Diva-liscious

The “Traveling Diva” invited me to attend the 90th Anniversary of TAIX, a french country cuisine restaurant in the Silverlake, Echo Park area at 1911 W. Sunset Blvd. Pleasantly surprised , I went and enjoyed a wide variety of tasteful temptations of hors d’oeuvres from beef burgundy, shrimp ceviche, truffled macaroni and cheese, mushroom caps with garlic escargot de Bourgogne, succulent frog legs that melted in your mouth, petit toasted crab and cheese finger sandwiches following a number of other treats for dessert. My favorite dessert was the Mousse au Chocolate Noir. TAIX spoiled our palettes with a taste of France and wine. All that was missing was the Eiffel Tower! They have one of the most extensive wine collections in the Los Angeles area and are one of the few restaurants, nationally, that can say they are a fourth generation cuisine! Raymond Taix gave a heartfelt speech celebrating the ancestry of his family’s french food. In 1912 Marius Taix Sr. started his legacy of treating everyone with his culinary delights in the downtown Los Angeles French quarter. His affordable prices back then and still today make this a must for everyone’s needs for lunch , dinner, wine tasting, dessert and coffee ...

Prohibition to Gentrification, French Restaurant Celebrates Decades of Serving L.A.’s French Quarter, Old Hollywood, Politicos and Next-Gen Hipsters   Sunday, October 8, 2017 4 p.m. – 8 p.m. Taix French Restaurant 1911 W. Sunset BoulevardLos Angeles, CA 90026   Taix French Restaurant, Los Angeles oldest family owned and operated French country restaurant, is celebrating its 90th anniversary with its traditional “cent” roast chicken dinner. On Sunday, October 8, 2017 from 4 p.m .to 8 p.m., customers, old and new, can celebrate with a 90-cent “Taix” Roast Chicken dinner special.   The menu for the evening’s anniversary hours will be limited to soup de jour, salad and the “Taix” Roast Chicken with au jus—a classic French country chicken dinner introduced by Marius Taix Jr. in 1927. (Dishes will only be 90 cents each.) Full service bar available; reservations will not be accepted and diners will beseated on a first come, first serve basis.   The Taix Family is the third and fourth generation of sheepherders and bakers from the “Hautes-Alpes” in southeastern France that moved to Los Angeles around 1870. In 1912 Marius Taix Sr. built a hotel called the Champ d’Or in downtown Los Angeles’ French quarter, which was located on 321 Commercial Street, and included a hotel restaurant subleased to a ...

by Angela Rocco DeCarlo copyright 2017 Laguna Beach, California, resembles the Italian Amalfi Coast - at least to we Italian Americans. So naturally, we wanted to enjoy it with our four DeCarlo grandchildren, aged 12 to 19. Getting them together was a feat we relished. However, we had to be sure there was something for everyone to enjoy. So we concocted an afternoon itinerary which included diving into the frothy surf,  lunch as Las Brisas, with a quick detour next door to the Laguna Art Museum. Actually, I had read a review of the "Ben Messick: Memories of Los Angeles" exhibit and thought it would be wonderful to see and perfect for our little artist, Serritella. But how to entice the baseball and hockey players, Sam and Andrew,  as well as college girl, Michelle? The genius of our plan included the "Holy Grail" of any Laguna Beach visit - a parking space - with apologies to the illustrious legend. While Laguna is gorgeous, traffic and parking are ugly. So we zeroed in on lunch at an old favorite, Las Brisas restaurant, with its valet parking lot and were perfectly located to do everything easily without lost time or much walking. I really appreciated the front desk ...

Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center Anaheim, CA By Angela Rocco DeCarlo "Downton Abbey," one of the most successful television shows, is set in a fictional Edwardian English castle, awash with nobles, paid-servants and enormous upheavals due to war, jealousy and financial ruin. The Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center, Anaheim, CA, is presenting an exhibition of the lovely wardrobe of the show. Seeing the clothing up close is delightful. In every detail the show's six seasons evoked the volcanic disruptions brought on by World War I and its political, societal and financial changes. The Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age took woman from their corseted floor-length dresses to loose shifts exposing naked shoulders and legs - shocking. "In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now God knows, anything goes." From Noel Coward's song, "Anything Goes." The Downton Abbey era is illuminated through the skillful Julian Fellows' scripts and an array of outstanding good-looking actors who enchanted television viewers. The gorgeous period clothing charmed all. "Dressing Downton - Changing Fashion for Changing Times" featuring nearly 40 of the original garments designed and fitted to the individual actors, can be seen at Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center, Anaheim, California, until May 11. It then ...

by Greg Morabito  A lot of New York restaurants are hard to get into, but only a handful of places in the city require background checks, referrals, or special membership cards to enter. Here's a guide to 10 private New York bars and restaurants, with information about where to go and who to talk to if you want a table. 10) Tiro a Segno: This private Italian-American social club, which occupies three brownstones on MacDougal Street, has something you won't find at any other restaurant in New York City: an active, wood-paneled shooting range in the basement. Upstairs, there's a bar and several dining rooms serving a wide array of traditional Italian American food. Tiro A Segno (which means "shoot the target") is strictly members-only, although they sometimes bend the rules if you want to buy-out one of the banquet rooms for a large event. But if you want to become a member for life, you must be nominated by a current member, and it certainly helps if someone in your family is Italian. For more on the club's 124 year legacy, check out their official site. (Photo) 9) Brooklyn Edible Social Club: About twice a month, this culinary collectiveholds small dinner parties ...

by Angela Rocco DeCarlo Let's face it. A tea party is a fantasy experience. It is presented in a frou-frou environment and the food can best be described as "doll food." Often good, but diminutive. Nonetheless, it is my favorite meal, aside from Chicago deep dish pizza. As my granddaughter Serritella Danielle DeCarlo's "Golden Birthday" was upon me I felt a tea party was the perfect way to celebrate her. She became eleven on July eleventh. An artist, dancer and writer who looks like she stepped out of a fresco in ancient Pompeii, not far from where her great-grandmother, Vita Serritella, was born in 1903, before coming to America in 1911. I began my search for a proper tea room in the city of Orange...a local place fit the bill, alas, no openings and parking is quite dicey. Tried polling pals for suggestions, but then my husband searched online and found Pamela's Tea Room, Garden Grove, CA, which was the best location at the 405 and 22, for guests coming from Huntington Beach, Long Beach and LA. It turned out to be a marvelous find. Having taken tea at many swanky places I can say when done well lit is a lot of fun, especially if you favor a light repast with a variety of textures and flavors in ...

Ground Breaks for New York City’s Virgin Hotel VOA begins construction on the 412,000-square-foot Virgin Hotel in NoMad The VOA-designed Virgin Hotel will be located on Broadway between 30th and 29th Streets. Last Friday, ground broke in Manhattan for the world’s second Virgin Hotel. Designed by the New York–based architecture firm VOA, in collaboration with developer the Lam Group, the 412,000-square-foot tower will contain 465 guest rooms and offer roughly 70,000 square feet of retail space at its base. With a slim façade that grows larger through sections that jut out from its sides, the 39-story building will bring a flash of modernity to the historic NoMad neighborhood. “Where the building appears to be shifting to the sides, we deducted some bulk out of the corners of the structure so we could reuse the floor area higher up,” says Brian McFarland, VOA’s lead architect on the project. “This allowed us the opportunity to create more corner windows at a higher elevation so those rooms could enjoy views the lower rooms wouldn’t allow.” Virgin Hotel in NoMad Virgin Hotels, a division of Richard Branson's Virgin Group, plans to roll out hotels of distinct designs in various cities around the world, and as such, “the Virgin Hotel ...

By Angela Rocco DeCarlo When living in Chicago I covered California more frequently than other venues. Health spas. Theme Parks. Beaches. The entire state seemed to be a playland where the perfect entertainment could be located and devoured. Loved it. Now thatI’m living in exile in Southern California it is fun to display the land’s end treasures for Midwesteran pals who come to visit. When my friend, Dianne, and her family visited me recently, I wanted to give her a taste of Orange County, California, to take back against the next nasty Chicago winter. What could be better than lunch on the beach and a shopping spree on Balboa Island? As a Chicagoan I’m fascinated by the surfing culture of the Pacific Ocean beaches. I’ve been to the charming surfing museums in Huntington Beach and get a kick out of watching surfers calculating waves to catch the best ride back onto the sand. In fact, I’m still agog by my son’s next door neighbor’s garage which houses endless racks of wetsuits, ...

By Mark DeCarlo There's a place, just north of DTLA, where Angelenos - or visitors - can have an immersive experience of a fantastic meal, a tasting tour of a winery, and get a history lesson on LA's early wine making pioneers. And its been there over 98 years. Hidden along the industrial streets of the warehouse district, Los Angeles' San Antonio Winery has been making wine since 1917, surviving prohibition only by becoming a sanctioned wine maker for the Catholic Church... amen! Today, the renovated, working winery and restaurant embraces its heritage and boasts some of California's least known, yet finest wines. Yes way, dude. Winemaking in LA. Totally awesome. Anthony Riboli is the first member of the fourth generation to join the family business. He is also the first family member to have received a formal degree in winemaking and grape growing from the University of California, Davis. Winemaker Arnaud Debons worked in the Bordeaux and Cahors regions of France after graduating from the prestigious winemaking program at the University of Toulouse in France. He brings his expert tastebuds to San Antonio Winery and we get spoiled as we taste triumph with every sip and bite. Daily wine tours and tastings offer an authentic ...

Stella Rosa®, America’s favorite semi-sweet, semi-sparkling wine, extended its line this week with the dazzling arrival of its newest luxury flavor, Stella Rosa Platinum. This astronomical wine bursts with natural flavors of crisp green apple, vanilla, and fragrant elderflower, all of which offer a touch of sweetness and a refreshing finish. Stella Rosa Platinum is best served chilled with fresh fruit, cheeses, spicy cuisines, and desserts. Stella Rosa Platinum is available at San Antonio Winery tasting rooms in Los Angeles, Ontario, and Paso Robles, and will soon be hitting its full launch in mid-March. San Antonio Winery’s Stella Rosa brand is the original semi-sweet, semi-sparkling wine, owned and imported by the Riboli family. Grapes for Stella Rosa Platinum are harvested in the northern region of Piedmont, Italy. In the past three years, Stella Rosa has seen incomparable growth and was deemed a “Hot Brand” by Impact Magazine in 2014. To earn “Hot Brand” acclaim, wines must achieve double-digit growth in the past three consecutive years. For more information visit http://stellarosawines.com/the-future-is-coming/ or http://sanantoniowinery.com/.   About San Antonio Winery: San Antonio Winery remains the longest and largest producing winery in Los Angeles with over 98 years of winemaking under its belt, making it an essential component ...