Casa Jaguar, Tulum.

Tulum would be my number one destination wedding vacation. The endless white sands, unadulterated sunshine, and relatively secluded beaches — it is a little piece of heaven. If you wanted to have an impressive beach wedding reception with delicious food and ambiance to die for set under the stars, then Casa Jaguar, in the jungle of Tulum, is the place. Jeez, I would love to shoot a wedding here. You hear me, internet gods?

1-4 Casa Jaguar's sign, dream catchers, their daily menu on a chalkboard, and a cross.
5-7 Viet Kong rolls: rice paper rolls with fresh vegetables, shrimp, mint, and finished with sweet + sour sauce (90 pesos); rich and velvety zucchini cream soup with curry + coconut with home made bread (90 pesos); a sweet whole fish cooked in a wood burning oven (320 pesos).

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Chez Panisse / @chezpanisse in Berkeley, CA.

Chez Panisse is Alice Waters. Alice Waters still may or may not be Ruth Bourdain. One way or the next, Alice Waters can cook up a mean slow food movement meal. I just wish that it would have been made more clear to us that the mandatory 17% service charge added to the bill was for The Edible Schoolyard Project and not at all for the servers. Which means you should add in a 20% tip for the staff. Trust me, you probably won't walk out of this place, even at lunch, without dropping a bill. 

We walked in on New Year's Eve afternoon sans reservations + managed to score a last-minute seating.

1 Cozy bungalow style restaurant blends right into the Berkeley aesthetic in the Gourmet Ghetto.
2 The daily menu.
3 House-made bread + branded glassware.
4 Muscadet has easily become one of my most beloved white wines: Amphibolite Nature 2010 ($34).
5+6 Side of mixed olives ($4) and anchovies ($4).
7 Fresh from the garden lettuce salad ($8).
8 The winner of the lunch: Curried carrot soup with seared ginger raita ($9).
9 House made bucatini with cauliflower, pine nuts, currants, saffron, marjoram, and pecorino ($18).
10 Hog island clams and gulf shrimp cooked in the wood oven with tomato, leeks, and aioli ($24).

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After hours.

Empty O'Hare is pretty magical.

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Comal / @ComalRestaurant in Berkeley, California.

1 The back seating area of Comal would be wonderful place for an event or a wedding. It is well-designed and open-air with an abundance of heat lamps for those colder nights.
2 I first ordered the Jack Satan: Partida Reposado, hibiscus syrup, infierno tincture brought the heat, lime, and salt ($10).
3+4 The cocktail and dinner menu of the day.
5 A bowl of the house-made chicharrones ($3).
6 Their trio of salsas.
7 Then, I switched over to imbibe The Comal Swizzle: tequila (or mezcal or sotol) with Falernum, pineapple, passion fruit, lime, and crushed ice ($9).
8 Beef + pork albondigas en adobo ($12) for the table.
9 Ensalada picada: little gems, beets, avocado, goat feta, and cilantro-yogurt vinaigrette ($10).
10 Whole immaculately, spit-roasted Fulton Valley chicken with fire-roasted fingerling potatoes ($39).
11 Side order of their Midnight black beans de olla ($5).

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Go's Mart sushi.

The thirty minute meal that rocked our world and devastated our wallets ($75 for 1 roll and 6 pieces of nigiri).

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Stanley Kubrick @LACMA visual recap.

The Stanley Kubrick exhibit at the LACMA ($20 per ticket) was unlike an exhibit I have seen before. The history behind each one of Kubrick's films was extraordinarily comprehensive, well-documented, and for public viewing.

I bought Seth tickets as a Christmas present + it turned out to be a fantastic five hour adventure.

1-5 The Shining's famous proverb on reams of paper, Jack Torrance's typewriter, twin's outfit, the axes + the hedge maze, and the original photograph prop, captioned "Overlook Hotel, July 4th Ball, 1921" with a young Jack in the bottom center.

6-8 Some ultraviolence of A Clockwork Orange's Korova Milk Bar servers + Alex's costume.

9-12 2001: A Space Odyssey's Dr. Bowman as a star-child, HAL 9000's eye (little known fact: the eye is really a Cinerama 160-degree Fairchild-Curtis wide-angle lens and HAL was created in Urbana, Illinois), the monolith, and the room in which Dr. Bowman grows old and dies. 

13 A model version of the war room from the 1964 cult classic, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

14 A still from Lolita.

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Kokkari Estiatorio in San Francisco.

Kokkari Estiatorio has rave reviews for a damn good reason: from the extensive wine menu to the various meats slow-roasting on the open-spit this Bib Gourmand listed restaurant is top notch in so many ways. The wait to eat at the bar was over an hour, and unless you're a hawk waiting around and being polite won't get you a seat. We got ours and dove in — it was worth every penny.

1+2 Our walk through the Embarcadero Center to the restaurant.
3 Outside of the restaurant.
4 We selected an Old World white wine: Stilos de Bodego, Con Class, Rueda '10 ($32).
5 The menu.
6 If I had to have only one item to eat for the rest of my life, it would be dolmathes. These grape leaves stuffed with rice, dill and mint, and finished with lemon with a few Kalamata olives are the ultimate aliment ($7).
7 Spanakotiropita: traditional filo pies of spinach, feta, leeks + dill ($8.50).
8 Saghanaki is pan fried Kefalograviera with lemon + oregano ($9).
9 Avgolemono is a traditional egg-lemon soup with chicken + rice ($8).
10 Grilled lamb meatballs with spiced tomato sauce + Greek yogurt ($8.50).
11 Gigantes: oven-baked giant beans with tomato sauce, olive oil + herbed feta ($8.50).
12 Fried smelts with garlic potato skordalia + lemon ($8.50).
13 Grilled octopus with lemon, oregano + olive oil ($13.75).
14 Lyle, the sommelier, picked Pago de Los Capellanes, Joven, Ribera del Duero '10 ($36) from the Old World red wine list for us.
15 Galaktoboureko is semolina custard in filo with quince spoon sweet (Kydoni Glyko in Greek) + pistachio ice cream ($8).
16 Stuffed, we return to the hotel.

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