Dear Pardee Properties:

Please stop tearing down  beautiful craftsman homes and putting up these monster structures that cut off our sunshine,air and beach breezes. Think about where you live and if you would like a huge structure to be built and cut off the light and air for you. I ask you, if this is your way of forcing the old Venice home owners to sell their properties? I see that  you state on your web site that you give back to the community? Will you please let your gift be that you remodel the old craftsmen homes? This would be the best gift in the world to Venice, lets keep Venice, Venice and keep our community a community, it would be greatly appreciated by many of us who are watching the quaintness of Venice be destroyed and your name seems to the name Pardee properties that is profiting from it.

Peace,

Laddie Williams, Jataun Valentine, Lydia Ponce,

Pam Anderson

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El Huarique – A Hidden Gem

On The Boardwalk Culinary Scene

The aptly named, El Huarique – Peruvian for “Hole in the wall” – is hard to find but well worth it. Located INSIDE the food court at 1301 Ocean Front Walk (X street Westminster) this rockin’ little spot dishes up delicious Peruvian style cuisine at very reasonable prices.

Talk about reasonable – their signature dish is the very popular rotisserie chicken, 1/4 of a succulent roasted bird with salad and rice all for the princely sum of $4.99. Many other gourmet dishes can be found on the menu, including ceviche de pescado, done in authentic Peruvian style herbs and spices.

Owner/Chef, Ernesto Guitierrez, was born in Lima where his Mother cooked meals in her kitchen to help bring in some extra money. This is where Ernesto learned to love cooking. When he moved to America in 2010, he started the Inka Deli next door to Big Daddy’s on the OFW, but (Gee, what a shock) after the lease was up, the landlord priced him out of the location.

Now Guitierrez has opened the fabulous El Harique, cooking up delicious Peruvian cuisine at very affordable prices. You’ll sit at a counter – it’s not fancy, but the smiling faces of Ernesto and his aide de camp, Milo, as they prepare your meal, make it a pleasure to dine there (or you can take out, or get delivery if local).

So you will have to look hard to find this little jewel of an eatery on the Ocean Front Walk, but just go on inside the food court at 1301 OFW and dig in. You will not regret it!

– B. Meade

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Dear Beachhead:

It was very disheartening to see Anjelica Huston turning on the switch to light our Venice Sign in its traditional red and green for the holidays.  Such irony as she was lighting a piece of valuable Venetian history, while her husband, Robert Graham, could not construct a studio that could possibly retain Abbot Kinney’s historical columns and his promenade. These destroyed columns were copied from St Mark’s Plaza in Venice, Italy, the city on which Kinney modeled his Renaissance City in Southern California. Those columns should have been declared historical long ago and never been allowed to be removed. I abhor this worship of celebrities and their subsequent courting of them, over what little of Venetian history remains. The celebrities will come and go; our history needs to be zealously protected.

To add to the insult, incredibly, Ms. Huston was more interested in talking about her book, than in the spirit of the ceremony. She mentioned it three times before posing for photos with Councilmember Bonin.

May I say to the Councilmember as well as to the Venice Chamber of Commerce, that here in Venice, there are thousands of ‘celebrities’ to choose from who work tirelessly as volunteers to better their lives and the lives of others in our community.  Perhaps next year, we might consider one.

Laura Shepard Townsend