Empress Pavilion Chinatown, Father's Office Culver City, and Musha Torrance - all in one day

It's rare that I get a day off to spend with Johan these days, so when the opportunity came up this past Sunday, we decided to head up to Los Angeles downtown, to look at lofts and other opportunities to buy into a housing market that's going through the floor.

To feed our foodie appetites, we aimed to go for dim sum in Chinatown's Empress Pavilion. This is a classic Chinatown dim sum destination, a place that both Johan and I have enjoyed on several occasions. I even recall taking my dad there when we were in town. Well, we weren't the only ones with this bright idea - a huge crowd was waiting for tables like we were. After a half-hour wait milling around the many shops, our table was called. We ordered a variety of steamed dishes, since we tend to like these versus the fried ones. We enjoyed some sui mai dumplings, some squid, tripe, chicken's feet, rice noodles wrapped around minced beef while we sipped our hot tea. We finished with some egg tarts. The experience was good, though not excellent. I was surprised that there was not as much variety as I had expected from a place that was getting such high turnover. But overall the food was good. But maybe not better than a dim sum place closer to us in Cerritos, the name of which escapes me right now.

After this, we headed to the west side, toward Culver City. Actually, we first went to look at some condos on La Tierra Blvd near the airport. That made us thirst, so we headed back north to Culver City, to the new Father's Office. We have been longtime fans of the original Father's Office on Montana. Well, the original location, anyway, since we didn't really know the Original Father's Office, befor the current owner modernized it. Anyway, this second location has been a hit since it opened, catering to a new clientele. We had visited this location once before. We decided to sit inside at the bar and each ordered a Trappist Belgian beer out of the bottle called Westmalle Triple. This is one of our favorite beers, priced at $10 a bottle. What we got was something that started out somewhat refreshing, but later turned not so great, kind of out of balance and acidic. We surmised that this beer was not so fresh, maybe something that many folks did not order. I started drinking water after this; Johan ordered a Maredsous on tap. We ended up having a decent time there, but I would have preferred something else, like a Chimay on tap...

Usually at Father's Office we enjoy some of their tasty snacks, like their Frites (fries) or Sweet Potato Fries, but this time we tried not to ruin our dinner. I still like the place, and think that this visit might have been better if we had actually ordered some fried goodies!

In the evening, we made our way down to Torrance, to Musha. We have been to Musha a few times before, the first time with Paul and Hitomi - and that was the best experience to date! This time, we ordered the chicken leg, the cheese risotto, the torch-seared makerel, and an egg and noodle dish which I don't remember the name of, but it seems really popular since several tables ordered it. We drank some Asahi beer which hit the spot. The food was all lovely. All the other diners seemed to be Japanese Americans. It was fun. We left feeling pretty satisfied, but I think we still had more fun that time with Paul and Hitomi when we order like 10 dishes or something!

So that was our big day of eating out. The rest of the time, we have been eating in mostly, so not much to write about. So I'm happy to have had something to contribute this week!