A lot of people rag on Buddha's Belly, but on my first visit, I found nothing to complain about and enough to draw me back. There were parking places right out front, and the sunny patio was pleasant. Ramin recommended the ginger fried rice with beef (left), so we tried that and the Asian chopped salad. The fried rice is a huge, flavorful plate with veggies, beef pieces and a nice hint of ginger. A little spice would have been nice, but it's the kind of place where they don't want to scare the customers, and I can understand that. The chopped salad was also a massive pile of lettuce with little cubes of tofu and veggies, and if I were making it, I might have gone for less lettuce and more substance, but it was fine. Someone had also recommended I try the cod, but at $16.50, it seemed like a pricey lunch. So: West Hollywood prices and light on the spice, but friendly service and a crowd-pleasing pan-Asian menu make it a good casual choice on Beverly.
A few weeks ago, Blair's in Silver Lake started opening for breakfast, and none too soon as the Coffee Table will probably be closing in just a few weeks. Fortunately it's not too crowded at the moment, but go soon, because when the Coffee Table closes it's gonna be mobbed, I tell you! The menu? You've got your blueberry pancakes with mascarpone, your oatmeal with barley (yay, something healthy); your eggs with morels and shittakes; and various Benedicts. How did chorizo get so fashionable all of a sudden? I remember when you had chorizo if you were slumming it at the Rodeo Grill, but now at Square One and Blair's and BLD it's chorizo this, chorizo that. My egg dish, pictured, isn't the most attractive, but the combo of kale and crumbled sausage is tasty and I feel virtuous when I get my first serving of greens at breakfast ($10). In fact, I'm doubly virtuous, because Blair's serves a slightly odd side of sauteed arugula with the egg dishes. I'm not really used to cooked arugula, but it actually tastes pretty good. Matt's lox and bagel platter ($12) is nicely accompanied by pickled onions instead of nasty raw ones, and lots of capers and arugula. There's some really nice looking pastries in the case and they reputedly do a decent cappucino, so perhaps I'll go back and try the pecan sticky bun that was crying my name. I've a few minor quibbles -- the fruit cup doesn't have the lush, seasonal selection of the fruit at Square One; the toast arrives with nary a scrap of butter and none is offered; and a refill of coffee might have been nice. But really, it's hard to complain when there's breakfast with wild mushrooms and sticky buns and such just down the street from my house. The lunch menu has paninis, burgers, chicken caesar salad and beet and goat cheese salad...I was more excited by the breakfast menu, but you can go either way if you're there at a brunchish time.
Waaay back in the 1920s or so, Wilshire and Rampart was a snazzy place to be. The nearby Park Plaza hotel hosted some of the town's ritziest parties and fashionable folks stayed at the neon-topped Wilshire Royale Apartments, popping over to Bullock's Wilshire for tea and Perino's for dinner. Unfortunately, we all missed those days, when MacArthur Park was an actual park instead of a vast den of iniquity.
Don't forget to stop by the bathroom with its show-stopper $6,000 toilet, which was already covered by The Knife -- suffice it to say that sitting on a pre-heated seat and then being gently cleansed by a stream of warm water in a restaurant restroom is probably something everyone should try once.
I wanted to pick up some black cod and sundry Japanese groceries at Mitsuwa, so we stopped for lunch in the Little Tokyo Square mall at Hana-Ichimonme, which was recommended on Rameniac's blog. It was a perfect lunch spot, cute and cozy with a wide selection of ramen and bargain combination lunches. We had the signature Hanaichi ramen with is made with a soy sauce base; it has a distinctive taste of fish stock, which was fine by us but lighter and distinctive from the rich pork-based broth at Daikokuya. 
They also have the pork-based one and a miso-based one, with toppings like corn, kimchee and stir-fried vegetables. The pork gyoza were light, yet crispy and greasy in the best way; there's also a huge selection of rainbow-hued fruit drinks with various combos of red beans, ice cream, rice cake, gelatin cubes, etc. And my favorite, coffee jello. But we skipped dessert there and instead tried out Fiore/IF, the Pinkberry-esque spot in the Japanese Village Plaza. 
I like the clear plastic chairs and furry pink couch on which Matt chills in the photo, and I found the sour yogurt/green tea swirl very intriguing. I kept sampling a bit of the green tea and a bit of the sour flavor to see which I preferred, until it was practically gone. Very refreshing after a bowl of hot, salty ramen, but I don't think I'll be rushing there all the time when Pinkberry opens in Silver Lake.
I was invited to visit Celadon, the newish Asian small plates restaurant in the Third St. space formerly occupied by Yi, a pan-Asian restaurant with Filipino touches that seemed to scare off diners, and Tahiti, which was pleasant but didn't have much focus.
The dishes are imaginative, although some of his refined touches like the yuzu truffle viniagrette on the wontons didn't pop for me; either my palate is rather coarse, or the richness of the dishes overwhelmed the tricky garnishes.
