I recently did a very short road trip from Los Angeles County to San Diego, California to attend an event at the San Diego Convention Center. I took a few stops to be a tourist along the way, one of which was at Jeune et Jolie to try their French tasting menu for dinner.

I usually don’t care too much about the Michelin Guide; instead, I decide on places to dine through reading other normal people’s reviews online and browsing through restaurants’ menus to see if there are any unique experiences or innovative dishes that I can try. I found Jeune et Jolie through my regular process, but later found out that they also had a Michelin star for 2025.

I had a reservation for 5 PM, which was right at opening time. Because this was basically a dinner for me during a solo drive, I booked my reservation for a one-person seat at the bar so that I wouldn’t occupy an entire table that could potentially go to someone else. Unfortunately, this didn’t give me an ongoing view of the kitchen, but it did allow me to chat with some of the bartenders and dishwashers who were working on the opposite side of the bar.

Upon arrival, I was brought to my seat at the end of the crescent bar. The tasting menu here isn’t a preset menu, but rather, a selection of items from which you can pick a dish from each course category. After browsing the options, I pretty quickly knew what I wanted, so I placed my order with my waiter.

While my first dish was being prepared, I was given a complementary caviar bite as my amuse-bouche. The intensity of the caviar was unexpectedly mild, but it was still a nice starter.

My first course was Anderson Ranch lamb tartare with apple, beet, and mustard seed.

Similar to the caviar, I thought the lamb tartare was a bit mild, and I would’ve appreciated it if it had a bit more intensity in the lamb. With that being said, it was served with apple and beet, which added a clean and refreshing taste to the flavor profile. Because of that, I’m not sure if the lamb was actually too mild, or if it was the juiciness of the sliced apple and beet that was prematurely cleansing my palate prior to being able to fully appreciate the lamb flavor.

I don’t drink alcohol, but I do like trying unique non-alcoholic beverages. Along with a wine pairing, Jeune et Jolie also had a sans espirit pairing to go along with their tasting menu, which I opted to add to my dining experience.

The first non-alcoholic drink to supplement the first course was Kally’s Early Cabernet with notes of cherry, Lapsang tea, black pepper, and thyme. As you’d probably expect from the description, this had a deeper fruit flavor accompanied by a subtle kick.

In between the leading two courses, I was given some bread with lemon butter. The texture of the bread was amazing, and the lemon butter had a fantastically delicious balance of citrusy and fatty flavor. The bartender conveniently encouraged me to save a bit of the bread for the next course to use as a dipping instrument for any leftover sauce.

My second course was San Diego spiny lobster with sweet potato, sherry, and sage.

This lobster had a great balance of tenderness and firmness such that it gave a very fun and satisfying textural experience during chewing that you’d expect from high-quality seafood. The sauce enhanced the lobster well, and after I dipped some bread into the leftover sauce like the bartender recommended, I felt like the sauce even enhanced the flavor of the bread as well.

The drink to go along with the lobster was called Vanille, containing notes of hojicha, burnt vanilla, and smoked shoyu. This was my favorite beverage from the sans spirit pairing; it had a deep, bitter flavor profile, but it was a good type of bitter that was rich in flavor and doesn’t make you reflexively scrape your tongue against the top of your mouth.

Next up was Deer Meadow trout with gooseberry, spinach, and matsutake.

To me, this tasted like a regular fish dish. I could tell that it was high-quality trout that was prepared well, but otherwise, it wasn’t particularly memorable. What was memorable, though was the sauce… because it was way too salty. I’ve only seen this level of saltiness work alongside extremely fatty foods where the salt has a lot of flavor to extract and work with; in my opinion, I don’t think this trout was quite at that level where the saltiness of this sauce worked in its favor.

The beverage paired with the trout was the Blanc, made from dealcoholized chardonnay and containing notes of gooseberry, tarragon, and vanilla.

The fourth and final course was gâteau au fromage with grape, Mascarpone, and puff pastry.

I liked this dessert because it wasn’t too sweet, and instead relied on a nice variety of fruity flavors (rather than sugar) to carry the dish. It was also fun to eat due to the puzzle of balancing all the components to make sure each ingredient was present in each bite.

The final beverage to accompany the dessert was Cerise with notes of cherry, sasparilla, licorice, and vanilla.

For drinks paired with desserts, I usually notice that the dessert is pretty sweet and the drink is pretty bitter, and those two flavor profiles combined strike a nice balance. However, for this gâteau au fromage and Cerise couple, it conformed more to the “birds of a feather flock together” philosophy rather than “opposites attract.”

And if you’re curious, that brown thing on top of the ice cube is a coffee bean. I did not notice what it was during my sips and it eventually made its way into my mouth, so I bit into it, only then identifying the object and discovering that it was not intended to be edible…

Upon the conclusion of my meal, I was given a cookie and a dusted chocolate truffle to eat while remitting payment and signing the check. I liked the cookie and enjoyed the berry coating on it.

During the waiting time in between my dishes, I snuck in some photographs of the restaurant.

When I caught a window of opportunity when the wait staff wasn’t in the way, I walked over to the kitchen to snap a photograph of that as well.

The restaurant also had an outdoor dining area, though it seemed like almost everyone preferred the interior that day instead.

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

Homard is “lobster” in French. Due to the extra premium nature of the menu item, there was a US$25.00 upcharge compared to the other items that you could select for the second course.

If you read a lot of my food blog posts, you might think that this is relatively cheap, but keep in mind that I went alone and this was the bill just for myself. When I dine at high-end restaurants, I usually go together with a friend (usually preferring a woman who is good at cooking and is a food enthusiast) because I like discussing the details of the food with my companion. However, that was logistically too difficult to arrange this time around, so I took this dinner solo.

When I first saw the price of the tasting menu prior to showing up at the restaurant, I thought it was surprisingly low, especially for a Michelin star restaurant in Southern California. However, after finishing my dinner, I knew why that was the case—the portion sizes are very small. At the end of this meal, I felt like I had eaten not much more than just a hearty snack.

Luckily, I was headed to my hotel after this, and because of my Marriott Bonvoy elite status, I had access to the executive lounge along with a food and beverage credit. To put things into perspective, after checking into my hotel, I was hungry enough that I ate a whole margherita flatbread, a bowl of risotto, and an assortment of miniature pastry desserts to fill the gaping void that this tasting menu left in my stomach.

To relieve the curiosity of anyone who may be wondering, I figured it would be worth sharing the other options from the tasting menu that I passed on in favor of the foods I selected above:

• Premier: Amberjack crudo with plum, shiso, kombu, and verjus; or oeuf with sweet corn, chanterelle, coffee, and black truffle.
• Deuxième: Potager with artichoke, zucchini, rhubarb, fromage blanc, and lardo; cabillaud with porcini, persimmon, and kombu; or Hollander Farms pigeonneau with green garlic and leek.
• Troisième: Gnudi with ricotta, mimolette, carrot, lavender, and fines herbes; Klingeman Farms pork with fig, turnip, and walnut; or Lone Mountain entrecôte with sweetbreads, Swiss chard, mushroom, and bordelaise.
• Quatrième: Pêche with corn, basil, and white chocolate; or chocolate with anise hyssop and cocoa nib.

One thing to keep in mind is that high-end restaurants like this regularly change their menu on the basis of what is available in season, so if you choose to also dine at this restaurant, not all of these options may be available for you, especially if you visit outside of autumn.

I’m torn on whether or not I would recommend this restaurant, and to whom. I think if you compare this to other Michelin star restaurants, it is completely reasonable… which is to say, pretty expensive (which is why I usually end up not going to much Michelin star restaurants, because I think the value proposition is not the best). I think the food was good overall, and the service was fantastic (which you can probably tell by the unusually high gratuity coming from me, someone who thinks tipping culture should be abolished in the United States).

I think if you want to go on a cute date to a special spot and don’t have a large appetite, then this could be an experience that is worth having. However, if going to a restaurant with a vibe and atmosphere of this nature is not one of your priorities, then you might want to keep searching for more restaurants to consider.

This coming weekend, I’m headed to San Diego, California for TwitchCon. For that trip, I decided to start in Los Angeles County and make the ~120 mile (~195 kilometer) drive down south, making a few stops along the way. So, in preparation, I headed over from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. While in town in LA and before I left, I decided to stop by 江戸前鮨 㐂扇, which translates to Sushi Kisen, a Japanese restaurant in Arcadia, California.

I originally heard about this restaurant back in early 2025 during the highly destructive Eaton Fire due to this message they posted online during a power outage: “We cooked come proteins that we can’t store in our fridges. Any firefighters, police officers, [or] electricians who’ve been working hard fighting for our community … please come help us clean [out] our fridge.” I used to work in law enforcement and still have quite a few first-responder friends. I now work in a field that is far less stressful and has far greater earning potential, so one of the ways I like to help my former fellow comrades is to support business that support them.

After being on my “want to go” list for several months, I finally found a good opportunity to check them out for a lunch omakase experience costing US$90.00 per person.

The meal started with some sea snail.

My friend got some hot green tea with the restaurant name 鮨 㐂扇 printed on the side of the cup. She said it was great tea, and she was happy that the waitress promptly and regularly came around to give her refills. This was only US$3.00 and she thought it was great value.

The lunch omakase consisted primarily of nigiri. Pictured below were our first six pieces.

Part-way through our meal, we noticed that they were cutting up some tuna; one of the chefs was happy to show it to us and let me take a photograph.

Afterwards, nigiri service continued with four more pieces.

My favorite type of sushi is sea urchin, so I was happy to see that uni gunkan was part of the omakase.

As we were nearing the end of our omakase, we were given a negitoro hand roll.

I forgot to bring my Sony ZV-1 camera for this meal, so I took all my photographs with my phone. On my point-and-shoot camera, there is a single “action” button where you can prompt it to auto-focus by depressing it part-way, then command it to capture the shot by lowering the button all the way down. My phone, on the other hand, has a virtual capture button that immediately saves the picture, and if you want to get it to focus, you have to tap the screen atop the item on which you want it to focus. Obviously, my left hand was busy holding my hand roll and my right hand was busy holding my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is a pretty hefty device, so I used my nose to tap the screen and make it focus on the tuna. My friend found that quite amusing and said it was the “life of a content creator.”

After we finished the hand roll, we each got a bowl of miso soup containing some whitefish.

To conclude our meal, we got a nice, thick cut of tamago served nori-ribbon nigiri style.

As expected from a Japanese omakase experience, we were served at the sushi bar and were able to watch the chef prepare each item throughout our meal. This was the view from the perspective of my seat.

I snapped this photograph of the rest of the restaurant (including the regular table dining area) on our way out. We had the final reservation slot available prior to them closing for lunch, so the restaurant was empty by the time we had finished our meal, and most of the staff had already began their mid-day breaks.

Along with our check, we were given a survey so that we could share feedback about our experience, which my friend filled out. In the photo, you can see the chef eagerly peeking over the sushi bar to see what she wrote, which I thought was pretty funny.

This is what the exterior of the restaurant looked like; it was just a small and somewhat inconspicuous restaurant nestled in the re-entrant corner of this strip mall.

I originally wanted to try out their dinner omakase, but the timing didn’t work out this time around due to my friend’s tight schedule and my infrequent presence in the Los Angeles area. Being in Arcadia, this restaurant is further away from the more congested and unpleasant areas of Los Angeles, so I am definitely willing to go back in the future to try their dinner set as well.

With that being said, I was still satisfied with the lunch omakase. It was relatively light, but still reasonable for what you’d expect for lunch. There wasn’t anything particularly special or innovative about the omakase, which is not necessarily a bad thing—it serves as a good option for someone who is looking for a simple, predictable, traditional experience during a quick lunch break.

Today is the last day of astronomical summer, with the autumnal equinox happening tomorrow during the late morning in my local Las Vegas time zone; I felt like this was a good milestone to share some of the miscellaneous food photographs I’ve taken over the past handful of months.

During the last two seasons, I dined in at quite a few restaurants that I thought were blog-worthy: Stubborn Seed Las Vegas, ikigai, Sushi by Scratch Beverly Hills, Bello by Sandro Nardone, Kase Sake and Sushi, The X Pot, Peacock Alley, Petrossian Bar, Sparrow + Wolf, A Different Beast, and Kabuto Edomae Sushi. For the restaurants that I thought didn’t warrant their own dedicated blog post, here is a round-up photo dump with everything else.

 
While in Los Angeles County housesitting for a friend, I met up with another friend to help her do some furniture shopping. We sat on several different couches from a bunch of different stores, and I concluded that all of them felt nearly identical. Then, I sat on the last couch on her list of couches to test out and realized that it was about 20 times better than every other couch, and that we probably should’ve just started with that one to begin with.

After successfully debossing our butt prints on many different couches, we got sushi for lunch at Mills Alley in Pasadena, California. Here is my chirashi bowl and tako wasabi.

During one of my trips in spring, I flew transcontinentally with JetBlue Mint on one of their new Airbus A321neos configured to allow all Mint passengers to have direct aisle access (as opposed to the older Airbus A321s that have “throne” seats in the even-numbered rows and a 2-2 configuration in the odd-numbered rows).

I don’t know if this has always been the case, but I found it enjoyable that they gave me a bottle of Saratoga Water, considering the recent Ashton Hall Saratoga Water meme.

While waiting for the flight attendants to prepare all the meals, I received a glass of Diet Coke and their signature zero-proof “Mint (Under One) Condition” with seltzer, ginger, lime, cucumber, and mint. I also got a small brass snack bowl of what I think was vegan rinds, potentially made out of rice.

I always like to sit in the last row of lie-flat first class and business class cabins because they offer the most privacy; in this case, I was in seat 8F. This meant I would be the last one to receive my meal, but I don’t mind; I feel like receiving your meal deeper into your flight helps partition out the journey a bit better so that you’re not done with your food right away and left with a bored mouth for the rest of the flight.

For my meal, I got some shrimp, lasagna, and a chicken salad. I think this is literally the most dry chicken I have ever tasted in my entire life. The food was incredibly disappointing, and I think the bread was probably the only decent thing they served for dinner.

For dessert, I got this wild-looking fruit and nut ice cream. This was significantly better than the meal, though I don’t know if I thought that because it was actually decent ice cream, or if I had been so let down by dinner that this only tasted incredible in comparison.

One of my friends recently visited me in Las Vegas for a bit. She was craving some late night sushi, so we tried out Japaniero Asian Fusion in the southwest Las Vegas Valley. We were pleasantly surprised at how high-quality the fish was. We enjoyed some sashimi and ceviche, but my favorite dish was the rock shrimp with spicy yuzu creme.

Back on a plane—this time with American Airlines.

Although my cholesterol levels are no longer as dangerously high as they used to be, I am still mindful of my health and try to eat fish and birds whenever possible to maintain heart health and avoid hereditary-prone disorders and diseases. Thus, I requested grilled salmon with vegetables, pita bread with hummus, and a side salad for my in-flight meal.

The person sitting next to me, though? He requested nothing, because he completely knocked out right after boarding the flight. He didn’t regain consciousness until I was more than halfway finished with my meal, but after he woke up and realized that everyone else had either received or was in the process of getting their food, he looked around in panic as if he was too late and he would not get dinner that day.

The guy was young, and he seemed genuinely concerned, so eventually, I told him something along the lines of “don’t worry, you’re in first class, they will come back and give you food after they’re done serving everyone else.” Lo and behold, when the flight attendants were finished fulfilling everyone else’s requests that had already been put in, they asked my next-seat neighbor what he wanted for dinner. I think he picked some kind of pasta meal.

In addition to the regular portion of the meal, in-flight meals also usually have a “from the bakery” section where the flight attendant will walk around with a basket of fresh bread and allow you to select what kind of bread you would like to have to go along with your meal. They brought the bread basket to the guy next to me, and he picked a roll. He then proceeded to jab at every single dish, literally not eat any of it, then eat only the bread with a gigantic portion of butter.

When he had the chance, he flagged down the flight attendant and asked for some more bread and butter. He then proceeded to eat only the bread and butter again, and not eat anything else. This was so funny to me that I felt I had to take a picture. I didn’t want to make it obvious so the framing is a bit weird and I just barely got his tray in the shot with the wide angle mode on my phone’s camera, but you can see the comical stack of butter wrappers atop the rest of his uneaten food.

Also, if you’re wondering about the discrepancy between my photograph here in seat 1A and the statement I made earlier about preferring the final row of the first class cabin, my last-row preference only applies to lie-flat seats that have direct aisle access. For United States domestic first class in a 2-2 configuration, I always try to grab the bulkhead window seat if I can so that I can go in and out to the bathroom without my seat neighbor needing to move, and also so I can sleep without my neighbor bothering me to go to the bathroom.

Anyway, this was my dessert. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I do recall it being pretty good, albeit a bit too sweet.

Back in Las Vegas, I had a tasting menu dinner reservation with one of my friends one day, but we had a few hours to kill before our time slot. We were on the Strip, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to visit the Coca-Cola store on the Las Vegas Strip.

For the longest time, I’ve wanted to do the “Around the World” beverage tasting experience but never got around to it until now.

I’m glad that I brought my friend along for this, because the portion size for the drinks was actually more than I expected. Even though the plastic cups look small, the liquid adds up pretty quickly, so it was helpful to have her help drink some of this.

It was definitely interesting, but still probably just a one-time-only kind of activity for me. My conclusion after trying all 14 beverages was that plain old regular Diet Coke and Coca-Cola Zero Sugar are still my preferred Coca-Cola soft drinks, and my all-time favorite is still Coca-Cola Zero Sugar out of a Coca-Cola Freestyle dispenser with either lime or peach syrup mixed in.

I don’t know where this was from because I was with a group of friends after dinner, one person picked a place in walking distance to go to for dessert, and I basically blindly followed her to the restaurant’s front door. We picked two desserts to share amongst ourselves, and this strawberry ice cream dessert was my selection; I thought it was very good.

Anime Expo happened over the summer, and I had some friends visit Los Angeles from out of town for the convention. I also happened to be in Los Angeles County at that time (though not for Anime Expo), and I took the opportunity to meet up with some friends who I hadn’t seen for a while.

With one of my friends, I went to Shinkai Sushi Japanese Fusion in Alhambra, California. My friend told me that she’s not really a sushi expert, so to spare her from the decision-making, I decided to order two different combo plates of sashimi along with a side of sushi rice. The fish was high-quality and cut satisfyingly thick.

In the evening of the final day of Anime Expo, I joined one of my friends and her group of convention-goers for dinner at Hanu K-BBQ. While at the restaurant, I happened to run into someone else I know, so I went over to chat with her at her table while I was waiting for food to come out. Apparently, Hanu K-BBQ has very fast service, because by the time I was back at my table, the waitress was already done cooking our first batch of meat.

The quality of the meat was great, but we ordered a comically small portion of food considering the number of people who were in our group, so I left hungry. This restaurant is one of the rare spots in Koreatown that has plentiful parking, so if I’m in the area again, this is definitely a place I’d be willing to try again (but order a more reasonable amount of food).

Now we teleport to the San Francisco Bay Area, to which I traveled for Open Sauce 2025. I had a travel companion as a +1 for my trip, and on the day that we arrived, we walked over to a nearby strip mall to get some food and buy some filtered drinking water and snacks.

For lunch, we dined in at Otoko Sushi in Redwood City and ordered a chirashi bowl and “treasure box” off their sushi combo menu. Both of these were pretty mediocre, and I found the market price on the treasure box to be fairly overpriced compared to what we got (though I don’t remember exactly how much it was; I just remember that it was too expensive).

This was such a funny moment for me that I felt like I had to share it, and I figured that its relation to food is close enough that it would make sense to tell the story here.

After our sushi lunch at Otoko, we walked to the nearby Nob Hill Foods to buy a gallon of spring water and some protein bars. My friend initially picked a KIND bar, but then she remembered that she had an app on her phone where she could scan grocery store barcodes and be told how healthy an item is.

She then proceeded to scan literally 30+ different items from the shelves in an attempt to find the healthiest protein bar, periodically expressing comical frustration and confusion at how unhealthy so many of these options were. At one point, she was so bewildered that we decided to fact-check her app by scanning the barcode on our drinking water… to which the app declared that it was 100% healthy. Now more confident in the app, she proceeded to squat back down and scan even more items.

We weren’t in a rush because our next scheduled obligation was quite a bit later on in the night, so I stood there in pleasant amusement while doing curls with the gallon jug of water in an attempt to make more efficient use of my time and get a light workout in.

The best part: she ended up just buying the original KIND bar that she had first picked anyway.

For lunch during one of our San Francisco days, we went to Echigo Home Cook. For our beverage, we ordered an iced coconut hojicha. The flavor profile on this was very unique and distinct, and I think this might have been the most delicious tea I have ever had in my entire life.

For our main entrées, we got one deluxe chirashi bowl and one uni-toro-kani rice bowl. My friend also added on a creamy scallop hand roll, which is not pictured here.

The fish quality was unbelievably high. The food here was very pricey, but the quality was also up there to match. The salmon roe in the chirashi bowl was unlike any I had ever had before—it tasted almost like it was a more naturally watered-down version of the roe, but only to the perfect level such that it reduced some of the more intense saltiness you expect from ikura so that the flavor profile comes out a bit more pure and clean. I also remember it having an unusual citrusy freshness to it. It’s almost as if each roe was individually injected with a tiny portion of yuzu juice and then resealed.

Jumping back to Las Vegas, here’s an octopus appetizer I had at Javier’s in the Aria Resort and Casino. I also ate the fish of the day as my main entrée, but I forgot to take a picture of that.

And finally, to wrap up the photo dump, here are some photos from a seafood restaurant. I don’t remember where this is from because I was conveniently chauffeured there by my friends. As you can see, we ended up ordering a lot of dishes. The portion sizes were smaller than we had hoped, but overall, the food ranged between decent and solid.

And that, along with the individual dedicated blog posts that I linked above, concludes my past two seasons of food adventures. I’ve had more to share recently than I usually do because I’ve been traveling together with friends more often lately, which encourages me to go out and try local restaurants’ dine-in experiences (as opposed to there being a higher likelihood while traveling alone of just ordering a simple chicken or fish dish for takeout and eating it in my hotel room while working or watching YouTube).