DannielleDishes.com by Dannielle Kyrillos

by Dannielle Kyrillos

Archive for the “Travel” Category

They Tell Me LA’s Beautiful When it Rains

Published: June 3rd, 2011

Runyon Canyon, Afternoon


You’ve probably heard of Neko Case, and maybe even love her. She often sings with the New Pornographers, and has pipes so powerful they’ll stop you in your tracks, make you cry, all that stuff amazing voices can do. Whenever I’m in LA, a beautiful, melancholy song she sings called “In California,” actually written by a lady named Lisa Marr, pops into my head a lot. It captures how you feel when your mood doesn’t match the sun. It also references Bonnie Brae, a superbly named street you drive past a lot if you’re staying Downtown and don’t like to ever take the highway.

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A Nice Fable from The Spice Table

Published: June 3rd, 2011

The Chile Prawn and the Grill, by Aesop

Once upon a time, there was a wizard-chef named Bryant Ng and his fair lady, Kim. They took over an crumbling old warehouse-like building in Downtown Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo and made it cozy and inviting, with a nice, sturdy bar right up front, softly glowing, hanging lamps fashioned from bird cages, and long wooden tables. Each day (except Sunday) at lunch and dinner, their palace, called the Spice Table, is filled with the flavors of Singapore and Vietnam, and especially pleasant wafts of smoke from sizzling meats on open flames. Wanderers from across the land arrive and eat satays of lamb belly and chile prawns, and an intriguing concoction of peanuts and anchovies, which certainly contains a love potion of some sort. They feast on kon loh mee–egg noodles with ground pork and spices, and always save room for Kaffir lime custard. They wake up the next morning in their own beds wondering if it had been a hazy dream, but then realize that pile of clothes at the foot of the bed really does smell like smoked meat. The moral of our story? Even if a wily fox or up-to-no-good scorpion offers to lead you to The Spice Table, take him up on it. And order more than you at first think will be enough. There’s a crisp Albarino that goes perfectly, too.

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Turn on the Bright Lights

Published: April 1st, 2011

Like a Diamond in the Sky

It is such a special treat to take in an opera at the Met at Lincoln Center, and one of the best parts starts well before the performance.  The Metropolitan Opera House is one of my favorite interiors in New York, because when you walk in and encounter these quasi-futuristic, brilliant twinkling masterpieces, you can’t help but be transported, uplifted and inspired.  They were originally hung in 1966 when the Met moved to Lincoln Center, designed by an Austrian man named Hans Harald Rath, and just last year were completely refurbished and re-crystalled in Austria by Swarovski. 

A tip if you’re seeing “Tosca” and not feeling up to being emotionally crushed: It has a relatively happy ending if you leave before the third act!

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