Tag Archives: bacon

Little Dom’s…Again! {Brunch}

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I’m a tofu-eating, yoga-practicing, toms-wearing, brunch-going twenty something living in Hollywoodland. I’ve become my own worst nightmare. My name is Shannon, and I am so LA.

Maybe it’s true. Maybe the sunshine does make us less cynical than our eastern counterparts (I still love you more, NY!). But how cynical can you really be on a sunshiney Sunday morning enjoying eggs benedict with your slightly woozy friends from the previous night’s debaucherous adventures? (life lesson learned: Jameson is stronger than beer.)

Enter the wonderful meal mashup that is brunch. I was particularly hyped when I found out that Little Dom’s in lovely Los Feliz served brunch, so duh, I dragged some (slightly hungover) friends to recuperate over some coffee and breakfast potatoes.

Little Dom’s
www.littledoms.com
2128 Hillhurst Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 661-0055

The Rating: 

The Quick and Dirty:

The wait wasn’t too bad during prime brunch time (maybe 20 minutes or so?). The coffee? Strong enough to kick that headache. The eggs benedict need to become a regular menu item, because they were perfection. For an Italian restaurant, the pizza is just ok (props for the homemade sausage though). No brunch is complete without pancakes, and it’s really hard to f those up, especially when they have blueberries and ricotta cheese in them. Yum.

The Eats:

{roasted garlic potatoes}

{bacon eggs benedict on focaccia}

{italian sausage pizza}

{ricotta blueberry pancakes}

Meet Your Meat at Animal {Carnivorous}

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{rawr. animal. you can tell from the date on the menu how delayed i am in posting this. also, check out how hipster i am instagraming the sh*t out of this photo.}

When I was younger, I proudly declared that I was a “meat-a-tarian,” partially because I haaaated vegetables and mostly because I loved meat.  And I still.  Love.  Meat.  While I can always appreciate a good vegan meal (I actually do enjoy tofu and other miscellaneous soy “meats”), I appreciate a tender, juicy, red steak a little bit more.

Enter Animal, the restaurant for the true carnivore.

Animal
animalrestaurant.com
435 N. Fairfax Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 782-9225

The Rating: 

I came here with my big brother and sis in law (fellow foodies and bloggers) for an all out meaty dining experience.  We are quite a chatty bunch, so it’s apparent when a meal is good when we shut up.  Animal made us shut up.

The eats were as follows:

{chicken liver toast}

This was fine, but it was quite a spread of pate for a tiny piece of bread.

{hamachi tostada, herbs, fish sauce vinaigrette, peanut}

Probably the lightest thing on the menu. Awesome sauce, an array of varietal textures.

{pig ear, chili, lime, fried egg}

Um, wow. Thin slices of crispy pig ear tossed in refreshing lime. You break open the egg yolk and mix everything together. Looks unappealing, tastes FANTASTIC.

{foie gras, biscuit, maple sausage gravy}

This is where things starting getting heavy. Foie gras? Rich. Biscuit? Dense. Maple sausage gravy? Hello, food baby. Mix ‘em all together and it’s like an insanely heavy, sweet/salty item that’s torn between a dessert or a dish.

{foie gras loco moco, qual egg, spam, hamburger}

The most expensive thing on the menu (Animal is a small plates restaurant, so at $30+ a pop, the loco moco is an investment.  In your belly’s happiness).  Whatever they make the ground beef with, it is divine.  Just give me a plate full of the ground beef in this loco moco and you’ve got yourself one happy girl.

{poutine, oxtail gravy, cheddar}

We ended the meal with the heaviest dish (and that’s taking the foie gras biscuit into consideration).

Stuffed, silent, and nearing a serious meat food coma, I couldn’t help but make a Friends reference re: meat sweats.

Have I mentioned I’m never too stuffed for dessert?  See the sweet endings below.

{citrus, rhubarb, sabayon, yogurt, sable}

{bacon chocolate crunch bar, salt & pepper ice cream, nutella powder}

Probably the richest, heaviest, meatiest meal I’ve had. Animal is not for the faint of heart (or the vegetarians out there). But fellow meat lovers out there, unite, for we have found our mecca.

Spinach Salad with Bacon Dressing

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BACON!  God’s gift to carnivores everywhere.  I love me a good spinach salad, but I couldn’t find a bottled dressing that really worked for me.  Leave it to Alton Brown to concoct a fantastically tangy dressing that works seamlessly with your standard spinach salad.  Did I mention that there’s bacon fat in it?!

The Good Eats host’s recipe is easy, easy, easy…and you probably already have most, if not all of the ingredients already on hand.  The simple-yet-hearty salad consists of spinach, hard boiled eggs, bacon, white mushrooms and an onion (I didn’t have an onion, and thought it was totally fine without it).  My new fave dressing is made up of red wine vinegar, sugar, dijon mustard, salt, pepper and…bacon fat!  YUM!

Sidebar: My new favorite kitchen staple is kosher salt.  I’m just bummed I hadn’t stocked this in my pantry earlier.

I had everything ready to go except for bacon (shocking, really.  I usually have this stuff ready to go.)  I swung by Ralphs to find some bacon, but was quite frankly, grossed out by all of the un-pronouncable chemicals in literally every single package I was looking at.  Since I haven’t found myself a legitimate butcher around here, I’ve been using Whole Foods as my meat supplier.  Thankfully, I found some delicious turkey bacon (with all fully-pronounceable ingredients) at the meat counter.

…but the thing with turkey bacon is, there’s significantly less grease and fat, so I couldn’t scrounge up the 3 tablespoons the recipe calls for to use in the dressing.  Enter the ginormous bottle of olive oil I keep handy.  While whisking the dressing, I threw in some pieces of bacon to extract the flavor, since the fat was lacking.

I ate this salad 3 days in a row.  I think that’s a fair assessment of the awesomeness of this salad.  Even with the slightly fat-less dressing.

Breakfast for Dinner

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I tend to have this problem towards the end of every week…I open my fridge and realize I really have nothing in there to make a decent dinner.  Before reaching for the takeout menus, I see some fresh berries I picked up last Sunday and was inspired to make breakfast for dinner.  I have an inexplicable love of breakfast food, and it’s just as delicious and comforting any time of day.

I don’t actually measure anything in my french toast batter, but it’s essentially an egg, some milk to give it a more liquidy consistency, a bit of vanilla, a pinch of salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.  I soaked 3 pieces of bread and threw them on a hot skillet . Everything, including the bacon, was cooked in about 10-15 minutes.

Cinnamon and nutmeg french toasted, drizzled with agave syrup, dusted with powdered sugar and topped with fresh raspberries and blackberries with a side of turkey bacon:

Mmmmm.  Good morning night!