The last time I was in LA nearly about a year ago, I drove past a place called Wolfgang Puck’s Cafe on Sunset Boulevard right by Sunset Strip. For some reason, that place stuck in my mind as a landmark and so this time I decided to actually go check it out. And as far as restaurants go, it was a lot more like my kind of place than some of the other places I ate at while in LA.

I prefer the more laid-back and fun atmosphere for dining any day as compared to a high-falutin, snobbish restaurant. For starters the food at a high-falutin restaurant is generally not my type… I’m not interested in eating escargot (I head a good one once — why do they call them escargot? Because no one would eat them if they were called snails!) or eels, or calamari or any sch stuff that is considered exotic. Chicken is about as exotic as I get! 🙂 My problem with the more exotic foods is totally psychological… the image of the animal being eaten comes into my head and totally turns me off. Except in the case of chicken where I have succeeded in conditioning myself to dissociate boneless chicken from the image of an actual chicken with its head being cut off — note I said boneless!

Anyhow, so as I drove from one end of Sunset Blvd to the other I decided on a whim to actually stop @ Wolfgang Puck’s for lunch. I liked the atmosphere. Nice and lively and definitely non-stuffy. The bartender served a good Sapphire Tonic with the pre-requisite two limes (you’d be amazed at how many leave out the second lime). They were reasonable priced for California standards. Service was quick and the Spicy Chicken Pizza that I ordered was actually really good. So everything was going really well, except as it always happens, I got a small piece of bone in my chicken 🙁 But still once I got past the bone crunching in my teeth, the Pizza was great, the food was great and the atmossphere was great. I’d definitely go back there again and hope that the bone was only an unfortunate oversight which won’t repeat itself!

hmm.. I guess if there was no bone, Wolfgang Puck’s would have gotten a full thumbs up. But I think I’ll have to give them a partial thumbs up for now!

Oh and on a similar note, another place I dined at in LA was a restaurant called Typhoon (see the article about Typhoon I found on the web while writing this blog…) at the Santa Monica County Airport. Cool location — right off the run way so you can see the private planes taking off and landing. The food was a different story altogether. My friend actually ordered (and ate them for that matter!) Frogs Legs! They also had a whole section on the menu titled “Insects” — yup that’s exactly what I was looking for. Most of the more — I was going to say exotic, but I think eccentric would be a better choice — eccentric foods are always deep fried… I guess once you fry it, it all tastes the same… be it frogs legs, ants, cockroaches, crickets and whatever else people eat — I had read far enough to already kill my appetite!

The food at Typhoon was not to my liking — I guess after seeing the menu and seeing the things both on our table and others I doubt anything would have been to my liking that evening! 😉 So at most I can give it a thumbs flat.

While I was in LA, two friends of mine invited me to accompany them to a party — so I can see what partying is like in LA. Being halloween it was a costume party of course. So my friends show up dressed in glow-in-the-dark afro wigs and calf-length trousers… both husband and wife were dressed as Mozart! Along with them another friend who was wearing a clown mask and a huge afro-wig. So when I stepped into their car at in the foyer of the Beverly Hilton, needless to say quit surprised! But my surprise would soon be outdone by the amount of time, effort people at the party had put into their costumes.

The party was itself held in a warehouse converted to a loft in downtown L.A. And from what my friends told me, the area wasn’t one to be caught in after hours. The loft/warehouse though was ultra-cool. Very open, minimal furniture, large Proxima projectors — talk about big screen TV. Very smply but tastefully done.

And this party was kind of like the party which kept on going… at first there was one room, which was large, but nothing surprising. But then, you walk into the back and it opens into a whole other area! And that wasn’t it, there was an open-air area too. By now I though I had seen all of it and then later in the evening doors to other “party-locations” seem to appear out of no where! It just kept going on and on and on!

The women at the party were literally drop dead gorgeous, especially dressed in their mostly skin tight and skimpy outfits! Ones which deserve special mention are: the one dressed as an FBI agent, one as Lara Croft, “the naughty nurse” and even someone who came dressed as a shower! But in my ook the award for the best costume goes to Superwoman and her sidekick the Superdog (or Superbitch?) both of whom were adorned in their appropriate costume. Superdog of course was an 8 month old german-shepherd mix — Maya (got the dog’s name, but not the owners!)– who was very friendly and was literally boogie-ing on the dance floor with everyone!

It’s been a long time since I went to a real party. In fact the last one that I can remember going to and having fun at was actually my own party back in Delhi which is the subject of an article in itself. Anyhow, it was good to finally get back into a scene which is totally full of fun and no restraints. I’d go back to LA just to go to another party like this. Definitely the highlight of the trip!