Monday, May 17, 2010

Into the Heart of L.A.- Culinary Tour - Part Two

Part two of my Bertolli Frozen Foods all expenses paid vacation "Into the Heart of L.A. Culinary Tour". Please read part one here, and see my give away for a new autographed cookbook by celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito that will be given to a lucky reader through the Random Number Generator on Friday, May 21, 2010.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to Blogher Ads restrictions I had to transfer all previous posts regarding the Bertolli contest I won to this ad free review blog, but prior comments to those posts were saved on my original blog and all prior comments will be tallied on both the original post and the post moved here in regard to winning the cookbook. Thanks for understanding!

Now on to "part two" of my adventure!

All photos will enlarge when double clicked on- use the back arrow to return to the blog post

The "street food" scene is all the rage in Los Angeles!  Over 90 popular gourmet catering trucks rove around the streets and Twitter their locations so their followers can find them and order lunch or a snack. In this photo mosaic you can see some of these trucks that we located by Twitter along L.A.'s Museum Row on the Miracle Mile.

Someone was filming us from the top of the World's Fare truck!

A peak inside the truck's state of the art kitchen.


The World Fare truck was a double decker bus with the roof top removed, that they call the "bustaurant," so we decided to hop on top while we waited for a sampling of their food to be served.

A group shot of the happy food bloggers and their contest winners on the top of the World Fare "bustaurant."

There was plenty of room on top to stand and use the ledges as a table.

Plus we had a good view from the top of Miracle Mile and......

....some of the beautiful hill top houses of L.A.


The World Fare chef, Andi Van Willigan, came on top to talk with us and describe the available entrees. She had spent four years as the Corporate Executive Sous Chef for the Michael Mina Group and two seasons as sous chef in Gordon Ramsay’s “Hell’s Kitchen,” but she wanted to return to LA and try something new and has enjoyed developing recipes for World Fare owners Travis Schmidt and Jason Freeman.


They are famous for their "Bunny Chow" which is a South African meal comprised of hollowed-out bread filled with savory stews and curries. World Fare also offers a sampler of its four Bunny Chows, served on pepper halves instead of hollowed bread, which is what we ordered.  The fillings consisted of roasted pork with corn and jalapeno relish; Worcestershire short ribs with horseradish creme fraiche; chicken curry with chick peas, coconut milk, cashews and cilantro; and vegetarian chili with black red and garbanzo beans with sweet corn and tomato.

We also tried their "truffle mac and cheese balls" which I'm holding in the photo mosaic above. They were so good I could have eaten a hundred of them!

The dessert offerings were delectable. We sampled red velvet cupcakes with a cream cheese filling, a rich chocolate brownie cupcake, a big chocolate chip cookie, and then my favorite dessert which was butterscotch bread pudding served with butterscotch pot de creme! It was heavenly!


Our next samplings came from The Shrimp Guys truck! Inspired by the shrimp trucks they saw on a trip to Hawaii, the owners claim they learned to cook in what they call the academy of "MMK" -- "My Mom's Kitchen."

We tried four shrimp samples -- garlic butter shrimp, coconut lime shrimp which they call "Coco Loco," spicy garlic butter shrimp and spicy coconut lime.  Both the spicy entrees were dosed with Thai chilies and tropical spices.

They were all very flavorful and delicious!


Next we sampled from Lee's Philly Gogi truck.  There is no web site for his truck but Lee's twitter site states: "Trained in Philly to bring you the BEST steak sandwich. Our Gogi style tacos and burritos are L.A.’s BEST."


His chicken and beef tacos were overflowing with meat, and the addition of Korean kimchi vegetables made them spicy and juicy good.

Lee was very friendly and pleasant and even posed for photos with out group!  We felt like celebrities!


We left the food truck area and headed over to 712 N. Heliotrope Dr., Los Angeles, CA, to visit "Scoops" -  the ice cream and gelato shop of a former artist named Tai Kim.

Mr. Kim allowed us to sample all the flavors on little plastic spoons which he handed to us.  We then made our choices of which flavors to have him scoop into our cups.


Mr. Kim offers a fluctuating menu of exotic flavored sorbet, ice cream and gelato flavors that he has blended fresh daily to fill his 18 bins.


Some of the flavors that were available the day we visited were chocolate Guinness, black truffles, lavender honey, blueberry plum wine, pistachio jasmine, Thai iced tea, vanilla coffee mascarpone cheese, goat cheese basil, ricotta Marsala Oreo, banana coconut, pistachio orange water, salty chocolate, apricot tiramisu, strawberry banana, salty caramel, soy based pear cranberry raspberry.


I had a little plastic spoon sample of each flavor and could not decide which one I like more than the other, as they all tasted temptingly good! The flavors were not overpowering and the consistency was creamy and smooth, yet not overly filling.  My ultimate choice of four serving scoops were consumed very easily, and I feel a little sad I won't be able to taste such delightful flavor combinations until I visit LA again sometime in the future. If you wish to enjoy a gourmet ice cream taste experience be sure to put a visit to Scoops on your agenda!

Time to go back to the limousine for the last two legs of our culinary adventure -- please return for part three where we will explore one last specialty store where we have a chance to participate in a taste quiz and then we go on to the Four Seasons Hotel to meet Rocco DiSpirito! 
Don't forget to enter my give away for an autographed copy of Rocco's new cookbook, "Now Eat This" if you haven't already entered! All comments on this back page blog will be combined with the ones originally left before I was required to move that post to this review blog.


FTC disclosure: I received this trip courtesy of Bertolli Frozen Meals (all-expenses paid covering transportation, hotel and meals) and my opinions are independent of the paid or sponsored relationship.



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