Lunch at St. John - London

The problem with being a food lover in a great city full of fun stuff to do, is that at the end of the day - after doing all that stuff - it's hard to muster the energy for an evening of fine dining.   We solved that dilemma by keeping our eating in London pretty casual for the most part, with the exception of two pre-planned meals:  lunch at St. John and dinner at the Clove Club.  Other places I strongly considered:  The River Cafe, Wild Honey, Arbutus, the Ledbury (which was booked solid for the week) and Upstairs at Ten Bells.

I had heard about St. John from several people and it seemed like a great "only in London" dining experience.  A chance to try some real British food.  My main quandary was whether to do St. John Smithfield, or St. John Bread and Wine. Since this was our first visit to either and the location was slightly more central, I went with the original at Smithfield.  Generally it seemed Bread & Wine might be more casual with a focus on smaller plates, but that's about all I could discern about the differences. When you walk into the building you pass through an airy enclosure holding the bar and the bakery counter - and then upstairs to the right is the dining room. It's white paper table cloths and rather formal service, but not quite fine dining exactly.

On the day we visited a large table in the center of the room was "Feasting" - which allowed them to order special dishes that aren't on the regular menu, such as heaping platters of whole crab and hog roast. It appeared to be a wedding party with the bride and groom on the far right, above. They were very chic and fab.

The menu at St. John changes daily - almost entirely.  There are three things that are always on the menu.  The bone marrow, the rarebit and the eccles cake (and possibly the madeleines, now that I think about it.)  Other than that it's entirely fluid, and they actually post it ahead of every meal on their website. We had the bone marrow, broad beans & berkswell (a cheese) and the brown shrimp with cabbage to start - all of which are pictured below.  The marrow was served with the traditional parsley, shallot and caper salad with a little mound of damp, gray salt.  If you like marrow, and I do - it was terrific.  The broad beans and berkswell was very good too - but the "brown shrimp and cabbage" was entirely different from what I was expecting, basically a slaw with parsley dressing and a few shrimp sprinkled in.  For some reason I was expecting a hot dish, and I expected the shrimp to be a bit more prominent.

After receiving our first round, I realized the broad beans and brown shrimp were far more salad-esque than expected, so I canceled our order of an additional salad and substituted the welsh rarebit.  I was really glad I did.  If you were looking for a food that exemplifies the concept of umami, this is it.  It's the English version of a Croque Monsieur - toast topped with a creamy strong paste of cheddar, mustard, worcestershire and ale - with even more worcestershire broiled on top. I thought it was amazing, but I think James thought it was a bit much.  In any event, the recipe is here, maybe I'll give it a try around the holidays.

Finally, we capped off the savory portion of our meal with the braised rabbit with borlotti beans and aioli. This was nice, but somehow seemed a bit wan.  We also considered the Plaice and the Kid Chop, so maybe we chose poorly.  We weren't really interested in the "faggots" or the pigeon.  The restaurant specializes in offal - Fergus Henderson, the chef, is basically the originator of "nose to tail" eating - so you can expect to see it all on the menu.  

Things took an upswing with dessert. The Eton Mess was a delightful jumble of fresh strawberries, strawberry coulis, meringue and whipped cream.  James had the Eccles cake with cheese - which was very similar to mince meat pie and almost as savory as the rest of our meal.  A word about the wines.  We asked for a white burgundy, and wound up with a Pouilly Fuisse.  It was ok, but we really should have done better in that price range (49-50 pounds) given their focus on wine. James had a dessert wine with his eccles cake - it cried out for dessert wine for sure - but I seem to recall he wasn't too crazy about it.  They weren't really a negative, but overall I thought the wines should be more of a positive under the circumstances.

Our feasting neighbors also had the Eton Mess for dessert - the groom poured the strawberry coulis over the wedding cake style dessert himself.

After dessert, we ordered the "madeleines" since they are a specialty of the house and were highly recommended in several reviews.  All I can say is, they weren't madeleines. They looked like madeleines, with the humps and everything, but they had a scone-like biscuit flavor instead of the tender texture and buttery rich flavor of a madeleine.

Overall I enjoyed St. John and I'm glad we went - but there are a few drawbacks that give me pause.  The service was just the slightest bit "sniffy" and I never quite settled into that warm, jovial feeling you want to have during a great meal.  I think you have to enjoy a certain level of adventurous eating and be willing to give some deference to the restaurant in order to enjoy the experience.  There's a smidge of that "lucky to be there" factor that many find off-putting.  Altogether with that and the fact that (most of) the food we ate was good but not phenomenal, I'm hard pressed to say whether I'd rush back there if I found myself in London again tomorrow.  Unless the invitation is for feasting - with platters heaped with whole crab and mounds of Eton Mess. In that case, count me in.

Son of a Gun - Los Angeles

Have you seen the cover of the new Bon Appetit yet?  I just got mine in the mail and I was bowled over all over again by the gorgeous fried chicken sandwich on the cover - which I recognized from dinner last week at Son of a Gun.  It was one of those things that everyone in the restaurant was ordering, and we had to have one too as soon as we laid eyes on it. In fact, everything on the menu sounded so amazing it was hard to choose - so we made it as easy for ourselves as we could by ordering almost everything on the menu.
We didn't have a reservation and the restaurant is tiny - with about ten tables on one side and a small bar and  communal table on the other, so we so we got there right at six to get a spot.  We weren't the only ones - when we first drove by, about five people were in line but by the time we walked up, it was at least three times that many.
We happened to be seated next to an adorable couple out on a date - below is a photo I snuck of their order of the King Salmon with jerk spice, kiwi, palm sugar vinaigrette and habanero.  They said it was delicious and they also recommended the Burrata with Uni.  We didn't try either one, but I'll take their word for it.  You can also see a bottle of the house fermented shandy sitting on the table here - drinks are as big a deal as the food here and they have a killer cocktail menu.

It was apparent that the male half of the couple was absolutely smitten with his date, and when we started chatting with them we learned this was only one of many stops they would be making, as they were doing a progressive dinner. When I asked where else they were going he showed me his list. (I had to keep it a secret from her because each stop was a surprise.)   This was in fact their second stop - the first had been Osteria Angelini, and they were on their way to Fig & Olive, then Spago and on to Craft, with a last stop at Mozza to pick up Butterscotch Budino *to go.* The date had been going since 9 AM - it started with croissants at Proof bakery, then there was a trampoline session at Sky High Trampoline Park, and a stop for a massage at a day spa before their dinner began.   Quite a day!
The Kale Caesar salad - below left, was another dish that practically everyone seemed to be ordering -showered with finely grated parmesan and tossed with crisp toasted walnuts.  The avocado and citrus salad was refreshing and delicious too - nothing unusual but it's hard to go wrong with a combination of tangy, sweet citrus and buttery avocado.
This was the smoked mahi fish dip with celery, radishes and crackers - it came with club crackers on the side.  This is the kind of thing I should make at home but never do.  The shaved celery and radish was a nice refreshing touch and it had great flavor - lots of horseradish.
 Next up came their justly famous lobster roll.  I was already aware that it was pretty small - but it is really tiny - just a couple of bites. They use potato chips to hold the lobster salad in.  The sweet lobster salad and buttery roll were delicious, but hard to share.
My personal favorite dish was the Shrimp Toast sandwich - pictured below. Shrimp toast is usually a crisp buttery slice of bread topped with a mixture of chopped shrimp and mayonnaise and baked until golden brown. This was turned into a sandwich with the addition of a top layer of buttery crisp bread and accented with a Sriracha sauce and a bit of cilantro.  It was insanely rich, but I could have easily eaten another one.   It would be the perfect couple of bites with a cocktail.
Soon after that came the famous fried chicken  - topped with a sharp vinaigrette based slaw spiked with jalapenos and red onion and served on a toasted brioche bun smeared with a rooster sauce mayonnaise.  It was probably the best fried chicken sandwich I've ever had - and though I haven't tried Bake Sale Betty's up in the Bay Area, I've had a few.  Here in San Diego they serve a credible one on a biscuit at Tiger Tiger, and the MIHO Gastrotruck dishes up a similar version - but this one was special.  I definitely prefer the lighter bun, and the combination of the sharp coleslaw & fried chicken provided a nice contrast.
 There were a few other dishes in between that were ok, but not something I'd order again.  The brandade with "grainy mustard butter" arugula and fried egg was not as flavorful as it should have been, and the BBQ shrimp with warm potato salad and pickled bacon did not live up to its imaginative sounding name. One surprise stunner of the evening though was this brussel sprout dish, with chinese sausage, cinnamon, peanut and egg.  The crispy brussel sprouts mingled with the broken egg and sausage, and accented by the sweetness of the peanut and cinnamon became one of the best tasting and most original dishes we tried - very David Chang.
 

We didn't have room for dessert, but the few options on the menu sounded good - especially the house made tin roof ice cream.  Some ladies next to us recommended the lime frozen yogurt, which was served in a bowl with a graham crumble and a smear of torched meringue on the side.   Reservations are hard to come by because of the size of the place, but if you get there early or late, or have time to wait, it's pretty easy for a small party to get seated at the bar or communal table. To my way of thinking, the ideal way to spend time here would be to sit at the bar with a friend or a date, have a few cocktails and graze on some of their more interesting small bites - in fact I'm planning to do just that as soon as I can!

Son of a Gun
8370 W 3rd St
Los Angeles, CA 90048

open for lunch & dinner M-F
dinner only on weekends.

Bar Stella | Bar Keeper - Los Angeles

The next stop on our whirlwind LA tour was Sunset Junction in the heart of Silverlake.  This little corner at a bend in the road is  home to the east side branch of Intelligentsia - famous for it's perfect espresso and Granada tile, The Cheese Store of Silverlake and Cafe Stella.  I had been to each of those before, but I hadn't noticed Bar Stella - hidden away a few steps down from the Cafe toward the street.  Jora and Desi had been here a few months earlier and wanted to recreate their experience, and once I entered I could see why.
The ritual (because we definitely plan to repeat this again) involves stopping in the Cheese Store of Silverlake for cheese stuffed dates, grilled on the panini press.  Those are carried, wrapped in paper, to the bar, and set out to wait for drinks to arrive - then consumed with a delicious beverage while still warm and gooey.  I can vouch for the fact that they pair nicely with a glass of chilled rose, but I'm sure any one of their cocktails would be equally delightful.  (The C. Arthur was strongly recommended by the young man seated to my right.)

It's hard to imagine a better place to while away an hour or two, and that's exactly what we did.   We chatted with the bartender and a few other patrons, listened to some good mellow music, enjoyed the afternoon light filtering in through the doorway from their small Moroccan style patio, and soaked up the pleasure of spending an afternoon with favorite girlfriends in a lovely spot.
We also plotted our next move - which would include dinner.  Since the trip was planned on short notice, we hadn't been able to get a reservation anywhere - so we figured our best strategy was to show up somewhere early.  We contemplated Lucques, L&E Oyster bar and Mozza, but we all really wanted to try Son of a Gun, so we figured we would try that first and head somewhere else as a backup.
On our way into Bar Stella, we popped in to Bar Keeper, just around the corner - it's a boutique liquor store and cocktail supply shop with a huge selection of bitters, a wall of top shelf liquor choices, and lots of vintage cocktail glasses, shakers and accessories.  They specialize in bitters - displayed below - and Desi picked up a bottle of Yuzu bitters that she handed to the bartender and asked him to make her a drink.  He came up with a refreshing gin concoction that she absolutely loved.  Win win.
 So, let's recap.  Other than a short stop at Broome Street General Store for a delightful visit with Elizabeth , Elodie and delicious baby Francesca, we spent our day eating, shopping, drinking and eating, in that order.  Oh and eating some more, if you count our stop at The Pie Hole on the way home.  Yup, it was pretty much bliss from one end to the other!

Next up - Dinner at Son of a Gun, then back to San Diego!

Cookbook - Los Angeles

Cookbook is a small grocery and food shop in Echo Park and a sister to Cortez. It's tiny, but packed wall to wall with great stuff, including fresh bakery breads, Marin Sun Farms meats, fresh pastured eggs, and a selection of fruits and vegetables from local farms including leeks, kale, beets, meyer lemons, avocados, fresh herbs, etc. They also stock pantry goods like Rancho Gordo beans, Maestri pasta, June Taylor jams, Mast Bros. Chocolate, Sightglass coffee and Straus dairy and carry a small selection of prepared foods.

Originally, the idea behind the name was that they would feature dishes inspired by or drawn from different cookbooks each week - but it seems like that has fallen away in favor of the practicality of offering their customers what they want - such as the Beans and Greens made with Rancho Gordo's Good Mother Stallards (recipe here).
 They were especially well stocked with great looking produce on the day we were there.   On my last visit a few months ago the selection was not quite as good, so I'm guessing it varies from day to day.
 The best part is their prices are not overly inflated.  They charge maybe $.50 to a dollar more than Whole Foods or a farmers market for the produce and pantry items. By contrast, Broome Street General Store's prices are marked up about 30% across the board.
 Next door to Cookbook, there is a small boutique called Cookbook 2, where they sell a few home goods - primarily the clay cazuelas and pottery items that they use at Cortez.  There are also some solid wood bowls, Japanese spice grinders and paring knives.  It's not obvious that it's there - we wouldn't have known about it if our friends at Cortez hadn't told us about it that morning.  You have to ask them to unlock it for you and let you in.
 We all really liked these pottery tumblers that they use as coffee mugs at Cortez.   They not only look cool, but keep the coffee really hot.

I picked up some of their house made granola, a bag of Rancho Gordo cranberry beans, a package of Maestri bucatini and a jar of the avocado honey we enjoyed at breakfast at Cortez (which I just discovered they also sell at Whole Foods.) It was a good haul!

Cookbook
1549 Echo Park Avenue
Los Angeles
(213) 250-1900

Cortez - Los Angeles

This past weekend some girlfriends and I took a little day trip to Los Angeles. My usual MO has been to go up and spend the night - which is great too - but the day trip actually works pretty well, especially with a group of friends who make the drive a a pleasure instead of a chore.  We started the day with brunch at Cortez - a cafe in Echo Park run by the same lovely folks behind Cookbook - a small grocery and take out shop a few blocks away.
 The menu at Cortez is small, but everything on it sounded fantastic.  If you're familiar with Boulette's Larder at the Ferry Building in San Francisco, it was like that, only more California and less French, with half the price and pretension.  (I've been fantasizing a lot about opening a food business lately, and this was eerily close to what I imagine it would look like.)

I had the farro and lentils with harissa and egg - which came with a big tangle of fried shallots.  Something like this runs the risk of being bland or heavy, but this was neither - the perfectly cooked runny egg mingled with the harissa and farro to form a hearty but not gut-busting breakfast dish.
 Desi and Jora had the merguez sausage on flatbread with yogurt, pickles and greens - and Jora added an egg.  The lamb sausage was mild and the pickles added a nice sharp accent.   Elise had the white beans with smoked tomatoes, chard and an egg - which also had great flavor.
We shared some roasted kabocha squash with sage browned butter and shaved cheese, and the flatbread with avocado honey and olive oil.   To drink, we had blood orange juice (I did anyway, I was still recovering from a wicked hangover) and cappuccinos, and Elise had beautiful fresh mint tea - just mint steeped in boiling water.  The flatbread with honey and olive oil was pretty much the perfect indulgence.  It reminded me of the sopapillas at Tomasitas in Santa Fe.   I liked it so much I bought some of the honey at Cookbook later.

I was also really taken with the design of the place - it's a small room, with two long communal tables and a small bar in front of the kitchen. It feels open and airy with the simple wood & brick interior and high ceilings.  The accents - copper, citrus, dried herbs - strike the perfect note of modern California chic, and I  liked that it doesn't look just like every other hipster retro-pharmacy/train-station style joint out there.

After we ate, the place cleared out and we started chatting with Stephen and Jitson.  (I don't know what it was about this trip but we just made friends wherever we went.  LA has become so friendly lately!)  We even got them to pose for a photo.  When I originally asked if I could take pictures, Stephen said sure, just follow and tag us on Instagram!  (@restaurantcortez)While we were chatting, they mentioned that Jonathan Gold had recently savaged them in the LA Times - I pulled up the review and read it on the spot.  I usually like his reviews, but I think he may be off base on this one.   He went for dinner - which may be a substantially different experience than brunch, but he waxed rhapsodic about the food, calling one dish "just short of stunning" - so clearly the food was not the problem.  His main complaint seemed to be that the portions were too small and the wine ran out too soon.  A choice quote:  "You are going to cut the two globes of merguez sausage neatly into halves, wrap your bit in a bandage-sized scrap of flatbread and hope that you have not taken more than your allotted half-teaspoonful of yogurt sauce."  Their response:  just ask for more!  He also rather snottily references "screechy  jazz" and claims "if you belong here, you know who you are."  Oof.  The most irritating part is that it seems the review is mostly for effect - since he comes into Cookbook all the time, and has never uttered a complaint about the atmosphere there or seemingly felt out of place.  Regardless - I  doubt his review will deter anyone who would otherwise be inclined to go there for dinner,  and I for one can't wait to try it!

Stay tuned for more of our adventures on the East Side!

Cortez 
1356 Allison Ave in Echo Park - just off Sunset
Los Angeles, CA
(213) 481-8015

Underbelly - San Diego {Dining Review}

I'm not very knowledgeable about ramen (or, let's face it, Japanese cuisine in general) but I am curious - so I was excited to try Underbelly, the new ramen-centric eatery in Little Italy recently opened by the folks behind Neighborhood and Craft & Commerce.  It replaced the late Red Velvet wine bar at the corner of Kettner and Fir - on the west side of the same block as Bencotto and Influx.

The first thing you need to know about Underbelly, especially if you're planning to go at night, is that it's cold.  Every surface in the restaurant is metal or glass, and the windows are kept wide open, even in the winter.  It was sprinkling on the night we were there, and our table was actually one of the windows - so that half of our party was indoors and half was out on the sidewalk. They're also a little aggressive about their "rules."  When I first walked in, the bartender/cashier/hostess/server barked at me that I needed to order before sitting down.  I had to fend her off  by explaining that my husband was already at the bar and we were meeting a larger party.  The room is small and seating is limited, so I guess it makes sense that they would like for people to place their orders, eat and get out relatively quickly - but it wasn't a very welcoming approach.

We ordered almost every starter on the menu to try as much as possible.  The "boiled peanuts" arrived first and we were afraid they didn't bode well for the rest of the meal.  Soggy and strangely flavored, they were a definite miss.  The "Ahi Tataki" was nice enough, sauced with a ponzu dressing and served over assorted bean sprouts - but I can't say it was any better than any other seared ahi I've been served in the past twenty years.

These rest of the starters followed in a similar vein - inoffensive, but nothing extra.  The descriptions on the menu seemed to make them sound more interesting than they were.  The little Kurobuta Sausages were ok - not too greasy - maybe they could have been hotter.  The "house made kim chi" underneath seemed perfunctory.  I didn't even remember it was there until I looked at the menu again just now.    I liked the "Ginger Beef Brisket Mushu" all right - the sweet shredded beef wrapped in mushu pancakes tasted something like Japanese barbecue.

By far the best of the bunch were the Shrimp Gyoza.  They had a nice crispy/tender exterior, good flavor inside, and the pea shoots on top were fantastic.  I'm not sure why there are whole pickled garlic gloves on the plate - I'm pretty sure nobody ate them.

The ramen options are a bit complicated.  They offer several different set combinations, and you have the option to add just all of the toppings they offer - plus a few more -  to any bowl.  We tried three combinations and shared them:   the Underbelly, the Belly of the Beast, and Charred Kim Chi.  The Underbelly was garnished with pork belly, bacon and the same sausage we'd had as a starter.  The "Belly of the Beast" was topped with a brisket, and oxtail dumpling and short rib meat, and the Charred Kim Chi included shishito peppers, rainbow carrots and napa cabbage.  I thought the Underbelly and Belly of the Beast were pretty tasty, but I didn't much enjoy the Kim Chi.  I was expecting it to have some kim chi "funk" but roasted carrots were pretty much all I could taste in that bowl.  Others enjoyed it more than I did.  There were eggs in all three bowls and they were well cooked - runny and soft in the center.

You may have heard that Underbelly refuses to provide spoons to diners.  This is ridiculous for four reasons that I can think of and possibly more.  One, you know your customers will want to use spoons to eat soup, simple as that.  Two, it is impossible to scoop up the elements and taste the dish properly using chopsticks. You want to pick up a little bit of meat, a little bit of egg, and maybe some scallions and take a bite with a little broth?   Sorry, that's just not possible.  Third, eating a soft egg with chopsticks is a pain.  And fourth, the bowls are huge, and having to pick up a huge basin to drink the broth is messy and inconvenient.  Underbelly has responded to this criticism by saying they wanted it to be "authentic."  Get real.  It's obviously not "authentic" in a thousand other ways.  This is just another gimmick, like the "no ketchup" rule at Neighborhood, intended to get people talking.

They do have a great tap craft beer selection though (one diner in our party pronounced it the best thing they offer), and I did enjoy the meat based ramen bowls.  I probably wouldn't make the cross-town trek for it again, but if I lived in the neighborhood, I could definitely see myself trucking over there (with a spoon in my purse) to tuck into a bowl of the Belly of the Beast or the Underbelly at the bar.  If you skip the starters you could easily get out of there for around $25. per person all inclusive, which is no mean feat in that part of town these days.

By the way, this thing about not being knowledgeable about ramen is something I plan to change this year - starting with a trip to Convoy this afternoon for some groceries to try David Chang's recipes in the ramen issue of Lucky Peach. I'll let you know how it goes!

p.p.s:  If you are also not as knowledgeable about ramen as you would like to be, there's a great primer here.

Underbelly
750 W Fir St (at Kettner)
San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 269-4626
Menu here.

Pizzeria Mozza and the Mozza Cookbook

A few weeks ago I took a day trip up to Newport Beach with a friend to do a little Christmas shopping at Fashion Island and have lunch at the new Pizzeria Mozza up there.  It's an easy day trip from San Diego, and the food is just as good as the Los Angeles branch.  We started with the caprese salad and toasted bread - a first for me.  They roast the tomatoes lightly on the vine, and serve them over a bed of fresh burrata with pesto and olive oil.  This is simple enough that it is all about the details, and this version was divine.  I tried making it at home using the instructions in the cookbook a few weeks later, but the same magic just wasn't there.  The one thing that was just as fantastic was the bread - grilled in the panini press with garlic olive oil and sea salt.  HIGHLY recommend recreating it at home if you have one of those fabulous devices.

We split the salad and an order of the squash blossoms (a must) and moved onto the mushroom pizza.  I hadn't tried this particular one before - I've been stuck on the goat cheese, scallion and bacon pizza - but it was really good, with the same puffy crispy edges, an assortment of mushrooms, good cheese and lots of garlic.

For dessert we split two of our favorites - one of which is the Caramel Copetta.  It's a sundae of caramel ice cream, marshmallow fluff, caramel sauce and spanish peanuts with a pizzelle cookie on the bottom and a liberal sprinkle of sea salt.  I think that's why I like it so much - all that salt and caramel.

Our other favorite is the Butterscotch Budino - the most popular dish at either of their restaurants. It's a deep butterscotch pudding, topped with the same caramel as the Copetta, with a dollop of whipped cream and creme fraiche on top.  It's worth every bit of the hype.

Just after this adventure, a friend of mine went to Nancy Silverton's book signing at Chino Farms and got me a copy of the new Mozza cookbook (autographed to Alice Q. Foodie - awww!)   Opening it up, I immediately wanted to make everything in it.  I was thrilled to see that it included the recipe for my favorite cookies they sell in their to go shop - Chocolate Hazelnut Maltaglieri, the Torta Della Nonna, pizza dough, pasta dough, their composed mozzarella crostini, salads, etc.  It really is a complete compendium of almost every dish at Mozza and Pizzeria Mozza.

Unfortunately I haven't had the best luck with the recipes. The instructions for the caprese suggest roasting the tomatoes for way too long at too high a temperature.  Mine broke down during the process and I didn't cook them as long as the instructions suggested  (on the plus side, they're great in pasta!)  I also tried the budino right away for James' birthday last week, since it's pretty much his favorite thing ever.  The first time it set up too soft and super grainy. It calls for an outrageous amount of cornstarch (2/3 of a cup!) and three cups of whipping cream, where most pudding recipes call for just a few tablespoons of cornstarch and whole milk.  I tried again with a half recipe (which was plenty for us - it makes ten servings!) but as I cooked the custard it turned grainy and lumpy again.  This time I used a hand blender to smooth it out again - but the recipe doesn't say to do that, it just says to strain it.  It worked pretty well, but it still wasn't perfect.  The flavor wasn't quite right either - it was more "butterscotch" than theirs - not necessarily a bad thing, just not what I was after.  I'm determined to get it right.  If and when I do, I will post a recipe.

The Chocolate Maltaglieri and the Torta Della Nonna were a success, luckily. Will post about those later.  The baking times were still off -  for the cookies it was too short and for the tart it was too long, but I was able to figure that out on my own.  I guess it also depends on your oven somewhat - there is a little natural variation there.  All in all, it's a lovely book and I would definitely recommend it - but my advice would be to take matters into your own hands if it appears necessary!

Amended:  I have made the pizza dough twice and it's fantastic!

Pizzeria Mozza
800 W Coast Hwy (toward Balboa Island)
Newport Beach, CA 92663
(949) 945-1126

parking is impossible, just plan to valet. It's not as hard to get a reservation as it is at the LA branch, but it's still a good idea - they are on Open Table.