I was fortunate enough to get to the LA area not only twice this summer, but over back-to-back weekends.

I spent a Friday night at the start of August catching up with one of my best girlfriends. Nicole lives (I use that term loosely in that at the time this is being written, she is currently packing up and prepping to move out) in an LA suburb, and we wanted a night to catch up on all the ridiculousness that had transpired in our lives over the summer so far.  So I abused the flight benefits I have access to and headed out to her place for the night.

SLEEPOVER WIN.

The second weekend, I randomly decided to join a new friend – a blog friend – as his plus one to a wedding of a friend of his. Both weekends were fabulous, and of course, included delicious dining that will be highlighted below.

Weekend One -
We did dinner in Malibu on Friday night (I just love saying that. Doesn’t dinner in Malibu just roll off your tongue a little? No? Just mine? Ok FINE.) at a place on the beach called the Paradise Cove Beach Cafe.

We had giant margaritas and I enjoyed the seafood tacos (two fish, one shrimp) that were HUGE and delicious and spicy and nearly perfect.

The setting of the Beach Cafe was great, in that it was – naturally – on the beach.  I’m not accustomed to ocean outside my windows so I basically just sat and stared off in daydreamland while we ate.

On Saturday morning, Nicole took me BACK to this bagel shop – East Coast Bagel – we’d stopped in prior to our Vegas trip back in June. As you can infer from the name, they’re all East-Coast-style and stuff… not sure what that means exactly except for two things:

• they are fucking DELICIOUS
• they actually make chocolate and/or chocolate chip bagels, which I haven’t found elsewhere YET. So when I get chocolate chip bagels, toasted with peanut butter and the peanut butter gets all warm and amazing because the bagel was just toasted… my heart does a little song-and-dance routine that not many other food combos can elicit.

(Rachel promises me that their available on the East Coast and when she comes in from Jersey this weekend, I’m getting a suitcase full. What a great friend )

Weekend Two -

I joined Nico out in the Hollywood Hills area the following weekend as his plus one for his friends’ wedding. It was kind of fun to tell people I was from the Internet (and since Nico and I met because of 20-Something Bloggers, that’s what we told people), until we realized that the people seated with us at our table – Nico’s friends – were also major social media nerds so that wasn’t as impressive as we thought it’d be. Anyway, Nico writes a lovely recap of the event here (and says some sweetheart things about me). But let me talk about the food at two different places.

Breakfast.  We did breakfast at what apparently is a famous little eatery.  And by famous I mean it was in the movie Reservoir Dogs, or so I’m told (I actually haven’t ever seen that movie, whoops!).

We enjoyed multiple cups of coffee at Pat and Lorraine’s in (on?) Eagle Rock.  I had classic French toast that was the perfect amount of comfort breakfast food to start the day.  It was a really cute, diner-ish place with a great patio and friendly staff.  Seems like the kind of place that the locals frequent and that certainly has it’s “regulars.”

Then, after a few hours of tooling around Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and other nifty little neighborhoods, we did a late lunch at The Alcove.  It’s a gorgeous little bistro/deli place in the Los Feliz neighborhood of the LA area.  We sat outside, drank mimosas, and I ate the most ridiculously amazing crab cake sandwich in the history of crab cake sandwiches.

Here’s what they say about it on their menu:

crab cake sandwich
maryland style crab cake made from sweet blue crab meat on a caramelized onion bun, caramelized bermuda onions, wild arugula, tomato and chipotle aioli on the side

Don’t even tell me you’re not salivating.  That aioli?  AMAZING.  And you really can’t go wrong with arugula; it’s one of my favorite greens of all the greens.

So, mid-afternoon outdoor lunch plus good company plus champagne plus crab?

Le swooooon.