L.A. STORIES — PART ONE

What does L.A. mean to you?

Do you have a personal connection to it, or is it a dream (or headache) conjured up by everything you’ve seen in movies and television or read about in books?

For me it’s something very specific and highly personal; Los Angeles is my husband’s hometown, and we return every Thanksgiving to visit his 92 year old Mom. We stay with Ruth in her modest condo in Beverly Hills, visit with extended family, and experience a part of a world that is so very different than the one we know in Portland.

And because I’m the driving force behind everything we see and do here, you can be sure that good eats and eye candy are at the foremost of everything we do.

We come, we eat, we conquer retail. It’s what we do.

We got into L.A. late Saturday afternoon, and one of the first things we did was enjoy an early sushi dinner.

For years we’ve been going to Hirozen,  a simple Japanese restaurant located in a strip mall (as is so much here in this sprawling city). It’s not fancy and not the place you’d likely to see a famous place, but the sushi is so good and we know what we love.

It’s such a treat to be treated to anything your little heart and large gluttonous appetite desires — plate after plate of spicy tuna rolls and soft-shell crab rolls and delicate corn soup and plate after plate of shrimp tempura.

We ate until we were full to the brim, and still more food came out for us — a gloriously medium rare flat-iron steak and miso soup and more sushi.

What a treat — and wonderful way to cap off our first hours together.

Yesterday was a day full of eye candy — and eighty five degree weather.

Shopping at Target was first on the list. There’s a great one off of La Brea and walking in, it struck me that even Target sometimes embodies local influences and demographics.

There’s such a large Jewish population in L.A. that the store even had a section of Hannukah wear — something I’ve never seen anywhere else.

Looking for a jacket for Charlotte at Nordstrom Rack, Oliver took a departure from his regular Nikes-only shoe-wear and found these, his first ever pair of designer kicks.

He usually goes for more pragmatic choices so this one surprised me, but I guess as a teenager he ‘s coming into his own style and he asked for these. He never asks for anything expensive or unusual, so Grandma indulged him this one discounted luxury item.

Grandma gave us her credit card at the market, and told us to buy anything that looked good for lunch.

I love Bristol Farms. It’s like Whole Foods but less health conscious, more about luxury.

It’s kind of like a West Coast version of Dean and Deluca (a little less esoteric with more day-to-day items) but when your corner store sells beluga caviar and Godiva chocolate and the best Nova lox to be had, anywhere, you know you’re in for a visual treat.

Nothing sounded better to me than fresh tuna poke, so I headed to the sushi bar in the back and checked that out.

Here’s what it looked like when I got it home.

Nothing like the Sunday Times and a bowl of the freshest tuna.

Some toasted bread and Hawaiian-style potato chips were the perfect accompaniment.

Charlotte and I then decided to spend the afternoon at The Grove, one of the nicest outdoor pedestrian malls I’ve been to (it’s a regular film and TV spot).  It has a lot of beautiful shops — not just your average high-end retailers but more unusual ones too like Madewell and Diane Von Furstenburg. Because it’s such a mecca in Los Angeles, the window displays are especially beautiful.

I particularly liked the homemade gingerbread houses that filled the windows of Anthropologie.

One of the houses was about six feet tall — and oh-so-pretty.

My favorite thing about The Grove there is the farmer’s market hall with the mini-restaurants, food purveyors and one of my favorite gourmet markets in the country: Monsieur Marcel Market.

It sells the very best of both European and domestic foodstuffs and housewares — a smallish shop with so many glorious things to try, marvel at, covet.

And because it’s L.A., there are the things that only the uber-wealthy and food-obsessed would get.

Like this.

One liter bottles of bone broth (just rich stock) for twenty five dollars a pop.

Who buys this?

Look at these beauties.

I’ve not seen these kinds of pasta outside Bologna and Lucca.

Look at that level of detail below.

So many fascinating and beautifully packaged things, and the spice aisle also held things I’d never seen before; things like red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar powder (that’s a new one for me) and these.

Between all the lovely condiments and housewares and French knives and champagnes and so much more, I could easily have dropped thousands and thousands of dollars without even coming up for air — and then asked that they put all my purchases in a couple of these baskets.

Confession time– I bought one of these baskets–unlined with plain leather handles– two years ago at this same market and I use it all the time still.

But I’m bag greedy and I’m scandalously retail promiscuous with basket lust.

I always want more.

I showed as much restraint as I possibly could here with purchases (I bought a cheese plane, a French enamel house sign and a few Smoked Maldon tins) and then allowed Charlotte to drag me out with one last lingering look at the line up of macaroons in the window.

Seriously, this Monsieur Marcel shop is divine.

We window shopped some more, looking at all the beautifully made clothes and people dressed up to the nines, and when the heat felt too much, we stopped by a place in the market hall for an old-fashioned treat — a mint chip cone from this place that has been here forever.

We headed back to Grandma’s — there was just enough time for a quick cocktail, a game of Scrabble (we will probably play a dozen games in the five days or so that we are here) and then we headed back out for more food.

This time, the crowd demanded old fashioned deli, and Ruth wanted us to deviate from Nate n Al’s (our regular hang-out) in favor of another traditional place, Factor’s.

Talk about old school.

As soon as you sit down, they bring out an assortment of homemade pickles and marinated cucumbers.

The walls are covered with photos of bygone movies and signed pictures, and the menu couldn’t be more throw-back.

Lots of options were available, but for me, if you are going to NY or LA deli, only a certain sandwich will do.

With the house-made pastrami you can have it hand-cut thick or machine sliced thin; we asked the waitress and she was adamant that thin was the way to go.

You can really almost never go wrong asking the seasoned wait help for menu suggestions, and here was no exception.

I forgot how tender and toothsome a great pastrami sandwich can be; the heat of pepper and seasoning yielding to the luscious meat with the proper ratio of fat to lean. The rye bread was packed with caraway seeds and was the perfect depository of such a generous sandwich — and it made me realize how difficult it is to find a good soft loaf of rye bread these days (especially in Portland).

This morning, over a long, sunny picnic in Brentwood, I thought about my kids perception of Los Angeles.

We’ve been so many times that we no longer gravitate to the big things that originally held so much interest– The Getty, Santa Monica, Hollywood, Griffith Observatory and so on — but now we lean in to pleasures closer to Grandma.

Scrabbles games at home. Lux meals out. Shopping trips. Old movies on TV.

In a moment of mommy guilt, I suggested that maybe we should go on a hike. Or rent bikes. Or something, well, different.

Oliver, clever to the core, nailed it as we packed up my makeshift picnic blanket and beautiful plastic plates and salts that travel with me wherever I go.

He put his arm around with me, seemingly to soften the truth he was about to spring on me.

“Mom, don’t try to get us to be something we’re not. We’re not backpackers. We’re more like… snackpackers.”

“It’s what we ARE, Mom,” Charlotte chimed in.

So there you have it.

My kids may not be the most cultured or physically challenged around, but they will know wonderful food and that there is no shame in deriving great pleasure in the food world that surrounds them.

Joy is just one Pinkberry frozen yogurt away.

Whether yours is an Original Tart topped with fresh pomegranate seeds, dark chocolate and potato chips (like mine) or more traditionally bedecked with mini-M & M’s, waffle cone pieces or cookie dough, it’s all good.

Even if it’s just in the back seat of the car.

Okay, so that’s just how it is.

We’ve just four days left in which to stuff ourselves silly.

Should we see something pretty or unusual in this town say, on the way to a epic breakfast roll or the best lobster roll, so be it.