Los Angeles

Greenspans is tiny and sandwiched (no pun intended) in between a bar and some tacky Melrose clothing store on the old Tommy Tang strip of Melrose, where Evan Kleiman opened Angeli Cafe all those years ago. Back then all of the good actors in town could be found in Milton Katselas’s Mon and Wed night class at the Zepher Theater just across the street, and Chianti was down the block serving up perfect stracciatella soup. That stretch was something back in its day. (Pardon the walk back 30 years).

Well, seasoned chef Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese is going to bring that block back. It’s good. It’s real good.

My friend Sandy emailed me last week. “Just came back from a place that’s right up your alley”. My friend Sandy is a woman in the know and she certainly knows what alleys I frequent.

She’s also very discriminating and not prone to false alarms or wasting anyone’s time, so my interest was piqued. When I heard the name, Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, I was more than curious, I was out the door. Not being a lady who lunches, my friend Sandy was a bit surprised, and I hope delighted, that I emailed her straight back asking for a lunch date.

Tables lined up along the windows at One Pico offer not only an ocean view, but also a glimpse of Santa Monica's glitzy new Ferris wheel. Its complex computer system dials out the colors, changing light patterns the way a kaleidoscope does when the barrel is turned. In the foreground, palms nod their shaggy heads in the breeze, and the sand below is dimpled with hundreds of footsteps. Joggers streak down the beach as the waiter in a fitted vest pours glasses of Guigal Viognier from the northern Rhône.

Something is different about the restaurant in Shutters on the Beach hotel in Santa Monica, and it's not just the reasonable wine prices or the interesting selection. To celebrate the iconic beach hotel's 15th anniversary, One Pico has undergone a much-needed makeover. And the powers that be have had the good sense not to go for a trendy restaurant-slash-lounge, but a comfortable and casual place with an updated California menu that emphasizes simplicity over complication, seasonal ingredients over the pricey and precious. It's a strategy that's bringing in locals along with summer's hotel guests.

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Last week, I had two major disappointments. I did not win the ticket lottery to attend Michael Jackson’s funeral at the Staples Center and the red velvet doughnut at the Nickel Diner in Downtown LA was not red velvet.

I was fairly certain I would avoid Downtown and all of the MJ festivities after I learned that I didn’t win seats for Michael Jackson’s funeral in the ticket lottery. Better for the riot police to not have to deal with the likes of me: the aimless spectator. But having made previous plans to meet two staffers from the Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition that Tuesday at the Nickel Diner for lunch, I knew I would be in the neighborhood...

Then I received a message from a young woman in Russia who wanted me to deliver a note to the funeral. You see, I participate in CouchSurfing.org so I regularly communicate with people from all over the world who want to visit Los Angeles. This particular traveler asked me if I would post a note and a flower in the fan area of the Staples Center in lieu of her coming to LA herself.

My husband and I are lovers of the grape, so we rarely indulge in hard alcohol, especially since it’s usually more costly and the bars in Los Angeles don’t exactly cater to our age range. It’s hard to find a place with a classy atmosphere that’s not blaring hip-hop and filled with half-exposed 20-year-olds.  How they find the money to buy $12 martinis all night is a mystery to me.

Dave would be content to never leave our house and watch ESPN all night, but I work from home and every once in awhile, I need to get away from my computer and experience the real world. Being a compulsive planner, I always have a few places I’ve found from my Internet travels I’d like to indulge in. Enlisting the excitement of a friend, I recently convinced Dave to take us to the Edison Bar in downtown Los Angeles. Usually, this would be a wholly unacceptable destination on a weeknight, but because we could take the subway – which cut our travel time in half and allowed him to drink – he agreed to the excursion.