For birthday festivities: Round 2, we hit up The Bottle Room. We enjoyed a juicy turkey burger stuck with a knife, perfectly crispy x-sm shoestring fries, cheese and some drank.

The Bottle Room
6741 Greenleaf Ave
Whittier, CA 90601

Monsieur Marcel @ The Farmers Market
6333 W 3rd St.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Neighborhood: Mid-City West

A pillow-like, poached egg with an oozing yolk on a bed of ham, topped with some rich, heart-seizing hollandaise is to die for.

I found out one of my heroes, Alton Brown, had an episode on eggs benedict so I found an episode and got to learning!

After following his episode’s instructions exactly our hollandaise was WAY too red. He called for 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper and then later even added more! His Food Network instructions called for 1/8 tsp. to start. Someone messed up.

So we retried the recipe the following day and it was incredible!

This was adapted from Alton’s recipe. He baked homemade english muffins, but we used store bought. Lemon juice rounds out the sauce well. Use a lemon squeezer for faster results if you’re making a huge batch.

Get an english muffin, top with ham, a poached egg and top off with hollandaise.

Seriously, greasy chips paired with some rich feta. We couldn’t get enough. After Greek Fest, we tried finding something as good or similar, but still no luck…

I usually don’t even like lamb but these tiny little things were shockingly good. Perfectly seasoned, perfectly cooked (I swear I didn’t only like them because they were $4-5 a piece).

Meat flippin’ action.

Expensive greek beer was a fail. Better than no beer, though.

Spice Thai Cuisine
24301 Muirlands Blvd Ste R
Lake Forest, CA 92630

Earl of Sandwich
@Planet Hollywood Shopping
3663 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas, NV 89109

Penang Malaysian Cuisine
5115 Spring Mountain Rd
Las Vegas, NV 89146

A perfectly, evenly dressed caesar side salad with knife-and-forker “crouton”. This one caught us off guard, haha. The giant crouton was a bit hard to manage but it was yummy nonetheless!

The “wow factor” for this one’s quite obvious, it’s over a foot long! And it came with a different kind of bun. It was more of a semi-crispy, soft, baguette than the standard hot dog bun. Two of us couldn’t finish this.

Their famous “frozen hot chocolate”. Delicious. ~$7.

Serendipity 3′s got a sweet location between Caesar’s Palace and the Bellagio which means mad foot traffic. If it weren’t for a prime location (or rampant John Cusack fans?), I don’t know what would keep this place so incredibly crowded. Personally, about $37 post-tip for these two items is a bit expensive for me.

Serendipity 3
3570 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas, NV 89109
(877) 346-4642

The bruschetta was actually the best part of this meal. The bread used won’t cut the roof of your mouth .

Salmon. WYSIWYG.

Why’d they fork my tiramisu?! It’s tasty here, but if I had to pick, Maggiano’s slice would win. Nom nom nom.

Come on down for some expensive, fairly plain and uninspiring eats! Bring some cash too ($5?), since its valet only. I must give them credit for the waitstaff though: they’re very friendly and personable. There’s a major non-creepy flirt on staff. And one of them was as kind as he was tall…6′ 7″ or something insane =O.

Villa Nova
3131 W Coast Hwy
Newport Beach, CA 92663
(949) 642-7880