Grilled chicken from Beacon
The last time I had dinner at Beacon in Culver City was, wow, a boyfriend-and-many-bad-dates ago and pre CoC. I vaguely remember having the Bento box and not really having anything stand out about my dining experience. I’ll blame it on the company back then. Heh. In any case I hadn’t gone back til I got the 30% off discount for dinner from Blackboard Eats recently.
It was closing in on the last day when I could use the BE discount code so my bf and I decided to take our chances and show up at the Asian restaurant without any reservations. Fortunately there was some room at the bar which was lucky considering they apparently have a great happy hour here.
Green Tea Soba Noodles With Grilled Shrimp
While the other bar patrons enjoyed their HH spicy tuna rolls and vegetable tempuras, we dug into the dinner menu, first letting our server know that we had a discount code. He was so nice about it. I don’t know why I was expecting him to look down his nose at me for having one but then again Blackboard Eats is always good enough to remind discounted diners to tip their servers on the full amount.
Anyway, bf and I decided to split the green tea soba noodles with grilled shrimp and each ordered our own entrees of miso-marinated black cod with sesame-tossed green beans (him) and Thai-marinated grilled organic chicken with green papaya salad (me). OMG all were so frickin’ delicious! Couldn’t really taste the green-tea-ness of the soba noodles but didn’t care. Still couldn’t get enough of them and was sad to have shared the dish with bf. Loved the finger-licking goodness of the shrimp as well.
My chicken was so tender and I especially loved the skin. Yes, I love eating chicken skin especially when it was made like this where it was crisp and seasoned-savory. However, I wasn’t all that crazy about the green papaya salad, but then again I’m not crazy about pickled-flavored things. I don’t know why I thought it would be sweet. But I’m sure those who love that tarty flavor will love the side salad. I ended up giving it to bf who polished it off for me, appreciating its freshness.
As for bf’s cod, I’ll let him speak for himself: “Tender as can be, fell apart when I placed my fork on it. Freshfreshfresh. The sauce stuff was also quite tasty and complemented the fish, and the beans were every bit as fresh. Portion size was tidy, the ‘right’ size, quality not quantity — this was some delish stuff.”
Butterscotch Pudding
We were both so happy with our dinner that I was ambitious enough to go ahead and order the butterscotch pudding for dessert. “Really?” asked bf when I placed the order. I was so sure of my decision that I told the waiter before he could even hand us the dessert menu. I first spotted this baby on Beacon’s online menu and hoped it would be as tasty as the one I had at Rush Street’s grand opening party a couple of years ago.
Sure enough, it did not disappoint. Even bf dug in and he isn’t even into sweets. “This is actually pretty good!” he said spooning gobs of the yumminess into his mouth. The pudding was soo creamy and buttery and yet not overly sweet like butterscotch usually tends to be. I kinda wished bf hadn’t tasted it because what started off as MY dessert became ours.
We’ll definitely return. I especially want to give that happy hour a try.
Beacon
3280 Helms Avenue
Los Angeles, California 90034 (map)
(310) 838-7500