Twice a year in Los Angeles, dineLA comes around and highlights some of the best restaurants in the city. In the past, we’ve always taken this opportunity to eat our way through the city. Whether it’s mouthwatering chicken & waffles or experiencing the taste of France, we are always down to discover new food that we haven’t tried before.

This time, dineLA invited us to visit Hinoki & the Bird in Century City.

We’ve actually been here a couple of times before and really loved both the outdoor patio space and the food. It’s perfect for enjoying some cocktails and delicious bites outdoors on a warm summer day.

Each participating restaurant in dineLA will have a special set menu comprising of a few courses of their signature dishes. This time around, we started off our meal with some delicious crispy fried chicken and a salmon crudo. The fried chicken was my favorite of the starters, though I may be biased because it was reminiscent of Taiwanese fried popcorn chicken, a childhood favorite of mine.

For our main courses, we tried one of each of the options: steamed hamachi collar, summer corn rice, and duck bao.

The steamed hamachi collar was probably my favorite. The dishes all had a clear asian influence and tasted like a modern twist on meals my mom used to cook for us growing up. The fish came with some noodles on the side that we dipped in the dish’s sauce. My mouth is still drooling thinking about it!

The summer corn rice was kind of like a Japanese fried rice, and the pickled vegetables on the side were the perfect palate cleanser to keep us going for the entire meal.

We topped it off with some miso donuts dipped in honey caramel and mango / passionfruit sorbets. Definitely don’t miss out on the donuts. The glaze was so good, we were still dipping our spoons in even after the donuts were gone!

dineLA restaurant week ends on July 26 so don’t miss out! Check out their list of participating restaurants and make a reservation at discoverlosangeles.com.