One of my resolutions for this year was to get out and do more stuff in the city. So by delightful coincidence, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lydamorehouse was bringing her son Mason to visit UCLA and attend an Overwatch tournament. I have been showing them around and having an absolute blast. She also introduced me to Maureen McHugh, who lives in my neighborhood! I had no idea.
When I heard they were taking my recommendation to go to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, I decided they needed to have a thoroughly weird day and took them to Destroyer, LA's second-most avant-garde restaurant. It is across the street from Vespertine, which is a very strange wavy building run by the same chef, where they serve alien food for about $500. Reviews of Vespertine are equally split between "The greatest restaurant in America," "What the hell is this scam," and "The experience is great but the food doesn't quite live up to it." The Yelp reviews are a trip and include photos.
Destroyer serves very strange, very pretty, very expensive, very LA food which is also (mostly) legit delicious. Lyda was struck by an very pretty muffin-like object decorated with delicate sprigs of herb. When she asked what it was, the waiter said in rather warning tones, "It's a brioche. It's gluten-free." Sadly, the gluten-free brioche had the texture of a rock and bounced when we attempted to cut it.
The rest of the food was quite delicious, if odd. I inhaled my ash-roasted potatoes with poached egg, the spice cake was dense and tasty, and the chocolate mousse topped with cucumber-flavored snow was absolutely fantastic, complete with surprise crunchy streusel on the bottom.
Seelydamorehouse for a description of the Museum of Jurassic Technology.
We then went to the Long Beach Aquarium. By then we were verging on hangry, so we went to a pleasant grassy area with a tiny train and a Ferris wheel going backwards, and I introduced them to the taco truck. Lyda had tacos, I had a quesadilla with carnitas, and Mason had the world's largest plate of chili fries. It made a nice pairing with Destroyer, and TBH was equally delicious if less photogenic.
I spent 3 1/2 hours observing leafy sea dragons, sea horses, gobis poking in and out of sand like cylindrical underwater gophers, a spider crab apparently earnestly attempting to communicate with me, a crab leisurely eating a clam, penguins having a poetry slam, bioluminescent comb jellies, lorikeets doing strange things with their heads and looking very dinosaur-like, moon jellyfish the size of a pinhead which visibly moved the same way as the hand-sized adults, sea otters rapidly revolving, and the only photo I took was this one of a flounder we watched for about 20 minutes:
lydamorehouse was bringing her son Mason to visit UCLA and attend an Overwatch tournament. I have been showing them around and having an absolute blast. She also introduced me to Maureen McHugh, who lives in my neighborhood! I had no idea. When I heard they were taking my recommendation to go to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, I decided they needed to have a thoroughly weird day and took them to Destroyer, LA's second-most avant-garde restaurant. It is across the street from Vespertine, which is a very strange wavy building run by the same chef, where they serve alien food for about $500. Reviews of Vespertine are equally split between "The greatest restaurant in America," "What the hell is this scam," and "The experience is great but the food doesn't quite live up to it." The Yelp reviews are a trip and include photos.
Destroyer serves very strange, very pretty, very expensive, very LA food which is also (mostly) legit delicious. Lyda was struck by an very pretty muffin-like object decorated with delicate sprigs of herb. When she asked what it was, the waiter said in rather warning tones, "It's a brioche. It's gluten-free." Sadly, the gluten-free brioche had the texture of a rock and bounced when we attempted to cut it.
The rest of the food was quite delicious, if odd. I inhaled my ash-roasted potatoes with poached egg, the spice cake was dense and tasty, and the chocolate mousse topped with cucumber-flavored snow was absolutely fantastic, complete with surprise crunchy streusel on the bottom.
See
lydamorehouse for a description of the Museum of Jurassic Technology.We then went to the Long Beach Aquarium. By then we were verging on hangry, so we went to a pleasant grassy area with a tiny train and a Ferris wheel going backwards, and I introduced them to the taco truck. Lyda had tacos, I had a quesadilla with carnitas, and Mason had the world's largest plate of chili fries. It made a nice pairing with Destroyer, and TBH was equally delicious if less photogenic.
I spent 3 1/2 hours observing leafy sea dragons, sea horses, gobis poking in and out of sand like cylindrical underwater gophers, a spider crab apparently earnestly attempting to communicate with me, a crab leisurely eating a clam, penguins having a poetry slam, bioluminescent comb jellies, lorikeets doing strange things with their heads and looking very dinosaur-like, moon jellyfish the size of a pinhead which visibly moved the same way as the hand-sized adults, sea otters rapidly revolving, and the only photo I took was this one of a flounder we watched for about 20 minutes:
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