Silver Lake

On the way to the dance at Lindy Groove, my hosts took me to the Local in the Silverlake area. It's actually pretty neat area. I think in their avoidance of the freeway, Sunset seems to be the best way to get from their place to Pasadena.

The concept of the restaurant is not super unique, but they do make it very convenient. They offer all locally growned vegetables, grain, meat, and on top of that offer good tasting food. My company all each got something very different. There were the Old School Mac & Cheese. I got couscous, wild grain rice.

On my plate, I had couscous w/ spinach salad and Dr. Pepper marinated flank steak (by recommendation). The couscous was mixed in with beans and cranberry. That's very different, I've never had that before. The Spinach was mixed w/ a very tangy dressing, so I can't name it, but it was tasty! The flank steak, unfortunately, being the bigger ticket item, it was also the not-so-good part of my meal. It was overdone and chewy. You can barely taste the marinate.

In theory, whenever they marinate w/ Dr. Pepper or Coke, the idea is not to have them to be sweet, as much as taking advantage of their acidity to soften the meat. In this case, they seemed to have failed in that aspect.

That said, it is not to say that I won't go back. I will go back, but maybe with another entree. Luckily for me, their food is always seasonal, so no fear on trying something new.

Afterards, we walked around a bit and checked out some boutiques, none of them are chains which is cool. There's neat vintage furniture stores, neat handmade stores... we didn't get to check out much because it was near closing time, but we did manage to go to coffee bar down the strip.

This ain't your regular Starbucks, they have variations up the wazoo. All kinds of milk variation and obviously espresso/chai variation. The place is a neat hangout, and you can tell that people definitely take advantage of that.

The Local
2943 W. Sunset Blvd,
Los Angeles, CA
323-662-4740
http://silverlakelocal.com/

Intelligentsia Coffee
3922 W Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90029
323.663.6173
http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/locations/view/Silver+Lake+Coffeebar