Ooh, Matt, my dad would be so envious of the Russian restaurant. He loves Central European food and it's not that common out here in LA. Loads of ethnic restaurants, but not a ton of European ethnicity restaurants.

I saw HPVII-PartI today (there ought to be a better acronym

Preferably one that doesn't make me want to encourage young women to get their Gardisil vaccinations.

Thank you Cass, so glad it's not just me. My first thought was, "sounds like a new strain of herpes."

That restaurant article makes me want to go out to eat. Hmm. Maybe we need to plan a very LAista outing to good food in a casual setting. Preferably kid-friendly.

Dana, I am so sorry you are having such a collection of troubles all at once.

I gather it's really a sort of pan-Central Asian place. The owner is from Uzbekistan, but their menu is about half Russian and features other countries too (I think plov is Turkish?). Saturday nights they supposedly do a Russian disco thing.

Spidra, back in 2004 I ate in a Russian place that was in a strip mall between Santa Monica Blvd. and Sunset. Maybe it's still there?

Spidra, has he ever been to Warzawa? It's a Russian restaurant in Santa Monica, been there for decades. I've never been there myself so I don't know how good it is.

Dana, your last few days have been rotten.

Marketted, where I only bought empanadas. Then leaves. 2 hours and 7 bags of leaves. My walk, the sidewalk of 4 houses and street. Next up: swim. After I eat something.

I have a maple pecan pie in the oven and the ingredients for the pumpkin pie sort of around. They bake at different temperatures, so I can't do both at once. That's ok—it'll keep the nice smells coming out of the kitchen for a longer time.

Sounds interesting, Matt.

He may have been, Burrell. He's not a fan of the West Side so he's not as likely to go out there. But I just sent him a list of Russian restaurants in LA. Esp since he's been out at UCLA doing research anyway.

[link]

The owner is from Uzbekistan, but their menu is about half Russian and features other countries too (I think plov is Turkish?).

Uzbek cuisine takes in all of the various immigrants into Uzbekistan, from Russians to Koreans (brought in by Stalin to work on the rocket system). One of their pickled vegetable dishes is spelled differently but sounds remarkably like "kimchee." (I have a few Uzbek restaurants near me--lots of Russians out here!)

Remember when we were different people and ate out together a lot?

Vaguely. I mean, it's hard to remember anything pre-this life.

Cashmere, we're doing these cookies: [link]