sugar snap peas and grapefruit at baco mercat.

California is spoiled by it's abundance of citrus.  It amazes me that you can walk down a street here and see lemon trees and orange trees on just about every block (I've refrained from picking any fruit mostly because I fear some man will jump out of the bushes and arrest me for stealing.  This isn't to say that I am not really tempted.)  This plethora of citrus seems to find it's way into almost every dish we've eaten here.  It shows up in avocado salads and as a sauce for sashimi (the boy is now a huge proponent of raw fish and citrus) and it showed up in this dish you can see at left that we ate on our first night in Los Angeles at Baco Mercat (which is an absurdly amazing restaurant that focuses on vegetables and small plates like the mercat sandwich that they created which I love).  This is one of those dishes that after I ate it I kept thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it.  The variety of flavors and textures is spectacular - crispy sugar snap peas, creamy burrata, crunchy croutons, sweet pear, and tart grapefruit.  You imagine it will be overwhelming, that everything will overwhelm everything else.  You imagine this will be an epic fail but then you have one bite and you swoon.  Everything works perfectly especially when covered in a dusting of chives and a sharp vinaigrette   This is the dish I plan on eating all summer.  The dish I plan on making the second sugar snap peas show up at the east coast farmer's markets because if I learned anything in California it's that citrus makes everything better.  

(Sorry about the sub-par photo which doesn't do the dish the justice it deserves.  All of the restaurants love dim lighting and using a flash is not something I will ever do when out to eat!)