Pizza Fusion in West Hollywood is now open!

Pizza Fusion offers fresh and organic foods and an earth friendly restaurant.  Their menu states “You are about to eat the freshest veggies.  Tastiest certified organic tomato sauce, the juiciest hormone-free meats, and crispiest hand-stretched all-natural dough. Delish.”  I will agree almost everything they claim.  Fresh veggies, check.  Tasty tomato sauce, check.  Crispy dough, absolutely!  Since I don’t eat meat, I cannot comment on the juiciest meat.  I can, however, give thumbs up to the veggie chicken.

D & I shared a large Spinach and Artichoke pizza (we added the veggie chicken) with multi-grain crust.  The pizza looked so good when it arrived that we almost devoured the entire pie before I remembered to take a photo.  My first bite provided a noticeable crunch.  The dough was thin, crispy and delicious – everything I like in a pizza.  The rest of the pizza was quite enjoyable.   However, since I enjoyed the crust so much I think I will stick to the traditional cheese from here on out.  Multi-grain crust, tomato sauce and cheese is all this girl needs.  I must admit that I went a little crazy with the root beer.  Normally, I’m a water or iced tea drinker, but Pizza Fusion offers bottomless Boylan’s Fountain Sodas available in assorted flavors. Yum, too difficult to resist.

I have no doubt that this will become a regular for us.  I do appreciate the veggie chicken, but I’m a little disappointed that they don’t have veggie pepperoni as well.  Even us veggie’s enjoy a good cheese and faux-pepperoni pizza now and then.  I guess all I can do is continually ask about it every time I go in.

Update:

We have since used their delivery service. We have tried the Roasted Beet & Feta salad, Greek pizza and a Traditional Cheese pizza. It was all very good. They still have a little work to do on their delivery system as there were a couple of return phone calls to us. The first call was to let us know that the first quote on the price was incorrect because they forgot to add the $2.00 delivery fee. The second call was to let us know they were out of sundried tomatoes for the Four Cheese & Sundried Tomato pizza. We opted for the Greek pizza instead and they did not charge us an additional dollar for ordering a more expensive pizza.

This would be a good time to be chummy with the bartender!

Traveling was a huge part of my year. I think this may be the most I have ever traveled in one year. The year started off slow, but it eventually picked up. Here is a list of my adventures:

March – Snowmass, CO

Deutsch and I had a wonderful 4 day ski trip in Snowmass, Colorado. We met up with Deutsch’s family, his parents, Imbi & Rein, his brother, Ravo, and wife, Alexa, and family friends, Ruth & Peter. This was the first time I had ever been to Aspen. We actually didn’t ski in Aspen, but we visited the town. Not quite as glamorous as I had expected, but very quaint. We enjoyed our large room, which we affectionately named Club 101, at Snowmass Inn.

April – Las Vegas, NV

This was the first out of four visits to Sin City. On this occasion, we celebrated Deutsch’s birthday. We met up with our drinking buddy, Erin. Erin brought her friend, who brought her friend, who brought their friends and so on. To Deutsch’s surprise, he enjoyed his birthday with five females. A nice treat for him since he is usually stuck with just me. I won’t go into details because as the saying goes, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. I will just say the evening involved high speeds, an interesting Score and a pole. Take that as you will, but a good time was had by all. Dinner was at Border Grill and our hotel of choice for the weekend was the Monte Carlo.

May – Napa Valley, CA

Napa Valley was another first for me. I met up in San Francisco with my friends Sue & Angie. Deutsch was supposed to go, but due to a medical emergency he stayed home to take care of our ailing kitty, Tippit*. We spent the first night in SF. We lucked out with a great rate at a fantastic hotel, The Stanford Court in Nob Hill. The next day we rented a car and drove out to wine country. Again, we were lucky to stay in another great hotel, River Terrace. We had a weekend filled with delicious meals and tasty wines. Vinyards we visited: Andretti Winery; Darioush Winery; Goosecross Winery; Domaine Chandon and Van der Heyden Vineyards & Winery.

* Tippit made a full recovery.

July – New York, NY

We met up with my cousin, Krissy, and her hubby, Paul. First, I would like to give kudos to Krissy for conquering her fears and getting on that plane, even in horrible weather conditions! We had a fantastic time eating our way through NYC. We are all vegetarians and we searched out all the great veggie restaurants. My favorite restaurant was Red Bamboo in The Village. Fortunately, it was worth the ourtragous two hour wait. Next time, reservations! Just a few highlights of our trip: our excursion to Williamsburg, breakfast in Bryant Park, the Central Public Library, MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) and all the food. Check out Krissy’s blog part 1, part 2 and part 3 for more. We stayed at the Courtyard Marriott in Mid-Town.

August – Toronto, Canada

In August we were off to Deutsch’s parent’s 50th Wedding Anniversary party. It was an enjoyable night celebrating with loved ones on such a wonderful occasion. As usual, the champagne was flowing and we danced till dawn (well, not really, but it’s fun to say). I only hope we are as happy as them on our 50th! We also took the opportunity to visit the rest of our family and friends.

September – Las Vegas, again

If I recall, this was a last minute trip. We were expericing serious Vegas withdrawls. We stayed at The Excalibur. We also did research for our new and upcoming website, VegasHotelBuffets.com.

October – Chicago, IL

Halloween in Chicago! Our visit to Erin was long overdue. What better time to go to Chicago that Halloween? Well, maybe St. Patricks day, perhaps next year. As usual, Erin showed us a grand time. Let’s just say a lot of Vodka was consumed. We finally saw her cool condo. I was extremely envious. A gorgeous place. Halloween was an evening of bar hopping, with more treats than tricks.

November – Las Vegas, yet again

This was actually a business trip. We attended Pubcon, a web publishing conference at the Convention Center. It was 3 full days of speakers. I learned a lot about the business, but it was long and exhausting. The 4th day was easier, free drinks at the Nine Fine English Men pub. That was tiring too with the pressure of networking. At least the Guinness helped out. We stayed in a nice Spa Suite at the MGM Grand. We went a little overboard with the room because we were also celebrating our wedding anniversary.

December – Can You Guess…. Vegas!

This trip was strictly pleasure and last minute. THEhotel, a botique hotel in Manadalay Bay, offered us a complimentary 2 night stay in a suite. They also gave us other perks like a $35 in dining credit. It was on my birthday weekend, so how could we say no? The weeked was fun from beginning to the very end! On my birthday we went ice skating at The Hard Rock. Yes, an ice rink in Vegas. Ah, the magic of technology. I hadn’t been skating in over 10 years. At first, I was a disaster, but slowly it all came back to me. I was skating like a pro (not) in no time. Then Deutsch surprised me with an evening of dinner and theatre. We saw Phantom Of The Opera and then dined at an Italian restaurant, Zeffirino. At dinner I was presented with a fantastic dessert with a candle and was even serenaded “Happy Birthday” by a troubador (is that the right word ?). It was a great night at The Venetian. The entire weekend was fantastic. Even at the airport on the way home a certain video poker machine was very, very nice to me. Thank you for a fun and memorable weekend Deutsch.

Toronto for Christmas

Since this hasn’t happened yet, I can’t write about it. However, I’m sure it will be a very Merry Christmas!

We always love having visitors. Thanks to Ruth & Riina, my Mom, Sue, Chris & Sonia, Ravo & Alexa, and Ema & Isa for taking the time to see us this year. We hope you will come again in 2007!

An evening of culture would not be complete without dinner before the show. Since the theatre was in Westwood, an area we are not familiar with, we ventured to a new restaurant. Deutsch performed his usual restaurant search through the internet and found us an Italian place, Tanino. It was nice, a little stuffy, but nice. We shared a half bottle of a red wine blend. To our defense, we only had a half bottle because it’s never a good idea to consume a lot of alcohol right before a sit-down performance. I learned that the hard way when we saw “The Producers” (on Broadway no less) and almost fell asleep during the first act. Anyway, I digress. Both Deutsch & I had the bland pumpkin tortellini in a sage cream sauce. It sure sounded good, but was a let down. To make up for our disappointment, we indulged in flour-less chocolate cake. It was an improvement, but nothing to shout from the mountain tops. I think we will continue our Westwood restaurant search.

We went to the Geffen Playhouse and saw “Boston Marriage”, written and directed by the great David Mamet. With only a cast of three women, it is an interesting ensemble of Rebecca Pidgeon, Mary Steenburgen and Alicia Silverstone. This Victorian period comedy took place in only one setting, a drawing room. In the usual Mamet way, the dialogue went at a furious rhythmic pace. Between the accents, cryptic dialogue and quick pace, it was easy to miss something. Which I’m sure I did, more than once. On the heels of Brokeback Mountain, this play deals with unconventional relationships in an unforgiving time. All three performances were enjoyable, but Alicia Silverstone was the stand out of the women. I must admit, I was not expecting much from her theatrical abilities. However, Alicia was a pleasant surprise. She had great comic timing. She may have had the smallest role and the shortest stage time, but she took her character and ran with it.

It was definitely an enjoyable evening, especially for a Monday night. We even had celeb spottings at the play: director Kevin Smith and actor Dennis Haysbert. We are even thinking about seeing the production “1984″ this week. Hey, this culture thing is kinda fun.