Foodies in this town have long beaten a track to Surfas, the cooking and restaurant supply store in Culver City. You can probably trace the origins of half the bannetons and cannelé molds and bottarga and sea salt caramels in Los Angeles kitchens right to the corner of National and Washington. The shop is owned by Les Surfas, whose father opened the store in 1937; Café Surfas opened in 2005. They also hold some pretty amazing cooking classes in the store's gorgeous demo kitchen (a fully-functioning commercial kitchen equipped with state of the art equipment, TV monitor and audience seating for 30-50. Whoa). Up tomorrow, a kids cooking class with Piccolo Chef; on Sunday, a wedding cake workshop; next Wednesday, a pie and tart tutorial. Check the just-updated Surfas Facebook page or The Surfas Blog for more details.

About 10 days ago, Surfas put up a new website, which handles the company's web sales. The old website is currently being reworked, and will be up and running (with a new name: www.surfaslosangeles.com) by early next week. So if you've been hunting for Peugeot pepper grinders on the website and have been confused by the format (or freaking out and hoarding your Tarbais beans, as there was a lease scare a few years ago), no worries; they've simply been upgrading.

Surfas: 8777 Washington Blvd., Culver City, CA; (310) 559-4770.

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