son of a Gun was really doing something special here.  So obviously, I was more than happy to come back for round 2.  Quadruple T and his girlfriend were in town for the New Year, so we (Smooth Obturator, Triple T, and myself) made a celebratory evening of our first meal of 2014 (yeah yeah, I'm waaaay behind!)

Uni burrata, button mushrooms, yuzu

I was pretty intrigued by the pairing of uni and burrata, definitely two of my many favorite things in this world.  I don't think the flavors worked well here.  Both elements have such subtle, light, delicate flavors, that when paired together sorta cancel each other out.  It just all tasted kinda "blobulous" (I totally just made that up).  A creamy blob of that, with a slightly salty sweet blob of this = "blobulous."  Maybe more yuzu would have made the dish sing a little bit more.

Hamachi galbi vinaigrette, pink lady apple, radish sprout
We weren't that impressed by the raw stuff, but I did find the galbi vinaigrette to be quite memorable. Packed with umami goodness, I wished I could bottle the stuff up and pour it over everything.

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King Hua

Dim sum has to fall into the same category as sushi, for it's lack of varying descriptors.  Also, while all sushi looks the same, all dim sum looks the same as well.  As a result, dim sum isn't all that exciting to blog about, but I still do it because good dim sum deserves some attention.  King Hua isn't the best, but it's pretty good.  Maybe I don't know what the best is anymore, since my favorite place Sea Harbour Seafood has faltered in quality just a tad.  LoMa-Linda recommended some new places for me to try since the prices and wait times are high at Sea Harbour.  I agreed to try King Hua mostly because they serve milk buns, and I refuse to eat dim sum unless I can have my milk buns!  This meal was a special occasion since The Gunner (who needs a new name) and Perpetually Underwhelmed were visiting me from Portland.  I wanted to show them what was good about SoCal, and ain't nothing better here than the Asian food.

Siu Mai
Porky, juicy, plump.

Pan Fried Turnip Cake

Crispy exterior with bits of Chinese sausage smattered between chunks of moist cakey turnip.

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