Wilshire Restaurant - Dine LA Week

My favorite week of the year aside from all the holiday and vacation weeks I have, is Dine LA week. For a few weeks out of the year, a ton of restaurants in the LA County area have specialty 3 course menus that highlight their restaurants. You can try these places for dinner and some for lunch for a reasonable price for a nice tasting menu including a appetizer, entree, and dessert. This year, I toned it down to one place. Lately I've been trying to limit the amount of "luxury" eating due to trying to lose weight, eating healthier, and saving money. Luckily my best friend Jennifer sent me a nice giftcard to Wilshire as a thank you awhile back. What better time to use the giftcard, so thank you Jennifer!

The restaurant was uber trendy and I thought used the spaces quite uniquely. We started off at the bar for drinks. One of the bars was located outside and sort of intertwined with the trees (the bar was basically built around the tree). My friends Adrienne and Alex tried Wilshire and had a bad experience with the food and service, so I was a little biased. However, I think they redeemed themselves and I thought the food was great and the service excellent.

I decided to have the Dine LA menu which included a variety of choices for the appetizer, entree, and dessert. For the appetizer I had the choice of Kabocha gnocchi, grilled octopus salad, or something I can't remember...hehe. I chose the octopus salad which was grilled nicely and served with some frisee and a puree of some sort, I think a red pepper one. My date decided to go off menu and started off with a large crabcake singaporean style. It was spicy with large chunks of crab. For the entree, the choices were duck leg cassoulet, pot pie for two, and diver scallops. The pot pie sounded delish, but it was for two. The duck leg was unique and I've always wanted to try a cassoulet which is a French dish that is slow cooked with white beans. The meat on the leg fell of the bone with just a touch of my fork. It was so tender and perfectly flavored with 5 spice giving it a sort of Chinese taste to it. My date opted for lamb which was tender and served with an interesting array of Indian spiced quinoa, a soy flavor Japanese eggplant, and Raita. I guess they were going for a Indian, Asian, American fusion? For dessert, it was a no brainer choice....doughnuts! Three red garnet yam doughnuts served with praline ice cream. It must of just been fried because it was hot and crispy.

Wilshire has a great happy hour menu and some specials on certain days. It is a great place for some good cocktails and asian-french-american fusion food.