laker game = kobe sliders

now, you know the wans are huge laker fans. and when we found ourselves in the position of watching them play a tiebreaking, championship-winning game 7 last week, the hub and i hit up MIL to watch the bean for the evening so we could go out to dinner and watch it.

we wanted somewhere that wouldn't be too crowded, where we could relax and enjoy some good grub. somehow, the subject of the langham hotel in pasadena came up (formerly the ritz-carlton, where my friend trish got married a couple of years ago), and after perusing the bar menu, we decided to hit 'em up for some of their kobe sliders and lobster corn dogs. oh, yeah.

note: as usual, these pictures are pretty shitty. i blame it on bad lighting and a lackluster point-and-shoot. heh.

having arrived just after the tipoff, the bar was already lined with patrons, as were a lot of the tables in front of the other (rather small) tv. damn.

we ended up taking a table behind these women, who were quietly cheering on the celtics. i hated them at first clap.

we checked out the menus and placed our orders. i remembered seeing the langham tweeting about their special bar food for the world cup.

my drink of choice: a fancy $15 cucumber cooler. it was good, although those cucumber chunks kept getting sucked up in the straw and i damn near choked more than once.

i liked the ginormous ice cube in the hub's johnny walker.

the game was quite disappointing through the first three quarters, but i never lost faith. i just knew my boys would pull it out somehow. in the meantime, the food arrived. from that world cup menu, duck fat-fried fish and chips:

pommes frites with three dipping sauces, plus those kobe sliders in the background. the buns were slathered with homemade bacon-tomato jam - to. die. for.

the hub didn't love the lobster corn dogs as much as he'd wanted to. so i ate two.

later, as we savored the beauty that was the 4th quarter, we indulged in this chocolate gateau with caramel popcorn ice cream. yeah, not as good as it sounds.

while we likely would put the langham on the bottom of our list for future game watching, it wasn't an awful choice. it got pretty lively as more and more folks from the, uh, laser convention began to arrive, and we were amused at watching an older dude sitting on the couches next to us. he was surrounded by about six fairly decently hot chicks, and we cracked up as we overheard him using super cheesetastic pick-up lines on each and every one of them. the celtics fans in front of us were dejected as their team ended up losing the championship, and slunk away in defeat even before the final buzzer went off. buh-bye.

i kind of wish i could go to the parade, but i'll settle for watching it on tv.

woo-hoo, back-to-back champions! i love me some lakers.