I didn’t photograph every bite that went into my mouth while in LA, though the unphotographed items included the big family meals and the lunch Ryan put together from our Christmas eve hike. Though I wish I had photographed the latter because it was delicious and included cheese, persian flat bread, walnuts from a friend of the family’s farm, olives, salami, and homemade hummus made by Ryan’s dad.
Working a little backwards…our last dinner in LA was a special goodbye dinner on the Santa Monica Pier at Shutters on the Beach.
We began our meal with a Zinfandel Ryan had purchased last year from Briar Rose.
And then shared a few appetizers including a grilled shrimp, a green salad (not photographed):
a beet salad (hard to believe this was a beet salad, only yellow, it was delicious, but everything was to be honest!).
For our main entree the 4 of us split a lobster penne pasta,
a seafood hot pot,
and last but not least a grilled sea bass with carrots.
To finish up we split a peanut butter and jelly trifle made with red velvet cake.
On Christmas eve we also went to a special dinner at Nikita in Malibu.
We began our meal with champagne, a beautiful flower topped salad,
as well as with their special crusted sea bass.
For our entree we shared scallops and shrimp risotto. I let Ryan eat most because I wanted to save room for dessert 😉
To digest a little and enjoy the evening we took a walk outside, sat by the fire, and watched the sand pipers run along the ocean’s edge.
They were in constant motion so this is the best I could do!
We then ordered their chocolate bar, another house special. Which was amazing, with a nice crispy crunch.
Oh and did I mention this was an engagement celebratory dinner?!?! Details to come soon…Ryan said he wanted to write that post, so I’ll give him a few days.
I was trying to hold out to share the news until I had pictures from the engagement, but I couldn’t wait any more 🙂 Details soon, for sure!!
Enjoy the last day of 2013!