Foodie Friday: Are Yoo Hungry? The Foundry on Melrose!

Welcome to Foodie Friday! This is where I post weekly blogs on my obsession with food. These blogs are usually photos of food I’ve eaten at cool places, recipes that I love, and interviews with foodie bloggers, chefs, and authors. Please note: I am NOT a trained food critic or chef. I just love to eat. And I’m obsessed with The Food Network and The Cooking Channel. I’m basically a Foodie Groupie. 🙂 Hence why I decided to post every Friday about food.

A quick announcement: I’ve got interviewed lined up soon with two famous food journalists/cookbook authors – ROBIN MATHER (“The Feast Nearby”/Ten Speed Press ’11) on Friday July 29th and DOMENICA MARCHETTI (“The Glorious Past of Italy”/Chronicle ’11) on Friday August 12th. Please stay tuned and mark your calendars!

Today is another installment of “ARE YOO HUNGRY?” This features self-indulgent photos of yummy food that I ate recently. 🙂 This week, I had dinner with some friends visiting from out of town. They are super cool original punk rockers from the LA early ’80s scene and worked in the record industry as well as managed cool bands like Thin White Rope and The Poster Children. They are also hardcore foodies. One friend, Michael L. Compton, also has a great blog where he posts these great essays on his culinary adventures: http://theorderoftheomnivores.blogspot.com/ (Stay tuned, his blog will be up and running on a more regular basis as he settles into his new home of Las Vegas).

We met for dinner at the amazing THE FOUNDRY ON MELROSE. This is the new restaurant from chef ERIC GREENSPAN, who made his reputation as Executive Chef at Patina and the opening chef at Meson G. I loved Eric when he appeared on The Food Network’s “Next Iron Chef.” For more info on the restaurant, go here: http://www.thefoundryonmelrose.com/

(Keep reading after the jump for all the yummy food pictures! I apologize for the quality, they were all taken on my iPhone without a flash.)

For our dinner, we ordered a whole BUNCH of items. That was because we had an amazing coupon discount as well, so it was also an affordable dinner. But even without the coupon, the regular prices at The Foundry on Melrose are actually very reasonable – you can eat gourmet food and not break your wallet. 🙂

I had heard so much about the famous grilled cheese sandwich from shows like THE BEST THING I EVER ATE on The Food Network, so of course we had to order it for the table. 🙂 It was very rich and decadent and perfectly melted. It was also the perfect size as a rich little appetizer for a table of five people.

I ordered the MARKET MENU, which had two choices per entree (salad or soup, main entree, and dessert). It’s a fantastic deal and you get a lot of bang for the buck. I know everyone’s on a budget these days thanks to our economy 🙁 so this Market Menu is a great deal when you want to have a special dinner celebration but are counting your pennies. 🙂

I ordered the soup – White Corn Soup with green tomatoes and halibut fritters and diced pickled watermelon rind. They first served it without the soup – only the fritters and fruit:

And then the waiter came over and poured the soup on top of this lovely presentation. How classy is that? 🙂

The soup was creamy, sweet, and the crunchy fritters and fruit added a tangy bite so you weren’t overwhelmed by all that sweetness. I could have licked the plate clean. I saved some of the soup so we could dip our grilled cheese into it. It also tasted good even after it had cooled down.

We also ordered the Open Faced Cuban Reuben w/pork belly, gruyere, pickled cabbage, mustard appetizer. It is rather huge – like half a sandwich – so for someone like me who fills up pretty quick, I think this could have been a whole meal for me. Again, it was a gourmet version of a Cuban sandwich. I liked the sourness of the pickled cabbage balanced with the fattiness of the pork belly.

One friend ordered the Chopped Salad w/pistachios, currants, mixed vegetables. I’m not a fan of chopped salads – for some reason, I don’t like my salads all chopped up like that. But this was DELICIOUS. I can’t even describe what was in it. In fact, it was so delicious that it contained fennel, which I normally am NOT a fan of, and I loved the fennel! See, Eric Greenspan can work MAGIC on people who are not fond of fennel! 🙂

And then… a glorious surprise. The kitchen graciously gave us a special free appetizer treat! How CLASSY is that? I love restaurants where they truly care about the customers and treat us well because they know we’re passionate about good food. So thank you, Foundry on Melrose, for the freebie Corn & Chorizo Agnolotti w/tarragon & lime brown butter!

See? It even had FOAM. I get all excited about foam even though I know some foodies say it’s old news. Then again, I get excited when I receive amuse bouches! Or all this extra bread between our courses, like these yummy biscuits with scallion or chive butter:

Another friend ordered the Caramelized Scallops w/rhubarb, long beans, chicken oysters. I didn’t get a chance to taste it, but he said it was the best scallops he had ever had! I love me some scallops, so I’ll have to try this next time!

For the main meal, I ordered the Crispy Skin Salmon w/green beans, fingerling potatoes, garlic cream. This dish was perfect – the salmon was medium rare and just melted like BUTTER when you ate it! There was just the perfect amount of garlic cream that did not overpower the dish. The skin was super crispy and I wish they made bags of just the crispy skin alone, like a bag of potato chips. 🙂 Because I cannot eat a lot, I only ate half of this for dinner. I saved the other half for lunch the next day. So I felt like had two meals for the price of one. 🙂 And it tasted fantastic cold right out of the refrigerator!

Another friend ordered the Butter Poached Turkey w/turnips, apples, spaetzle. I didn’t get a chance to taste it, but the words “Butter Poached Turkey” were enough to convince me I bet it tasted like a little slice of heaven. 🙂

Another friend ordered the “Patio Season” Burger w/cheddar, Hawai’ian bread, summer condiments. We LOVE Hawai’ian bread for how soft and sweet it tastes. It was the perfect complement to the perfectly seasoned burger that was so juicy! The different condiments gave you the opportunity to play with a variety of tastes, and the onion rings had a pickled flavor that was really unique and tasty. 🙂

Finally, dessert. Thankfully one friend had the Toffee Banana Croissant Bread Pudding w/bourbon whipped cream, which I was very curious about. It was so delicious – the bread was moisty but still dense, and the chocolate and spicy sweet toffee added a kick! They also had a smaller portion, but it was so rich that you felt you had eaten much more.

I am a HUGE panna cotta fan. I don’t know how to make it, so I always order it when it’s on the menu. I had to try the Buttermilk Panna Cotta w/raspberries. OMG. I could have eaten a whole vat of that. In fact, that is my one huge complaint about this restaurant – CAN’T YOU SERVE A POUND OF PANNA COTTA FOR ME INSTEAD? 🙂

The best part of this meal? Normally, these types of fancy gourmet restaurants use a ton of butter and you feel really sick afterwards because the food was too rich. Here, the food was rich but not overly rich, so although we felt full, we didn’t feel sick afterwards. Which is always a good thing. 🙂 Plus, I had a gourmet lunch to take to the work the next day with my leftovers!

Anyway, I hope you get a chance to visit The Foundry on Melrose whenever you are in LA. It’s a fun place with great service, great food, and reasonable prices.

One final note – we did notice on the menu that there was an item that said “Ask about the Big 45!” So we did. Turns out it is a HUGE lobster with a ton of butter. They only serve one each night and it’s first come first served.

We were second. Oh well! The people to our left looked like they really enjoyed it. 🙂

Has anyone been to the Foundry on Melrose? Or do you have other places you’ve eaten at that you enjoyed and recommend to me? I look forward to your comments.

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Hope you enjoyed this week’s FOODIE FRIDAY! Stay tuned for next week’s daily blogs – MUSIC MONDAY, TV TUESDAY, WRITER WEDNESDAY, TUNA THURSDAY (about my cats), and FOODIE FRIDAY. Blogs are posted daily Monday through Friday at 9 AM PDT! Have a great weekend and Happy Eating! And, as always… Happy Writing! WRITE LIKE YOU MEAN IT!