Yummy

Brunch at the Roosevelt

September 17, 2011 The Beat, Yummy

public restaurant at the roosevelt hotel hollywood New hotel restaurants are high on our radar so with the renovation and re-opening of Public came the subsequent craving for menu novelty. We grabbed our good friend L, brushed past the bikini sun worshippers at Bar Tropicana, and laid into their $35 multi-course brunch offering. We ran through her visit to the W Barcelona over bottomless mimosas (a HotelCrush occasional indulgence) which came straight from the juicer in perfect champagne/orange proportion.

The space is arranged like a French bistro stirred into an English countryside dining room, with twisted horns displayed next to staid portraits and chalkboard cheese specials. Gone is the dark formality of the Dakota dining room, with its speakeasy booths and club seating. Cafe chairs and pub tables congregate under the aged ceiling mural of serpent unicorns swimming around the Roosevelt Hotel logo, and the effect is bright, breezy, and cozy as afternoon tea.

The brunch menu is organized as a pre-fixe inviting diners to select one starter, one main, one side, and a dessert. Starters range from our choice of the crabcake, to asparagus salad, hummus, or burrata on pain vert. We selected diver scallops as our main, though we could have chosen skirt steak, lemon ricotta pancakes, or one of the eggs benedict options (duck confit hash qualifying as the most haute). Our side of mixed berries was delicious – ripe, sweet, and as perfect-looking as a cereal ad. We loved the warm cinnamon and nutmeg coated Berliners for dessert, and resolved to hit the W Barcelona, rooftop pool or (gasp!) no rooftop pool.

Control Freak or In Control?

September 8, 2011 Bliss, Spaaah, The Beat, Yummy

Don’t get us wrong, we at HotelCrush love to delegate like the best of them. (Dress hems? Tailor. Driving? Taxi. Cooking? Well…usually take-out.) But there are certain things when absolutely nothing else will do, and that’s when we take matters into our own hands.

Beauty Treatments: We love the spa, but for moments when we really want to brighten up, we head into the shower with a tub of Bliss’s Blood Orange + White Pepper Sugar Scrub. Exhilaratingly scented and dense with the exfoliating natural alpha hydroxy acids found in sugar cane, we emerge with a new layer of skin, moisturized and back in the game.

Manicures: We’ve met women who swear by their weekly manicures, but we can’t say we’ve seen the light. Aside from being pricey, a regular manicure degrades quickly and a gel manicure runs at least $10-$15 more. Taking matters into our own hands, we purchased a Thermal Spa professional UV lamp, an Opi Axxium starter kit, and CND Shellac nail colors. We have the methodology refined from years of doing our own nails, with a couple of salon gel manicures to learn from the pros. We’re relieved to not be at the whim of the salon’s color selection (a little too ballet pink for our Vendetta taste), nor do we have that disappointing feeling of "My nail is peeling and it’s only been four days." But the best part? We’re able to prep our hands with sunblock before plunging them into the mini tanning booth of the UV nail lamp, something we’ve never seen at a salon.

Birthday Cakes: Though we admit to weekly Magnolia trips when we lived in New York ten years ago, with the cupcake, bundt cake, red velvet craze being what it is, we’re relieved to escape such a competitive sport. We don’t need a lot of birthday cake fuss for our birthday, but when it comes to others, we love to do something homemade. Whether it’s five-dozen mini vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting or a chocolate layer cake from scratch, it says "you’re the best" like nothing else.

Lemonade: This one is very dear to us. We love fresh lemonade as much as we hate the bottled kind (it’s as polarizing as the Coke/Pepsi war). So we are jumping-off-the-couch excited for the lemon tree that will soon be growing in the completely renovated backyard. We’re excited for all of the fresh lemonade, lemonade carbonated with SodaStream, lemonade with vodka, lemonade with strawberries that we can take. Now if we could just get a hold of our sugar intake..

The Smoking Scent of Fall

September 5, 2011 The Beat, Yummy

l'artisan parfumeur amber ball Our love of L’Artisan Parfumeur began with the scent of French Tuesday. Sultry, enveloping, imbued with the same charm as the heavy French accents and toasts of Laurent Perrier. It was the fragrance of L’Eau d’Ambre – gorgeous and swelteringly addictive, daring as a first kiss and intimate as candlelight. We sipped champagne and drank each room, infatuated.

Our devotion deepened when we received a gift from French Tuesday. It was an exquisite, triangular red box with three candles, two Mimosa Maurin and one Mure Sauvage. We nurtured them like a bottle of Louis XIV – opening the cap, sniffing, indulgently taking a sip. We burned them sparingly, gently returning them to the box and retying the gold ribbon.

As Fall descends and temperatures get colder, the smells change too. Rain seeping through dry leaves, wet asphalt, spices in place of citrus, hot chocolate instead of lemonade. But if there’s one scent we’d like to leave with you, it’s the aroma of Ambre, tingling like the first cold chill, warm as a beach bonfire, decadent, endless.