Cocktailia

When I mentioned to Matt Robold that we’d be visiting LA and wanted to try out something new, he was full of great sounding suggestions. A couple rum bars, a mezcal and tequila place, and more. I was just…

I spent last week in Los Angeles and had a chance to meet up with some LA friends for a drink. While my first thought was to meet at Seven Grand, I realized that there are still bars in…

In a couple months Cocktailia will be relocating from San Francisco to Portland, Oregon. Among other things, this means that my half-dozen annual trips to LA are going to be stopping, so I was sure to hit at least one…

Sometimes nice bars show up in unexpected places. When in the Los Angeles area, I generally assume that I’ll be going into LA proper to get a good drink so I was pleasantly surprised by Lula in Santa Monica,…

When researching LA bars, The Hungry Cat kept coming up. My intention was to find bars and lounges, not restaurants, but this place came up so often (particularly on Chowhound) that I finally decided to add it to…

We didn’t plan on hitting Tiki Ti on our recent trip to LA, but sometimes you just need to tiki it up. We were near a beach, experiencing some real summer weather for a change, and we heard the…

We were in Los Angeles all of last week, and I had gone armed with a short list of bars I compiled the week before. My list focused on creative, well-made cocktails, not necessarily popularity, but the two often go…

Our final stop on our recent trip to Los Angeles was Boardner’s in Hollywood. Boardner’s was one of my favorite bars when I lived in LA. I didn’t come here all that often, but it was usually the…

The Dresden Room, located in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, has been operating since the 1940s but became famous after its prominent appearance in Swingers in 1996.

We stopped in here around 8:00 on a…

Sarai and recently I spent a week in Los Angeles, extending Memorial Day weekend by a couple days on either side, and made a point of hitting a few old familiar spots. Saturday evening we went bar hopping with Nathan,…