Villa Blanca.

Okay, I'll go ahead and admit that I watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I've happily enjoyed  watching Camille, Kyle, Kim, Adrienne, Taylor and Lisa the last two seasons and I know I'm not the only one!

Thankfully, I have two dear friends who also indulge in this guilty pleasure! So imagine how excited I was when Jill thought of going to Villa Blanca to celebrate Jenny's birthday! Of course, Villa Blanca is owned by Lisa Vanderpump and her husband and has been featured quite a bit on the show!

The interior of the restaurant is beautifully decorated and has this amazing floral arrangement when you first walk in! We overheard that they go to the Downtown LA flower mart every Saturday to buy flowers. It was huge!!

Now I'm afraid the accolades for this place end here. I always love checking out the ladies room, but this one wasn't crazy impressive, although I did love the mirror and lighting.
 

It also had what I thought was a giant vase trashcan, turns out it was just a regular vase. Please forgive the poor bathroom lighting!

The food was good, but again nothing spectacular. I opted for the cobb salad which I ordered from a menu that was literally falling apart. I was really surprised with the condition of the menu, and while mine was the worst of the three, they were all in pretty poor shape. And three small slices of avocado?? Really? And that poor lone tomato didn't quite make it in the bowl with her friends. Very sad.

And now for the service. Oh....the service. Let me just say it was mediocre at best. Not excellent and not quite the worst thing in the world. It just wasn't as stellar as one would hope, and having read someYelp reviews prior to going, I can now understand why so many of them were rather poor. Jill was brought the wrong order and the busboy took it back mumbling something about fixing it. The waitress came by a few minutes later asking how everything was but didn't even notice that Jill was without a meal. Jill mentioned she was waiting for her correct order and the waitress simply said, "Okay" and then turned around and left. Uh, how about, "I'm sorry, I'll go check on that for you."  Rude. Then as Jill was still eating, a busgirl came around and wanted to take her plate...did I mention she was still eating!?! She got her meal later than the rest of us, remember?? And finally, our experience at Villa Blanca concluded with the waitress saying "Happy birthday to whoever it was." Gee...thanks.

Again, just less than we hoped for.

Despite the service and the lack of any of the housewives, it was still a fun experience with fantastic people watching as we sat outside at the corner table just under the sign! After lunch we took a short walk down Rodeo Drive to Crumbs Bake Shop for dessert!

Jenny adores cupcakes so it was perfect for her! And yes, they were amazing as they looked!

After dessert, we drove around a bit admiring the beautiful homes and ended up at Greystone Mansion. Simply gorgeous, but more on that tomorrow...