Kali Dining

There has been some epic eating in the last five days. Good thing that today is the first day of my diet. And I'm super determined this time - no excuses. I've already gone to the gym on both Saturday and Sunday, and it how hurts to cross my legs and walk in heels. Great.

On Wednesday night, my friend from ... oh elementary school, Cynthia, invited me to a belated birthday dinner on Wednesday at Kali Dining. Kali Dining is another underground supper club run by her friend Kevin Meehan, who used to be the chef at Cafe Pinot in DTLA. The dinner I went to was the last one to be held at his home in Culver City; dinners from here on out will be held in Venice in a penthouse loft with an ocean view.

When Cynthia originally emailed me details to the dinner, the directions were extremely vague. And sketchy sounding. Specifically, she told me "Enter though the back alley behind the house by the nail salon. There is a sign awaiting you with candles" ... what?!

When we got there and got ourselves situated, Chef Kevin led us on a tour of the house and to the dining setup in his guest house. He and his sous chef explained the ingredients to us, some of which was foraged only that morning. Very fresh.

bread, butter with dehydrated olive tapenade

duck egg scramble

spiny lobster crudo, miner's lettuce, orange, saffron gelee

braised wild hog, smoked potato puree, lardo crumbs, proscuitto, pea

calico bass, roasted garlic oil, stinging nettles, chanterelles

parsnip pudding, brown butter, caramel, sea salt, marcona almond, powder

raspberry pâtes de fruits

What a great night with friends. All eight people there were friends of Cynthia's that I just met that night, with the exception of Evan Gotanda, whom we had gone to high school with. Chef Meehan was charming and gracious, and talked freely about his preparations for the meal. Apparently a few days before, he had gone hunting for the first time and shot the wild boar himself! Pretty crazy, and he described the whole experience, with the help of Erik Sun, who showed up at the end of the night. Erik is an avid hunter and fisher, and was the one who had caught the spiny lobsters for our meal. I can't wait to start reading Erik's blog and see his fooding/hunting/fishing adventures all over the world. At a cursory glance, his pictures are already absolutely gorgeous.

See how beautiful and well lighted my pictures are? Chef Kevin had a lighting booth setup in this backyard so he could take pictures and upload them to the Kali Dining page on Facebook. It was so cute; he would make sure that my dish looked nice and would take me outside so we could both take pictures of the dish, before going back in to eat it. There are more spots for Kali Dining in the coming weeks, so make sure to go! You can either book an entire dinner time for yourself and friends, or you can go with one or two other people, or even just by yourself, and have a great night of eating, drinking and being merry.