Asia de Cuba - Los Angeles, CA

Asia de Cuba... This is a famous restaurant which I have to admit, refused to eat at. Very pretty and well located at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood, this restaurant has a magnificent view of LA. I simply expected the food to be bad. Plus, I guess it probably helped that my family had a bad experience at the Asia de Cuba - Buenos Aires, Argentina. I thought they would all be the same. Well, I was wrong!

I had a tofu dish that was unbelievably good! Very tasty and satisfactory! I was initially happy to see that they had a couple of very good options for vegans on their menu. It is an Asian-Cuban fusion restaurant so, I guess that is somehow expected. Vegans can always eat well at Asian restaurants. Lots of veggies!
When my tofu dish arrived, I felt a little disappointed to see how small it looked. There were maybe three small to medium squares of tofu on one side of the stark white, rectangular plate. On the other side of the plate, there was a tiny little accumulation of thinly sliced salad (that I have no idea what consisted of) and a skinny strip of a yellow (what I think was mango) sauce.
Trust me... don't judge by the looks! It was amazing!!! Extremely tasty and more than enough in quantity.
Maybe I am still just not really used to eating small amounts of food. Oh yes, I am changing that too. Along with the change in my diet, I am also changing my eating habits to smaller amounts of food and fewer meals a day. I used to be proud of eating a lot. Still working on it :)

Unfortunatelly I don't think this restaurant has a website independent from the hotel. Therefore I wasn't able to check the name of the tofu dish I had or the price, but this can now be, my great excuse to go back and take some notes! I was planning on going back anyway!!! I really enjoyed it! The food was excellent, service was great and the scenery.... exactly what you need from LA.

NOPA - San Francisco, CA

Nopa is a very nice restaurant in San Francisco. It has a nice vibrant atmosphere, a casual-chic interior structure and decoration with a long bar and open kitchen. The kitchen offers a counter sitting where you can watch the chef cook. I sat upstairs where I wouldn't consider the best sit in the restaurant but it was interesting to have a complete view of the restaurant from above. No to mention that I, accidentally, dropped an olive down on a table in the dinning room below :)

I shared the "Warm Marinated Olives" ($5.00) as an appetizer with my sister. For my entree I chose the "Moroccan Vegetable Tagine, Almonds and Lemon Yogurt" ($16.00) without the yogurt. It was surprisingly delicious!!! The olives were okay. Interesting idea to have warm olives, they were good and tasty but nothing different from the ordinary olives that we would get anywhere else. The Tagine was really good. I confess to thinking it wouldn't be enough to eat or boringly tasty, but I was wrong. It was really tasty and more than enough quantity. So good that I've been craving it!

At this restaurant I had a little hard time understanding the menu. A lot of "fancy" words that I didn't know what they meant, much less what the food was. I had to ask a lot and thanks to a patient server, chose the right dish.
You can access their website www.nopasf.com and check out their menu.

I will definitely go back to Nopa! The restaurant is "cool" and the service was good.
You can also just go for drinks and/or appetizers. There are a lot of seats at the bar where you can also order food.