Culture Me, Los Angeles: Spago in Beverly Hills

It’s Tuesday at 9:30 p.m….and the eight-year old kid on the cell phone sitting at the table next to us still has two courses to go.

Welcome to the one-post edition of Culture Me, LA. I’ve been hanging out in the land of the beautiful people for the past several days, helping one of my clients with their annual trade show. Seeing as how this was my first trip to the West Coast, I made a reservation at Spago, Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant in Beverly Hills. I’m pretty sure this dining suggestion got a collective eye roll from my two colleagues who have visited Los Angeles numerous times, but they were nice enough to humor my “I have no shame when it comes to playing tourist” self.

We arrived at Spago and were seated at the perfect people-watching table. (Not sure how we snagged that one, but I’m certainly not complaining.) Being the overly prepared individual that I am, I had done a once-over of the menu online, although ended up changing my mind by the time the waiter came to take our order.

For my first course I had the hamachi and tuna sashimi with avocado, sticky rice, and a yuzu and soy dressing. (If only I had thought to break out the Canon PowerShot, because the colorful tower of fish and greens was a culinary work of art.) The presentation was pretty, but the yuzu and soy dressing was a bit overpowering and drowned out the fresh flavors of the fish, leaving a salty aftertaste. I still cleaned the plate, though.

The Cantonese style duck with bing cherries and stir-fried lo mein noodles—my second course—was the highlight of the meal. The duck was fantastic, but the best part was the lo mein. I usually shy away from ordering stir-fried noodles when I go out to eat because they’re typically laden with oil and other undesirable ingredients, but this was hands down, the best lo mein I’ve ever had.

Although I was stuffed, there was no way I was taking a pass on dessert. I decided on the bowl of cherries which, I learned from the waiter, was now the bowl of strawberries. Even better.

My dessert looked simple – a bowl of strawberries, fresh cream, and three mini shortbread cookies filled with strawberry jam. But let me tell you, the berries were out of this world. They tasted as if they were hand picked just moments before they were delivered to our table. I’ve eaten my share of good quality strawberries – I live a block from a Whole Foods, for crying out loud – but these berries were beyond fresh and perfectly sweet.

The food at Spago alone made my day, but our celebrity sightings were -- wait for my bad joke -- icing on the cake. George Hamilton, Ray Floyd, and Warren Christopher were all seated nearby.

As if that wasn’t enough, Wolfgang Puck walked into Spago and stopped at every table, including ours, to say hello. He also filled us in on some exciting epicurean news: Washington, D.C. is getting an eatery called The Source from Wolfgang Puck in September 2007. Look for the restaurant on the ground floor of the Newseum.

Note: I have to give my colleague/boss/friend Marshall Manson credit for the opening line of this post. He made this comment during dinner and I think I laughed all the way back to the hotel in our Porsche, er, merlot-colored rental car. Make sure to check out his post on our Spago experience, too.