Shop Review: Lunada Bay Market

Lunada Bay is a beautiful neighborhood in Palos Verdes Estates, California. There are a limited number of commercial centers on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, and probably one of the most charming ones is the Lunada Bay Plaza, which has a little coffeeshop, a few restaurants, and small businesses. In the summer, the Lunada Bay Homeowners' Association sponsors a summer concert series - I went to one concert last year and it was a lot of fun, with a beautiful green lawn, children dancing to music, and a few booths set up featuring some community organizations. 

Recently opened, the Lunada Bay Market is a small market with a selection of natural, organic, and high-end grocery items, beautiful produce, seafood, and meats, wine, and a deli counter offering a few salads, a handful of sandwiches, and smoothies. I ordered their tuna beet sandwich, which was comprised of tuna salad mix, diced beets, greens, radish, tomatoes, and cucumber on an oat french roll. The sandwich was tasty, and I like the idea of adding beets to tuna salad. Maybe Miss Nomad Foodie will be more inclined to try some foods if they are (naturally) colored pink?

tuna beet sandwich from Lunada Bay Market

In any case, it's a charming grocery store - bright and clean, and catering to the affluence of the surrounding area - and certainly a good option if you want something less corporate and with a more neighborly feel than the Trader Joe's up the street at the Golden Cove Plaza. All of the staff members I met were uniformly friendly and attentive.

2201 Palos Verdes Drive West, Palos Verdes Estates - 310-377-2025

Review of Dine L.A.: Bettolino Kitchen (Redondo Beach, CA)

Somehow, I was notified that AmEx had a $5 off offer for Dine L.A. restaurant week, so on a whim I checked out the website and realized there were some intriguing menus at restaurants in my area. I thought this would be a great excuse to get my brother and sister-in-law, as new parents, out of their home and eat something nice. So we went to Bettolino Kitchen, a restaurant that I would have never noticed even though I'm in the Riviera Village area often.

The prix fixe menu featured three starters, which we got one of each. SIL thought her Insalata d'Estate - romaine, watermelon, cherry tomatoes, mixed olives, onion sprouts, feta cheese, and lemon dressing, was fresh and good. I thought my brother's Crostone di Funghi e Pecorino - sliced speck and sautéed crimini mushrooms, was excellent. My Zuppa d Piselli - cold mint scented peas, zucchini and yogurt veloute with squash blossom and pea sprouts was delicious, although the pea sprouts, which were long and thin, made eating it with a soup spoon difficult.

Pappardelle con Ragu d'Antica

For the secondi, brother and I both had the Pappardelle con Ragu d'Antica - stewed and shredded duck leg, pine nuts, and tomato sauce while SIL had Salmon al Salmoriglio - petite salmon fillet, herbed cous cous, sauteed zucchini, red bell pepper, eggplant, garlic, fresh oregano & parsley, lemon and extra virgin olive oil. The pappardelle was excellent. Alas, while the eggplant and salmon was good, the cous cous was overly salty and the zucchini perhaps a bit too old as it was bitter.

Salted Caramel Semifreddo

Our waitress presented us with a complimentary Salted Caramel Semifreddo - semi-frozen salted caramel mousse, layered graham crackers, and chocolate sauce, as she had given the wrong order to the chef, increasing wait time for our entrée. I didn't particularly mind the wait time, and I thought it was quite nice of her to proactively offer the semifreddo, but I wish she had done so prior to my ordering of dessert, because we were then too full. The semifreddo was very rich - it's definitely a dish to be shared - and depending on how into the salty-sweet trend you may be, potentially too salty.

Our Peach Melba - poached peach, vanilla gelato, raspberry sauce, almond crumble was pretty decent. We had to deconstruct it because of SIL's newly imposed dietary restrictions, so perhaps we didn't eat it as intended. The peach and gelato were very good, but I thought there was too much almond crumble, which featured semolina.

deconstructed Peach Melba

Overall, I really liked our appetizers and mains. I would go back again for those, but would instead go around the corner and across the street to Desserts by Patrick for some gelato after the meal.