This was a great idea for commerce on Main Street for those who have never experienced the fun dining and drinking scene in Santa Monica. Whether it was executed in the best light of the ticket buyers is yet to be seen. There were many faux pas I witnessed, but after all this is the first year they did this. With some tweaking and more cooperation on the part of the venues involved, it could be an outstanding event for Santa Monica in the future.
The premise is to visit all of the participants and give them 10 Dollars of Monopoly money and you get a small sample of the restaurants choice. Some of them were stellar; some of them were just ok. My favorites were: Enterprise Fish Company – Ceviche’s, Tsukiji Sushi Sen Sushi – California Roll, Rick’s Bar – Vegetable Sliders, Manchego – Goat Cheese en Pan Tostada, famed M Street Kitchen – Magic Brownies. And Sunny Blue for its Omusubi (also called Onigiri), which are Japanese rice balls with different fillings inside, wrapped with or without nori. Some of the restaurants conveniently ran out of food way to soon, and others said that the event was over 2 hours earlier then what is should have.
These were all the participating restaurants and bars: 3 Twins Ice Cream, Areal, Basement Tavern, Beyond O2, Enterprise Fish Co., Finn McCool’s, Café K, Lula Covina Mexicana, Montego, M Street Kitchen, Panini Garden, Pet’s Coffee & Tea, Pressed Juicer, Revolution, Rick’s Tavern, Stella Barra, Sunny Blue, The Galley, and Tsukiji Sushi Sen.
Other activities included a beer gardens, “Go Directly to Jail” photo booth, and for those who hit all of the locations entered to win a Taste of Main Street prize with gift certificates to participating locations. Funny enough my guest ended up winning the grand prize! She shared some of her winnings with her lucky host, me!!! (I have a friend who will go unnamed, but knows who he is, who got passage to an event from me and won a prize he did not share with me. Instead he chose to taunt me about it for a year about giving it to me as an Xmas present and again as a Birthday present which never came. Talk about disrespectful!!! Of course I dropped this friend like a hot potato!! Shame on him.)
This was a great way to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon at the beach. Hopefully next year they will iron out their kinks and I will make this an annual fun thing to do!
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