Filed under: Food, Silverlake/Los Feliz | Tags: cheeseburger, cochinita pibil, taco, Yuca's
It was my birthday recently. There’s a huge, mental gap between 26 and 27 that I didn’t anticipate; it didn’t hit me until a few days after my actual birthday, on Saturday morning. I managed to stave off yet another quarter life crisis by concentrating on the Really Important Thing: Food. We were having a birthday dinner party on Sunday; because we were making quite a few things from Suzanne Goin’s Sunday Suppers with Lucques cookbook, this meant we needed to prep everything day(s) in advance. Sigh. Such a wonderful cookbook, but the recipes have onion-sized layers that require much too much forethought and planning. I was supposed to spend all of Saturday prepping everything, but I forgot I had to 1) contemplate the meaning of 26-going-on-27; 2) de-mullet, i.e., get a haircut; and 3) buy groceries. Running in and around Silverlake after my haircut, I needed a food break, but it had to be quick, because I had groceries to buy, ingredients to prepare, life directions to overanalyze. I also had a hankering for a cheeseburger.
Yuca’s is one of Los Angeles’s prides and joys; we’re proud of big, James Beard-ed things in small packages. Known primarily for their tacos and burritos, people from all over apparently battle traffic to line up for a Yuca’s burrito or taco. Mother Herrera, sitting on a stool as you step up, takes your order and writes it on the back of a brown paper bag if you’re taking it to go, on the bottom of the paper plate if you’re getting it for here (“for here” meaning, one of 4 tables at the shack, the tiny stool on the side of the shack, a random chair scattered about the shack, or the back of my Yaris). She tallies the price of your order and you submit payment to the kind lady who is doing triple duty of receiving payment, cooking, and packaging. The remainder of the 4 people squeezed in this shack are doing their part to grill and cook everyone’s order. This is the real Five Guys.
Filed under: Food, Silverlake/Los Feliz | Tags: brunch, eggs, pancakes, Silverlake, The Kitchen
Hey! As a few people have emailed me (sometimes I can’t believe people listen to me as well as they do; I can’t believe even more that people read this as consistently as they do), let me explain: 1) it’s the HOLIDAYS, people; 2) because of (1), I haven’t been eating out very much, instead opting for the egg roll goodness that is my mom’s cooking; 3) I’ve been dog sick with the flu, just dog sick (my dog is not sick though, yay! 2009 will be a non-hospital year for Idgie!); and 4) despite (3), I’ve haphazardly gotten myself involved in a group organizing a fundraising drive slated for February whereby you eat a designated restaurant and such restaurant donates a portion of its proceeds to Lambda Legal or some other legal defense funds to assist in the epic Jerry Brown v. Kenneth Starr battle that will commence henceforth in the spring. One of the partners told me that it costs at least $100,000 to pursue a case well; at least $200,000 in a criminal case. Justice, and injustice, is very expensive.
Here’s one I meant to post right before the sickness. The Kitchen, a potential target of our fundraiser.
Just to be clear right off the bat, The Kitchen I’m talking about is a homey little joint in Silverlake, not an expansive, enormous Chinese dim sum place in Alhambra. (You can tell a lot about people by their word association skills; reminds me of this Richard Pryor skit on SNL when SNL was being politically incorrect the same way Sesame Street was at the time. If you immediately connect The Kitchen to Silverlake, then you really are the white hipster dude or young Asian girl arts-school graduate that you strive to be. Yay!)
I used to come here a lot, back when I was living in Los Feliz, right after Los Feliz became the New Silverlake, but just before Echo Park became the Newer Silverlake. It is a little diamond smacked between the roughness that is the gay, gay Akbar and the family/ consumer capitalism that is McDonald’s, on Sunset and Fountain. I can’t think of anything more American, or gayer, than this.
The Kitchen is one of the contenders for the best fries in the city. We didn’t order them this time around (too early for fries) (although, you’re right, how can it ever be too early for fries?), but they are the best. A big bowl of seasoned, tossed in herbs-crisp-skinny, fresh french fries, almost too hot to bite, certainly too good to not. But, like I said, we were not here for the fries, we were here for the brunch.
I kind of hesitate to tell everyone about the brunch here, even though I always do, or end up bringing everyone I know here, even though I live clear on the other side of town, because The Kitchen is known more for its comfort dinner, and late night eats than it is for its brunch. When I was living around here, I used to walk by and think that the whole brunch thing was a myth, because it was so empty on the weekends. Turns out, people don’t realize that it has one of the best brunches in town. While all y’all go on to Millie’s, Fred 62, Eat Well, Madame Matisse, etc. down the street – I’m here, no wait, no line. Thanks for the seats!
Everything you would want for breakfast is here: eggs (poached, fried, scrambled, omeletted), pancakes (awesomely served with fried potatoes without a damn about your carb loading!), french toast, fried chicken and eggs!!, sangria, mimosa, plus their regular lunch menu. I ordered the Eggs Tuscany: “poached eggs on english muffin with red wine sauce, served with applewood smoke bacon and breakfast potatoes.” Two things: 1) There is no extra charge for poaching the eggs, which restaurants annoying do sometimes; and 2) this is only $10. Others got the pear pancakes ($10) and the Breakfast Sandwich (prosciutto, fried egg, frisee topped with blue cheese, served with breakfast potatoes and side salad of frisee) (also $10 — a theme. The only brunch item over $10 is the fried chicken and fried eggs, which is $11).
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.
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