The Review: Blue Plate Oysterette
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A concept restaurant that would likely be right at home in Tokyo, uWink combines food and drink with interactive media and light-hearted games. Order from touch screens at your table and play trivia quizzes, get your horoscope or test your dating IQ while you wait.
Located on the fourth floor at the back of the Hollywood & Highland complex, uWink looks a bit like a comfy, spare cyber cafe. A buckle-shaped bar greets you upon entrance and a slew of two and four-top tables equipped with double-sided touch-screen monitors fill up the rest of the space, which has lime green accents, blonde wood and large windows that look out onto the open air mall. Ordering from the touch screens is fairly easy and not as lonesome-making as you might think. If you're there with a friend or a date it's actually kind of fun to scroll through the specialty cocktails (most are super-sweet and girly--like caramel apple martinis and fruity shooters) and then the appetizers and entree lists. Food choices are represented with a photo, price and a list of ingredients and you can modify your order at your seat. No mayo? No problem.
Appetizers are basic if a bit greasy: sliders, fried calamari, shrimp quesadillas and chicken fingers with ranch or blue cheese dipping sauce. For dinner or lunch pasta dishes (chicken and pesto carbonara, garlic pasta, a spicy Thai pasta) are available as are cheeseburgers, turkey clubs and BBQ pork sandwiches. There are also a variety of salads: Cobb, Southwestern Caesar, BBQ beef and a basic garden salad. Main entrees include Baja fish tacos and braised short ribs.
The food is basic and tasty but the scene at the restaurant is all about the games, which were created especially for uWink. Of particular interest is a trivia quiz called Zillionaire that is based on the "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" model and features a surprising amount of hyper-local L.A. trivia, including questions about local chefs and even one that asks what the first initial of the Times restaurant critic is. You can play with your dinner date or challenge another table to a match.
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The novelty of ordering by a large touch screen in the middle of your table wears off in about two minutes as other guests at you table wait for you to figure out what you want to eat so they can look at the menu. It is lucky that there...
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