On the Friday after dinner at JiRaffe, we drove to Beverly Hills for lunch at
Fogo de Chao. The restaurant was incredibly busy, probably because of the well-priced dineLA promotion. Addictive mochi-like cheese breads to start, plus a trip to the salad bar for hearts of palm, greens, and sun-dried tomato. The salad bar at Fogo de Chao is actually smaller than the one at
Libra; the same vegetables are present at both, but Libra also offers several cooked dishes. Anyhow, as is par for the course, soon after we flipped over our Yes/No cards (which is how you signal to the servers that you're receptive to more food), three small plates of fried plantains, caramelized bananas, and mashed potatoes were set down, and then the carnivorous parade began. I don't even remember all the cuts that were brought to our table, but they were all good, and we ate just enough to be satiated without going overboard.
After lunch, we headed to Beverly Drive, in quest of coffee at Coupa Cafe. We are loyal customers of the Stanford branches, but Andrew insisted that the quality at the Y2E2 had suffered of late, so of course we were curious about the other franchises. Lattes in hand, we meandered down the street to
Bouchon Bakery for some cookies, which were consumed in the picturesque, fountain-containing courtyard area between Bouchon and the Montage hotel.
TKO (Thomas Keller Oreo), which was much better than the TKO bat cookie I had at Bouchon Bakery
in New York last fall:
Passion-fruit macaron, probably my favorite of the four cookies we tried:
Nutter Butter (Andrew's response: "Now in this, you can actually taste the calories." Agreed - the peanut butter buttercream is overkill. I don't think I'll get this cookie again.)
Chocolate bouchon, i.e. a glorified brownie bite:
