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andrew zimmern, andrew zimmern charity dinner, Anthony Bourdain, bizarre foods, bizarre foods america, charity dinners, Deathbed Food, DeathbedFood, Diane Wagner, el bulli, Ferran Adria, food events, los angeles regional food bank, news, royal/t, the layover, travel channel
Royal/T in Culver City Hosts “Bizarre” But Fun Pop Up
After “running into” Andrew Zimmern yesterday by chance at Ink, I was even more excited to go to his Pop-Up Charity Dinner tonite. He didn’t let me down.
First, Royal/T was a very cool place to host the dinner. Its modern art, Japanese influenced vibe really set a fun mood for the event …
A highlight for me was seeing Andrew again. His greeting me with that “Hello Deathbed!” and a big grin really does it for me. Plus, catching him in the kitchen was great too, especially getting the chance to ask him about the LA dining scene … check out his passionate response:
Hmm, I’m thinking that Anthony Bourdain (who recently started his SF Layover show by saying, “If Los Angeles is the King of low end eateries, and New York dominates with its shear number of high end, then San Francisco is the undisputed champion of the middle”) may benefit from chatting with Andrew about this. Maybe Andrew could catch Tony, over a few beers ideally, to update him on recent developments here in LA, say over the last 10 years, about the abundance of incredible chefs and restaurants now here.
Ah, I digress. Back to the event! Throughout the evening, there were cameras rolling, covering the action for Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods and upcoming Bizarre Foods America shows. Man, it takes a lot of men (and women) to produce this footage …
And, the star of the evening (besides Andrew) was the food which included several “Bizarre” elements.
We started off with an Octopus dish which included “pig-face bacon” … while I always welcome octopus dishes wherever possible, I can’t say the same for this type of bacon (at least yet).
Course One was a Santa Barbara sea urchin with tomato and yuzu. To me, this seemed like a dish that maybe Ferran Adria would have made at El Bulli … foam on top, food as art.
Course Two was a huge hit with everyone around. Linguine with geoduck (a very large salt water clam) and little neck clams. I really loved the combination of large and small clams in this dish.
A bonus course was Chicken Feet with Chinese spicing. Honestly, the feet thing is a bit bizarre for me … so I mainly enjoyed the incredibly spicy veggie garnish.
Course Three was called “Tongue Tied” – comprised of three different tongue delicacies. Again, tongue is a “bit” out there for me but I have to say that the chile braised lamb tongue quesadilla was impressive.
Course Four was a grilled lamb with crispy chuchules (pig intestines), posole and avocado salsa. This was definitely one of my favorite courses of the evening. The lamb was so simply done yet amazingly succulent and flavorful. The chuchules? Well, let’s just say I didn’t really dig into these too much …
Course Five: Dessert. A Chocolate Budino “Orrori da Gustare.” We were told to try it first and then our server said she would tell us what it was. Visually, the chocolate, ice cream and bacon(!) were calling out to me. So, I took a bite and the server proudly announced that the ice cream had bacon in it (good!) and the chocolate had blood in it (em, not so good). Well, it tasted great in any case.
So, all told, quite a bit of adventure at Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizarre” Pop Up tonite. When’s the next one?