What a Cook Wants, 10

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Delicate, Crunchy Macarons

French macarons have delicate, crisp exteriors that bely their chewy insides; they're essentially a meringue (made with ground almond) cookie sandwich with a lush, naughty filling. The best ones I had were at Boule, which sadly did not survive the recession.
But I hear the macarons at L.A. Burdick are mighty fine, and they're definitely the fabulous, perfect-end-of-the-party cookie right now. They seem almost too debonair to be called cookies, but that's just their French mystique.
Harvest Flavor Macarons in seasonal flavors: pumpkin, cinnamon and chocolate, $22 for a box of 15.

I Came, I Comme Ça, I Chowed Down

I recently attended the opening of Comme Ça, chef David Myers' newest venture. (see above and below)

Myers has beautiful eyes and a smoldering intensity (but perhaps more pertinent to this blog!) is a cuisine-forward, thrilling chef to behold. This is his second venture after Sona, a restaurant I love dearly. What I like about his cooking is that it gracefully dances that razor-thin line between
1. advanced, intellectual dishes and
2. food that is actually delicious and accessible.
Most chefs who fall into category 1. completely forget about 2. I love having my brain stimulated while I eat, but ultimately the pleasure that matters most is in the mouth.
But I digress, dear reader, back to Comme Ça!

The focus of all restaurant openings, oddly, isn't the food. Openings are basically an amped up catering experience (seriously, there was a catering truck out back, though to his credit it did belong to Myers), which is ok because the purpose is not to dazzle the palette but rather convince everyone there that This Is The Place To Be! Look at all the cool kids! So hopefully they'll tell their friends, and more cool kids will come (like these gals).

Standard-issue LA Hotties, exhibit A






Comme Ça's opening was quite successful to that effect: it was crammed with hipsters young and grey, well-cut suits and too-cool-for-school $60 t-shirts, a few dedicated foodies, other talented chefs, and a lot of folks eager for free drinks.
And the drinks were superb, oh my goodness. I'd never had scotch with anything other than soda (P.S. I hate scotch, the smell makes me want to hurl), but their fabulous 'Penicillin' with scotch, ginger, lemon and honey made a believer out of me. Sweet Lord, it cured all my ills. Likewise, the 'Rumble' with rum and bruised blackberries was its own modern art, gorgeous in the glass and jiggy on the tongue.
The restuarant will be an LA brasserie, something this city sorely lacks, though I can only assume (and hope!) Myers will put his own tasty twist on the classic French dishes. I was delighted by his Salad in a Spoon. Frisee (I like to think of them as thistles), lardon~though they seemed suspiciously like tiny cubes of pork belly, yum~ and a delicate hard-cooked egg, all in one perfectly assembled bite? Tory heaven.
There were also crusty, lusty breads from Boule, Michelle Myers' gift to the LA pastry (and chocolate!) scene:
But perhaps my favorite part was the 3 cheese stations: goat, cow, and bleu! Excellent cheese is always the right answer:
That tasty bit had butter, a nutty bleu who's name I forget (somebody had one too many Penicillins!), and was drizzled with honey. Decadence of the finest sort.

Let's see, final credits... all the photos here were taken by Victor Rodionoff and pilfered by yours truly from MetroMix (thanks guys!). And look, I even made it into one of them! Yes, I am famous now, very exciting.
>Slightly-more-eclectic LA Hotties, exhibit B

I'm the juicy one, second to right. I can't wait to eat there for real, they open their doors to all tomorrow. Bon Appétit fellow Angelenos!
Comme Ça
8479 Melrose Ave.
323.782.1104

The Candy Connoisseur

I never considered my friend Jeff a foodie. When we met in college, his diet was almost exclusively burgers and pizza, with pancakes in the morning. (Yet he magically retained his ripped physique.) On occasion I'd find him eating lasagna and spaghetti, and oh, the Twizzlers. Good Goddess did he eat a lot of Twizzlers. At the movies I'd order popcorn with enough "butter" to make me queasy- what is popcorn but a vehicle for butter and salt?- and Jeff would sit down next to me twenty minutes before the previews started with a lap full of Twizzlers, Sour Patch Kids, maybe some Spree or Bottle Caps, Nerds if he could find them, and polish off the lot halfway through the film. I don't recall any SnoCaps, with Jeff it was pretty much straight sugar.

Back then I was obsessed with trying every dish at the one tiny Vietnamese restaurant off campus, figuring out what that mysterious herb was in the salsa at the Dutch Cabin (answer: cilantro. I come from white folk), and perfecting my one-dish couscous suppers. Jeff was always in the mood for a burger... he had other fine qualities.

After school he moved to L.A., and when I had the good fortune to join him in Lalaland we picked up where we'd left off. Here his diet had expanded to include the occasional salad. No one can resist the Los Angeles "I'll Just Have a Salad" ethos; it's an unavoidable part of the culture even Jeff got sucked into. So far it hasn't killed him, and fortunately hasn't affected his well-defined abs. (How does he do that?)

About a year ago we were wandering through a candy store after a roller coaster at Six Flags. I was expounding on my working theory of Fast Food French Fry Superiority when a funny thing happened: Jeff started talking about Swedish Fish. Or rather, complaining. Apparently, most Swedish Fish are stale. They sit too long and get stiff and tough. I'd never thought about "candy freshness" before. I watched Jeff feel up every bag in the store; when he finally abandonded his search in disgust, it occured to me I may have underestimated my friend. I suggested perhaps Red Vines would suffice? and the look on his face reminded me of my own when people tell me they know a great "Philly Cheese-Steak" place. His eyes held the contempt I usually reserve for militant vegans and "compassionate conservatives."

A lengthy treatise followed: I was schooled on the horrors of Red Vines in all their West Coast-Twizzler-Imitator-Evils, how they're hard, not pliable and the flavor is weak and tastes of chemicals. It was like watching an inverse image of me in the mirror, his blue eyes ablaze, squawking about the finer points of candy texture. He was beautiful. He finally settled on some Skittles (regular, not the Tropical kind).

We had brunch yesterday. As Jeff ate his pancakes, he explained to me that the Nerds Cherry and Sour Apple flavor combination was terrible, the importance of buying the smaller packages of Laffy Taffy (the easier to switch between flavors), and we had a lovely seasonal chat about the best brand of candy corn. Apparently, one company makes it too grainy and soft, though Jeff is wary of tough candy corn as well. I made a mental note for next year to buy him a package of the uber-fancy, homemade candy corn sold at Boule, an elegant patisserie on La Cienega. I just hope it's good enough.