Please The Palate Newsletter April 2018

Written by Allison Levine on April 5, 2018

Travel Lifestyle Cocktails Wine

Spring is here! Well, after the snow storms on the East Coast and rain storms on the West Coast, hopefully it is time for the flowers to bloom and the sun to shine! The first quarter of 2018 has flown by with restaurant openings, winemaker meetings, winery region visits, wine events and multiple airplane rides! Now, with Spring comes longer days and lots of great happenings!

Upcoming Events

Pebble Beach Food & Wine (April 5-8)
Pebble Beach Food & Wine is the premier epicurean lifestyle event on the West Coast, matching 250 acclaimed wineries and 100 celebrity chefs to create a hedonistic four-day destination on one of the most picturesque strips of coastline in the world. Throughout the weekend you’ll enjoy intimate access to the pinnacle of culinary and wine talent at wine tastings, cooking demos, and some of the most exclusive, unique dining opportunities available in the world.

Oregon Wine Trail Los Angeles (April 24)
We’re hitting the trail with 50 Oregon wineries and our friends at Olympia Provisions, Salt & Straw Ice Cream and Stumptown Coffee Roasters for a grand happening of Oregonian wine, food and personality. No white table cloths, no orange cheese cubes. Instead, a generous pour of Oregon’s fine wines and pioneering spirit.

Vintage Hollywood (June 9)
Vintage Hollywood is an intimate outdoor event attended that showcases an exclusive group of wineries and features food from some of the area’s top restaurants. The beneficiary for the 2018 Vintage Hollywood event is one of Los Angeles County’s largest social services agencies, The People Concern, which was formed in 2016 in a merger of two trusted social service organizations based in Los Angeles – OPCC and Lamp Community. Informed by more than fifty years of work in the community, The People Concern empowers the most vulnerable among us to rebuild their lives.

Check out www.pleasethepalate.com for upcoming events and if you want to be notified of blog posts when they go live, please sign up on our site, here.

Read the full April 2018 Newsletter.

Please The Palate Pick of the Week: Little Damage Charcoal Ice Cream

Written by Allison Levine on March 31, 2018

Food

I love ice cream and never need an excuse to eat it. But, when there are added health benefits, it becomes that much easier to justify. That is why the Little Damage Charcoal Ice Cream is the Please The Palate pick of the week.

Little Damage Ice Cream Shop is a family-owned shop in downtown Los Angeles that makes local, fresh, organic soft serve ice cream. The ice cream is made daily in small batches and there are four flavors offered at a time. What makes Little Damage unique are the colors and flavors, including the turquoise blue “Unicorn Tears” and the black “Almond Charcoal”, “Black Roses”, “Black Thai Tea” and “Upside Down” flavors.

The black ice creams get their color from activated charcoal and the signature hand-rolled black cones are also naturally colored with activated charcoal. Activated charcoal is a fine black powder made from bone char, coconut shells, peat, petroleum coke, coal, olive pits or sawdust and it has a variety of proposed benefits, ranging from lowering cholesterol to whitening teeth and curing hangovers.

So, while the soft serve ice cream is creamy and tasty, and not too sweet, the fact that it has health benefits makes it all the more enjoyable and that is why it is the Please The Palate pick of the week.

Little Damage
700 S. Spring St.
Downtown LA

NoMad Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles

Written by Allison Levine on March 29, 2018

Lifestyle Food

Located on the corner of Olive and 7th street in downtown LA, the 1923 neoclassical neutral-colored building is rather nondescript from the outside.

But inside is another world. The NoMad Hotel has transformed the one-time Bank of Italy building into warm opulent space with dark jewel-toned velvet everywhere. The towering lobby can be entered through the doors on 7th Street. The space is broken into several areas, including a bar, a library and the casual Lobby Restaurant. Overlooking the lobby is the Mezzanine Restaurant, the more formal dining option.