“The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association’s Summer Season at the Hollywood Bowl kicks off this Sunday, June 23rd.
Now into the ninth year with award-winning chef Suzanne Goin and restaurateur Caroline Styne, Hollywood Bowl Food + Wine promises exceptional dining for visitors to the iconic venue. Goin and Styne’s culinary history has defined Los Angeles tastes since 1998 when they opened Lucques, their legendary first restaurant.”
“At the Hollywood Bowl, their California-inspired offerings include three restaurants and three marketplaces. Additionally, menus for the Terrace and Garden Boxes, which can be ordered a day in advance, are created by four-time James Beard Foundation award-winner Suzanne Goin. Goin’s vibrant new summer dishes pair beautifully with the exceptional wine and beer programs curated by Caroline Styne, the James Beard Foundation’s 2018 Outstanding Restaurateur of the Year award recipient. Overseeing the broad range of dining options serving Hollywood Bowl Food + Wine’s thousands of nightly guests is Executive Chef Jeff Rogers.”
“This year Caroline Styne has curated a diverse retail wine selection in the three marketplaces offering a broad selection of varieties and options for wine lovers visiting the Bowl. The markets feature a number of canned wines as well as a wide selection of vegan, organic and biodynamic bottles, including a collection of natural wines from producers including Broc Cellars, Wavy Wines, Nat Cool by Neipoort and Hollywood Bowl wine sponsor WINC wines.”
“Returning for the 2024 season are the Wednesdays and Sunday Market Tastings – a 14-week program of complimentary wine tastings at the Plaza Marketplace with guest winemakers, importers and sommeliers hand-selected by Caroline to give the venue’s visitors an immersive and personal experience with her favorite people in the wine world.”
“Hollywood Bowl Food + Wine’s many dining options include three sit-down restaurants, street-food kiosks, pre-ordered picnic boxes and a full-service dinner delivered to your box seat. For private events, Hollywood Bowl Food + Wine provides catering at several locations for groups both large and small.”
Here’s a lagniappe from the Hollywood Bowl : Ticket holders that use the Hollywood Bowl Park & Ride or shuttle bus can show their ticket to receive 20% off purchases at the Hollywood Bowl Plaza Marketplace, including wine purchases.
Continuing with us to uncork all that is Hollywood Bowl Food + Wine 2024 is restaurateur and Wine Director Caroline Styne.
Hi, I'm Chef Rudy Soremin, Princess Cruises head of culinary arts, and the menu maker for a catch by Rudy, that's me, come serve with us when I want the asking king crab of food news, at least the salt-cold restaurant show on AM/A30 KLA radio. And welcome back, it is the so-called restaurant show, and happily we're here with you every Saturday morning from 10am until 12 noon, right here on AM/A30 KLAA, the home of Angels Baseball 2024, and you can also catch us on the Angels radio AM/A30 KLAA app. I'm Andy Harris, the executive producer and co-host of the show, and we're enthusiastically presented each and every week by Melissa's World Variety Produce and West Coast Prime Meats. Well, we definitely know from the weather summer is here, and another hallmark of the summer is the kick-off of the summer season at the Hollywood Bowl, which is tomorrow, and a great thing at the bowl, since Hollywood Bowl food and wine came in, under the tutelage of executive chef Suzanne Goan, and restaurateur in Somalier, Carolyn Stein. The food at the bowl is up to what is being performed on the stage, and happy to welcome back Carolyn Stein to talk more about the food. Carolyn, everybody loves barbecue, of course. Tell us about what's on the menu at the backyard this year, because that's one of my favorite outlets. Yeah, we love that location, and first of all, it's situated in such a perfect place. Kind of see the stage, you're a little bit open to the theater, and of course you cook everything over these two gigantic wood-burning grills, and so the smell of everything cooking up there is just super dreamy. And as opposed to the wine bar, which is all small plates, this is more of an appetizer, entree, steakhouse kind of experience. We do beautiful ribeye steak, and lamb chops, and an incredible country-style pork chops. And of course, fish, this beautiful, bah-hot, striped bass on the menu, it serves the corn succotash, avocado, and watercress, it's very bright and summery. Even though everything is sort of cooked on the grill, and full of beautiful, rich, charred flavors, it's still sort of bright and light and fresh, and perfect for summer. And beautiful, like, Rob R items, we do spicy shrimp, a fierce-cream shrimp, and a lobster lui, and she's also put tin fish on the menu here. You had me at lobster lui. Mm-hmm, I know. It's so good. It's so good. Two grams of talented. Really, the food is great. Now, of course, L.A., you have to have a good burger, and I know at Kitchen22, I think you can get some of the fried chicken, but tell us more about what's on the menu at Kitchen. Kitchen22, because I think you can get a burger there. Oh, yeah. You can get a burger, you can get grilled cheese, and what you can get, you can also get Spanish fried chicken, which is a signature item from AOC. It's fantastic. Spicy fried chicken with a little cumin butter, and served with romesco aioli. You can get salads and sandwiches there, too, but really, it is definitely the burger shack, for sure. Always good. Now, of course, it is L.A., so sushi. Tell us about the sushi options at the Hollywood Bowl, because I know it's something you're proud of. And, you know, in terms of buying sushi at a venue or an arena, I would buy it from you at the Hollywood Bowl, but I might be a little suspect elsewhere. You know, I have got to tell you, our sushi is so, so good. It is truly something I'm trying to let people know about, because, like you said, you might go there thinking, "Oh, it's supermarket sushi. You don't want to -- it may not be the best place to get it." But, actually, we have sushi provided to us from this fantastic restaurant in Glendale. There's a sushi bar called seaweed, and the sushi chef there is insanely talented, and he's put together the most beautiful boxes of sort of sushi that you can get in our marketplace. You can also order it pre-ordered to your box feed, or even as a day of order. If you get to your box feed, you have an ordered food, you can still order some sushi day of. He makes it daily, delivered right before the show starts, so it's super, super fresh. And it's just beautifully sourced fish, really gorgeous presentation, and beautiful taste. I just cannot rave enough about the sushi that we have there. I think you just had your form, so all good as far as that's concerned. Now, you have three marketplaces that are grab-and-go places that are at the bowl. What can our listeners expect to get at the marketplace? Because I know that's where you also have these wonderful cheese as sort months. Yes, we do beautiful cheese plates and charcuterie plates, and we have prepared salads and sandwiches too, sort of big green salads as well as, you know, smaller green salads available. We have lots of sort of snacks and sweets and tons of wine, tons of wine and beer. And any kind of cookie you might like. Any kind of crispity crunchy thing, we have so much available because a lot of people get there. We have enough time to prepare a picnic or maybe didn't want to lug a picnic up. And so we have plenty of provisions for people to be able to put something together on the site. Love it. Now, of course, one thing that Luke and AOC was known for, are known for, is some outrageous desserts. And I know you don't disappoint at the Hollywood Bowl, so make us even hungrier. Okay, let me see. Well, in the backyard, we have a fantastic cheesecake tart with candy come quads, blackberries and blueberries. Because, you know, we love highlighting local produce and the summer fruit when we have it. This is dreamy honey panna cotta. It's just super silky and luscious with strawberries and raspberries and creme fraiche. We have a chocolate hazelnut torta. We have this milk chocolate torta on the menu at the wine bar. And, oh, our signature butterscotch protogram. And then in the marketplace is actually, we also carry some of these desserts that I've just noted. But in addition to those, we have fantastic ice cream pies and soft served from magpies, which is a local ice cream shop here in LA. And they do spectacular vegan ice cream as well as regular ice cream. And their vegan ice cream is just perfection. You would never know it's vegan. The texture is perfect, flavor is amazing. So really excited to offer those too. And an interesting footnote about magpies, Carolyn, that we can share with our audience is, is sometimes serious executive chefs transition into other food products. You know, maybe what they really wanted to do was do barbecue. And in the case of magpies, you have a very serious fine dining executive chef that what does he really want to do? Well, wonderful soft serve ice cream, that being Warren Schwartz. So, you know, soft serve seems to be having a moment in LA right now. You're starting to see this on some very high-end restaurant menus. There's always popular in the quick service places. But it's kind of fun to see to get this elevated to the fine dining level. And, you know, of course, you have it available at the bowl. I mean, one would expect. Yeah. Now, and yeah, Warren actually Warren worked with us at Luke for a long time. And so when we found out what he was doing, what a perfect thing that maybe can help support him. They're killing it. He and his wife run this company and they're just doing such an amazing job. And the ice cream pies are kind of a new addition. So, again, I kind of like the way magpies is going. Totally. Now with you. Now, one thing we have neglected, Carolyn, and when we should not, you are a very serious wine person. It's something that Luke and AOC is known for, very serious wine list. In the wine community, you are very, very popular because every winery owner, every winery distributor, every wine salesman would love to give you a presentation. And unfortunately, they're just not enough hours in the day. But what you can do, and what you have done, is have a very elevated wine program at the Hollywood Bowl from buy the glass to buy the bottle. All price ranges kind of give us a little overview because that picnic that you have at the bowl, unless you have a glass or bottle of wine with that or a craft beer, I just don't think the experience has been complete. Nothing is complete without wine. Thank you very much. I have such a good time putting together the list for the bowl because I get to paste a variety of wines at different price points because I do want to have something for everybody. I want to have affordable wines as well as uber high-end wines for those people who are enafiles. And so, yeah, we have, we sell wine at any possible place that you can pay for anything at the bowl. Even the concession stands, you know, we have, we have a lovely lower tier price level for wine. And then we have a step up, and I highlight a couple of wineries there. One is Maison Noir. His name is André has been Mac, and he makes fantastic Pinot Noir from Willamette Valley. So we have his wine up in the concession stands as well as Brown family vineyards. Both of these wineries are black-owned wineries, and Brown family makes this house of Brown Chardonnay, which is fantastic and bright and beautiful, very user-friendly. And so we highlight those two wines in our concession stands as well. And then in the restaurants, of course, we have, you know, a fairly expensive wine list. Everything from California to France to Austria, Italy, Spain. We try to have a pretty international mix at a variety of levels, but there's some really fun wines on the list, for sure. Most definitely. Now, in terms of being accessible, you're continuing a program that you started a few years ago, and these are special market tastings that you have, I believe, on Wednesdays and Sundays. And I guess you already had one this week. Kind of fill our listeners in on that particular program, because again, that's unexpected, and it just adds to the experience of enjoying a performance at the bowl. Yes, every Wednesday and Sunday we do a complimentary wine tasting in the marketplace plaza. And we bring in winemakers, wine distributors, wine importers to come and pour free taste for guests. You just want to come and have an experience. It's kind of a nice way to connect the guests with the bowl, with the wine program directly. For Juneteenth, Wednesday, that was our first tasting. And I did highlight the wines of Andre Mack, who I mentioned before, who was Maison Noir. We pour a couple of his wines. And we have just a really fun variety of people coming to pour. It's really fun. It's been an hour before the gates, so we're out there pouring for a good few hours for the show. And it's really fun. People get to learn something, they get to chat with a wine maker, make a new connection. A lot of people have gone to visit the wineries after having the taste in the plaza. So it's just a great way to get up close and personal with the wine list and with our guests. Can you tease who's on the docket for this Sunday? For this Sunday, let me just fill out my, I'm just a little old and I can't remember. And Caroline, I don't expect you to have everything in front of you. You've been doing really well, I mean, between just the menu at the bowl to have all of that and your head is pretty impressive. So this Sunday, because of the opening night, we don't have anybody pouring in any plaza. There's so many activations going on that it was going to be a little bit crowded. So we're not doing that this Sunday. But on Wednesday, July 3rd for Harry Connick Jr. I have a wine distributor from Springboard Wineries and we're going to be pouring Red Car Chardonnay, a local cinema-based winery, as well as onward, another winery from up north who specializes in natural wine. So that's going to be a lot of fun. You know, for various shows, like we're trying to be a little thematic. So, you know, if there's Italian music, we're going to pour some Italian wine. We have a lot of fun people coming. And actually, one thing I'm really excited about is on Wednesday, August 7th is we're pouring French Bloom, which is a new, non-alcoholic wine from the Champagne House tattinger. And they've actually made a really, really delicious, non-alcoholic champagne. So we're excited to pour that, too. Carolyn, I'm going to take your word on that. But I have, boy, I have not tasted a non-alcoholic champagne yet that I think even comes close. So this is good to know, French Bloom, okay? Yes, I know. I got to give it a whirl. Yeah, it's really good. No, you would definitely know. Now, another thing that I know they're doing at the boldish year that is not directly involved in your area, but I know you can speak to it, you know, parking is always something that you need to plan ahead for there. And what the Philharmonic has done this year is they have increased the options of park and ride and are really suggesting that to patrons to make it a lot easier for them because there's just so little on-site parking at the bowl and it's so congested. And then once you get in, you know, with a vehicle, it's a little difficult to get out. So can you kind of just illuminate our audience a little bit about these off-site parking options because it's really the way to do it and it's a lot less hassle? Yeah, you know, speaking to some people who did the park and ride for the first time the other day, and they said it was actually so easy and so fun. So I say definitely go for it, yes, because there are fewer parking spaces available than ever before. They needed to sort of deal with the congestion in the neighborhood. And so the solution is more park and ride options. Lots of access for people who are willing to do that, and I suggest trying it. I think once you try it, you'll like it. And they've sort of moved all the lots around because, yes, that's fact parking was also kind of a nightmare. Everyone definitely would complain about the stacking and having to wait forever to get your car out. So this has been a solution towards that. And so far, people who have taken that route have really, really enjoyed it. And just to add to that, Carolyn, their park and ride lots for the bowl all over town. So really, almost wherever you may live, there's something that is convenient for you. And again, this just takes the hassle out of it because you want to go there and have a wonderful evening. And having to worry about getting out after the concert. If you even were able to get in because there's a very limited amount of parking to begin with, you just circumvent something that, you know, why have that extra aggravation, as I like to say. Exactly. I hear it's kind of a party on the buses too. So, you know, I think, I think, Carolyn, everybody is in the right frame of mind. Ladies and gentlemen, again, it is the summer season at the Hollywood Bowl. Kicks off tomorrow with a tribute to Henry Mancini. And we will be speaking with Carolyn and Suzanne a little later in the summer because the big annual charity event they do. L.A. loves Alex's lemonade stand is coming up. And if you like, if you are a foodie and you appreciate the big national prominent chefs who all come in to support this event, as well as more wine varieties than you possibly could even sip and enjoy. This is the event for you. And Carolyn, let's leave them with what the date of Alex's is this year so people can get that on their calendar. Saturday, October 5th at UCLA, you are so excited. I cannot wait to this event my favorite day of the year. Oh, just the food offerings are unbelievable. And of course, underlining all of this, Carolyn, is a really wonderful cause. And when we speak with both you and Suzanne in the coming months, we'll get into all of that too. But again, this is one that you don't want to miss. Ladies and gentlemen, James Beard award-winning restaurateur in Sommelier, Carolyn Stein, the season kicks off at the Hollywood Bowl tomorrow. You are listening to the SoCal Restaurant Show. When we come back, yeah, gotta wrap up the show. 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