A New Favorite Flavor Emerges at Scoops

On the left, Mike's; on the right, Maria's

As part of Friday night date night (this is part of a three-post series), Maria and I hit our fave ice cream spot, Scoops in East Hollywood (sorry, Fosselmans, you're up there too).

Any Scoops visit is a good one -- but this one delivered what has quickly become my favorite flavor yet: Spiced Kabocha/Japanese Squash. With hints of cinnamon spice and pumpkin, that flavor was straight up my alley. I paired it with the Green Tea/Marsala Wine flavor (remember, at Scoops, one "scoop" is actually two -- and at $2.75, an amazing deal), which had the nice effect of enhancing the green tea flavor.

Maria, meanwhile, went for the Pineapple/Kiwi, which was nice and refreshing; and the Black Sesame Seed/Marscapone.

Rate-A-Restaurant #201: The Park

Restaurant: The Park

Location: 1400 Sunset Blvd. (Echo Park)

Type of restaurant: Modern American



We stipulated: It was another rare date night, as Evan was accounted for until 10 p.m. We didn't want to stray too far from home, and also didn't want to spend too much. I'd heard good things about the Park -- and Maria remembers briefly talking to the owners while strolling by during the Great Los Angeles Walk last November.

They stipulated: Reservations aren't necessary, except for groups over 6. Also, unfortunately, it's no longer BYOB at the Park. The restaurant doesn't yet have its beer and wine license, but had been letting diners bring their own booze -- until the city cracked down. Damn city.




What we ordered: Appetizer: Mini Cornmeal Pancakes, $9 (with seared shrimp, chipotle butter, roasted tomato salsa and Mexican crema). Maria: Linguine with white clam sauce, $12. Mike: Albacore Duo, $18 (Albacore crusted with ground coriander and black pepper, grilled with blood orange sauce, and Albacore braised in olive oil tossed with potatoes, shaved fennel, parsley leaves and meyer lemon, served with grilled asparagus).



High point: We had a hard time deciding between the cornmeal pancakes or the szechuan fried calamari as an appetizer; I think we chose wisely -- although I wish they hadn't taken the "mini" so literally. As for the entrees, the seasonings were amazing -- the pepper on the Albacore was perfectly seasoned, and the white clam sauce offered up a nice spice as well.

Low point: There's something about being denied BYOB that made me want to BYOB even more. Sure hope they get things resolved soon, as a nice glass of wine would have nicely complemented the dinner.



Overall impression: Friendly staff, low-key environment, nice place. Talk about a great L.A. experience -- they were even playing Dengue Fever when we entered. As we dined, a family came in with their little girl, dressed as a princess. Apparently they're regulars -- as we left, the owners showed us pictures drawn by the girl, taped on the wall. But most importantly, the prices are great -- and that goes pretty far in this economy. With places like the Park, I don't get why anyone would choose a chain restaurant over this.

Chance we'll go back: Yes, and I'm thinking we could bring Blogger Preschooler -- and perhaps meet up with another family too.

For a complete list of our more than 200 restaurant reviews, check out our companion Rate-A-Restaurant site.

And Now, Some Good News at The Times

After taking them to task last week for what felt like an unusual number of careless errors -- including running the same story twice in Thursday's paper -- it's only fair to point out that the Los Angeles Times is still churning out plenty of kick-ass journalism.

The paper just landed three first-place awards in the annual Scripps Howard National Journalism content, including the web reporting prize for Mexico Under Siege, as well as the photojournalism prize for Michael Robinson Chavez's portfolio and the Washington reporting prize for David Willman's take on the federal investigation of the 2001 anthrax scare.

(On the downside, Willman is no longer with the Times, having left Tribune at the end of last year after its D.C. downsize.)

Retro Friday: Out of Business Edition

You'd expect the big-box chains to have staying power; but alas, as we've seen recently, that's just not the case. Inspired by this week's final closure of Circuit City, I found a few more old stores that might be familiar to Angelenos. First up, above: GEMCO. And sadly, below, here's GEMCO as it announces its own going out of business liquidation.





Here's an unusual clip, someone takes a video of... their grandmother? At a Fedco location in 1984. Check out those ancient TVs and computers on display.



Before Ralph's bought them, Alpha Beta used to urge customers to "tell a friend."

Spot Today's Downsized L.A. Times Mistake, #3 in a series

As we've been lamenting all week, the downsizing of the once mighty Los Angeles Times has led to more careless errors in the newspaper. And unfortunately, they keep making it easy for this feature to continue.

In Thursday's paper, the above story (with a Northridge dateline) ran on page A-12, while the story below (with a Pennsylvania dateline) ran on A-19. But look closer. It's the same story. Yep, the same AP story ran twice. Guess that's bang for their AP buck.