Paladar

I mentioned that we went to my cousins, "underground" restaurant while we were home for Easter, so I'm back with the deets.

Alex (my cousin) is about to graduate from USC  in Kinesiology and had full intentions of going to medical school until his knack for cooking lead him to start a "supper club" (apparently that is the proper name for this sort of thing). 

The restaurant is called Paladar, after the South American cultural tradition allowing families to run restaurants out of their homes, as long as they cook with locally produced food.  Cool huh? That's obviously not the case here in the states; hence, the "underground" connotation.

Anyway, enough mumbo-jumbo.  Every Thursday night (at 7pm and 9pm) is Paladar night at Alex's small, college apartment. He and his roommate, Bobby (his business partner) transform their living room into the dining area with dimmed mood lighting,  table-clothed banquet tables, tea candles with votives, and soft music.

Every week they put together a unique menu and shop for most of the produce at local farmers markets.  For a mere $15, customers receive a gourmet, three-course meal, with fresh baked bread from a local bakery. 

Menu from the night we went

Kevin loves his bread

First Course

Second Course

Unfortunately, I was flighty and forgot to take a picture of the last course. Oh well. 

You may also notice that they offered a "Wine Pairing" for $30 the night we went.  They don't always do that, that was a special they were having, but just in case you are curious and don't know what a wine pairing is (like I didn't) it is a small glass of wine that comes with each course.  I don't drink wine so I wouldn't know, but apparently there are different savory flavors that go best with certain foods. My parents, who also joined us for dinner that night, ordered the wine pairing and said it was delish. 

  

It was fun to see how popular the whole supper club/underground restaurant has become.  When they started, two years ago, they only had 6 people for their first dinner but it has grown to become reservation only.  They also had to add the second dinner at 9pm because so many people were showing interest.  And to be honest, I thought it was something that only college students would be interested in, but I was surprised to see USC professors and other adults from the area there to eat.

Kitchen

Chef-man (Alex) and me

Since the semester is ending and they are graduating they wont be doing Paladar from their apartment anymore. Rumor has it that they have plans to open up a real restaurant in the near future.

Check out these videos for some footage of Paladar in action, documentary style: here and here.