From Hotel Fare to a Garlic Festival

There’s a new hotel in Century City. Walk into the lobby and you find typical hotel opulence--potted plants, huge vases, soft sofas. There’s a bar (already doing a surprisingly brisk business), and beyond that, a restaurant.

The restaurant--JW’s at the Marriott, 2151 Avenue of the Stars, (213) 277-2777--is a typical hotel restaurant. It’s got that overstuffed look, with chandeliers everywhere you look and waiters wearing vests. At the moment, they’re having temperature troubles; we worried that frostbite would set in before we’d finished dinner. Dinner itself was typical hotel fare; it featured dishes like seafood salad with peapods (we couldn’t find a single peapod), veal with passion fruit sauce (I leave that to your imagination) and stir-fried chicken that hadn’t been stir-fried. The best of the desserts we tried was cheesecake in strawberry sauce; I don’t recommend the chocolate cake.

What I do recommend is that, if you’re fond of garlic, you reserve a table at La Toque, 8171 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (213) 656-7515 next week. During their garlic festival (through July 23) the restaurant will be serving a special four-course dinner at $36 per person. Garlic will be in everything (except dessert), pungent fumes will fill the air, and if it’s at all like last year this normally staid restaurant will turn remarkably raucous.