Farmers Market and LA

Friday 21st August. A leisurely start this morning with Lady P driving us to the Farmer's Market for a breakfast of eggs, bacon, hash and bagel and a decent cappuccino.  A few hours wandering around this interesting place sees us finding the chili-lime-salt that we had around the rim of the cocktail glasses in the Sacramento food tour. Beauty, we buy four bottles. After the market, we head up to Griffith Park and the big telescope, which provides a good view of LA and the smog. A detour for beer, chips and wine at a local supermarket and home to the apartment to blog, relax, have a cold beer and a shandy. Except Flashy mixes the shandy using tonic water by mistake, but no one seems to notice. We then plan dinner. One of the interesting things about bars and some restaurants/taverns in the US, is that very often they are hidden behind a small door with no windows. As a result, they often look very dodgy and you think twice about entering. But that is a big mistake as we discovered. Just across the road, sort of, is a single small door and a little sign saying "Mud Hen Tavern". This turns out to be a voluminous space, nicely appointed with an atrium space and party lights, hipsters, wannabees and us, with all tables full and turning over regularly. We desire cocktails, and plan to wander about the neighbourhood and look for a dinner restaurant somewhere else. The Mud Hen was so good and really pumping and we were lucky to get a table - and that was only on the basis that if they get a dinner reservation we would have to go. To avoid this, we decide to have dinner there as well as cocktails. This turned out to be an excellent choice, with great cocktails and sample plates - pretzel; small blue cheese, fig and rocket pizza; smoked beef jerky; chicken waffle croquet and lamb balls (not their balls - lamb meat made into little balls) with mint. A number of cocktails were consumed along with two bottles of red. I think we made it home.