The other week, a friend was visiting the area for a day and wanted to know where she should go to experience what she termed “Trendy LA.” Considering she was from New York, I was not sure if this comment was said in all seriousness or condescendingly comparing New York to LA as the Trendy Mecca of the US. Her question though definitely made me think about where to send my oh so hip friend. Sure, I enjoy certain LA secrets, but it was not the secrets that she wanted; she wanted to see Lindsay Lohan at The Ivy or Britney Spears at Kitson. Damn foreigners.
Since she had a business meeting that took her through lunch, I was not required to supply the morning activities. Thus, for the truly Trendy LA lunch experience, I told her to check out The Ivy, the place where celebrities like to go because they “like the food” and not the attention they get when 20 billion paparazzi flash their cameras. She agreed, feeling it was the perfect lunch spot. Though, part of me thinks she wanted to scour US Weekly hoping she might end up in the background in one of those shots. Nevertheless, it was a boring and simple lunch. No celebrities. But, hey, she was going for Trendy LA, not celeb hounding.
After she had lunch, I mentioned that she should check out The Grove and do some shopping there. And if she felt The Grove didn’t match her tastes, she could always check out Rodeo Drive, complete with overpriced boutiques. I’m not sure if it was the word overpriced or boutiques that got her excited, but Rodeo was her destination. She ended up buying nothing, but I guess that wasn’t the point. She did make it over to The Grove, enjoyed it, but “it’s not exciting.” Well, if you’re there on a Wednesday afternoon, then yes, it might be a little dead.
For dinner, I suggested several different places. Since this was a Wednesday, I suggested that if she wanted something slightly less trendy, but cheap, she should check out Don Antonio’s on Pico, right off the 405. Their Dollar Taco Wednesdays are pretty big, with lines out the door, but that wasn’t enough for her. So I suggested Restaurant Row in Beverly Hills. There she could pick from some very fine restaurants, such as The Stinking Rose and Lawry’s, while still remaining in one of LA’s more trendy locales. She didn’t want something too congested though, so I recommended The Little Door, a small French restaurant on W. 3rd St. She loved it.
That was all she had time for since she had a late flight back to NYC. She enjoyed her Trendy LA experience, but when she left, she mentioned that when she comes back for a visit, she wants to know the new hot spots, since all her NYC friends want to hear about them.
Again, damn foreigners.
Photo by Alan Light via Flickr
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1 Alisa // Feb 12, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Loved it!
I’m from New York myself and I feel the same way about my New Yorker friends coming to visit. I start to plan the “trend activities” weeks in advance and most of them involve in and about West Hollywod “trendy” spots, including Geisha House, UrthCaffe, Miss Sixty and Fred Segal stores…but there is always Hadaka Sushi on Sunset that is “best kept secret.”
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