Here and There - Welcome Summer
by Andrea RademanJ
une 24 at The Taste of The Nation samples bites from Asia De Cuba, Beacon, Fathers Office, Grace, Kiriko, Kzo, Hungry Cat, Noé at The Omni and many more restaurants, plus enjoy fun activities and music at Culver City’s Media Park. Also: wines from over 40 wineries; waiter races; chefs cook-off; auction; kids make pizzas with CPK. Proceeds go to Share Our Strength to help end childhood hunger.
July 14 and 15 San Francisco International Chocolate Salon at Fort Mason Conference Center, the first major chocolate show on the West Coast in two decades. Enjoy artisan, gourmet and premium chocolates, demos, chef and author talks, wine pairings, chocolate painting, a chocolate spa, and TasteTV’s Chocolate TV program. Tickets: $20. www.SFChocolateSalon.com More chocolate: Jean-Paul Hévin, named Meilleur Ouvrier de France (France’s top craftsman) in 1986, worked at Hôtel Nikko alongside Joël Robuchon before being invited to run Peltier, a famous French pastry shop in Tokyo, which became his home base. Today, in addition to five locations in France, he has shops in Tokyo, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, and Kokura. For something unusual, taste his cheese-chocolate appetizers, a salty-sweet mixture of chocolate enhanced with dried fruit, herbs or spice: époisses cheese/cumin; Pont l’évêque cheese/thyme; goat cheese/hazelnut; and Roquefort cheese/walnut. www.jph-japon.co.jp
Mark your calendar for July 21 Project by Project’s 10th Anniversary Food and Wine Celebration at the Wallis Annenberg Building at the California Science Center, 700 State Dr., downtown. VIP Reception: 6:00 - 7:00; Main Event: 7:00 - 10:30 pm. Every year, each local chapter partners with a community-based organization in a fundraising campaign. The event chair this year will be none other chef Akira Kurose of Maison Akira in Pasadena. Chester Hashizume says, “This is our 10th year of serving non-profit organizations in the Asian-American community.” Mia Chan, National President, Ed Chu, and others, have been hard at work all year pulling this together. The great chefs of blue on blue, Boule Patisserie, Cafe del Rey, Choctál, Global Cuisine Catering, Joe’s Restaurant, Maison Akira, Mako, Michel Cordon Bleu, Michelia, Noé, Orris, Purely Catering, Royale, Roy’s, Water Grille, Wilshire, Woo Lae Oak, the wonderful, just opened in Santa Monica, Zu Robata, and others will be there. FIJI Water, Starbucks Coffee and Yaegaki Corporation of USA (sake) are contributing the beverages. There will be silent and live auctions, celebrity chefs, and more so pony up — they need your money! Call 310-943-3868 or info.sc@projectbyproject.org .
By the time he was 10 years old, Makoto Kameyama was helping out at his father’s sushi bar in Tokyo. Later, he apprenticed in edo-mae (Tokyo-style) sushi before moving to the U.S. in the early 1980’s. After a stint in L.A., he made a name for himself in N.Y., opened his own restaurant, Kameda, then moved on to Chikubu, where he began flirting with fusion. He signed on with Prime Grill in 2002, which led him back to L.A. as Executive Chef at The Prime Grill (421 N. Rodeo Drive in the Rodeo Collection, Beverly Hills; 310-860-1233), a Certified Kosher steakhouse, which means that every piece of china, silverware and stemware is immersed in a ritual bath, a spiritual ritual that, in this age of e coli and other health scares, makes for the purest standards of hygiene. Chef de Cuisine Aaron Bashy cooks his signature Prime Black Angus Filet and Prime Reserve Cut in an on-site dry-aging chamber – a unique process passed down through generations of the Allaham family – to ensure robust flavor and incredible tenderness. As expected, the meats are delicious but sushi is in equally high demand. Highlights include lean tuna from Hawaii; fatty tuna (toro) from Japan; Atlantic salmon and ikura from Nova Scotia; smoked salmon from Alaska, and more. He also does a Kyoto roll with tuna, salmon and avocado; a Prime Grill roll with yuzu-glazed black cod; and his signature crispy rice and spicy tuna with Asian sauce and jalapeno. His appetizers include (cold) yellowtail pastrami; Matsuzaka beef with Japanese cucumber; Aburi spicy tuna with crispy onions and mustard lime sauce; and (hot) chicken tenders with wasabi guacamole; yellowtail tempura with veggies and spicy sauce; and mini skyscrapers of Wagyu steak sliders with caramelized onions and house sauce (black truffle, extra).
Since this is a steakhouse, one might assume that is named for a choice cut of meat. However, one visit to this elegant hybrid of in-house dry-aged beef and Japanese dishes makes it clear that everything here is prime. That includes regular customers of the original New York location such as Mayor Bloomberg, Donald Trump, Madonna and Bono. Prophetically, owner Joey Allaham, whose last name translates to “meat” in Arabic, is a third-generation master butcher who arrived in America from Damascus at the age of 18. He says of his fine dining mecca, “This restaurant is for all people who love food; the fact that it is kosher, is a bonus.” Aside from serving dinner Saturday to Thursday, in observance of the Sabbath they close Friday at sundown until Saturday, when it turns into an evening lounge and party rental space. A copper staircase leads down from Rodeo Drive to an indoor-outdoor lounge with a cabana “roof,” amber lamps hanging above a gold marble bar faced with bamboo, glass panels framed in pale purple sheers, and dark purple booths in a sunken dining room. The Purple Room, adjacent to the patio, features plum colored maple floors and a state-of-the-art audio-visual system that makes it ideal for private gatherings. Wine Director Atom Hovhanesyan offers rare vintages from California, Italy, New Zealand and Israel, nearly a dozen available by the glass. Many of the fruit mixes used in the cocktails are made in-house, including the Berry Citrus Martini made with fresh pureed berry, fresh citrus and premium vodka. Note: Ben Greiser, who took the photo, is a dream waiter. Ask for him.
Fans of L.A. Weekly restaurant reviewer Jonathan Gold’s “Counter Intelligence” column were pleased to note that his riveting writing and laugh-out-loud sense of humor recently won him a double whammy Pulitzer Prize, the first for a restaurant writer, and the first for a free publication.
Chef Nobu Matsuhisa performed the sacred Sake Ceremony at the official opening of Nobu Waikiki at Waikiki Parc Hotel in Honolulu, HI, sister property of the renowned Halekulani, For his latest venture, Nobu created a distinct menu featuring local Hawaiian delicacies, innovative Japanese cuisine, and a priceless ‘ingredient’ that the beloved chef refers to as “Kokoro” — heart. 
Anime fans, intensify your for long, hot summer with a dash of PAPRIKA. Directed by Satoshi Kon from a novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui, and written by Kon and Seishi Minakami, Paprika is a mind-bending, eye-pleasing, tantalizing treat rendered in both hand-drawn and 3-D animation. Great directors such as Hayao Miyazaki and Mamoru Oshii (“Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence”) blazed the way from kid stuff to adult entertainment like this riot of future-shock ideas and images. When the DC Mini, an experimental device developed in a mental hospital to read patients’ dreams, goes missing, along with one of the employees, it’s up to Dr. Atsuko Chiba (voice: Megumi Hayashibara); her genius colleague Dr. Kosaku Tokita (Toru Furuya), the inventor of the DC Mini; and the gremlin-like Dr. Torataro Shima, aka the Chief (Katsunosuke Hori) to find them. The Chief enlists an old pal, Detective Toshimi Konakawa (Akio Ohtsuka), who suffers from nightmares, not the least of which are about a circus where all the performers and the audience look like him. At an Internet site he finds scenes from his past, while Dr. Chiba infiltrates other people’s dreams. As for Paprika, she’s a sprite who appears when Dr. Chiba is around. Rated R.