Monday, February 14, 2011

Ladies Lunching

Maggie Cats here: last week I spent a good chunk of time in LA visiting family. On Friday, me and a friend (who has asked to remain nameless) decided to go to lunch at a semi-famous Beverly Hill eatery. We just so happened to spot several "celebrities," meaning we saw some people from a reality show. I was able to strong-arm my friend into writing up a guest blog post detailing our adventure. Seriously, I literally wrangled a promise out of her to write about it...mostly since I don't watch the reality show in question. So enjoy!

One of the must see spots of LA is Rodeo drive. So Friday afternoon, Maggie Cats and I headed up to Rodeo drive for lunch at Villa Blanca, and of course, shopping. Why Villa Blanca? Well RHBH, of course. That’s the Real housewives of Beverly Hills, for those not in the know. Villa Blanca is owned by one of the housewives, none other than Lisa Vanderpump and her husband Todd (note from Maggie Cats: that name is fake, right? It’s got to be fake. Seriously, Vanderpump??).

Following the GPS, we wound our way around the streets of Beverly Hills until we found the restaurant located on the corner of Camden and Brighton Way. The outside seating wraps around the corner of the restaurant and was lined with billowy white sheer curtains. The weather was perfect—a normal February day in LA (71 and sunny). On Friday at 1pm the restaurant was humming. On the way in, a tall redheaded woman in a crazy (and I mean crazy, even by LA standards) outfit was standing across from us at the hostess stand. When the woman turned around,Maggie Cats recognized her as Phoebe Price.


Who the Hell is Phoebe Price? These are the words you will find if you google her, she’s famous because she is famous; she’s often on the red carpet and claims to be an international model—but really she just gets attention from her outrageous outfits and unique look. According to Maggie, the only reason she IDed her was because of the website Go Fug Yourself. Check it out: Ms. Price has an entire section dedicated to her cray cray stylings.

In line to sign in at the hostess stand were also several normal looking (by normal I mean not augmented) older 70+ year old women, one of whom called this the “hottest restaurant in town.” While I doubt that is true, it was a nice sentiment and made us feel oh so posh. Waiting on a table we headed to the bar. Maggie ordered a tasty cocktail called the Big Pink, which starts out like a mojito with lime, mint and simple syrup but then instead of rum gets vodka, cranberry juice, and finishes up with a splash of soda. This seemed to be the drink of choice in the restaurant today, as almost everyone at the bar was holding or ordering one. According to Maggie it was strong and tasty (it was both, equally).

While we were waiting at the bar and chatting up a gay couple that was in town from New York, the co-owner of the restaurant, Mr. Vanderpump, I mean Todd Kent, walked by, clearly large and in charge of the establishment. Celebrity sighting Number 2 had been made!


Once we were seated, I finally took notice of a woman at the bar, who had been casually eating her lunch the entire time. It was none other than the “morally corrupt” (said by Camille Grammer in season one of RHBH), Faye Resnick.

Faye enjoyed her lunch, and post lunch tea as we ate at a table outside. She had a nice chat with Ken, but for the most part she was alone. She checked her watch repeatedly, and her mirror at least two dozen times. So I can only imagine she was waiting for Kyle to meet her for lunch. Similarly, Ken’s obsessive cell checking—and not in a sly, cool-guy way—culminated in a walk outside with the phone held to the sky (as though an arms length would magically give the device satellite reception), was waiting for a call or text from Lisa. Were these so-called celebs actually expecting calls, or were they just eternally hopeful that someone would actually want to talk to them? Who knows.

After our lunch, which was quite delicious and reasonably priced, we hit the streets for some window-shopping. Or just hit THE street, because it's Rodeo Drive, baby. And you never know who you'll run into.


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