I Love LA

I spent the last week of May down in Los Angeles. My travel buddy Katelyn joined me for some fun restaurant and wine bar adventures.

Holbox (a Mayan word pronounced Ol-bosh) is inside of the Mercado la Paloma near the USC campus. I love Mexican mariscos and I love eating inside of a market. This place has won a ton of awards including LA Times Restaurant of the Year and a 1-Star rating from the MICHELIN guide. They do not serve alcohol and it is counter service. I emailed them beforehand to make sure I could be accommodated as a celiac (you know I am a gluten-free person). This was a lesson I learned the hard way in Mexico City- who knew that tuna tostadas and shrimp cocktail can have soy sauce or damned Maggi as an ingredient. Holbox staff assured me that aguachiles, tostadas and shellfish cocktails were gf. Que bueno!

We got to the market right around 11am when there was already a line. Holbox opens for lunch at 11:30. Luckily we found a spot at the counter and had time to study the menu (I love that it indicated which dishes contained gluten). The chef Gilbert Cetina grew up cooking alongside his dad who runs the neighboring stall called Chichen Itza. Across the market, Komal Molino makes the tortillas for Holbox. I bought a paper package of fresh blue corn tortillas to eat with my family later. The market also includes a spot to buy Dodgers gear and the walls are decorated with interesting satirical posters of classic American products.

https://www.mercadolapaloma.com/events/2024/5/25/presidential-rogues-gallery-satirical-posters-from-the-1950s-to-the-present

What we ate: shrimp cocktail, spot prawn and scallop aguachile and a yellowtail tostada with salsa macha. Katelyn ordered a fish taco that was not gf but it looked delicious.

We also had a great meal at RVR (pronounced river) in Venice. The folks on Wine Berserkers recommended this restaurant and bonus, it was within walking distance of my friends’ house where we were staying. We sat at the communal table - this place was hoppin, beautifully lit, fun music. It had great energy on a Wednesday night.

The folks at RVR were great about accommodating my diet, too. They marked up a menu with an OK next to the dishes that were naturally gluten free. We ordered the house pickle plate which was delicious, perfect balance of sweetness and acidity with interesting textures. Followed with an avocado handroll of greatness, stir-fried supersweet and crunchy snap peas with white miso, shiso and sesame and an order of duck confit fried rice. Katelyn chose karaage Japanese fried chicken that looked crispy and savory. The wine list at RVR was very fun - we ordered two different Mosel Rieslings by the glass a Kabinett Trocken and a Feinherb from Stein.

Elsewhere in LA - we had a delish gluten free lunch at Luv2Eat Thai Bistro in Hollywood and a late dinner at Zinque, we split a half bottle of Champagne at Esters Wine Bar in Santa Monica and enjoyed fun glasses of Beaujolais at Stanley’s Wet Goods in Culver City. We popped into some fun wine shops too, Wine House and Lincoln Fine Wines. It was good to see that Lincoln Fine Wines was doing well after their terrible break in a couple years ago. On our way east to see my family near Glendale, we met up with winemaker Adam Frisch at the Beachwood Cafe in the Hollywood Hills. Katelyn recognized this place from the Harry Styles lyric. Thanks to Katelyn for sharing these great food photos.