Restaurant Review #186: Friedel Caribbean Cuisine, Studio City

Mango beef

In the mood for a lazy dinner, but something different from the usual pizza or Chinese delivery, I ordered Freidel Caribbean Cuisine through a food delivery service called LA Bite (formerly Freeway Food). Using this service, you can place your order online and get food from restaurants that otherwise wouldn't deliver to your neighborhood; however, you'll pay a steep delivery fee (call the restaurant first and ask if they'll deliver directly to you!) and encounter higher than average minimum orders (for Friedel, the minimum order is $30). The food arrived as scheduled, but the scheduled delivery time was an extraordinary hour and twenty minutes on a Sunday night at 7:00. When the delivery doesn't come straight from the restaurant, it will naturally take longer, but not fifty minutes longer.


Festival bread

Unfamiliar with Caribbean food, we ordered more food than we needed to get a better feel for the cuisine. An appetizer of deep fried festival bread had a similar sweet corn flavor to a hush puppy, but with a smooth, chewy consistency.


Jerk chicken

Authentic jerk chicken is coated in a rich spice mixture, not drowning in sweet sauce, while mango beef (lead photo) doesn't contain anything that tastes like mango, but is still a pleasantly sweet dish with flavorful meat.


Curry chicken

Curry chicken wasn't memorable for much other than having fatty chunks of meat.

Entrees are reasonably priced at $9 - $16 each for a generous, filling portion of entree plus sides of rice, plantains, and cabbage. The restaurant offers a real variety of vegan and vegetarian dishes, most of which use a soy meat substitute (a few are veg only, while only one contains tofu). If I were to eat from Freidel again, I would go to the actual restaurant instead of ordering online, and I'd probably try some new dishes, though all but the curry chicken would be worth repeating.


Freidel Caribbean Cuisine
11320 Ventura Blvd.
Studio City, CA 91602
818.763.8100


Tags: Caribbean Food Studio City Ventura Blvd. Los Angeles

Restaurant Review #182: Big Sugar Bakeshop, Studio City

Big Sugar Bakeshop is a tiny new bakery on crazy-busy Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. It's so small you'll miss it if you're driving by at more than five miles per hour, but unless it's two in the morning, you probably won't be going much faster. The bakery has no parking, so you'll need to fight the masses for a meter on Ventura or a free spot on a nearby side street.


Chocolate cupcake

I stopped by the place hoping to satisfy a cake craving and pick up a gift for a co-worker. I sort of accomplished my mission. The display case offered no more than 20 items, far fewer than I expected from viewing their website (their menu is longer than what you see on display--I should have asked about that). They had three cupcakes, so I got one of each. I wasn't terribly impressed by them and didn't think they were worth $3 apiece. They were lightweight (I guess for $3 I wanted a dense cupcake) and the cake part was dry. The icing was superb, however--light, fluffy, and not too sweet. I had to whip up my own batch of buttercream frosting afterwards to finish off a craving induced by the vanilla cupcake. (Yes, my eating habits completely revolve around my cravings.) There aren't any tables, so don't expect to dine in. They have ribbon if you need your item to look gifty, but their packaging doesn't even begin to compare to Boule's (though their pricing does). The cupcake boxes have nifty cupcake holders to keep your cupcakes from sliding into each other on the drive home.


Vanilla cupcake

The gift selection was adequate, but could use more options. Right now, you can purchase well-designed cards for about $4.50 each, flavored gourmet honeys, obscenely priced tins of hot chocoloate (yours for only $22.50!), Kschocolate bars for $4.50, butterscotch sauce for ice cream, designer cloth napkins, mugs, luxurious hand lotions, and various other items.

If you're a cupcake aficionado, be sure to check out the newly launched Cupcake Finder LA.

Big Sugar Bakeshop
12182 Ventura Blvd.
Studio City, CA 91604
818.508.5855
Tue-Sat 10am - 6pm
Sun 11am - 5pm
Closed Mon.
Website


Tags:Cupcakes Los Angeles Studio City Bakeries