Eating it up in Cali

While I wouldn't say that this trip has been quite the culinary experience my last trip to the LA area was, I did manage to find my way to a couple of tasty restaurants that I thought I'd recommend to my friends who live around here or may be visiting the area in the near future.  The first was from my Monday night dinner with Br and family, Louise's Trattoria in Pasadena.  I had the fish special with capers and a meyer lemon sauce and it's just good Italian food.

Last night was a dinner out with coworkers and I once again found myself at an Italian establishment, this time in Claremont, called La  Parolaccia.  Their wine list was great, the bread they served before the meal was so delicious I easily could have made just that my meal, and my dinner, the Tortiglioni Norcina, was a well balanced dish of pasta, sausage, mushrooms, and cream.  Bellissimo!

My favorite yet, though, was my solo excursion out tonight where I once again found myself in Claremont Village, but this time at Viva Madrid a tapas place with food and drinks so good that the place was consistently packed wall-to-wall the entire time I was there.  I love tapas because you get the opportunity to try so many different dishes.  Here I ordered a glass of the house white wine (it was Spanish and delicious), dried, cured white tuna on toast drizzled with olive oil, asparagus wrapped in Serrano ham, baked mushrooms stuffed with chorizo, and I finished my meal off with a slightly sweet cheese dish of toast smeared with Cabrales cheese and topped with red wine poached pears.  Everything tasted wonderful, the ambiance (pictured above) was dark and cozy and a little eclectic, and I'm pretty sure that when I'm called out to Pomona for work in the future that I'll be making this awesome little Spanish nook a regular stop.