Cities love to celebrate themselves. Los Angeles is in the midst of patting itself on the back for our stellar food and drink during dineLA.
It kicked off January 24th and runs to February 5th (but skipping Saturday, January 30th). Over 250 restaurants across the basin are offering three-course meals at a fixed price, from Asia de Cuba’s Asian Spiced Pork Spare Ribs to Zucca Ristorante’s Petto di pollo con misticanza di verude. Check the restaurant list or venues, price, menu, and neighborhood.
If you are on a liquid diet, however, there’s one LA watering hole that can satisfy your thirst for culinary adventure; the Library Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel.
Chief Librarian and drink designer Matthew Biancaniello recently hosted the private kick off party for participating dineLA chefs, crafting his cocktail menu to satisfy the foodies. The options are now available to us, as long as the ingredients are in season.
- The three course cocktail tasting consisted of:
- The Roquette: Hendrick’s gin, mint, lime, agave nectar, and arugula
- A shiitake-infused bourbon Manhattan with a Luxardo cherry
And The Last Tango of Modena, an eye-popping combination of Hendrick’s gin, muddled strawberries, 25 year-old balsamic, and St. Germain foam.
You have never sipped anything like these drinks, which are as thrilling as driving home in an exotic sports car: you know the route, but you’ve never moved like this before.
Biancaniello directed his creations towards the chef crowd, working savory flavors into liquid form like his standard ham-on-rye: prosciutto-infused bourbon, black maple walnut liqueur, and cornichon pickles.
“(Chef) Mark Fell was blown away by all of them,” said Biancaniello in between a spotty cell phone signal from the Getty Museum, where he was celebrating his recent profile in the LA Times with his wife.
The Library Bar will continue innovating and experimenting, bringing us presents like fennel-infused gin with fresh blood orange juice, kumquat-basil mojitos, a passion fruit martini injected into the heart of a kumquat, and a jaw-dropping venture into cocktail tasting: two drinks in one. Using special quaffer glasses (http://www.quaffer.com/shop.net/retail/default.asp), Biancaniello will mix one cocktail that rests in the bottom of the glass, close the neck with a cherry, and mix another, different drink, for the top. “Like a flight, this is all in the same glass,” he says. “The second drink will follow and compliment the one you just had. It’s like two courses in one.”
We may not live on alcohol alone, but the cocktail menu at the Library Bar sure wishes we could.
Participating dineLA restaurants with cocktail specials:
Roy’s Hawiian Fusion Cuisine (downtown LA)