The Los Angeles County Environmental Health Restaurant Rating site is a must visit site for an L.A. area diners. Here you can find out what inspection score any restaurant in the county got. L.A. rates restaurants on a 100 point score with ‘A’ being 90-100 , ‘B’ is 80-89, and ‘C’ is 70-79. We never go to any restaurant that didn’t get an ‘A’.

Even though I bought tickets for the Nouvelle Vague show at Tangerine last night, we didn’t see the show. We got to Tangerine and there was a line to get into the lounge. We stood there for a little bit before we realized the line was not moving, so we went to the front of the line and said we had bought tickets. It turns out the people in line didn’t have tickets, and we could get our tickets via will call. I gave my ID to the girl and she started looking up my name, but couldn’t find it. Strange. Luckily, we had the receipt along so we showed her that. She looked at it for a little and pointed out that I had bought tickets for Thursday’s show which was the day before. Doh!

I really should learn to double check things before click the ‘purchase’ button.

I just bought tickets for the Nouvelle Vague show at Tangier on Friday, and I was glad to see they did not use Ticketmaster for the tickets, instead they used a service called Virtuous. I have been getting sick of paying Ticketmaster’s outrageous fees lately. I bought tickets for the upcoming Cake/Tegan & Sara show and the tickets were $35 each, but the total came to $93.45. That’s $23.45 in fees! Yuck!

In contrast, Virtuous only charged $3.00 per ticket as a fee, and in addition:

Every Virtuous ticket purchase helps support people in need, close to home. How? 10% of our profit from each ticket purchase helps support the local food bank serving the community hosting the event.

For example, each ticket purchased for a Los Angeles event will help the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank obtain and deliver much needed food for the 350,000 individuals they serve each week through their network of over 1,070 charities in Los Angeles County.

How great is that? I hope more venues start using Virtuous.

Arrested Development may be the funniest sitcom ever. It’s such a shame no one watches it and it is in danger of being cancelled. (Although there is word that Showtime may pick it up.)

One character’s name is a funny one: Bob Loblaw (Say it out loud), and here is a bit from last night’s show:

Bob Loblaw: Actually, I was going to stay in my office tonight and work on my law blog.

Tobias: Of course— the “Bob Loblaw Law Blog.” Wow. You, sir, are a mouthful!

Another really funny bit was when Tobias was a combination Analyst and Therapist, so he shortened it to: Analrapist.

We went to Locanda Veneta for Michele’s birthday.

The restaurant was small and dimly lit, which made it romantic, but the tables were a little too close together for my liking.

The wine list had a half decent number of wines on it, but was on the pricey side. We had a bottle of the Concannon Petite Syrah for $52.

Appetizer was Melanzana alla Parmiggiana (grilled eggplant stuffed with mozzarella in a tomato basil sauce, baked “au gratin”) and Burrata Caprese (Burrata Cheese and tomatoes, served with olive oil and balsamic vinegar). The eggplant was good, but was overshadowed by the excellent Burrata. We will definitely be ordering that one again when we go back.

For main course I had a special: gnocchi with black cabbage and ricotta in a white bean sauce. The original white bean sauce had bacon in it, so I had them substitute it for another white bean sauce that they had. The gnocchi was good, but not great; I think I am still spoiled by the Gnocchi we had in Venice last year.

Michele was tempted by a special that night, a crab risotto with pomegranate seeds, but went with a regular menu item, the homemade black ravioli filled with fresh lobster served in a creamy saffron sauce. It was very good and Michele was very happy she ordered it.

Dessert was the Il “ Trio” Locanda: vanilla crème custard with caramel sauce, chocolate custard with fresh raspberry, and Panna Cotta with a fresh raspberry sauce. All three were very good and it was a great desert to split.

The service was good. The waiters and bus boys came with everything fairly quickly and cleared things well, but they never we needed to refill our wine glasses ourselves.

Rating
Food: 8/10
Atmosphere: 7/10
Service: 7/10

Locanda Veneta
8638 W 3rd St
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(310) 274-1893

Dave Navarro, who I try to listen to every week on Camp Freddy Radio (Saturday’s 6-8 PM on 103.1) has been doing a sporadic radio show from his house. It called Spread Radio Live. I’ve never been able to catch it, but he’s doing another one today at 7:30 PM, so I’m going to try to check it out.

When my wife and I are standing in the check out line of the grocery store, we like to play a game called, “Guess Who’s on the Cover of O Magazine This Month”. In case you don’t know, O is Oprah’s magazine. I think the rules of the game are pretty self explanatory. Amazingly enough, we both win every month.

We buy heirloom tomatoes every now and then, especially when they are on sale. Rock n’ Roll Ralph’s usually has them on for $5.99/lb but yesterday they were only $3.39/lb, which was cheaper then the regular tomatoes, so of course we bought some. If you have never tried heirloom tomatoes before, you should. They really taste like real tomatoes instead of those mushy tasteless things that pass for tomatoes these days.

In case you are wondering, heirloom tomatoes are here is a good introduction.

We went to see Bauhaus at the Wiltern on Saturday night. We were pretty happy when we found out they were playing. When we had to miss Coachella earlier this year, this was on of the bands that we were really disappointed about not seeing.

Our seats weren’t the greatest, we were in the second last row of seats. But the Wiltern is small enough that even these seats weren’t terrible. We were expecting an opening band, but there wasn’t one. Luckily our timing was perfect, the lights went down as soon as we sat down.

The band sounded good, but there were a few times I heard some feedback that was a little annoying. Peter Murphy’s voice was great as usual. The stage was pretty bare except for the usual instruments and amps. The light light show was pretty snazzy. Unfortunately the lights meant that I wasn’t able to get any pictures at all. For one song, Daniel Ash took a break from his guitar and played the sax, which was pretty cool.

For there main set, they played for about an hour, playing a variety of Bauhaus songs. They took quite a few minutes to come out for their first encore, making the crowd work for it. The first encore they only played one song and left again. After a little bit they came back out and played a Love and Rockets songSlice of Life from Burning From The Inside. Daniel Ash was singing, so Peter Murphy was just playing the tambourine and singing a little back up. They then played T-Rex’s Telegram Sam, and Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust.

After the second encore, they left the stage and the house lights come on in the theatre. We just looked at each other and said “What? They aren’t going to play Bela Lugosi’s Dead?” We were a little disappointed and started leaving the theatre. But then we heard the crowd starting to get a little louder and decided to go back in. The crowd was getting louder and many people were shouting “Bela”. They then turned the house lights back off and the band came back on and did play the song everyone was waiting for.

We saw the She Wants Revenge show at the Troubadour on Tuesday night. The show was very good with Monsters in Waiting and Viva K as openers.

Indie 103.1 has been playing “Tear You Apart” by She Wants Revenge recently and I really like this song. Their album was supposed to be released that day, so I went to a few record stores to buy the CD, but no one had it. It turns out the album was not released for some reason.

Before the show we went and had dinner at Flavour of India down the street from the Troubadour. It was delicious as usual. We also saw the guys from the band walk by us on the sidewalk as we were going into the restaurant.

When we walked in the door and were showing our IDs someone walking out of the club said something like “ask about VIP badges”. We weren’t really sure what he was talking about, but the bouncer gave us VIP stickers and told us to go up the stairs when we got into the club. We went upstairs, showed our stickers to the bouncer and managed to sit in “The Loft”. It was great being able to sit and watch the show from up above instead of being stuck downstairs with the big crowd.

The opening bands were both good. We liked Monsters in Waiting a lot, and Viva K were good too. We found it interesting that both bands had female lead singers with black hair.

The place was pretty crowded by the time SWR came on. They started with a drum machine beat and then the four members of the band walked on. I was surprised to see four band members, because all the press always talked about SWR having just two members - Justin and Adam 12. I guess they added a guitarist and drummer for this tour.

The show they put on was really good. The lead singer seems to have a real good stage presence. He engaged the crowd and seemed pretty friendly and relaxed up there, although he seemed a little overwhelmed that they were playing a sold out show at the Troubadour. At one point a girl screamed “Take your shirt off!”, and he just said “Never”. He also gave a little rant against their record company, encouraging people to phone them and ask for the record to be released.

They sounded good too. The songs I was familiar with sounded much like the recorded versions. I think they played for about 45 minutes to an hour, but I really wasn’t keeping track of time. As many of the reviewers have said, they are very reminiscent of Joy Division. I think what reminds me of them is the very “kinetic” sound they have, dark yet danceable at the same time.

After the show we went to the front room to see if we could buy a t-shirt but they were sold out. I regret not buying an EP.

I can’t wait for the CD to come out. In the meantime I can enjoy some of their songs at their MySpace site.

Playlist:
red flags long nights
sister
out of control
monologue
these things
broken promisses for- broken hearts
spend the night
someone must get hurt
disconnect ( adam solo)
she loves me she loves - me not
tear you apart