How to Cure Roadrage

I love the light fixture at Gjelina. *Note: photo from Gjelina's website

After a long day of driving all around Rosemead / San Gabriel and Beverly Hills and encountering stop and go traffic, idiotic LA drivers and road construction everywhere leading to frustrating detours, Will and I went to Jerome's yoga class at Power Yoga.  As soon as I stepped on the mat, all that frustration and anger dissipated.  That's what I love about yoga; it simply does not allow you to think about anything else but concentrating on your poses.  It was such a hard class; it was my first class with Jerome and I loved it; he is my new favorite teacher at power yoga. We focused primarily on strength building. There were quite a few new moves that I had a lot of difficulty with (like the 360 degree rotating bridge), but that is what is great about yoga: no matter how long you have been doing it, you can always get stronger and improve. His class was just what I needed.

Afterwards, Will and I met up again and headed over to Gjelina in Venice for dinner. After only a 15 minute wait at 7:15pm which passed by quickly after opening a bottle of wine, we sat down at the communal table.  We had the oysters in the halfshell (kumamoto, kushi and malpeques), roasted sunchokes with salsa verde, grilled chicory with bacon vinaigrette and a fried egg,  hen of the woods mushroom with truffle oil on grilled 
toast, grilled squid with white beans, and an olive, chili, anchovies pizza with burrata.  We paired everything with a bottle of a 2009 Carneros albarino which was perfect with all the food, crisp with a little fruit and just enough acid to stand up to the food. I'm telling you, those Spanish whites are such a perfect match for food, and I was excited to see a California producer using the Spanish albarino grape. I really enjoyed the food; my favorites were the malpeques (former east coaster in me, reminds me of happy hour oysters at Five Points with Z.), the sunchokes (nice charred grilled flavor on the edges) and the mushroom toast (so decadent with the truffle).  While they are a tad heavy handed with the olive oil, the food is delicious nonetheless and the wine was helpful in balancing out the richness.  Service was good too, they checked in on us often and there was good pacing with the food; never once did we feel rushed even though there was a long line of people waiting by the time we left.  At $73 per person for just the right amount of food, a bottle of wine, and gratuity, the meal was relatively reasonable.  It was also so nice to catch up with Will, we hadn't seen each other in a couple of months even though we live just a couple blocks away.  I never know where the time goes!

Gjelina
1429 Abbot Kinney Blvd
Venice, CA  90291
(310) 450-1429