To Live and di(n)e in LA

I’m such an LA foodie hipster, I had a reservation at Osteria Mozza this past Saturday night and cancelled on them.

Now, I’ve no doubt they were able to fill our coveted 5:30pm slot. You know, the one normally reserved for those over 65 and usually found at a deli in Boca. Still, it felt good.

I’m surely not the first person to write about this phenomenon, the two choice reservation. Go ahead, try this. Pick up the phone and call (insert hot restaurant here) to reserve a table. In the case of either Mozza option, this of course must be done a month in advance, and only after 10am. For those fond of radio station contests this will feel familiar.

Vessia Ristorante, Irvine.

Vessia

Being as we’re not long for this part of California (we’re moving 50 miles to the north in a few weeks), we wanted to take advantage of a little time and visit one of our favorite restaurants: Vessia, in Irvine. We go often enough to be regulars but don’t get a “Hi Norm!”, nor does the staff chatter excitedly in hushed voices: “THEY‘re here” when we walk in. I am totally fine with that.

I do not intend to start writing restaurant reviews. And this is not meant to be a review of Vessia, but we are fond of the place. It’s big, but cozy feeling and the food is great. The wine list emphasizes Italian wines and is pretty nice for a bedroom community.

L.A. Wine – the concept.

Hi Folks

My idea for this site stems from the LA Times ditching regular local wine coverage.

One thing I was thinking about doing is a hybrid site like http://foodandwineblog.com/ that covers wine and food in LA but looks at the more obscure or atypical angle: a-la Tony Bourdain meets “Bizarre Foods” with Andrew Zimmern.

We could cover wine events, restaurants, tastings bars, etc – whatever we define as the format of the site.

Let’s use the comments section below to talk about ideas and possibilities.

This site can be reached with these URLs:

www.wine-la.com and www.la-wine.com

Whatever the format of this site will be (as a product of our collaboration) I would like this site to fill the void in food and wine writing that the LA Times recently created.

Another point I’d like to bring up is what to we want to accomplish with this site?

• Do we want a casual community blog that chronicles our experiences and foibles in wine and offers opinion-driven content from enthusiast-authors?

• Do we want something with a journalistic culture, an editorial direction and with potential permanence – a journalistic serious player that follows these principles: http://www.redwinebuzz.com/faq.htm#wiaip?

Let’s see where we go with this.