Ini Ristorante
Spicy miso carbonara & Butcher’s choice pizza
Bone marrow & toast
Beef carpaccio and house sangria
Came here for a Saturday lunch with the bf. I’ve seen a few pictures from this restaurant on Instagram and the menu sounded amazing. What we ordered:
Spicy miso carbonara - udon, bacon, shiitake mushroom, spicy miso cream, egg yolk
Butcher’s choice - pepperoni, sausage, bacon
Bone marrow & toast - miso glaze, herb salad, ciabatta
Beef carpaccio - waygu top eye, truffle cream, onion ponzu, arugula
House sangria - red wine, brandy, orange juice
Of all the dishes, the beef carpaccio was my favorite. Love the truffle cream on there. The bones in the bone marrow dish were amazing - nice deep grooves filled with marrow. Sometimes when ordering bone marrow, the bones are very shallow so you don’t get a ton of marrow. These were probably the deepest bones I’ve had. Might just be that one cow but who knows. It was awesome.
Ini Ristorante
16129 Brookhurst St
Fountain Valley, CA 92708
San Clemente
Casa Romantica
Casa Romantica is the historic home of Ole Hanson, a co-founder of the City of San Clemente. It’s a beautiful location right by the beach and features arts and cultural events. People also use it as a wedding venue. The day we visited, someone had a wedding planned for later that day. My bf and I stopped by here before heading over to Pizza Port for lunch.
View of San Clemente Pier
Beach view in the other direction
Walkway connecting the main house to the garden
The botanical garden was quite lovely here. We saw these giant hanging plants. Not quite sure what they are, but they look pretty cool and they are massive.
Butterfly statue
Mystery plant. What is it?
Huuuuge plant
Cloud tree statues
The inside of the house has a few antique furniture items displayed. The reading room is a unique shape, like a hexagon or octagon. Two of the windows open to allow ocean cross breeze to cool the room. Natural air conditioning!
One of the things that surprised me was the attention to detail in the house. Look at that ceiling in the ballroom. The recessed squares and all that detailing around the lights. And let’s not forget about the crystal chandelier.
The reading room
An interesting ceiling
It was a cute little tour. I would recommend going earlier in the day; it was getting a little crowded as we were leaving. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures from our Pizza Port lunch. But just know the pizza is delicious, and the beer! Favorite is California Honey Blonde Ale.
Locations:
Casa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens
415 Avenida Granada
San Clemente, CA 92672
Pizza Port San Clemente
301 N. El Camino Real
San Clemente, CA 92672
Messy Watercolors
Class: Messy Watercolors in Procreate by Teela, Every Tuesday
This courses teaches a messy watercolor style on Procreate. There are a total of 7 projects plus bonus content for prints, as well as extended licenses for the brushes (I love that Teela supplies all the brushes and the extended license as part of the course).
The first project is actually three mini practice projects using a leaf watercolor source image. The three projects demonstrate different levels of messiness.
Little Messy Leaves
Loose and Messy Leaves
Extra Loose, Extra Messy Leaves
Between the Little Messy Leaves and the Loose and Messy Leaves, there isn’t much difference on mine as I was still getting the hang of what “messiness” means in regards to the painting. The Extra Loose, Extra Messy Leaves, I was feeling more comfortable using the smudge brush so it has a bit more messiness in there. I think of these as practice warm-ups that introduce the new brushes and techniques.
Messy Popsicle. Reference (left), painting (right).
The second project is the Messy Popsicle. I love the colors on this one. The reference watercolor painting is on the right, and my version is on the left. Still struggled a bit with the smudge, this is most visible at the top of the popsicle with the darker pink color. I learned smudge does distort the nice texture from the brushes and stamps. So it needs to be used judiciously in order to balance the right amount of smudge and blend while maintaining enough of the interesting texture from the brushes. I’m still getting the hang of smudging and blending here.
Messy Popsicle
I love the splatter and texture in the brushes, just need to figure out how to make everything look cohesive as one painting. This popsicle reminds me of summer days, chilling out and things are easy breezy.
Messy Watermelon
I was pleasantly surprised at how the Messy Watermelon turned out. On project 3, we start using more stamps in the class for blooms, splashes, and stains. These help give that watery effect and create hard defining edges like on the watermelon rind.
Messy Echinacea
The purple in echinacea flowers are so pretty. This project introduces more stamps and more messiness. The petals were a little tough due to the layering and overlapping.
Messy Bird
At this point in the course, on the Messy Bird, I feel like I’m getting the hang of the messy watercolor technique. Getting better at blending, smudging, and warping the stamps.
Messy Fox
Messy Fox was pretty challenging due to all the fur and the light colors used like off-whites and greys. The course teaches a technique for a realistic eye and nose on the fox. This was pretty interesting, and I thought it turned out well. Basically using a lot of different colors to capture the color change in the eye and nose, then blending those all together. Zoomed in while I was working, it looked super weird. But then zooming out, it’s like ta-da! Magic! An eyeball!
Messy Beta Fish
The Messy Beta Fish is the last project in the course, took the most time, and was definitely my favorite. All of the bright and vibrant colors are just so beautiful. This project builds on all the previous techniques and packages them together. I used to have beta fish as a kid and always liked how their fins flow and billow in the water.
Overall, this was a shorter course than the Gouache Botanicals (24 projects including warm-ups vs 9 projects including warm-ups on Messy Watercolors) but there are a ton more brushes and stamps included in Messy Watercolors. I had a lot of fun learning this new technique and would definitely recommend the course. It is beginner friendly; more advanced artists can make modifications to suit their experience level.
Source photos:
Watermelon Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash
Echinacea Photo by Stephan H. on Unsplash
Bird Photo by Gabriele Agrillo on Unsplash
Fox Photo by Birger Strahl on Unsplash
Beta Fish Photo by Worachat Sodsri on Unsplash
How to: Edit the Shopping Cart Icon on Squarespace
A simple tutorial if you just want to change the weight of the icon and quantity counter to make it look more consistent with social media icons in the header.
Navigate to Design.
Navigate to Custom CSS.
In the custom CSS area add the code below for the icon and quantity counter. Change the font weight and icon stroke to your liking. I used 2px on my site since that seemed closest to the stroke of the Instagram icon which is right next to the cart.
.icon-cart-quantity {
font-weight: 700;
}
.icon--stroke svg {
stroke-width: 2px;
}
Before and after editing the stroke and font weight
Japan House Ramen Popup
Ramen Discoveries | A Popup Series
and
“The Art of the Ramen Bowl” exhibition
The popup series features different ramen styles and regions over the course of a few months. My bf and I decided to go during Mengyo’s Snapper Ramen style - the soup uses snapper fish. This seemed unique and different, especially compared to what ramen is typically available in our area (shoyu, shio, tonkatsu, or miso bases). I hadn’t had one with a seafood base before.
We made a reservation online using the booking system. This was pretty easy. However, the popup restaurant is a little difficult to find. It’s not in the same place as the exhibit, which is on the second floor. The popup is near Forever 21, there’s an elevator a little hidden in the corner. Take that elevator up to floor 5, round the corner outside, walk down the hall, there’s the popup restaurant. Took us a good 15 mins and asking around to figure it out.
Seafood ramen with smoked snapper and egg
Seafood ramen with chashu
The ramen was really tasty and unique. I got mine with smoked fish on top with an egg (of course) and my partner got chashu as his add-on. The soup definitely has the snapper flavor yet it’s nice, light, and not too salty. There’s an undercurrent of the smokey flavor in the fish and the egg. The chashu didn’t seem to have this, which is great if someone isn’t a fan of smokiness in general. I’d love to see more of this style of ramen in Southern California.
After finishing up our meal, we headed down over to the exhibit. The first section of the exhibit goes over the history and culture of ramen. It also deconstructs a bowl of ramen, which was very interesting. Breaking down all the different ingredients and technical specification as well as the bowl. Parts of this exhibit are interactive. There’s a display for smelling the different types of oils that go into the soup for example.
Gugi Akiyama
Kenjiro Sano
The second part of the exhibit is the designer ramen bowls. I took some photos of the ones I thought were especially cute. Like this one with little narutomaki - fish cake. I ate these frequently as a child in soups, etc. The little pink swirl seems so happy. And I’m currently obsessed with shades of blue this summer, so snapped a pic of a bowl like that.
Celadon - Kei Wakao
Shino Ware - Takumi Ando
The third part of the exhibit is about the Ceramic Valley of Mino which is a Japanese ceramics center. This part shares more about Mino - geography, history, and a collection of Mino ceramics. There’s different styles and they’re all beautiful.
Overall, this popup was a lot of fun. Loved the food and the exhibit. Makes me want to check out similar concepts for different items.
Location:
JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles
6801 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028
Have you been to a popup experience before? What’s your favorite type of ramen? Let me know in the comments below!