After a month of soft openings, this new eatery on Melrose, in a space I knew mainly as Casbah back in my club days, had an opening soiree for about a hundred movers and shakers.  (And me.)

My friend and I had a screening to get to after, but we happily stopped by for a few.  The place is so artistically dark that even Mr. X would be comfortable there!  We loved the very clever glass boxes on the ceiling, that each contain three lit real candles!  What a romantic touch. They must need a chimney sweep to get up there to light them each night!

Photo by Karen Salkin.

For this particular cocktail party, they served pretty whiskey concoctions and four kinds of passed hors d’oeuvres.  We picky eaters ate only two of them, so there’s not much to tell you about in the food category, other than to say we enjoyed the refreshing goat cheese filled cucumbers and delicious mushroom risotto balls.

This place has promise, but since they’re primarily a steakhouse and we didn’t get to try any meat, I’ll have to go back to do a real review for you soon.  And with the beautiful dark ambiance, Mr. X may even join me!

I’ve written about this chocolate company in the past, and even featured them on my TV show, Karen’s Restaurant Revue. I’ve run into them at a gifting suite and attended their West Hollywood opening. And now they’ve opened a new boutique in Santa Monica.

The opening reception was last month and was as sweet as their confections. I paid a quick visit, just to congratulate Kelly and John.

There was a tented bar in the back, lots of mingling, and attractive servers carrying trays with bite-sized pieces of several of their fudges.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t try more than a tiny bite because I was sampling a diet delivery program for a company, and wanted to be able to assess it correctly for them. But my friend, Candis, loved the pieces she tried, especially the dark chocolate with sea salt. It’s good that that was her favorite because each invited guest left with their own box of it. I guess mine will just have to wait until I’m done helping the diet food delivery company. But what a way to end a diet!