Beach City Baked Donuts had been on my donut radar for a while (yes, a donut radar, I have one!), and were tragically not represented at last year’s Donut Summit (may it forever live in infamy), so finally this weekend we trekked over to Redondo Beach to give them a try.

The donuts, as the name of the shop suggests, they are baked!  Not fried.  And the resulting donuts are tiny and cute, but not too tiny – size-wise, think in terms of a happy medium between your regular old fashioned glazed and those powdered sugar ones from the grocery store.  As with so many other little cute things, they are a Japanese innovation, and they come in very exciting flavors!  We tried four:  apricot, cinnamon sugar (which, we were told, is their best-seller), green tea, and the whimsically named bananaman, which was banana and chocolate chip.  They were all tasty, although apricot might have been my favorite.  Their texture was like a cake donut, but drier, and because of that dryness, the nice folk at Beach City recommended that we either eat them with coffee or warmed up, so we did both, and, let me tell you, warming them up made them verrrry tasty indeed.  The donuts are bit pricier than average – $1.50 for one, or $15 for a dozen, and since they’re a bit smaller, too, they aren’t exactly a deal, but they make for an interesting alternative to your everyday donut.  Beach City also touts the relative health benefits of baked donuts over conventional fried donuts, but honestly, I feel like anyone telling me that donuts are good for me is missing the point of donuts, which is that they are delicious and made out of sugar.  Also, Beach City serves this thing that they call an Affogato that is a donut with ice cream in the middle and espresso on top, which probably negate the health benefits, but DAMN IT LOOKS DELICIOUS.  All that aside, I really liked this slightly avant-garde variation on the Southern California donut shop, and, should we dare ever host Donut Summit 2:  Electric Boogaloo, I’m pretty sure they’ll give all those other boring old donuts a run for their money.

Beach City Baked Donuts is located at 501 N Pacific Coast Hwy., Redondo Beach.

The amazing organizers of October’s CicLAvia’s event just announced three- yes, three! – CicLAvia events: Sunday, April 10; Sunday, July 10; and Sunday, October 9.  They’re hoping to expand the original route into South LA, Chinatown, and/or Boyle Heights, but permits are pending and red tape is being cut.  For those of you who were not here to witness a huge chunk of LA proper shut down to traffic and open only to pedestrians, bicyclists, and random people playing hopscotch smack dab in the middle of 7th and Figueroa, check out Will Campbell’s excellent video below:

This is nothing short of a major public service announcement for my fellow coffee-loving Angelinos: Balconi Coffee Company has reopened on Olympic in Sawtelle (at the northwest corner of Olympic and Sawtelle). Some of you will remember Ray’s old shop on Rochester at Santa Monica. I’ve been anxiously awaiting word about his reopening since Balcony closed, and happy day, I got an email last week that Balconi (with an “i” not a “y” this time) is back. Hurrah! I haven’t yet been to the new shop, but I can tell you that Ray loves his beans. If the new cafe is anything like the old one, it will have a coffee menu that reads like a wine menu, and you’ll be able to order siphon coffee, lovingly made cup by cup, and enjoy that coffee while taking advantage of Balconi’s free wifi. Ray says he’s focusing on coffee right now, but will add other menu items as things settle down.

Update: Ray says the new Balconi is “a place to disconnect.” No wifi people. Just coffee. Very good coffee.

Details:
Balconi
11301 W. Olympic Blvd #124
Los Angeles, CA, 90064
10a-10p, 7 days

I do not like mushrooms.  I really, really do not like them.  Every once in a while, I eat a few off of someone’s plate, just to see if I still do not like mushrooms.  I’ve had everything from the crappy two-dimensional mushroom sliced overlapped on a bad pizza to $200+/pound truffles.  The pricey truffle was given to me by a work colleague who insisted that I didn’t like mushrooms because I was eating all the wrong ones.  He gave me a sliver of his precious lode, probably about $10 worth there, and I am sorry to say that that was $10 wasted.

But you probably like mushrooms.  Most people like mushrooms.  Most people who like food and life like mushrooms.

For you, then, I post this: the Los Angeles Mycological Society hosts the 27th Annual Wild Mushroom Fair on NEXT Sunday (February 13) at the LA County Arboretum & Botanic Garden in Arcadia.  There will be cooking demos, mushroom cultivation lessons, and other fungi-related fun.  Um, fun.  Full details are here.

Lobster mushrooms that really do smell like lobster courtesy bunnicula via the Blogging LA Flickr pool.