Spark Woodfire Grill and My Little Cupcake

Spark Woodfire Grill

This week is restaurant week where you can get bargains at certain restaurants for specific lunches and dinners in LA. I know they also do this in Milwaukee. BK looked at the restaurants that were listed and mentioned Spark which is close to our house and we have never been there. However, they did not have a special for lunch but we decided to go there anyway.

Spark is a rather small, white tablecloth restaurant on Ventura Blvd. near the CBS Studios. It was fairly busy when we arrived which was close to 2:00. There was a large table of young people who obviously worked at CBS. There is a special lunch menu – 10 items which are $10 or less each. Although I wasn’t terribly excited about going there, my mind changed drastically. Our attentive busboy brought and refilled our Diet Cokes regularly. He also gave us wonderful, crusty bread with an olive tapenade which was good but we both felt the Gaucho Grill has one that is better. Too bad that restaurant is no longer in Studio City.

I chose ½ turkey panini with a cup of their special soup - Ribollita Soup which is described as a hearty vegetable based soup made with borlotti beans, kale, prosciutto and parmigiano cheese. I asked for the soup before the sandwich since I like to have my soup first. I didn’t think I would like it because I don’t care for Italian spices but this thick soup didn’t have any of those flavors. It was delicious. The half sandwich had turkey, watercress, tomato, roasted tomato pesto and asiago cheese on their crusty bread. I really liked this sandwich with my only complaint being that one of the pieces of bread was turned the wrong way and kept falling off the sandwich. Then I realized that it was probably an end piece put on incorrectly when melting the cheese. I didn’t mind but some may.

BK chose one of their lunch specials of the day – a BBQ chicken pizza. The pizza is cooked in a wood fired oven. It is a very thin crust but the crust is not crispy. It is soft and when we ate it, we folded it like you would a tortilla and the taste was wonderful. It had plenty of chicken, onion, excellent cheese and a good BBQ sauce. She was very happy with her choice and I enjoyed a piece as well. I definitely will return and next time, maybe have the $10 eggplant parmigiana. There were many choices and Spark is now on my list of very good places to go.

My Little Cupcake

As far as good places to go, My Little Cupcake is NOT one of them. After lunch, we went to Bed, Bath and Beyond. Then we drove back to this cupcake place that we had passed when we were too full to think about eating anything. However, give us an hour and we are ready again. My first impression was not favorable. The interior was not appealing to me. I looked at the cupcakes and saw very few choices, like 6, although there are many listed on the board. Also, the cupcakes were not nearly as attractive as many other places except for one. This one looked like a mountain of chocolate. We asked about it and were told it was a chocolate cupcake with a mound of homemade marshmallow covered in a hard chocolate. This was for me. BK couldn’t pass that one up either and so we got two of those, one peanut butter and one white cupcake with white frosting (definitely not for me).

When we got home, I took out my chocolate delight which I had to eat with a fork. The first thing I noticed was what looked like grease on the inside of the paper cupcake holder. Not a good sign. The outer chocolate was quite good and sweet. The mound of marshmallow was excellent. The chocolate cake was dry and tasted stale. After we threw away the cake part, Bonnie tried the white one. That one didn’t have grease inside the cupcake holder, had frosting that was OK but again the white cake was dry and tasted stale. She hasn’t tasted the peanut butter one but we do not hold out high hopes for that either. If you can’t make and serve moist, fresh cake, whatever is on the top is irrelevant to me. There are many excellent cupcake places. My Little Cupcake is not one of them.

Cafe Aldente

As we were going to lunch today, one of our neighbors asked where we were going. When we said we were going to lunch, he strongly suggested we try Café Aldente which is located in the same mini-mall as Chin Chin on Ventura but way in the back. We asked about the type of food and he told us they make the best lentil soup and Greek salad he has ever had. He also said their pastas are delicious. I am not the biggest fan of Italian food, especially when I am watching carb intake, but I am a fan of going to new places and I like lentil soup so we took his advice.

I really wonder how anybody finds this restaurant. It is truly hidden behind escalators. We walked in and saw a menu on the wall. There were no other patrons there but it was after 3:00, a little late for lunch and too early for dinner. They had some lunch specials but we were too late for them. The menu is definitely eclectic – skewers, pizza, pasta, sandwiches and paninis, chopped salads of all kinds. The walls had movie posters in Italian but we ended up choosing Mediterranean which is surprising for me. We each ordered lentil soup and then shared chicken skewers.

First we were served 4 small garlic rolls that were really good. Then they brought the very large bowl of lentil soup. This soup has no animal fat or dairy products and it is pureed. My mother-in-law used to puree all her soups and this was thick as were hers. It is probably made from yellow lentils and had a light Mediterranean flavor. Both of us really liked the soup and I was looking forward to the skewers. Much to my surprise, we were served a chopped salad that was quite full of small cubes of fresh vegetables. The problem with the salad was that it had a dressing which to me tasted mostly of vinegar. I hated it and did not eat the salad at all and actually B ate a little and did agree with me about the dressing. One plus was that they divided our meal for us which was great. We each got a skewer with chicken, onion and green and red peppers which we asked him to leave off and he didn’t. The skewer was atop some good rice which was very buttery. There was also a roasted tomato which I didn’t taste. We also got some nice pita bread and a small but sufficient amount of good tasting hummus.

I didn’t care for the taste of the chicken. I can’t really explain why but there was some flavoring that I didn’t care for. I do eat Mediterranean food but I didn’t like this. It was all white meat and there was plenty of it. I felt some was dry but B did not find hers to be like that. We had too much food and brought some home which B can eat since I will pass.

The food was OK. The service was iffy. I had to ask to have our table washed. I was not offered a refill for my iced tea until we had finished eating. We told him that we wanted to take the remainder of our food home and he forgot to give it to us. When B went to the register to charge the bill rather than wait for him to come, after signed the receipt, she had to ask him for our take-home which he had for us. I see no reason to go back there. However, they have some nice specials. On Tuesday night, kids eat free with one adult meal. The specials on Tuesday are pasta dinners for $7.95. Since I didn’t eat a pasta meal and I know the garlic rolls are delicious, I can’t really say whether or not this is a good deal.

Magnolia Grille and Casa di Giorgio

BK’s sister, CA, who lives in Milwaukee, had suggested I write a review of a restaurant that we went to while we were there, Casa di Giorgio, one that we all enjoyed. I would love to do that but I can’t remember it. I do remember going there and that one friend was late and that my oldest daughter came with us but I have no recollection of what I ate. However, CA has reminded me that it has “good food, service & reasonable prices.” BK remembers having a very good steak. If any of the other people who were there could remember what we ate and give me some more hints so I can remember, I would appreciate it.

I would love people to write even very short messages on this blog about where they have eaten. Wouldn’t it be great to have many reviews from all over the country? However, I have yet to figure out how to get people I don’t know to read this so I just post it on Facebook and hope there might be some ripple effect. If anyone knows how to do this on Blogger, I would love that information.

I write these blogs very soon after the experience because I want it fresh in my mind (never mind my forgetting the whole thing). After water exercise today, we went to the Magnolia Grille, 10530 Magnolia Blvd., in North Hollywood. This is a neighborhood type place and they also bake their own bakery. The first big plus was the Diet Coke. Not only did it cost $1.50, but they brought a good sized carafe of soda to the table so we never had to wait to get more to drink. As you know from my previous posts, this is very important to me.

We were waited on promptly, served the drinks quickly, our orders taken as soon as we were ready and the food delivered in a proper amount of time. We each ordered a cup of chicken tortilla soup and then we shared a hamburger with fruit. The soup was wonderful, although not like a tortilla soup one might have imagined. It had a chicken broth base that was completely devoid of grease, was filled with white meat of chicken, some white cheese, corn, tortilla strips and a slight bit of cilentro. It was thick with ingrediants with no tomato or any real Mexican spices and I loved it as did BK. Our hamburger was a normal burger, good but nothing spectacular. The fruit was fresh and sweet. The wonderful thing was that they split the hamburger and the fruit for us and charged nothing extra. We were very satified with our meal.

We have been here a few times before, mostly for breakfast where there is a choice of freshly baked breads instead of toast – banana and zuchinni are two I saw there today. They serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. Again, if you are in the eastern North Hollywood, western Burbank area, I would recommend the Magnolia Grille.