During dineLA’s first summer week, Steven, fellow blogger Holly and I decided to try the restaurant BLD. We had a great although somewhat pricey meal at the nice West Hollywood restaurant. The decor wasn’t too notable except for an interesting tree in the back and the logo of the place is styled much like eating utensils.
BLD serves American cuisine with a French influence. The first thing I noticed when checking in on Foursquare was that all of the reviews and tips were about the restaurant’s breakfast menu, not dinner. So we will have to be back to try breakfast as well, but dinner was very tasty. The thing you have to remember about dineLA is that it’s not cheap food, but it’s the amount of food you get for the same price of a regular meal at any restaurant.
We were able to add any of the appetizers for only $8 extra so Holly ordered the Cajun Mac & Cheese Bites. They were delicious mac & cheese 
baked into fried yummyness. For our first course, we tried the heirloom tomato salad, beef carpaccio and crudo. The heirloom salad was a traditional salad with an interesting lime vinaigrette. The carpaccio featured raw beef (although it just looked like ham or turkey). It had an interesting strong flavor but my favorite by far was the crudo, which also had raw ahi tuna bits that made it taste like sushi. Great first dish!
Next we ordered pan-roasted pork chop, pan-seared scallops and summer squash cavatelli. The pork chop had a really nice fruity flavor added by the peach glaze. The corn relish on the scallops was also a nice touch. The cavatelli seemed to me like a variation on one of my favorite dishes, mentioned before: mac & cheese. Instead of macaroni noodles, squash was mixed with a creamy cheese marscapone for a healthier alternative. Quite delicious.
For dessert we had two mixed berry tarts and a brownie sundae. I wasn’t a big fan of the salted caramel ice cream but you can’t go wrong with a brownie and root beer sauce. The mixed berry tart was delicious, though, except it needed hot fudge to be perfect.
Our entire bill came out to around $30 per person, certainly not a budget meal, but we did eat quite a lot of food, so a great opportunity to splurge and try some new things.
Check out the rest of our pictures from BLD on Facebook. You can also see our pictures of our lovely meal in 3D here. We’ll have more posts soon on the Hollywood Bowl and summer festivals coming up. Hope you’re having a great weekend, Los Angeles!
Surviving LA on a Budget 