Ricky's Fish Tacos, Cheesestore of Silverlake, Pazzo Gelato, Forage, Yamazaki Bakery

Ricky's Fish Tacos: After a terrible experience at a Rubio's, I've been craving good fish tacos for months. A trip to London showed me how good fried fish can be (so amazing), and a free afternoon saw me hunting down not only a fish taco place, but a food stand. Food stands are another goal of mine, and this one was quite good. The fish was nowhere near as good as in London, but still better than most fried fish I've had in the US. Yummy, if a bit difficult to track down. I would eat again. Even better, it introduced me to the Silverlake area with lots of great stores.

Cheesestore of Silverlake: Our second stop was a cheesestore. I love cheese and especially love cheese shops with other import-y type goods. We bought their wonderful house olive oil (tasty but not overwhelming) and a baguette to eat it. Places that let you try olive oil are excellent and they get my money. A half pound of cheese...soft like brie but I forget the name...pretty good but a bit stinky. Also some salty caramels (so good). This was an awesome store. It looked like right outside the door they had a restaurant that was very busy, but we were full from fish tacos. Also right next door was Intelligentsia, which was incredibly busy so we didn't stop.

Pazzo Gelato: Across the street was a gelato place that was pretty good. They had several excellent flavor combinations. I had their balsamic vinegar and fig. I also tried the raspberry/mint/chocolate. While the flavor combos are great, they didn't quite pull off good gelato. Looking at the yelp reviews, I'm guessing they change flavors often. I would go again, but not go out of my way.

Forage: Earlier in the day we heard a radio story about this store (for buying ingredients from locals), and a random passerby told us they had tasty baked goods, so we stopped in. Very busy. The food looked great, and their oat bar with fruit/nut toppings was heavenly. The chocolate cupcake was also great...so moist and with cacao nibs. I loved it.

Yamazaki Bakery: On another day we checked out Little Tokyo. Bleh, I got five "pan" (breads/rolls/cakes) from here, and they were all tasteless, textureless, insipid. I would not let myself be dragged back.

We walked around the area and checked out the stores...bought a little teaset for $20...got some ok tacos at a foodtruck whose name I forget.

Yogurtland: Nearby however, was a Yogurtland. We tried four flavors (strawberry, chocolate, taro, and plain). Definitely just go with the plain yogurt. It was indistinguishable from pinkberry's and the other flavors were not as good. The toppings were fun, but we had higher quality strawberries at pinkberry and better lychee at frutti yogo. The brownie bites were nice, but a bit heavy. And the condensed milk squeeze bottle was a neat touch, but really not what I'm looking for on frozen yogurt. So good, but I'd rather go to pinkberry.

Science Center Cafe and Le Pain du Jour

Science Center Cafe: After a morning at the Natural History Museum, we had planned on eating at the food trucks. Unfortunately we were informed that they weren't going to be around today. Since the cafe was closed and they're constructing the food court, our only options were to drive back to Santa Monica or try the Science Center's cafe just down the block. Since the 10 W and 110 N were both packed, we went to the cafe though without much hope. When we got there it looked like they just had McDonald's and Taco Bell, but through a little door and past the Taco Bell desk, we found a sandwich/salad/soup...and Starbucks area. The chipotle chicken wrap had just a tiny hint of chipotle, so it was more like a chicken on salad wrap, but it was pretty good quality. I especially liked the fresh cilantro...in fact, I could've used some of that on my chili. The chili con carne had lots of meat plus a bit of cheese and red onion. I could've used more spice but it was really pretty good, especially for a cafe. All in all, thumbs up for a museum cafe.

Le Pain du Jour: This is probably the third or fourth time I've been here and I was specifically looking for a croissant but when I got there I realized the chocolate was too yummy sounding to pass up. Last time the chocolate croissant was lower quality than the all-butter (regular) croissant, but I am happy to say that this time they are both amazing. They also had french loafs right out of the oven and they are exquisite with a very clean flavor (just a taste of salt) and great crust. We also got two tarts, one strawberry/kiwi, the other pear. The crust is crisp and buttery, the custard is perfect, not too sweet, and the fruit is delicious and fresh. The best tart I've ever had.

Normandie Bakery and Noah's Bagels

Normandie Bakery in/near Culver City: This was recommended to me, and otherwise I wouldn't have stumbled on it. The mini muffin was excellent; I think it used buttermilk. The croissant was rather good, but not as flavorful as Breadman's or Le Pain Quotidien's. The blueberry scone was actually a muffin...very disappointing. The jam-topped butter cookie was quite good, with a full berry flavor and a buttery flavor. The baguette has an extremely crispy crust, but the crumb has poor texture, and there's no flavor. Not what I'm looking for in a bread. This bakery is the cheapest I've found in the area, though, as all the above cost less than $7.

Noah's Bagels in Marina del Rey: Very close to Mother's Beach, we stopped for a frozen blended caramel coffee that was weak and too sweet. Basically, it tasted like sugar, not coffee or caramel. The blueberry bagel poppers were pretty good, though with an unnecessary sugar coating. I would definitely get a regular (not coated with sugar) bagel from them.

Santa Monica Farmer's Market (various)

Farmer's Market (Santa Monica) today.

Mis Padres Tacos: one chicken w/ veggies taco and one beef w/ veggies taco (plus a few chips and a bit of salsa). Great all around. The corn tortillas are flavorful. The beef is properly browned/charred, the veggies are all fresh and combine into a wonderful taste. The chicken taco is put together slightly better than the beef, just because the beef could use a bit more kick...add the hot (red) salsa to really complete the beef taco. The chips are high quality and the salsas are pretty good. The red salsa is hot and very fresh tasting. The clear-ish, pink-ish salsa is mild-to-medium but not as flavorful. In all, I can't recommend this more. I would say it's better than any Mexican I had over three years in Texas.

Cafe Laurent: Peach and custard tart and blueberry muffin. The tart is just short of amazing. Beautiful and very tasty peach on the buttery pastry dough, separated by a creamy custard. Wonderful flavors, the tart is marred only by the slight sogginess where the peach juices flowed past the custard and reached the pastry dough. If I could only get these fresh! The blueberry muffin isn't bad. Not amazing like the tart, but still a good muffin. Plenty of blueberries, a good size, correctly cooked, but just not special. I talked with the salesperson again, he told me the only difference in the pastries at the farmer's market and the storefront is the environment/age, and he recommended I check out the Normandy Bakery for bread.

I think I need to update the pastry ranking because any pastry from the Cafe Laurent stall is great.
Oh, and when I last ranked pastries I forgot to mention the cheese danish/roll I got from Portos last week. I'll have to go again to remember exactly what it was like, but I do remember it was surprisingly good.

Espresso Experience: A Russian Kream Koffee. Great coffee here. Last week I got the espresso con panna and was blown away with the combination of whip cream and espresso. This week my Russian Kreme was good, but not quite great. The aftertaste was excellent, being nice and mellow. The coffee itself had good flavor, but the sweetener was a bit cloying...perhaps there was high fructose corn syrup involved?

Old Town Baking: A bag of six hand-sized ciabatta's. Not bad, they're coated in flour so that's what the mostly taste of. They're very soft with a pretty good crumb, but just don't have the flavor or texture that I'm looking for in a ciabatta. Last week's harvest loaf was great though, so I'm going to keep buying from this stand.