pfibiger

I've only been to a couple, but based on conversations I've had with friends who have been to a bunch of these restaurants, I'm going to recommend Jonathan Gold's Koreantown Top 40 from the LA Weekly. Gold is almost always exactly on the money, and the list has enough breadth that I'm sure you'll be able to find a few restaurants that suit your fancy. Phil

This was a big baking christmas for me. I had mentioned to my wife that I wanted to start baking bread..so Santa went to Surfas in Los Angeles and brought me "The Bread Baker's Apprentice", a baking stone and a small peel, a banneton, a bench scraper, and some other misc tools. I've started reading through the book, and I hope to get started this weekend :)

I ate at Joe's last week. My dinner was good, but not great (the pork crepinette), but my appetizer was spectacular. It was the grilled ahi with foie gras, over some kind of potato pancake. Every part of the appetizer was perfect. My dessert, the chocolate cupcake with a port reduction sauce was pretty great as well. I'd been for lunch before, but never for dinner. I agree that it's a pretty good deal, and I prefer it to a lot of the similarly priced restaurants in LA.

I found for the Wusthof knives (classic series) that we bought ourselves (about half of them were wedding gifts), the cheapest way to get them was to wait for one of the bed, bath & beyond 20% coupons to show up in the mail (if you don't get them you can sign up on their website to get periodic mailings).. I think after the discount, I got the 8" chef's knife and a 3-4 inch peeler for under $80.

I've had a couple of really good < $10 bottles recently. Berger Gruner Veltliner $9 (and it's 1 liter) Bogle Zinfandel $9-10 Walnut Crest Pinot Grigio $4-5 (as good as many $10 bottles I've had), served it alongside a Cline Zinfandel (also pretty good at $8) at my wedding this past summer.

I absolutely agree with MsRamsey about Dansk flatware. If you're near a dansk outlet, you can get some really great flatware for dirt cheap. I don't think I paid more than $50 for a 72 piece set that had 12 5 piece place settings and a bunch of serving pieces. I can't seem to find the store locator on the current website, but here's a google cache that lists all the dansk factory outlets: http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:Pozzf...&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 As far as dishes, i've been very happy with the Aspen white porcelain from Crate & Barrel. Good Luck, Phil