I was just happy that one of the participants - the Bonaventure Brewing Company - is only one block away from my office. I'd never heard of the place or seen it; it's located in the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, which is a place I rarely venture into.
So coworker Joey and I set out on our Dine Out LA adventure, walking against the sideways rain sans umbrellas (neither of us had one) and detouring through the "pit" at the base of the CityCorp building to try and avoid getting soaked all the way over there. Once we made it into the hotel, we had to figure out how to get to the restaurant through the round maze that is the Bonaventure. Cool design, but definitely not user-friendly. Finally, after asking a friendly staffer and walking up and down various stairwells, we found the Brewery.
The atmosphere was very welcoming and comforting - dark woods, plush chairs and a beautiful view of their rain-soaked patio. It was a nice discovery, and no doubt happened only because of the restaurant's participation in this charity event. We were served some nice, chewy bread with butter, then ordered our lunches.
For Joey, it was the Jerk Shrimp with Jasmine Rice and a mango salsa. He said everything tasted wonderful and that he very much enjoyed his lunch.
For me, it was the Cesar salad with grilled shrimp - easy on the dressing - and lots of crunchy croutons. The romaine lettuce was crisp and held up nicely to the shrimp and croutons. Great flavor and dressed just perfectly.
Our total donation to the AIDS charities? A mere $9.13, which was 20% of our bill. But, considering the restaurant had a good number of diners and they still had a dinner shift coming up, I'm going to assume their total donation for the day probably exceeded a few hundred dollars. Multiply that by all of the restaurants in Los Angeles taking part in Dine Out and you're talking tens of thousands of dollars.
And all we had to do was eat. How hard is that?
