Hilton LAX, Los Angeles, Calif.

I just returned from a business conference for 300 of our college students in Los Angeles this past weekend. We were staying at the Hilton LAX Hotel and Towers near the airport.

The food at the Hilton was okay if one only ate there once. The problem was there was absolutely no variety for those who ate multiple meals. While my per diem didn't allow me to eat at their "nice" restaurant (an Italian place), I did eat in their mid-range cafe, Le Cafe (they also had a 24-hour deli and a bar), where I discovered on Thursday that their lunch buffet and their dinner buffet were practically the same items, with the exception of a different chicken entree at each meal. All the other entrees, vegetables, and salad bar were the same. The breakfast buffet in there on Friday morning wasn't bad for a buffet, and they certainly had plenty of choices, including a whole section of fish, rice, miso soup, etc., for any Japanese travelers.

Once the conference started, we had group meals in the ballroom, and, interestingly enough, they chose to have buffets, which in my experience planning banquets and convention is the more expensive way to go over plated, pre-selected meals. Here's the problem, though....the buffets were essentially an extension of what they were serving in the cafe's buffet! Naturally, I got quite tired of the food at the Hilton. By Saturday lunch, I was just eating a big plate of their Caesar salad.



We had a dessert buffet for a mixer Friday night with cakes, cookies, and ice cream and fixings for self-made sundaes. There was lots and lots of food leftover...I don't think people, even college age, eat desserts as much as they used to.



At the Saturday evening dinner, they had some very interesting desserts on the buffet line. They had quite a number of these bite-sized morsels which I found quite good.



Starting at the nine o'clock position, there was a coffee mousse wrapped in a thin sheet of chocolate, a little tiramisu square decorated with a little dab of gold leaf on top, an orange mousse topped with orange preserves and garnished with milk chocolate, a lemon mousse garnished and wrapped in white chocolate, a rich dark chocolate mousse wrapped in decorated chocolate and garnished with a fresh raspberry, an almond mousse rolled in chopped, candied almonds and garnished with candied pineapple, and a tiramisu-style pistachio cream square.