I headed to LA last summer for a blogging conference and a couple of friends met me for some pre-conference fun. We flew on Hawaiian Airlines and arrived in the afternoon at LAX and easily caught an Uber to the JW Marriott at LA Live.  The hotel was in a great location in downtown LA and we had lots of restaurant choices around us. We were waiting for one of our friends who was joining us from San Diego, so we went to the hotel fitness center for a workout to energize us. The timing was perfect and by the time we freshened up, our San Diego friend joined us and we had dinner at gLAnce, the restaurant located in the hotel lobby.

We enjoyed a delicious mushroom pizza, chips, and a very pretty bottle of wine.We relaxed in the very comfortable room and relaxed and laughed and talked and ate chocolate until 3 a.m.

We got a little late start the next morning but still made it to the fitness center before starting the day. We were interested in trying a restaurant that we read about in a Serious Eats article.   We Ubered it to Little Tokyo to  have lunch at Marugame Monzo that Discover LA  has on its list of the best Japanese noodles in LA. Our timing was perfect and the wait was not very long. The servers thought we were Japanese nationals and spoke to us in Japanese. I tried my best to speak Japanese there and it felt like I was in Japan.

We enjoyed house-made udon while watching the workers in the glassed-in kitchen prepare the noodles. After our udon lunch, we explored Little Tokyo and had fun shopping for Japanese and Korean cosmetics, Japanese snacks, and clothing.

After our Little Tokyo adventure, we came back to the JW Marriott at LA Live and freshened up and headed to the hotel cocktail lounge in the lobby to participate in a free mixology class. What fun! We learned how to make a lemonade cocktail and a margarita. Both were refreshing drinks after a hot day of walking around and shopping.  And we found that the bar offered chicharrones as a bar pupu–fresh, hot, salty, crispy perfection.We ended the evening with dinner at Broken Spanish just a couple of blocks away from the hotel. We had to wait quite a while for our table to be ready but spent the time at the bar.  Once we finally got seated, our server offered to “omakase style” our dinner and bring out what he thought the best of the restaurant offerings were.

As a result, I don’t know what anything was called but everything was delicious.  What an awesome couple of days in LA. Living Hilo Style, LA Style.