echo park and silver lake

just got back from e's. we met up this evening and decided to walk around echo park. it's got a beautiful park with a lake in the middle. the major attraction of the town. . what was even better was one street (douglas?) lined with rennovated victorian homes. finding it took some work. first we parked and attemped to walk it. after walking up and down some steep hills and circling around the same streets, we decided to get back in the car and find it by driving.

it was well worth the effort. some of the color schemes made me raise an eyebrow (shades of purple on one, dark forest green on another, etc) nonetheless, very beautiful and very east coast. made me forget that i was in LA.

after that, we drove over to silverlake. silverlake is a lot of fun. quite hip, bustling even on a sunday night with interesting shops and restaurants. we stopped at the "kitchen" for dinner. a smallish restaurant with only ten or twelve tables but pretty packed. we had a bottle of red wine left over from the hollywood bowl ($3 corkage fee!), shared a spinach salad with goat cheese, grapes, and walnuts tossed in a citrusy vinagrette. for an entree, i had the tri-tip beef stewed with onions over garlicky sauteed spinach and mashed potatoes. e had a soy-sesame marinated flank steak with wasabi mash and stirfried veggies. both were excellent. mine was tender and very flavorful. and the marinade on e's entree was suprisingly good. i've had similar dressings on seafood, but with steak it has a much more unique flavour. all in all, a delicious dinner without breaking the bank.