Manuela

Hi!  I'm back.  Not an especially busy few days, but busy enough, and I didn't have the wherewithal to blog.  Shame on me.

So let's dial back a few days to this past weekend and Saturday night.  Van and I were left without Conrad for one more night, so the two of us did our own date night in DTLA. 

Look, as much as we LOVE our local Pasadena places, we like to get out of the city and into other parts of the metro from time to time, go try some other food and settings.  This time we hopped on the train to the Little Tokyo station and strolled the few blocks into the Arts District to Manuela, a restaurant we'd each been to but not together and not recently.

A few thoughts follow:

• The setting is great, an indoor/outdoor feeling. 
  
  
  I appreciated where we sat, sort of on the outer edge of the restaurant near a corner of the bar.  The music was less loud and oppressive there, and Van and I could talk easily.
• The service from the waitstaff was mostly fine.  I was grateful for the menu guidance that our server provided.  But it was kind of pokey service.  There were some big gaps of time in there, especially between the appetizers and main course, and we opted not to get dessert not really because we were full but because we doubted it would come any time soon.  There were at least a few larger (6-10) parties in the restaurant, and that may have affected things, but we did notice the lag.
• The drinks were tasty, and I'm sorry I didn't get a good shot of Van's parsley gimlet, which was the winner.  Mine was fine,
  
  
  and I had a glass of white wine with dinner.
• The food was excellent.  I'll quibble that the biscuits were curiously flat,
  
  
  but they were piping hot and tender.  I loved the salad
  
  
  - I'd have more salads in restaurants if they were like this one.  Van's venison burger was good, and my sea bass was terrific. 
  
  
  The winner, though?  The side dish of charred snap peas with black quinoa.  Superb.
  
  
  

We'll go back, and we need to get Conrad there again.  It was an easy train ride home, and then some American Idol before bed.