Eat.Shop

In my unprecedented amount of free time, I have been reading books & magazines about 250% more. Fancy that. (See new GoodReads widget sidebar.) In this quest for information, I have been re-introduced to my favorite travel guide series – there is a new edition out for Los Angeles. I first found the eat.shop guides last year when I was preparing for a trip to Europe. I had already found my hotels and I knew the major museums to peruse, but I really wanted a guide to just tell me the raddest, hippest, cutest shops and restaurants in Paris. Because there is seriously nothing I love to do more (aside from helping the environment, of course!) than to Eat and Shop. Each listing is paired with wonderful color photographs of literally just food and stuff. The great part about these photos is that they are mostly close-ups and are so crisp and colorful that they just pop out of the page and make you want to buy or eat it immediately.

Anyway – back to the new Los Angeles guide. I was in my new favorite boutique in Venice called Firefly, which is basically one of those all-purpose shops for women who love adorable things. Usually I don’t love adorable things, but they have great recycled stationary, plenty of goodies made with recycled materials, and just all around cute stuff for your home and body. Firefly is featured in this second edition of eat.shop, so they are naturally selling the guide. Just by flipping through it I found many shops featured sell recycled or vintage clothes – many of which I have never heard of, which is exciting. In a city like LA where there are so many big chain options, you really want to know about the hard to find, totally unique shops.

In the preface the writer talks about the different listings being homegrown, distinctive, posh or street-style. I kind of love that because so many of us are all of those things on different days. It is also nice how many different areas this guide manages to cover. The writer refers to LA as being sprawling and that is exactly true. How many guides feature 12 shops in the Venice area alone?!?

As you know, this website is all about locally-grown products, but supporting local vendors is just as important too. That’s not to say you shouldn’t take into consideration where they get their ingredients or products from, but most locally owned restaurants take pride in showcasing what our local farms have to offer. I often find that a locally owned shop is more welcoming and they tend to remember you after repeat visits, which just makes me feel good. The eat.shop guide is definitely for a traveler seeking a special visit to Los Angeles or an Angeleno who wants to find the best shops around. If for some reason the adorable 4x4 square book is too daunting or you just want to save paper, you can buy PDF’s of the guide on their website for almost 35% off.

Stay tuned as I visit & review some of the shops highlighted in
eat.shop los angeles: second edition.