It is First Friday again in Venice 90291 and the mob has taken over Abbot Kinney to sample all the best eats of trending and upstart LA food-trucks. As veterans of the chaos we headed straight to the Currywurst truck, which ranks in my top 4 with Dogtown, the Lobster Truck, and the Mexican Truck that parks at the corner of Flower and Lincoln but never comes to First Friday. As per usual I ordered the curry cheese fries and andouille sausage. So good! Every time. The fries had a little too much cheese on them for my taste this time, but there were different people working the truck than I remember. The fries come with a brown curry sauce, melted cheese, and mustard, the combination of which is delicious. The curry sauce and mustard cuts the cheese in just the right way. The andouille sausage is a classic, a thick roll bun to support it, and mustard, sauerkraut, and curry sauce top it.
We ate it in the makeshift noshing cove next to the Gjelina To Go Kitchen and then headed to the Tasting Kitchen for drinks to wash it down. TK is an old spot for Jonathan who was there when it started, but it’s still new to me and I never get tired of the fantastic cocktails. Yes it a restaurant, and quite an excellent one, but later the bar fills up with Venice night crawlers that are drawn in by the low lighting and the crazy creative cocktails made by the spiffy and talented bartenders. We settled into a Blue Bird and Undertaker to start with, and finished up with a Brave Heart and another Undertaker. The two Undertakers were mine and are bourbon based with lemon, while the Blue Bird is light, sweet and blue of course, and the Brave Heart is light and flavored with ginger. After some food and drinks we called it a most satisfying, quiet night.
Dinkel Dines 