Tag Archives: Maine

Quick Eats: Brentwood

Restaurant: Brentwood

Location: 148 S Barrington Ave Los Angeles CA 90049. 310-476-3511

Date: Jan 9, 2011

Cuisine: American

 

Brentwood is a local bar/restaurant perfect for the Sunday night with-the-kid dinner. It’s pretty straight up American, very tasty, but a bit overpriced. The menu can be found here.

Their bread is good. I (and my two year-old) particularly liked the flat cracker-like bread.

“Tomato & Farmer’s Market Vegetable Salad.”

“Swan Depot Seafood Salad, jumbo shrimp, baby Maine shrimp, Dungeness crab,iceberg lettuce, 1000 island dressing, fresh dill.” This is essentially a crab and shrimp Louis salad. The seafood is very fresh, the dressing good, so if you are partial to Louis (and I am), then that’s all a good thing.

“Fish & Chips, beer battered Alaskan halibut, fries, tartar sauce.” While overpriced, this is a very good fish and chips. The fish is very most and well cooked, the batter perfect, the fries crisp, and the tartar sauce very tangy.

“Short Rib Tacos, vegetable rice, black beans.” Interesting hybrid dish. Fresh corn tortillas, and soft rich short rib.

Paired with beans, creme fraiche, and pico de gallo. I had them cook the pico down because of my raw tomato hate. It tasted like oniony tomato soup.

Combined in the taco it was pretty delectable, mostly because of the rich tasty short rib. Perhaps a little avocado or cilantro might have made this perfect.

The small little bar. Not pictured here is that I had a nice “2006 Sancerre, Rolland Tissier et Fils.” A very crisp white, perfect with the salad. Not absolutely ideal for the short ribs, but it worked well enough.

This is a good little place, and the service is very accommodating. Despite the high price tag the kitchen has a “knack,” so I approve.

Book Review: Dead Beautiful

Title: Dead Beautiful

Author: Yvonne Woon

Genre: YA Supernatural

Read: Nov 5, 2010

Summary: Great YA, gripping voice pulls you right through.

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I found this via one of my writer blogs. A lot of recent YA is frankly, trash, but this was a very well written book. Superficially it might seem very Hogwarts, a young girl’s parents die suddenly, and then she is bundled by her mysterious grandfather off to a creepy gothic prep school in Maine. But it’s anything but derivative. First of all the first person voice is great. Smart, but not forced or full of attitude it pulls you seamlessly through the entire novel — and it’s 500+ pages. I literally read it in one sitting.

I’m not going to give away the major premise, but the school setting is often an enjoyable one when done right, and this one certainly is. The characters seem real enough, particularly the protagonist, and there is a unique creepy feel to the whole world. Intellectual, but not heavy. The supernatural is fairly subtle, and about 75% of the way through there is the “big reveal” as to what the deal is with certain things. As is usual with this sort of thing the book was better before the reveal, but it still held up afterwards, even coming to an emotional finish.

Fantastic debut novel, and I eagerly await the author’s next book.