Around Town - Street Restaurant

I tend to get so wrapped up in my own little Westside environment that sometimes I forget that Los Angeles is a huge city with all kinds of things going on in areas that are outside of my little hood.

It usually takes a specific event to get me to travel east of Canon Drive in Beverly Hills

on a hot summer traffic filled Friday night,

and my friend's birthday dinner was such an event.

The party was at famed LA chef Susan Feniger's hot new restaurant Street

one block up from Nancy Silverton and Mario Batali's Mozza on Highland and Melrose.

Here's the description from Gayot

Susan Feniger has been writing Los Angeles culinary history since 1981 with City Café, City Restaurant, Border Grill and Ciudad with her partner Mary Sue Milliken. After training in France and regular travels to India, Thailand and Mexico, Feniger opened City Restaurant, her first concept of "street" food in 1985, before specializing in Mexican and Latin cuisines with the later places. Now with STREET, she went back to her cooking roots and spent more time in India, to introduce more exciting street-food dishes. They come not only from India but from many other parts of the world.

The Street Restaurant with Graffiti Themed Decor

(It would have been perfect for Wendy B and her Francis graffiti dress!)

The small restaurant and interior patio was packed...as was to be expected on a Friday night.

The service was excellent and the wait staff was well informed about the food and the wine.

The food was...well... shall we say interesting if you like travel to exotic countries and eat the food sold by street vendors. I have to admit that other than eating a crepe cooked by a street vendor in Paris, I pretty much wouldn't eat anything off the street So even coming from one of LA's best chefs, I thought that the food was rather so-so.

The noise level was so loud that we had to shout the entire evening in order to be heard.

The Birthday Girl in Beladora Pearls

But in spite of what I didn't like about the restaurant

I had a wonderful time catching on life with the beautiful birthday girl
a brilliant lawyer, artist, art historian and author

and with all of the other gorgeous and talented women in the group.

The Birthday Girl Brought The Good Stuff

And while I wasn't digging the millet-marshmallow-coriander amuse bouche

I did enjoy toasting with the Chateau Talbot.