dineLA Restaurant Week: Boxwood Cafe by Gordon Ramsay

Not quite sure why it's referred to as Restaurant Week - considering it's two weeks - but either way, I love it! As soon as I heard that it was time for dineLA, I literally asked everyone I knew if they wanted to visit some local eateries. Luckily, I got several people to accompany me in the consumption of thousands of oh so delicious calories. My ass is certainly paying for it though!

So here is how it works, choose: lunch or dinner, price ranging from $-$$$, neighborhood of LA, type of food, and lastly restaurant. No matter what your choices are, the meals consist of three-courses: an appetizer, dinner, and dessert (you can choose the combination, selecting from three possible choices for each course). LA is such a cool city with so many hip restaurants, it was overwhelming as to where to start. The list had over 230 participating establishments so narrowing the options down to three was a bit difficult.

I work in West Hollywood, which if you are unfamiliar with LA, is only blocks from Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, and Hollywood. So we will narrowed it down by neighborhood since I was going with co-workers. Here is how the first dining experience went...(menu listed below as it was on the Web site)...

Boxwood Cafe by Gordon Ramsay

Dinner:

Appetizer- Cured Salmon Carpaccio

Dinner- Squash Risotto with Sage finished with Mascarpone and Aged Parmesan

Dessert- Chocolate-Peanut Butter Ganache with Salted Caramel Ice Cream

Price: $34

For my first dineLA experience, I wanted to go to Boxwood Cafe by Gordon Ramsay. I am a huge fan of his TV programs, and have always wanted to taste his food.

The restaurant is located in The London West Hollywood, a beautiful, swanky hotel located right next to the Viper Room and Whiskey a Go Go (both famous music clubs on the Sunset Strip). We learned that there are two sections of Gordon Ramsay's dining in the hotel; fine and casual. We were on the casual side, which was still upscale.

Although we noticed that we could pick our three courses off of the regular menu and spend less than the dineLA fee, we decided to go with the pre-set options. We quickly noticed that although the wait staff was courteous, they weren't too attentive. There was at least a 20 minute wait to be served between each of our courses, at one point I had nothing to drink, and we couldn't get our check when we were ready.

Most disappointing was the fact that the food wasn't all that I'd expected. It's THE Gordon Ramsay and I anticipated being amazed with everything I tasted, too bad I can't say that I was thrilled. Ramsay is always yelling at Hell's Kitchen contestants for making risotto wrong, so I thought his would be superb. Don't get me wrong, the food wasn't gross. I am just not sure if I'd go back.

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