A cook’s heaven looks like this

When Jackie and I had our exciting day at Penzeys a couple of weeks ago, the lady who worked at the store told us we had to go to Surfas in Culver City. I asked her what they had, and she said, “Oh, everything. Kitchen implements, and gourmet ingredients, and fresh puff pastry…” I stopped listening after “fresh puff pastry” because that was good enough for me.

We didn’t get the chance to go there after that, but I told Ying about it, and yesterday she called me and told me: “You HAVE to go to Surfas. Immediately. Get in the car and drag Erik along. You have to go now.” In case I didn’t get the point, she added, “This is a request, an order and a demand. GO NOW.” Call me submissive, but I did what she told me, and we went.

O M G Surfas is incredible. Let me tell you why:
1. They have ample and free parking.
2. They are a restaurant-supply store, so they are (a) non-LA-trendy, and (b) reasonably priced.
3. They have a café on-site where we ogled Maytag Blue cheese and jamón serrano, and bought a raspberry-lavender Italian soda (which was delicious).
4. They have one wall lined with freezer cases, of which one is entirely full of fruit purées.
5. They have every kitchen implement you could ever want, from a $14K industrial-size mixer, to a stockpot big enough to sit in, to adorable little foil cups for chocolates, to krumkake irons.
6. They sell orrecchiette (ear-shaped pasta) in bulk.
7. One of their baking aisles features enormous slabs of Scharffen Berger, Valhrona and Michel Cluizel chocolate.
8. They are right around the corner from the Helms Bakery complex, home of über furniture showroom HD Buttercup and source of all my recent clothing purchases Find Outlet, as well as one of my favorite LA restaurants, Beacon.
9. They make Williams-Sonoma and Sur La Table look like the 7-Eleven of kitchen stores.
10. They have little cans of wild blueberries (perfect for baking blueberry muffins!), jars of olive-oil-packed tuna and chickpeas, bags of powdered wasabi, and shelves packed with beautiful-looking jams, curds, and preserves.

Since we might be moving within a month, I restrained myself and came away with only a few things (including two of those cans of blueberries and one of those jars of tuna-and-chickpeas). But I’ve already compiled a list of things to get next time we go to Surfas — and this is not even including the list of things to get after we’ve moved (offset spatula, a new sifter…).

And now, I’m off to make some lunch with noodles I bought at Surfas, but before I do, I’ll leave you with the description on the back of the noodle package (since I don’t have a Kitchen Sidebar on my layout anymore 😦 ):

Extra Thin Noodles
Selected from super quality of wheat flour, manually and refinedly made, naturally dried up, softly tough, bright clean colour, evenly thick, sufficiently dry and not glued in cooking, is good for gift and self use.

If you’re at all interested in cooking, you have to go to Surfas, or else you have to come visit me so I can take you there!!

[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]