Filed under: Culver City, Food | Tags: bar exam, beer, burger, California bar, Culver City, Father's Office, Father's Office 2.0, hamburger, scallops
Waiting to see if you’ve passed the bar is a horrific end to a horrific process. With about a month to go, the California bar puts up a mean, mean, mean countdown (hours:minute:seconds:i’m surprised they don’t do nanoseconds). Everyone around you expressly or silently reminds you about how many days are left. And you cannot put more absolutely helpless pressure on yourself and you absolutely can not stupidly help but retake the exam in your head and again.
Last Friday was bar results day, and there was one girl who was not-so-eagerly awaiting her bar results. Father’s Office (“FO”) was this year’s anticipated celebration locale. Since I wasn’t the one waiting to see if I passed, I went.
I feel compelled here to apologize (for the second time in a row) about the crap pictures. I did remember to bring my camera this time, but no one at work knows about this blog (I like to keep my blog life and my work life separate, a la George Castanza), so I was trying to take these pictures as inconspicuously as possible. Turns out I take blurry pictures when trying to avoid attention.
We went to Father’s Office 2.0, which really is the better, bigger version of 1.0 in Santa Monica. The Santa Monica location was my first foray into the FO experience/cult, but it was so small, so cramped, and the douchebag level was so high, that we had to leave without tasting a burger or a beer. Two point oh is infinitely better: much, much bigger (although on the big nights, you still have to wait in a line, because only so many people can be inside at a time – sort of like a club, or the Haunted Mansion), which means that the number of preppy, yuppie, and very white scenesters are nicely dispersed amongst the rabble.
What do you get? Of course you get the burger. Of course. ($14.50)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: carne abodabo, coctel campechanga, Culver City, El Salvador, Gloria's Cafe, pupusa, seafood
Sometimes I get really strange cravings that make me want to get pregnant just to see where my cravings will take me. For example, every once in a while, I have a craving for slice from Cheeseboard Pizza, or for a Mission-style burrito. Super American comfort meals at Brownstone Cafe – in Middletown, Pennsylvania of all places – has no duplicate out here. Coffee at Vivace Cafe in Seattle. While destined to be unsated, these cravings make me happy. I think you get to know a city well by what it eats and what you take away from its eats. When I start craving foods unique to a city, it makes me feel that, however long or short my stay, I got to know it on more than a superficial level.
Last night I had a first: a pupusa craving. Pupusas! They have such funny names. Saying the word makes me grin. Pupusas certainly aren’t unique to LA, but I’ve had some of my very best here. I feel that the hit-or-miss ratio is higher here than San Francisco; in SF, if I walk into a random pupusa shop, it is 50% likely that it will be great, 50% likely that it will be an oily mess. Here, it’s more like 70-30. The fact that I had this craving makes me happy. This makes me feel like I am living in LA properly.
Where to go? My pupusa sources are usually out in the Eastide (meaning Silverlake/Los Feliz/Echo Park, not “Far Eastside”, meaning “east of downtown” – I get it, intentionally failing to recognize “true” Eastside neighborhoods like Highland Park blissfully denies their existence in favor of their gentfiried (and dangerously spreading!) neighbors to the west. But with the disclaimer that Yes I do recognize this distinction, I’m going with the popular meaning on this one.) Out here on the Westside (this is the part where the beach cities argue that they are the “true” Westside and everything else is just Mid-City), I really do not have my pupusa bearings. Someone suggested we try Gloria’s Cafe in Culver City. There we went.
One of the most difficult things about this food blogging business is remembering to bring my camera with me everywhere I eat. During the day, my cell phone camera is great. During the evening, not so much. Alas, it will have to do. This makes me sad, because these photos don’t nearly capture everything we ate so happily.
Gloria’s Cafe sits between a tire shop and liquor store, and has a big old-school non-blaring-digital billboard in its parking lot. Here is another thing I love about LA food: the best ones are often hanging out in the randomest of spots. See Nook Bistro. Come to think of it, this is like people as well.
It’s super cute inside. Colorful, bar in the back, tables not too crowded together. There is a lot on the menu – Salvarodan food and a page full of Mexican. First in order, of course, were the pupusas.
If you order only the pupusas (as opposed to a pupusa plate that gives you a pupusa plus sides), you have to order at least two, for the price of $4.50 (total, not each). There are a few flavors – pork & cheese, cheese, cheese and herbs, and beans and cheese. We ordered pork & cheese and cheese & herbs.
The way you are supposed to eat a pupusa is to throw the coleslaw on top and pour the sauce all over everything. The pork and cheese one in particular was delicious. The pupusas are made of thick corn tortillas, so the weight and strong flavor of the pork is able to withstand the weight of the corn. Added to the coleslaw and sauce, it was perfect. The cheese and herbs, on the other hand, while good, was a bit overwhelmed by all that corn-iness of the pupusa and the intensity of the sauce. The girifriend, either accidentally or purposefully, took a break from the colelsaw + sauce combination to taste the pupusa on its own and noted that it actually tasted better without the condiments. I tried it, and she was right, it did! The cheese and herbs, able to escape from all the flavors of the sauce and coleslaw, was able to speak out from underneath all that corn. You could taste the subtle herbs better without all the other flavor distractions. Overall, though, the pork and cheese was better.
Next: more food.
Filed under: Food, Mid-City | Tags: amusement park, chicken, chocolate, Luna Park, steak
Luna Park was an amusement park near downtown, around the turn of the 20th century. It was a populator of the great log rides, and, if it could have, probably also would have been inventor of the genius idea of taking one’s picture to record one’s reaction as she is faced with the impending 7 story drop, not to mention the water.
Luna Park the Restaurant on Miracle Mile is somewhat different, and somewhat the same, as Luna Park the Amusement Park. It describes itself as “kitchy, flea-market chic.” I don’t know who wrote that, but that needs to change. First, because it sounds awful. Second, because it’s not really true. I don’t know what kind of flea markets Luna Park frequents, but my flea markets are not chic-y. I bought a skateboard at a flea market once, $3. It wasn’t chic-y, it was dirty and the wheels had so much crusted dirt that it didn’t roll. That is a flea market. That is not a restaurant. That is not an amusement park neither.
What Luna Park does have, however, is a deer head. This sits above the bar. Elsewhere on the walls are interesting (in the good way) art drawings and/or caricuatures of people that are very reminiscent of the characters from the Triplets of Belleville. These float above lovely curtained booths; beyond the animal heads, it is rather pretty inside. Rather than kitchy, rather than flea-market, it is more apporpriately a mashup between the beginning of Stinkers’ newfound hipster irony and a French tavern.
As you can see from the above photo, it also is very dark; you have to read the menu by candlelight. This is more French and less hipster. (A dark hipster restaurant would just put flashlights on your table, without the batteries.)
Tuesdays Luna Park has “blue plate specials” where one or two of the entrees are about $12, plus $5 sangria. From what I understand, they are even served in blue plates! I guess this is supposed to be more more hipster cute and less food-stamp-stigmatizing. Blue plate specials for our night were meatloaf and a chowder, I think. We opted for the $5 sangria, but passed on the entree specials.
Entrees are in the $12-20 range — but I see you creeping, $19.50 honey glazed pork chop. I just finished an exceptionally long meeting – public interest lawyers, despite their collective zeal to do Great Things, meet just as badly as their law firm counterparts – and so felt exceptionally steak-y. The flat iron steak topped with salsa verde and served with french fries ($16.50) was in order, literally. My best friend had a harder time, a much harder time, first thinking she wanted a side salad and brussel sprouts, then deciding that no, that was lame (yes, it was), then maybe a salad, and at the last minute, the waiter-recommended bacon braised chicken ($15.95).
Filed under: Downtown LA, Food | Tags: "Deals", "Downtown LA", "Steve Martin", Cole's, french dip
Everyone thinks I’m saying Kohl’s when I say Cole’s. Why? Probably because Cole’s downtown (allegedly, the “originator” of the French Dip sandwich, but the whole which-one-came-first-the Cole’s-or-the-Philippe’s argument is, as my ex-roommate’s softball coach would say, like shooting dead ducks in a pond) hasn’t been open in forever. Come late this month, it’s re-opening and come December 6, it’s having an official launch party. 100 cent (because this sounds better than “one dollar”, like “four score and seven years ago” sounds better than “87 years ago”) (hat tip to one of Steve Martin’s old Shouts & Murmurs columns in the New Yorker, of which I can’t find anywhere online, otherwise I would link to it. I remember the beginning of it — “Get their attention – make them add.” This is why I like Steve Martin, even after SNL.) sandwiches and sides from noon till 4.
Probably will be a huge line like the one at Philippe’s 100th anniversary celebration. Good luck.
Cole’s
118 East 6th Street (at Main)
Wed-Sat 11am – 2am (woohoo! Another late night option for Downtown!)
“Saloon Specials” 4pm – 7pm daily (woohoo! Another happy hour option for Downtown!)
Filed under: Dog friendly, Food, Silverlake/Los Feliz | Tags: gelato, Pazzo Gelato, Prop 8, Protest, Scoops, Silverlake
This has to be one of the reasons why ANSWER LA chose Silverlake to host Saturday’s anti-Prop. 8 protest: food. If we were in the eastiest of East LA, where would we go? It hasn’t been gentrified yet. Too scary.
So, after marching from Sunset Junction, down Virgil, right on Santa Monica (at which point the guy holding the “GAY IS THE NEW BLACK” sign behind me said, “FINALLY! Where it matters!!”), right on Vermont, and then right back onto Sunset again (the breakaway crowd that tried heading towards Hollywood were sadly cut off – but then again, Hollywood was sooo day-after-the-election), back to where we started. We led a breakaway crowd to get coffee at Intelligentsia. It is very tiring, this protesting business. We sat down and were engaging in some Prop 8 banter when a line of 5 or 6 squad cars tried to break up the protest. We managed to get them all to back up and out slowly, in the same straight line they were in when they rolled up. This was considered a big victory for everyone. Certainly for the Martha Stewarts in the crowd. Such a victory that we returned to the safety of our coffees and decided to go across the street to Pazzo Gelato for, of course, gelato.
Know the difference between gelato and ice cream? Gelato has no air whipped into it; ice cream has lots. According to this, almost half of your ice cream carton may be air!
So many flavors, so little time to try them all. This does not stop most people, least of all me. Important decisions like this require equal consideration of all options. The people here are always happy to let you try everything, without a hint of impatience about it. So nice.
I also like that when you ask to try two flavors, they put one flavor on one side of the spoon and the other flavor on the other side. It’s so wasteful otherwise. Speaking of spoons, why do we eat gelato with those shovels? Hm, I ate a cup of gelato with a spoon once, and it felt so odd, so … American. Maybe licking spoon shovels makes us feel Italian. I don’t know.
Scoops over on Melrose and Heliotrope has crazy creative flavors – brown bread gelato, wasabi gelato, Guinness gelato, etc. Pazzo’s emphasis is less on “What is the weirdest thing we can do with the items in our cupboards?” and more on “How can we combine, simply, these things you will find at Whole Foods or Bristol Farms?” This means you get flavors like creme fraiche, marscapone, chevre with farm fresh raspberries. This also means: WOW!
We tasted as much as we could, and ended up with a small cup of gelato. A small cup garners you two scoops. After a lot of contemplation over the flavors (some flavors, like the limoncello, tasted great, but more as an individual flavor and less as a flavor that complements another flavor. There is an art to choosing flavors that will go well together, sort of like choosing your significant other.) We ultimately chose creme fraiche and hazelnut chocolate. $3.95.
The creme fraiche tastes like what Pinkberry stands for: tangy, but still slightly sweet. Really good, but don’t think I’d get this again – a little too tangy for me. The tangy was counterbalanced by the sweet of the hazelnut chocolate, but overall, they were too different to really meld together. Like Cher and Sonny Bono. Oh, well. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you don’t.
I remember the day when Pazzo just opened and I walked in, really skeptical, because I’m Euro-arrogant and say to people, I’ve been to Giolitti’s in Rome and that is GELATO. At most gelato places, I try it and get disappointed. Most often the problem is that it tastes much too much like ice cream and if that is the case, I’d rather be at Ben and Jerry’s. So, I don’t generally go back to most gelato places. But Pazzo — not as great as Giolitti’s, but still damn good. It tastes like gelato proper: creamier, denser than regular ice cream. It feels light despite the lack of whipped air; you feel refreshed instead of full; your palate is cleansed and you have finished the eating on a high point.
Price runs a tad on the expensive side – geesh, I remember when it was just under $3 for a small when it first opened – but in moderation, that is the way to go. Especially after a good round of protesting.
Next rally and march is at City Hall on Saturday at 10:30am. I am bringing the dog. But, wait, oh no! Where will we eat??
Pazzo Gelato (It says “Full website coming soon” but this is how it’s been since at least a year ago)
3827 Sunset
Sun – Thu 11-11
Fri – Sat 11 – midnight
During the summer, the lines are out the door, even at 11pm on a weekday. I know, don’t people have jobs in this town?!
Filed under: Silverlake/Los Feliz, Uncategorized | Tags: "Best Fish Tacos in Ensenada", "fish tacos", "Los Feliz", Prop 8, Protest
Quick stop to the Best Fish Tacos in Ensenada before doing our civic duty and protesting in already gay-friendly Silverlake and Los Feliz. Oh well.
LAPD also decided to stop in for a quick munch before doing their protecting-slash-threatening duty of monitoring the protest.
Now, there are two things, and two things only at the Best Fish Tacos in Ensendana: fish tacos (of course) ($1.50) and shrimp tacos ($2.00). They just started selling homemade drinks and horchatas. They also just got air conditioning, I think. Last time I was there, it was blistering hot, but everyone sat through it anyway because the tacos were that good.
It used to be that you were to order at the front, hand over your money, have it rejected by the uber friendly owner who would say something like, “Ahhhhh, not yet, wait until you eat them, you might want some more and hey, why don’t you just take one of yours for free, see aren’t you glad you didn’t pay yet??” Hence, this ordering-then-paying process was completely on the honor system. It also was very confusing when there were a lot of people, some of whom were new and didn’t get it, some of whom were old and were shouting new orders, and some of whom decided they had their fill and were trying to figure out how much they owed. All this at the same time. I’m a bit relieved that this methodology, while happy, also has been relieved in favor of paying up front, like all things in life should be.
Filed under: Food, West Hollywood, angry | Tags: churros, dessert, Lucques, steak frites
Last night was the Anti-Prop. 8 Protest In Which, Contrary to Everyone at Work’s Expectations, I, Disappointingly, Did Not Get Arrested. Instead, after some contemplation and venting of frustration at those idiots who use children as proxies for their homophobia and the anti-gay rights movements’ success in co-opting the gay rights movement and turning it into a singular issue of marriage, the rally ended – so early and without any violence – disappointing – a good number of people gathered and headed down Sunset and ended up around the CNN building in Hollywood. We marched down Melrose and ended up at Lucques. Whoops.
I’ve been to Lucques at least four or five times now, almost always for the Sunday Supper (if you can afford it, the pre fixe menu for $45 is easily, easily, easily the best deal in town for the quantity and quality of food you get). Each time, I walk in and feel warmed by the lovely exposed brick, seduced by that damned beautiful patio, and also a little discomforted by solemnity. I think sometimes I get so used to music blaring at restaurants and/or people screaming at each other because of poor acoustics that I forget what it is like to just hear the peaceful hum of people talking in their indoor voice as they clank their knives against the plate. It is a little startling, but then you get used to it, and realize that it is nice not to yell at the person next to you.
It was around 9 when we walked in. Remember my rule? Always at the at bar. And so we did.
We were hungry, but not hungry enough for a full meal. We also have money, but not enough money for a full meal (entrees run in the high 20’s-low 30’s – yet another reason why the $45 Sunday Suppers are such an outstanding deal). So, we opted to go with the more affordable (and as it turns out, totally fantastic) bar menu.
Before 9:30 on the weekdays and 10:00 on Friday and Saturday, the bar menu has a few things that essentially amount to finger foods (i.e., nuts, French fries, cheese and bread). After 9:30 is where the meat is: steak frites, omelettes, grilled cheese sandwich, spaghetti. We ordered the steak frites to share. $22. (BUT the online menu shows it at $19. !!! Blah. So much for the under-$20 bar menu.)
First out is the breads, butter, olives (Lucques variety of course), almonds, and kosher salt.
I learned last night that the kosher salt is to salt your butter after spreading it on your bread, not to salt the olives. This makes a great deal of sense. I don’t know what I was thinking. Such a good way to whet an appetite.
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