“Whoooah, whoooah,” the young bartender repeated as he free-poured tequila, circling around and around, onto multiple Blood and Sands.

“Uga booga,” he chanted as he mixed the super-strong dark rum concoction of the same name, and soon everyone in the tiny 30-seat Tiki bar was echoing “uga booga” back to him.

Tiki-Ti, in Hollywood/Silverlake, was an unexpected highlight during a February trip to vast Los Angeles, which felt impossible to get to know in five days, even with local friends and a car.

My vegetarian friends took my travel mate and I to a contemporary soul food restaurant, Larkin’s in Eagle Rock, where I ate the best barbecued ribs of my life.

They also took us to Beauty Bar in Hollywood where you can get a manicure and down drinks named Red Head and Shampoo. We went partly to get our dance on and partly to kill time so we could go to the 101 Coffee Shop at 3 a.m. for celebrity spotting, say Michael Cera from Juno and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. There was no cover and no attitude and a DJ played a snippet of Depeche Mode, but I’d have rather paid cover for a more interesting scene.

The 101 is a retro-style diner with a stone wall and brown leather booths that was used in the 1996 movie Swingers. It was buzzing at 3 a.m. My friends instructed me to study each face as I made my way past the long counter to the bathroom. I shifted my gaze from booth to booth but saw no celebrities. So I soothed my (relative) sorrow with a chocolate waffle smothered with ice cream and chocolate sauce.

We could have walked back to our jalapeno-hued hotel, the Hollywood Heights. With its vivid exterior it was easy to spot. It’s a couple of blocks from Hollywood Boulevard, the Kodak and Grauman’s Chinese theatres and the walk of fame. It was walking distance to the Beauty Bar, a farmer’s market and a Metro Rail station that could have carried us downtown, if we’d found time to visit. The boutique-style hotel rests near the hustle and bustle of Hollywood, but with its generous rooms, friendly staff and outdoor pool, it felt like a calm oasis.

Instead of a bus tour of homes of stars, we opted for a four-hour walking foodie tour of Hollywood called Six Taste. The others in our group of 17 hailed from locales 45 minutes away and for many of them this was their third Six Taste tour.

We visited a soothing teashop tucked into a corner of a shopping complex that we never would have otherwise discovered. I drank a half-priced jalapeno margarita during happy hour at Loteria Grill, learned how Miceli’s Italian restaurant inspired the pizza dough tossing scenes in I Love Lucy and saw the Prohibition-era courtyard where cars used to ferry customers to Boardner’s bar. Later, as we walked around Hollywood, we felt we had had an insider’s glimpse to what could have been meaningless facades.

We drove too much the first two days and were traumatized for the rest of the trip. If we hadn’t had GPS we would have been huddled in a corner somewhere, sobbing. I regret not hopping on and off a Starline double-decker bus.

We should have budgeted a full day for the Getty Center, which we visited on the only non-sunny February day of six, when we needed to add another layer to a T-shirt and cardigan. The gardens were stunning and the exhibits we saw left us wanting to see more.

On our last night in L.A., I ran into Robert Dayton, formerly of Vancouver band Canned Hamm. I saw his Toronto-based band Hallmark perform in the all-red back room at Bar Lubitsch in West Hollywood, a warm and stylish place that’s known for its long list of vodkas. After an inspired performance on a miniscule stage, Dayton, his entourage and I headed to Canter’s Deli, a 24-hour, family-owned Jewish deli with tan vinyl booths that’s been around since 1931.

I was satisfied with Dayton being my celebrity sighting/coincidental encounter in the second largest city in the U.S. But I told my mildly disappointed travel mate we were sure to spot a star at the airport.

I first noticed a familiar face in the security queue because officials had him remove his hat, leaving his hair with a horrible dent. Then I looked closer and recognized Steve Coogan, star of the 2002 movie about Manchester’s music scene, 24 Hour Party People. He unenthusiastically agreed to pose for a photo in the duty-free shop, and our visit to L.A. was complete.

crossi@vancourier.com

Twitter: @Cheryl_Rossi