Many USC students take Presidents’ Day weekend as an opportunity to visit home or travel elsewhere. While I was tempted to book a ticket back home to Colorado to ski this weekend, two midterms and an essay due this coming week made going home a less realistic option for me. Instead, I stuck around the LA area, but (as usual) still found plenty to do ~other~ than studying! On Friday night, my friend Janet and I braved the rain and headed west to Sawtelle. We stopped to eat dinner at Marugame Udon, a cafeteria-style noodle shop, which is one of our favorite restaurants. The eatery serves thick Japanese noodles at reasonable prices, and you can add a variety of toppings with no additional charge. Since we were already on that side of town, we naturally found our way to the Milk Bar LA, the popular new dessert restaurant, for some cookies, bagel bombs, and cereal milk ice cream.
On Saturday, I spent my morning with my aunts and uncle at the new Tartine Manufactory LA. Tartine is a bakery that started around 20 years ago in San Francisco but recently opened its first Los Angeles location, which includes a small market, an all-day restaurant, a dinner only restaurant, and even an ice cream window. The restaurant, which is in collaboration with Chris Bianco — the well-known pizza chef, is large in scope, but shares the same commitment to approachable, quality food of the original Tartine. If you can’t tell, I have been a big Tartine fan for a while now, so I am thrilled to finally have a location in LA where I can get my fill on morning buns (one of their signature pastries).
After I fully filled up on carbs through sampling a variety of Tartine pastries, I headed to City of Angels Boxing, a gym just minutes away from campus! Here, I took a class with around 20 of my sorority sisters that included strength conditioning, cardio, and boxing, of course. The gym has an incredible community and a friendly, supportive group of instructors. The workout was very challenging, but its fun to change up my fitness routine, especially when it’s a boxing class with a group of friends!
Now that I have completed my weekly food tour of LA, it’s time to study for my upcoming exams in AME204: Strength of Materials and AMST285: African American Popular Culture. I need to focus on studying now, but hopefully I’ll be back to Marugame Udon, Tartine, and City of Angels soon!
