Let’s Talk Kaboooom “Fishing With Dynamite”

Lucky US!

Let’s Talk KABOOOOM

It’s a gift to have good friends and a landslide to have even better contacts.

Last night my hubby and I were treated to the soft opening of “Fishing With Dynamite”, David LeFevre’s new Shell Fish restaurant right next door to the enormously successful and popular “Manhattan Beach Post Restaurant”.

The energy in this small place (35 seats I think) was not only palpable but also electric and explosively fun.

The selected few guests were high on anticipation, hunger and all things new and fresh from the great partnership of David and Jerry Garbus.

The staff was ready, armed with a phosphorescent positivity that illuminated the tiny space with an incandescent happiness. This was a trial run and success permeated the evening.

Rockin the crowd

It’s not always JUST about the food; yes food is what drives the culinary bus but atmosphere is King.
This little place has MOXIE and the invited guests were lapping it up and damn, that moxie tasted delicious.

Shall I start with the Oyster selection? My munching orders were to slurp and slurp I did; satiny, lustrous salty brine made my taste buds smile. Wellfleet’s from MA, Forbiddens from VA, Wildfires from NY and more. You didn’t think Taste buds can smile? Well where have you been hiding, it‘s a known fact that they do.

Bring on the Brine

The Shrimp. I could write a whole essay on the ‘flava’ of the Shrimp alone! They were buttery, dilly and I actually had to arm wrestle my husband for the last one. I won… A true Gastronome will not be denied.

We sampled the Grilled Asparagus with a tarragon bearnaise; the bearnaise was a cloud of rich, opulent goodness (my cholesterol my not agree). I tried to lick the serving dish when no one was looking.

oh my so good

The Albacore Tuna Tartare was a startling mouthful of gusto. The kimchi furikake warmed me up; I was glowing neon. The crunch of the hidden bed of diced cucumber cooled the shock and awe my palate was enjoying.

The worrisome part of the night was Mom’s Cape Cod Squash Rolls. These tasty balls of pure comfort food (with accompanying butter) present some serious competition to the Bacon Buttermilk Cheddar Cheese Biscuits next door.

Pure heaven

Rounding off the night was the Maple Pudding with Rosemary Sandies. Gentle in the sensory overload department which was exactly what the tongue wanted. Sweet, smooth, a bit of salt and crunch. It was not lady like to attempt to lick the remnants out of the chalice, though I did consider it.

The take home treat was the sleeve on our coffee/tea paper cups. The logo, so beautifully designed, has some simple language, “MAKE IT BLOOM”. At first I wasn’t quite sure what the deeper message was, but Chef Dave to the rescue to point out the small print. AMAZING. The sleeve is embedded with seeds that once planted (after a good moisten) will bloom a well-established little basil, chive and parley mini herb garden! GENIUS!!!

Genius

Thank you Chef and Jerry for your endearing love of your craft by sharing love through food. You both are genuine to the core, and I’m honored to be a part of your culinary community.

Let’s Talk Culinary Vision or Skid Row Scary

The expectation of experiencing the oeuvres of Ari Taymore was the highlight of my month. I savored the anticipation; sadly the anticipation was more savory than the experience. The youthful creative cuisine of “Alma” left me deflated and uninspired.

Don’t get me wrong, I admire the combination of the unusual bedfellow ingredients, the atmosphere was definitely hip, but the hype got ramped up to perhaps as they say in the lending world, “over promised and under achieved”.

The chicken liver dish was one of the best by far of all the small plates; sidebar:   I found the matt patina or lack thereof of the plates, to mute or even dull down the presentation of the food. The urchin, burrata and licorice greens on toast with a sprinkle of caviar  indeed amused my taste buds.

The Main course dishes really disappointed. The steak has literally no flavor or personality, be it visual or tactility on the tongue, and the lamb had to be sent back and further discussed with the very patient and sweet waitress.

I tried the sweetbreads and was pleased enough to eagerly await the oncoming plates (oh those plates).
The pigeon with blueberry was again, lacking in the flavor department.

I then quietly and sadly pondered the viability of staying for dessert. Happily my dining partners agreed that we should bail and seek more tantalizing options.

Dessert at AOC in their new location was a lovely diversion and completed the evening on a sweet high note.

Youthful exuberance, salted with a tad of palpable conceit won’t have me racing back.

Let’s Talk Heavy

My mom used to say that a house  was not a home unless there was a marriage, a birth and even a death completing the circle of a home’s history.

She told me this to comfort me or perhaps she truly believed it, when we were moving into our new house in Beverly Hills. I was in the 6^th grade and death was not something that I had any experience with. Even the  fact that someone died peacefully and of old age in our new home gave me some unease. My mom magically put my fear factor at bay with her one simple explanation.

When mom was passing from this life to the next stage, whatever that next stage is, my sister and I tried so hard to do the right thing. We didn’t want to upset her by our impending sorrow; we worried it would keep her fighting to stay on the side of the living. We were afraid to openly share how much we would miss her, how deeply and tangibly pained we were going to be in a very short amount of time. We knew that it was only a matter of hours before we no longer could hold her soft hand.

We didn’t truly and openly have the opportunity to talk to mom about her own death. She didn’t want to face it, didn’t want to discuss it. Perhaps she just didn’t want to die! She was 90 and we told her of her cancers reoccurrence; the hospice people tried a more direct approach and yet, it we never mentioned that Mom wouldn’t live forever.

During those days of the bed side vigil, my sister and I shared stories; Lisa on one side holding one hand, me on the other, moms hand in mine.

Oddly enough some of this was even enjoyable, if you can believe it, because my sister’s  youthful memory isn’t profound and so we got to relive our childhood without mom interrupting! She who always had to be the center of attention was still indeed that but she wasn’t talking now. But,  she WAS listening.

Sis and I got to laugh about funny stories, amaze one another with the courage our mom had in the face of adversity; financial, emotional and simply the multi faceted levels of being a single mom.

We sang songs of our childhood, looking up the lyrics and amazingly finding them on Google. And then I thought it might be comforting to sing the Lullaby mom sang to me as a baby and that I in turn sang to my baby when she needed sleep or comforting.

That was a tall order. It took every fiber of my being to sing the words to my dying mother. I sang loud and proud and hit the high notes without a tear, without audibly wavering. I knew instinctually she needed it, that she could hear me. This singing of this simple song with the many variations that I’ve created over the years was the most difficult task of my adult life. I didn’t want to cry while singing. I wanted to be strong, sing clearly and reach my mom, deep in that divide between our here and her next beyond.

The Hospice Nurse listened and watched as I sang and then my sister pointed to a stream of tears that crawled down mom’s cheek. I had indeed reached her. It was a profound moment.

What I find now, almost more profound and absolutely filling me with distraught is the fact that I never got to say the real words I wanted to say. I never had the courage to tell mom, to say that I knew she was dying and to tell her how very much I’d miss her.

It is a tricky business helping a soul fly away. It’s challenging to know what’s right, what it is that the dying person needs at this gigantic fork on the path to the next world.

Mom’s passing was peaceful, quiet with my sister and I  at her side, loving her on her way.

Mom, I miss you.

Wedding Day

Let’s Talk Real Estate Paradigm Shift

If you read the paper, check your Facebook, read the twitter and RSS feeds you know that our Real Estate market is booming here in Southern CA.

One of the reasons I’ve been absent from my semi regular e-letters to you is that in fact I’ve been totally swamped with several new listings hitting the market, some off market listings getting a ton of play and also the sales, all with multiple offers, on my existing listings.

But I wanted to fill you in on some important market shifts that I’ve been noticing.

I often talk about the mysterious “off market listings” and the trend of property selling before it ever hits the MLS, Multiple Listing Service and you often ask me WHY would a seller do that. I’ll try to explain.

To maintain one’s Top Producer status, the Realtor (me) needs to be in a plethora of networking groups with other active Realtors to find out who’s got property  coming up, and what these other Realtor’s clients are looking for.  Then, after hours of these meetings, client consults, properties are being sold off market. Sellers have enjoyed the anonymity of this practice. They enjoy the rapidity of the sale’s marketing  process. Eventually the sold property may appear on the MLS as a “for comp purposes only” comment.  This does help with our comps. Bottom line, with inventory so tight, this off market system has proven to be a very successful Top Producer strategy.

There has now been a paradigm shift.

Sellers are recognizing that yes, they still need their Realtor who is closely connected with the supply of off market, upcoming property but that the real potential crazy $$ to be attained,  the above and beyond asking price amount on the Sellers Net Sheet is now happening because of the old-fashioned way of marketing…via the MLS.

I mention this for a few reasons. For you buyers, the strategy of putting in your offer when the property is not listed, or not listed yet may backfire. For sellers, you may want to overcome the annoyance of those pesky Open Houses and the sign in the front yard in exchange for the greater buyer pool that’s not only outside of MY local über successful Realtor client base, but out in the world at large, via the magical internet.

Does that make sense? Would you like an example?

A nice property came out in my networking circles that was NOT going to be put on the open market (MLS). There were to be no Open Houses, no Broker’s Opens. I was on it like a gourmande on a succulent terrine de fois gras. We wrote. We were assured that this was going to stay off market. Hell, all the players (Realtors with the power) where in the know anyway.

NEXT: Seller decided he wanted a Full Monte of exposure. Long sad story short, my buyer was outed by 4 other offers WELL over our final and best. Go figure.

So, this is my e-message to you today. If you want stats in your market area, I’ll give them to you. If you want a consultation on what I feel your home is worth and why it is a GREAT time to sell, call me.

If you’d like to know from the ground up, information from inside the trenches (that I love), don’t wait for the media to get it right and current. I live and work in real-time; I know the market and I know what’s happening in it (even if my buyer didn’t step up to the plate when I presented the perils).

 

 

Let’s Talk A Pea Prodigy

Are Peas a vegetable? I think   they are in the bean or legume family, so perhaps this blog has gotten off to an   erroneous start. Let me ask my pal Google.

“Pea  /pē/ Noun

•     A     spherical green seed that is eaten as a vegetable.
•     Any     of a number of edible spherical seeds of the pea family, e.g., chickpea and     black-eyed pea.

Ok, so there is     the answer and let me get to the meat of this story.

I am in love with  Peas.

Once a long time ago  in Paris, my friend Alain Ducasse chose a famous restaurant for me and my friend  Jami to dine at near the Champs Elysees. I think it was  La Fermette Marbeuf.

On the menu that  night was a Terrine de Soup de petit pois de printemps, avec un morceau de  fois gras au fond”. Let me translate:   A spring pea soup with a knob of fois gras (goose or duck liver) at  the bottom.

This Terrine, a  large serving bowl was in fact quite gigantic, and at the time, I was quite petite but my robust appetite did and does not match my frame, not even today at almost 50.

The sublime Soup – I sipped,  devoured, drained (most daintily) every last sweet, silken drop. I had to     remind myself that I couldn’t lick the bowl. Instead I calmly and with the utmost seriousness asked the maître’D to please, yes please, serve me another. He looked quite stunned but nodded. Remember, the client is always right.

I recall that said Maitre ‘D looked equally stunned when I polished, in it’s inteirty the second terrine with     paralleled glee, discrete glee of course, I’m not one of those Ugly Americans, but my unbridled euphoria was undeniable. The restaurant staff  was astonished and I guess, the chef was smiling. I know it got back to Ducasse and he would have been beaming too.

I could go on about the Peach creation I had for dessert which merits many paragraphs but this story is     about my love of the Pea.

That was in the 80’s. Let’s fast forward.

2013 Mar’Sel Terranea, Palos Verdes, my husband’s birthday dinner:

I won’t go on  about the other dishes that were very delectable. I feel I must note however that the waitress  or is it more correct to say, ‘server’ drove me to distraction with her over hyped up energy, I think she had too many Red Bulls prior to service. Food and dish description deserves paced patience and grace.

I want to talk about the ecstasy of one dish in particular. The PEA dish. Finally I can get to the point of this blog post.

The Pea dish was a compilation of Gioia Burrata cheese from El Monte CA (who would have thought) with fresh English peas with their tendrils; a caress of SABA reduced balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, olive oil. It was garnished with a grilled herb ciabatta.

Perfection. It was Perfection. I have never tasted such Pea-ness, pea rich flavor, not since that famous dinner in Paris. But those French spring peas were cooked, these were not, thus an earthy freshness, almost tasting of the soil (in a good way). The savor was so deep, intensely pea like. Why don’t more salads contain Pea tendrils?  I’ve come to believe that the tendril is the source of the molecular beginnings of the Pea essence.

This simple dish was in its simplicity, anything but simple. It was complex, deep, primal in its connection to the earth.

Let’s Talk Gjelina’s PeasI had my second Pea experience the very next day at Gjelina’s in Venice. This Pea dish for lunch was a big surprise. I didn’t know my good Pea fortune would extend to two days in concurrence. Yay for me!

This variety of Pea presentation was chopped or diced fresh spring peas (the menu said smashed but they were not smashed and that is an insult to the end result) on a bed of burrata on toast of unknown variety. This piece of Pea heaven was also gush worthy. I made all sorts of cooing noises but the restaurant is so loud, no one heard me, but my husband could and my smile said it all. Yes, I was smiling with my mouth full, full of Peas. I was a happy gourmande.

To wrap this up before my readership becomes bored with my Pea reverie; I’d like to say that there is an interesting twist to all this Pea/spring/freshness.  My mom passed away on the Friday before all of this Pea indulgence. I think the renewal of the spring has some symbolism with this next spring of my life without my mother. I will share a parting visual memory to bring the pea stories into a full perfect pea shaped circle that just this second came into my mind’s recesses.

Year 2000. My mom shucking Peas on my porch in Saudi Arabia; a giant bag of fresh from the earth peas in their pods. It took her a long time to snap the little green orbs from their pods. I guess I too have now been released from the protective pod of my mother’s earthly presence.

This one’s for you mom. I love and miss you.

Lea Leeman

Let’s Talk Culinary Euphoria

Wow.                                Let those three letters sink in.

Sante!

I just finished dinner at Joel Robuchon’s Atelier in Las Vegas. I must commence by saying that I hate Vegas. It’s  not for me. I don’t enjoy the cigarette puffing drunken masses, with their glazed eyes glued to the slots. But I come every year (second year now) to better myself.

Better myself you might ask? At my Crap Game? No. I come for the RE/MAX R4 Convention, to learn how to provide excellent service to my clients; to surpass their expectations.

Much to my delight, while feasting on all things Real Estate, I stumbled upon M. Robouchon’s Atelier. I coudn’t quite justify a solo dinner for one, duration 4 hours at a cost of over $100 per 60 minutes (without wine and without my husband), so I settled, settled  for L’Atelier.

I apologize to myself and to all who revere M. Robouchon. The only “settling” I did, was for a millisecond in my seat, at the bar, in between fellow gastro gluttons.

Where to start. Without overly boasting, ok I’ll boast, I can count amongst my pals some of the worlds most celebrated Chefs. I know many personally and do prevail upon them and their kind personal assistants for aid when travelling, when dining.

I am a lover of food, cuisine, the bounty of Mother Nature prepared by gifted artist in the kitchen. I have been treated to many a 3 Star Michelin dinner and sometimes didn’t fully understand or appreciate to the fullest the bounty laid before me.

But tonight, tonight was different. Tonight I wasn’t prepared to have my senses lovingly assaulted by flavor, texture and aroma. I didn’t posses the confidence that this Vegas crowd could support such refined cuisine. Boy was I wrong!

One of my dear friends, Alain Ducasse has Mix here in Vegas. We dined there last year and they put on a vast array of  dishes for us. The venue was stunning, the service almost good, but as sad as it makes me, I was disappointed. I wasnt’ moved. I didn’t “wow”. I didn’t groan with the glee of ecstatically jumping taste buds. I was grateful for the attention, for the lack of a bill, but I didn’t leave on a food high note.

But tonight was different. It caught me off guard. Ducasse is a disciple of Joel Robuchon. I can see why.

This mini meal (remember I was solo) consisted of 3 courses plus an amuse bouche. Each was better than the next, or maybe just as fabulous.

I started with the Anchoives Marinees with confit of eggplant and roasted red peppers.

I followed with the Sea Bass on a bed of leeks with a wisp of a ravioli surrounded by an oncteuse sauce that defies not only gravity but also surpasses celestial godliness.

Next I struggled. I wanted to be mundane and have chocolate, or maybe the hazelnut whatever it was. My smarts led me to ask my charming waiter his favorite dessert. So I jumped into the Raspberry splendor on my plate.

It was sexual. I have to admit that it was. I’m not ashamed either. The waiter poured something on top of this red orb and it opened like a delicate flower, revealing..well. I better stop there, but remember I’m only talking about food here, no subtext, just food.

I guess in my haste I neglected to mention the amuse bouche, a frothy little number of fois gras and parmesan.

The bread deserves its own accolades, but we are talking FRENCH bread here.

Just like and Oscar acceptance speech, I have to give thanks to the puree de pommes de terres. They were amazing. I will note that they were not quite warm enough. Damn, am I hard to please?

As I happily chatted to my fellow diners I realized just how monumentous this meal really was. It moved me. It tantalized me.

Thank you Joel, Merci mille fois.

Let’s Talk Wedding Tears

I do

I cry at weddings.

I’ve not attended many but no matter how hard I bite my lower lip, hold my breath or breathe through my ears, the tears sneak down my cheeks and the sniffing begins.

This time it is very different. My husband Ken is going to be the legal officiator at our friends wedding and he has been planning the ceremony for months. I help too, but this is his gig and I’m overwhelmed at how amazing it is turning out.

Let me tell you a bit about my husband. Firstly he has a quirky sense of humor which borders on shock and awe. I guess his mom didn’t give him enough attention when he was a little tot because sometimes he says stuff that, well, I had to learn how to control. Secondly and surprisingly, he is a little shy. Thirdly, he can be a tad irreverent and sarcastic (I’m working on that).  Early in our marriage I had to create a quick reference catch phrase to put him in check. I.S.B. stands for “Inappropriate Social Behavior”.

I don’t mean to paint an unfair portrait – that of someone who I shouldn’t let out of the house, he’s not THAT bad but let’s just say that over the last 10 years of our marriage, he still manages to embarrass the heck out of me on occasion.

Our friends and especially the friends that Ken is going to bind into legal matrimony know him and his antics well. So why you ask would they ask Ken to stand before their family and friends with carte blanche to potentially reek a little havoc, cause mild embarrassment and then pronounce them man and wife?

The answer lies in the pages of his ceremony that I read aloud the other night to my sister an editor and film maker. I thought she’d be a good one to try it out on.

As I read the words, the quotes, the imagery and his prose those wedding tears welled up in my throat, crawled up my nasal passage and squirted out of my eyes. It was beautiful. His words were insightful, tender, humorous (of course) and lovingly chosen.

The bride and the groom knew that Ken would deliver something deep,rich and profound. I guess they knew that because they know about our love and the way that Ken, wrapped up in a sarcastic blanket of self preservation and shock value holds deep within a sensitivity that will illuminate the night of their nuptial ceremony.

I can’t wait for January 12th. I can’t wait for Ken to unite this couple in wedded bliss, legally and for eternity. I can’t wait for the gathered group to be a part of this magical moment.

Please excuse any typos as my eyes are moist and fogged up.

I would say I do again and again to my Ken.

Love is a Beautiful thing