So I was in Sydney and found my perfect pub, the Dove & Olive. I was a bit surprised to learn that it was an insult to tip the waitstaff. So I learned how it worked.
You go up to the bar and order what you want. You pay ahead of time. You find your own table. They give you a number. They send somebody over to your table with your food. If you want more food or drink, you go and repeat the process. If you want bbq sauce or mustard, it's sitting on a side table somewhere in the joint. Get it yourself. When you're done, they bus your table and that's it. Here in the states, the closest thing to it is how Carl's Jr works. I like it.
The most important thing about a sit down restaurant is that you get to sit down. So we have some difficulty because we have a lot of restaurants like Denny's and Tony Romas where the food isn't all that great and the service isn't all that great, but we're stuck in the formal restaurant rut in terms of the service style. There's nothing about these kinds of joints that is the elegant thing where the waitstaff ought to make a difference. They're watering holes.
I got in the habit of tipping because I was on business and expensing my meals. But even the business meal joints have become rather run of the mill to me. Basically, if you don't have live music, but you do have some music, it's not a fancy tipping kind of joint. So I would say there is a class of overpriced chain restaurants like PF Chang's, Houstons, Mortons and McCormick & Schmick that are in my sights. I'm going to tip there out of force of habit, but I really don't want to. I can get food that good at an Aussie style joint, but right now the Frequent Flyer, Happy Birthday and First Date crowd are keeping these places alive. Those people tip.
Over the past year or so, I have completely changed my food intake. I now prepare over 50% of my own meals and I haven't been to Carl's Jr at all this year. Starting in October I have created a new kind of diet which I call the Epicurean Paleo Peasant. It's epicurean in that it uses expensive exotic ingredients from time to time. It follows the Paleo recipe (and some dude named Taubes) and a lot of it is Peasant. By that I mean many of the meals are not cooked, but just raw ingredients - stuff I imagine any cave idiot could assemble.
Over the course of the past few months I have perfected the Caesar salad. It has been reborn under my care, and that has been a revelation. I never, ever liked salad. I can remember cycling up monstrous hills in Southern California 25 years ago with the idea in mind that by burning all these calories as a habit, I would never have to be one of those pathetic old men who have to eat salads. I have to admit that at Sizzler, I would pile on the bleu cheese and raisins in my spinach, but that's about it. My tolerance for salad was minimal. Until I started making my own.
The obvious problem with salad is that they don't have enough meat in them, but I always did like since the past 10 years or so of road dogging it, a Caesar salad with my steaks. Once in a blue moon, I'd scarf down a Cobb salad, but that was a rare occasion. So when I started making Caesars, it was clear that I should just put steak in it. It all goes down the same hole, right? But then I started experimenting beyond salmon and chicken to deli meats. Aha. Now I was onto something. And although I cheat by using Ken's creamy dressing instead of making my own from scratch, I had entered a whole new world of taste. And yes this was salad as a meal. Amazing. I realized that like an LA pizza eater who had never been to NYC or a Boston BBQ eater who had never been down South, I was only experiencing a fraction of what the real deal was. I hated salads until I made my own, and now I love salad. My salad, like a mango chutney chicken & prosciutto Caesar salad served in a pie tin, or pancetta & crab with seared watermelon.
I've been sharing pictures of my meals on Facebook now. I'm that proud. And my kids and my wife love my salads, even though the Spousal Unit tends to dislike anchovies and apples with peels still on them. Nevertheless, when I do the boiled egg, avocado and feta versions of the Caesar, she flops over helpless. It is my killer app. So when I went to our annual company picnic, I was eager to make a salad for everyone. Let me tell you about the nightmare.
First I didn't buy the ingredients myself but had a friend help. I'm downtown in a hotel, how am I supposed to get groceries enough for a dozen people? We had twice as much feta and half as much parmesan as I wanted. We had no place to boil the eggs. I already knew that some of the guests were vegetarian so I handled that part, but I still really wanted everyone to at least taste my specialty, with garlic sauteed diced pancetta with mushrooms. There was no stove and the pancetta was sliced. So it had to go in cold. It clumped up. Add to all that, I got on scene too late and the crawdads were already on the table. But wait, there's more. Nobody brought plates and forks. An hour later after working through the compromise, my vegetarian version got the compliments I needed to hear, but getting there was a new kind of ordeal for me.
Undaunted, I am doing the same thing again for a family get together tonight at my Dad's house. This time I'm making the salad in my own kitchen by myself. But I realized something ten minutes ago when my wife hung up the phone on me. She told me that I shouldn't put in any meat until I get there in case somebody in my family or guests are vegetarians.
Now I know what's wrong with America.
Everybody has to eat the salad. The salad is the green vegetable requirement of a balanced diet. But you can't put anything in it that's going to offend somebody. That's why you get the kind of salads you get with stupid tasteless iceberg lettuce, plastic fork evasive cherry tomatoes, park pigeon croutons and some nasty dressing on the side. That's why people like me grow up hating salad. We keep eating this rabbit plate of complete boredom and keep hearing that it's suppose to be good for us. Retarded. I don't want that salad. You don't want that salad. Nobody wants that salad. It is a nominal, minimal salad of last resort. It's the Lowest Common Denominator Salad. It makes nobody proud.
They used to say that America was a great melting pot. It was. Then some of us refused to assimilate, proud of our own belly buttons and in so doing, raising the Seventh Deadly Sin to some kind of bizarro world virtue. "We are a salad bowl", we now say. Meaning America has some kind of ineffable chunkiness that doesn't melt, but holds together under some panoptic federal dressing, so long as its complexion isn't too light. We might call that thing federal law which sticks to us giving the same flavor while leaving our impenetrable cherry-tomato skin intact. Because cherry-tomato pride!
Of course the melting pot will be back when it becomes convenient for certain powers that wanna be to melt our individuality into nothingness in solidarity with (insert victim here) or somebody else who is not the evil One Percent.
I like my salad, and I like it my way. Tonight I'm going to prepare a salad for everybody who doesn't prepare their own. AND I'm going to make my perfect salad for me. AND I'm going to leave all the tools in the kitchen as well as all the ingredients. If you don't like what's served, make your own.
Since I'm in a new food regime, learning how to cook better and more foods, and exercising like a maniac, my foodie interests are taking an interesting turn. In the back of my head there has always been some Biome stuff, but the questions around GMO/Monsanto are reaching a peak. Check back with me next year, I will have nailed most of it. Today marks article number two.
So over at Quora I've started following Justin Ma a young PhD in tobacco breeding and genetics at NC State. My first expert. Even though I'm more interested in water as a Biome subject, I think the GMO problem is more knotty. It might overtake. The contrast between the two with regard to market accelerations and regulatory restraints is interesting. Everybody loves overpriced, overhyped commercially modified drinking water in the face of drought. Everybody hates overpriced(?), overhyped(?) commercially modified food in the face of famine. Is water simpler than food? Is waste food so much worse than waste water? Does food matter more simply because it's more expensive to produce?
Anyway. We'll start with Monsanto and Bayer and find some fellow travelers as well. This first pass may sound doofy in a year or so, but coming at it fresh gives me a chance to be bold and without qualification.
GMOs kill bees
BT Cotton made Indian Farmers commit suicide
Taleb's Risk on Monoculture
Big Ag kills diversity
One thing I'm simply not going to deal with is whether or not GMO foods are safe for humans. That's just stupid on its face. Of course they're safe or else you couldn't sell them because nobody would eat them. As much as I hate falling back to the Carlin position, 'Everything causes cancer'. But aside from that, there's penicillin and peanuts. The first will kill me, the second will cripple my daughter. Neither are genetically modified anything.
Ma helps get through some false dichotomies with regard to identifying the market correctly. Consider the following:
First, the basic answer: GMO production will continue to grow, and more crops will continue to have GM traits incorporated into their breeding. At the same time, organic production will likely continue to grow due to the market demand for them. Both will continue to grow because they're defined categories, vs. the general practices we have now. GMOs have been driven by producers. "Organic" foods have been driven by consumers.
More details: One, this is a false dichotomy, as many of mentioned. It depends on your definition of organic. Organic refers more to production practices, while GMOs refer to genetics. While you can't have USDA organic with GM crops, you can certainly practice what might be classified as organic techniques on GM crops. And what you definitely can have are non-GMO crops that are non-organic - this likely constitutes the majority of production in the world, with the exception of Africa. (A little known fact: Europe, by the way, sprays more pesticides and apply more fertilizers than the Americas, due to their subsidies.)
So 'organic' vs 'GMO' doesn't mean anything real. And I am beginning to see cracks in the USDA and certainly a lot of confusion around how Americans perceive that their foods are produced. The fact is that we've been marketed so much food in so many different ways all of our lives that we are living in total isolation from food itself. We don't really know where it comes from, what processes it goes through (or why), and who does what to it. The bottom line is that everybody trusts the label, and the stuff that's not labeled. Well, as I observed at a New York City farmers market, the more dirt on the vegetable the higher the price. Myself, I'm just beginning to know a good avocado from a bad one, and how to time the yellowing of bananas, so I'm not much better. But we're all learning together aren't we?
Speaking of dichotomies, it will be useful for me to get down into the product sets. Part of the GMO'ification of various seed-sets (better vocab soon come) is the embedding of pesticides, and others is some genetic hybridization presumably for flavor, texture, color and/or hardening to grow in previously adverse climes. The third way is for sterilization that makes previously 'seedable' crops now only 'graftable'.
As for the monoculture stuff and Taleb's risk analysis, that's something I too will follow. He says, essentially, that the long-term risk of catastrophic crop failure is not worth any short term benefit. It's like planting roses on a volcano.
I'm also going to defer to farmers who blog, like this guy, who says common sense stuff like "don't take your advice on the farming business from Willie Nelson", and more importantly will talk specifically about the terms and conditions of his purchase of seeds from Monsanto.
Independently of this, I've been skeptical of both E85 and soy milk.
J-Dub is one of my alter-egos, another existential partner although he may not know it. If I were ten years younger I would have taken computers a great deal more seriously. It would have given me more social cover to be an outer geek rather than just an inner geek. And of course if I were a white dude instead of a black dude, I would have a great deal more invested in the logic of organicism. Although I'm not quite sure on that last score because I *am* organic in a new and interesting way, certainly my relationship with being organic would have gone through a different sort of rationale. Nevertheless, J-Dub is a vegetarian and I am not. Nevertheless, I think we share an organic connection with regards to food and other things which needs some fleshing out.
Let me start with the provocation that gets me here and work through its logic and see where it leads. You see it's often difficult for folks I converse with, especially in larger groups, to finish off what may sound like an offhanded comment spewing out of my piehole, when in fact it's just the beginning of a conversation. These are conversations often never completed, and so I sound like more of an asshole than I actually am. Being non-apologetic doesn't help. On the other hand, if you can't continue the conversation, I'm not likely to take you seriously or view you as deserving of the long answer. Thus this blog and its 13 year history.
The ethical difference between store-bought GMO food and store-bought non-GMO food is negligible.
From an organic POV, if you're not growing your own food, you're a beggar trying to be choosy. From that same perspective, the guy shopping at Whole Foods for natural products is just another consumer infusing his consumption with conspicuous social signaling. This is especially hypocritical for those who aren't using their bodies to social effect. Now that's a mouthful, but let me handle the last part of it because that's particularly where I'm coming from lately.
As some readers may know, I'm in the midst of my martial education. This year I am focusing on my own body and diet. It's working very well and I am rather stunningly pleased with the results so far. It's changing the way I live, but there's a lot of detail below that thread. At a higher level, the point of me doing my body conditioning is to put me into a position of providing some social service with my body as a junior sheepdog. These days that doesn't amount to much more than playing bodyguard around friends and family when walking through sketchy turf, but that means a lot to me. I very much like the idea of improving my physique in service of the safety of others. I am broadening the capability of my impulse to be a big brother and a protector of ladies and gentlemen in the context of the decreased sociability of the urban world today. My intent is to make that clear distinction from that and general badassery for which my cool pose might be mistaken. But the point is that I am moral muscle. I intent to bridge the gap between foolish chivalry and 'protect and serve' on the real. My diet serves that purpose. Not just to make me look sexy.
You've perhaps heard the joke, how can you tell which person at the table is a vegan. Don't worry, they'll let you know. That's a cruel joke if applied to someone with peanut or shellfish allergies. The moral distinction is clear. If you serve the wrong food to an allergic, they become poisoned, if you serve the wrong food to a vegan they become offended. The distinction between an insult and an assault should be self-evident. I am always trying to not be rude, but I am not above mocking a vegan who tries to make the political case that serving meat is an assault or worse.
I think it is reasonable for Monsanto and other food producers to resist labeling of GMO products. I think it is also reasonable for consumers to expect GMO products to be labeled. But to demand it now, in the context of stark ignorance of what GMO is, augurs in favor of the producers. One is harder pressed to demonstrate the perfidy of producers than the paranoia of consumers. This is one area in which I would like to see more responsibility of scientists and other experts, but in these days, such things are difficult to expect. Consider the retirement of Harold Lewis. Nevertheless, my food expert is Michael Pollan.
It has been a long time since I conferred with Pollan on any matter, but I like his approach. His simplest advice is to eat food, mostly plants and not too much. On the matter of what is food we get a simple admonishment. If your grandmother wouldn't recognize it, it's probably not food. I join this advice with that of Nassim Taleb who asserts the primacy of recipes handed down through generations. Of all the experimenting mankind has done with every possible thing there is to eat on the planet, it should be no surprise that bread baking has survived. Fifty generations of baking rather outweigh your sudden aversion to gluten. I tie that finally with our very evolution of incisors and large intestines. If God didn't want us to eat meat we would have teeth like horses or stomachs like cows. Nor do humans eat much insect flesh. These are not random circumstances subject to social engineering.
However agriculture is subject to engineering. Given that, one must ask the fundamental question of how agriculture has evolved at all. Or more specifically, what do chicken farmers know about breeding fowl that genetic engineers don't? What stands out in my memory is that all of those fifty generations of farming and breeding was done in almost total ignorance of genetics. What crops and commodities are today is little more than the eugenics of style, or as Pollan puts it, the botany of desire. Nobody raising corn, cabbage or cows knew if there would vitamins and minerals. Figuring out the calories is an entirely new idea, and counting them doesn't help the way we have been sold. Your grandmother doesn't know how many calories are in the tomatoes she grew in the backyard and made into spaghetti sauce. So why should you care? Because you buy it from the supermarket and that's all you know. Food in a box. Trust the label because for everything else, you are unable. Now what's a GMO label? Just another piece of consumer information to be entered into your iPhone app.
I have two problems with GMO but both are economic in nature, not ethical in nature. The first is the simple matter of monoculture. If GMO methods prove superior to traditional method of hit and miss, then we are possibly depending upon market forces to develop the most efficient crop. That means the overwhelming variety of potatoes might be engineered for french fries, rather than for stews. Not good. Secondly, there is the legitimate question of oligopoly of agribusiness seed stock.
Neither of these are the sort of matters that can be solved by selective consuming. It's like saying that if I only spend my lifetime purchasing red BMWs, then the car manufacturers of the world will respond. And I certainly do not expect any democratic process or social movement to work in any disciplined way. What I can do however is be a smart shopper and a microproducer, and I can give ethical ends to the means of consuming food. Those ethical ends outweigh the means of production.
It's in the microproducer angle that I find myself in complete enthusiastic agreement withJ-Dub as regards his intent to get with the growing veggies program. Aside from the fact that I know he thought his way into vegetarianism and does not in any way get self-aggrandizing in his choices, we gel on the ziggurat of skill. We both move from consumer to gearhead, to hacker to maker when it comes to food skills. And it is in this way we share the ethos that pulls us away from the shallow morality of consumerism to the virtue of study and practical mastery in production.
I don't know if or how I will ever sympathize with the consumer who chooses particular diets. I am rather convinced that people are merely being picky eaters, expressing privileged preferences. Moreover I sense that many people have elevated such preferences to fetishes and are really developing social intolerances and taboos. I don't have any problem with the privileged preferences, and not much with the food snobbishness - but food consumption doesn't weigh much with me morally. I hesitate to, but must make the parellel to sexual appetites, so you can see how this could resonate into another 1500 words.
I don't much care what people eat, but I don't like the moral pretenses of the politics of consumption. Producer know, consumers guess.
I'm giving part of the attribution to Neal Stephenson's Baroque Series, and part of the attribution Michael Pollan to and part of the attribution to the developers of Assassin's Creed. Also, now that I think of it we should spread a few props to Niall Ferguson and Nassim Taleb. It was a combination of their concepts that helped me to understand that I could have lived very well in the past. Not just the recent past, but in the 18th Century. There were very good ways to live back then, and good ways prior to that as well.
So when I think about my own martial education, a lot of it has to do with ridding myself of priorities established by contemporaries. Particularly I emphasize those priorities directed to me as a member of the consumer society - of those priorities that would have me spend effort, time and money pursuing convenience at the expense of spending effort, time and money for the sake of self-sufficiency. To be independently wealthy in our connected society requires a great deal more than it used to. But I digress. The point here lies specifically around the area of food.
I have often speculated about the amount of desperation a man would have been in when he found himself eating the first oyster. He must have been really really hungry to go underwater and pull that horrid looking thing off of whatever mucky object it was attached to, crack it open and slurp up the gummy substance. But then somebody said, "Nah, it was a teenaged boy doing it on a dare." Suddenly it made perfect sense. Not so complicated at all. But if you look at the history of recipies for oysters, the sophistication arises over time. Of course you want to eat Oysters Rockefeller. You'd spend good money on that. I would.
And yet we have fast food. Fast food is for people on the go who may have neither the time nor the skill to Big Gulpify themselves, or craft up their own McNuggets. Indeed what part of a chicken is the nugget? It's not surprising that this stuff isn't the best for you, but what about margerine? What about artificial sweeteners? What's the point of all this scientifically engineered food product? What goes into making that sausage? We don't know, we don't care. We simply eat when we're hungry because, relatively speaking, we are all very rich and we have choices. But then again so did our grandparents have choices. So did people in the 18th Century.
They judge inventions against sliced bread, you know. Damned good idea, sliced bread. So now imagine you were someone other than a teenaged boy on a dare. How do you come up with the ingredients, much less the audacity, to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? You and I both know, it's pretty much a toss up between that and Oysters Rockefeller depending upon how much cold milk is in the fridge. But OK. Peanuts grow under ground, so you have to dig those up, crack open the shell and crush the nut. Then grapes grown on vines in a completely different climate, surely not right next to wheat. Where the heck do you get yeast? I don't know. So this is a recipe that took a lot of doing. A lot of trial and error.
So yeah, if I lived in the days of Leonardo, I might have had a steel sword, but probably not a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I probably would have had a good Italian sausage, though and probably a decent pizza. The recipe for pizza, specifically the combinations of all the foods possible we think about make a good pizza have been passed down for generations. Like the first oyster, it didn't kill anybody. How many generations of good pizza do we have? It proved itself to be a domesticated food a recipe worthy of handing down for generations. Just as I learned from my parents how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
What has survived for hundreds of years is better. Everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. That's Murphy and Taleb. Pizza is the safe bet. I would say peanut butter and jelly will be a safe bet too, but probably not as safe as pizza, and certainly safer than say... well start reading this: http://www.fda.gov/Food/DietarySupplements/ I dare you. That's not a recipe from your parents, that's a recipe for disaster.
So ask yourself if this new thing you want to eat or avoid eating has been known to as many people over as much time as peanut butter and jelly.
One day two weeks ago I threw out my back. Nothing serious but I'm so stupid that I put heat on it instead of ice and ended up having to go back the the chiropractor twice more than it usually takes. You see, once a year I do this, but this is the first time I've done it during summer beach volleyball season. At 53, I'm the oldest dude on our regular court (but still have the highest vertical), and this might be my final season. I've got a lot of work done in my home office this year and I think all the sitting is catching up to me.
My chiro and I had some good conversations. He's about the same age and he reminds me of the Chinese kid from Oceans Eleven. The 'Grease Man'. He's one of those lightweight small guys that are all sinew and muscle and flexibility. Yeah he does ultra-triatholons. I used to have a very strong 'core' before pilates and big rubber balls came into fashion. That's because my primary sport in highschool was springboard diving. I retain my good posture and I never destroyed anything in particular except my gut.
He recommended I do 'movement', meaning exercise, and it worked. Simple stuff like squats and bends that made me hurt and pant for a week. Now I can do it without much problem, especially since my back pain is done. He also recommended The Paleo Diet. I whipped out my iPhone and took a picuture of the ISBN number on his copy, told the Spousal Unit and she said just figure it out, you don't need to buy the book. Besides, I already know what I eat that I could do better at.
For the past six months or so, I've been making a concerted effort to eat better lunches. And so I have moved through the deli section and bought a set of cutting boards. I've developed a taste for soprassetta and pepper jack cheese which are two new additions to my lifelong love of deli. I've also been consuming a lot of gourmet potato chips. I cannot resist Kettle Maple Bacon. Who could? But I turned a corner this summer when I realized that I could make a better ceasar salad.
Just this past weekend, I found myself at a joint called DTLA Cheese in the Grand Central Market. There, with Paleo fundamentals on my mind, I thought it would be cool to eat as I imagined most working class men in the 1920s ate, with some meat, fruit and cheese wrapped up in a handkerchief. So I got myself a chunk of hard sheep cheese called Fiore Sardo and a fat square of fennel salami called Finocchiona. The guy at the counter wrapped it up in special paper and put it in a brown bag for me. 10 bucks, and it lasted longer than lunch.
Now I'm not a cook. Not at all. My mother's kitchen was strictly a place for me to wash dishes and fix peanut butter and jelly and Nestle's Quik. I never touched the stove except for giant Saturday morning breakfast. So I know my eggs and sausages, but that's about it. Now I am having emerging behaviors about kitchen propriety that may very well stress my marriage. This combination of disciplines around food and movement I am integrating into my life, I thought you might like to come along.
So the first thing you need to know are the broad outlines of what I am calling the Peasant Epicurean Diet. It is designed for an upper middle class snot such as myself with rather paleo attitudes about grooming and housework and all that. I'm a man's man who works at a damnable keyboard all day long. Let my role model be a cross between Rudyard Kipling and a player to be named later. In short, I am going to use expensive ingredients because I dig flavor - that's the epicurean part. But I'm also going to use very simple raw ingredients that need a minimum of preparation, that's the peasant part.
Let me put one more image into your head. Back when I was 19, I worked at a retail store. Teamster Union shop. There was this pale skinny kid from Czechoslovakia who worked there. My friend Clave Marks could speak fractional Russian and Czech, but not much enough to have a conversation. The kid, every day, came up to the lunch room and ate out of a grocery bag. Groceries! Like an onion, an apple, a head of lettuce. Dude could fill up for a dollar.
--
The first staple of this diet is deli meat. The second staple is cheese. The third is romaine lettuce. The fourth is water.
Instrumentally, I have a big kitchen knife (Henkels I think - I've had it for 22 years) and a stack of pie tins. That's right. You see the signature meal I've been eating is a Man Lunch. That means I can throw this thing together in about 5 minutes. I don't know about you but when I had no cooking skills and I jump off the keyboard to eat, I want to eat now. I'm thinking the wait at the drive through is a good deal compared to figuring out something in my wife's kitchen. The most frightful apspect of this involves digging through a refrigerator that is (dis)organized according to principles that make no sense whatsoever to me. So I needed my own section of the refrigerator. Meats. Cheeses. Bottled water.
Now since I'm going to continue in this thread for a while as I develop the food and movement discipline, I realize I ought to just use today as a benchmark and sample day. How about that?
Today, my after morning poop weight is 210.6. Today's man lunch was, I think, pure Peasant Epicurean - let's call it PE - as follows.
1 dozen slices of Gallo sliced salami. 2 slices of pepper jack 1 half dozen strawberries 2 dozen or so green seedless grapes. 12 oz bottle of Pelligrino
All except the water goes into a pie tin. I use a hand towel, not napkins.
--
This morning I had no breakfast, but it's going to go something like this as time goes on.
Tea. Always tea. Simple, pure. Use Dasani bottled water and English Breafast grind Earl Gray loose tea. I get mine from the local Japanese supermarket.
For a couple years I was an elite reviewer on Yelp. I would give a restaurant five stars only if the meal showed me something I'd never seen before and it was really that good. What I'm going to do now is try to come up with a top x from memory - that is to say without going back to Yelp and seeing what I wrote. So these will be in no reviewed order.
Whist: Santa Monica Whist was a special meal for my anniversary when the Spousal Unit worked as a restaurant recruiter. So imagine you're a headhunter for chefs in Los Angeles. So we definitely had the hookup and had the chefs come out to meet us. Fabulous, daring meal.
?: New Orleans There was this little restaurant in New Orleans next to the Marriott a couple blocks from the convention center. It was on the corner. I had the most awesome shrimp dish ever. It was as if the chef knew how to capture the ocean breeze and put it into a broth. It made me feel like I was Aquaman and could breathe salt water, and this was what a fresh warm current tasted like.
Musha: Torrance Musha as anyone will tell you, is the most wholly original Japanese restaurant you are likely to find anywhere outside of the coolest neighborhood in Tokyo. You will eat things there you never imagined Japanese people ate.
?: NYC I really ought to remember the name of this joint. It was my first closing party. We got the upstairs room in a classic Italian joint over near the Citibank Tower on Lexington. There were about a dozen of us and it seemed as if we each had our own personal waiter. I'm sure that it went something like $200 per plate. I don't remember the main courses, but I do remember that we had 1977 Port and chocolates for dessert. Best service ever.
Del Frisco's Double Eagle: Ft. Worth Basically changed my steak from NY Strip to Ribeye. It was as if I had never tasted beef before, it was simply that flavorful. Astoundingly perfect steak. Still hasn't been approached.
As Cobb readers know, sometime around 7 years ago, I realized some awful things about the American electorate the fundamental nature of which can be described as lazy. I also recognized that when intelligent collaboration fails, human beings almost instantly and unconsciously revert to hierarchy. In this I predicted that Barack Obama because of the nature of his campaign and the character he displayed, would be subject to the great temptation of fascism. Which is to say more plainly that he is an opportunist who skillfully and with luck on his side managed to sell a shallow set of opportunities for intelligent collaboration as a candidate. The lazy American electorate purchased that dog food and soon after reverted to hierarchy. Obama has taken those opportunties as well. In this season, the press has come the constellation of his small treacheries. I saw its shape all along.
My most deeply held concern about the Obama Presidency has been and continues to be his naive, reactionary and rudderless foreign policy. I fully expect that his legacy will be that he was the American President who let Iran have nuclear weapons. Despite the bold and brave Stuxnet worm I'm sure his administration had a hand in, Obama's boldness is covert. He cannot hold his head high in front of troops and does not recognize the necessity and honor of the force of arms, the salutory effect of a national military force - the true meaning of uniformed boots on the ground. It is a projection of force with which he has fundamental quarrels - I believe it frightens him and so he responds to the irrational fears projected by like-minded individuals in foreign countries and peaceniks at home.
In the news today is the sort of event which gets my attention because, in combination with the aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombings it strikes me as evidence of a new sort of everyday savagery. After the professional terrorists have exhausted their most brilliant plans come the defiant ordinary butchers, all drinking from the same well of iniquity, the well of Islamist jihad the President dare not name, let alone poison. I am speaking, of course, about the machete attack on the British soldier in Woolwich. The broad daylight murder. The televised standoff in which red-handed killers were called 'suspects'.
Someone wisely said that Europe has lost its mind. It fears its own militarization because of what it did to itself during the 20th century. And so the pendulum of its willingness to be cowed in public has defied the gravity of its Islamist defiance. Barack Obama carries that kind of fear in his heart as well, as do others who fail to navigate the reality of honor in military discipline. When all violent action is undifferentiable to someone, they are happy to speak of their disgust of hatchet men in the streets, and are equally happy to send them off through civilian due processes as if all violence were the same type of crminality. In their simple-minded calculations, the random brutality of the one is only multiplied by the random brutality of the police, the national guard, the army. Better to suffer the indignity of Islamist wackjobs than the wackjobs in uniform - after all, real human beings just want to sleep and enjoy curious varieties of dress, meals and sex. So goes the thinking of the lazy many.
This makes life more difficult than it should be for the disciplined few for whom no pendulum operates our logic in support of the necessity of militant vigilance. But our efforts at intelligent collaboration have failed in the same democratic arena as the populist Obama's has succeeded, and so we fall too to hierarchy. It has taken me some time to see the measure of blind hero worship behind every teary salute, but that doesn't change the direction of my sentiment or of my thinking. It only makes me try, on occasions like today, to speak of the need for a leader capable of intelligent collaboration in support of boots on the ground.
I know such people exist who understand the limits of tolerance for that which seeks a barbaric undoing of our open society and civilized norms. That understanding comes from the simultaneous recognition of the value of liberty and the extremes to which it must often be defended. It comes not from fear, nor from dark vengeance, but for the necessity of protecting that which makes us civilized. It is not our unwillingness to employ violence which makes us civilized, but our unwillingness to be cowards. A nation so dedicated swears its citizens to oaths to this, and it is the dynamic life of that intelligent collaboration which keeps armies in uniform, in defense of liberty, in plain sight. A hierarchy of command that fears its own body will abuse itself in secret and send its dirty parts to do only dirty deeds. These are not the ways of proper leadership. These are the ways of fear and ignorance and such ways are always eventually revealed.
These are the events my friends. There is so little courage in our leadership that the tiny mobs are forming to fill the vacuum. The jihadi mobs are just the first. The now-quieted professionals whose masterminded schemes have been thwarted will again rise to direct them in due time. But by then they won't need masterful schemes..
This afternoon I ate like a monk. An astronaut. A prisoner.
I calmed myself down, slowed my breakthing, selected the pot. I opened up the can of tomato soup reminding myself of the sacrcity of this, in deep space. I marvelled at how effective the artificial gravity was, keeping the flame low as the pot warmed on the luxurious four burner stove. Gas. I remember when I could only find electric. I adjusted the flame down.
The one can of water I stirred in came from the two gallon canister on the counter, next to the rotating spice rack. I have it all. I selected a wooden spoon, no put that back. I selected a plastic ladle from the selection. I stirred gently, removed it and placed it on a paper towel.
I walked slowly to the living room and sat at the piano. I played with two hands remembering that I type so much that I have to force my fingers to work more than one at a time. I stretched them. I played a major scale in C, boring. I returned to the kitchen. The soup was ready.
I selected a bowl from the cabinet on the East wall. It was not Borky sized, but more appropriate to lunch - my midday half meal. I ladled out several until the bowl was 75% capacity and took it to the wooden table. It's quiet downstairs.
I took my time with each spoonful, the temperature was perfect - I never had to blow. The scrim of red liquid contrast against the white porcelain as the level of soup went down. I counted. At 13, it seemed that I had an infinite amount and that the meal would last an eternity, and so it became my last meal. I would savor every moment and enjoy every bit of pleasure that can come from tomato soup. By this time, that amount seemed to be more than I deserved; I was going to die after the last spoon. I couldn't be more satisfied.
My eyes glanced aross the table to the folded bag of Doritos. I ignored them. I was eating my soup and there was nothing else in the world save me and this time with it. At 36 I started eating faster and forced myself to slow down. Don't lose count. Breathe. This is a perfect meal. I can do this for the rest of my life.
I came upon a bit of statistical propaganda today - all for a good cause of course. I was re-introduced to the term 'Food Security'. What the heck is 'food security'? Are the people hungry or not? Are they starving or just hungry?
I leave it to you as an exercise to get a handle around the concept. I will do it in terms of historical comparison. Which is to say, to flesh out my Peasant Theory int he context of what Americans take for granted and what the world standard for hunger and poverty actually is. Always in the back of my mind is the Gapminder. By world standards, poverty is defined as living on less than $2 per day. Yes that's two. So ask yourself, while you are watching one of the Discovery Channel survival shows exactly how many calories you really need. Since we live in America nobody really says. Wolfram says anywhere between 1600 and 2800. Everywhere on the web there are Body Mass Index calculators which are just guides to help you become slim by convincing you that you are overweight. But that's not about the biological facts of what is necessary for you to survive. So such a wide range makes me want to hazard a guess, but I won't. I'll just say that hunger is relative. Consider the following survey question:
“We relied on only a few kinds of low-cost food to feed our children because we were running out of money to buy food.” Was that often, sometimes, or never true for you in the last 12 months?
Hell, I ate mackerel when I was a kid because we couldn't afford Chicken of the Sea. We endured the shame of shopping at Lucky Supermarkets and ate plain wrap. Horror of horrors.
Fortunately, there is some nice transparency if you want to dig into the matter. A reasonably complete accounting of the terms and methods can be found at the USDA. Since I look at boundary conditions, I immediately went to check out Wilcox County, Alabama which had the highest rate of food insecurity in America - something on the order of 38 percent. It turns out that Wilcox County's population has been shrinking since after WW2 and is now about 11,000 folks with only 13 people per square mile. I'm not surprised that there are people who miss meals in Alabama, and it stands to reason that when you're that far out in the sticks, there ain't much work nor an easy way to get McNuggets.
What strikes me when I read such matters (and in parallel, I'm reading Niall Ferguson's latest book which reveals that in 16th Century Western Europe the murder rate was 50/100,000 and the average height of a Frenchman was 5' 4") is how it is somewhat relativistic. In particular, coming across this particular paragraph was remarkable:
While children are usually shielded from the disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake that characterize very low food security, both children and adults experienced instances of very low food security in 1.0 percent of households with children (386,000 households) in 2010, essentially unchanged from 1.2 percent in 2009. However, among households with children in which incomes were below 185 percent of the poverty line, the percentage with very low food security among children declined from 2.9 percent in 2009 to 2.1 percent in 2010.
Several observations:
1. I recall that there are 119M households in America. About 38M have children.
2. Incomes below 185% of the poverty line.. OK the poverty line is not a line so much as a matrix. Here's the matrix:
Size of family unit
100 Percent of Poverty
110 Percent of Poverty
125 Percent of Poverty
150 Percent of Poverty
175 Percent of Poverty
185 Percent of Poverty
200 Percent of Poverty
1
$10,830
$11,913
$13,538
$16,245
$18,953
$20,036
$21,660
2
$14,570
$16,027
$18,213
$21,855
$25,498
$26,955
$29,140
3
$18,310
$20,141
$22,888
$27,465
$32,043
$33,874
$36,620
4
$22,050
$24,255
$27,563
$33,075
$38,588
$40,793
$44,100
5
$25,790
$28,369
$32,238
$38,685
$45,133
$47,712
$51,580
6
$29,530
$32,483
$36,913
$44,295
$51,678
$54,631
$59,060
7
$33,270
$36,597
$41,588
$49,905
$58,223
$61,550
$66,540
8
$37,010
$40,711
$46,263
$55,515
$64,768
$68,469
$74,020
So apparently it's a regular thing to not just talk about poverty, but people who are near to poverty. We are being statistically inclusive when we talk about 'the poor'.
An old friend of mine used to joke about the 'LA Poverty Line' which for single hale fellows well met was 36K in 1985. By which we meant that our basic necessities included a sporty automobile and a nice apartment near the beach. Both of us celebrated when we rose above that 'poverty' line. And while today we can easily be considered to be part of the 5%, what I refer to as The Slice, it's clear that while we were joking about poverty inflation, others in the government were not and are not.
Clearly it would be an abomination to inflate America's baseline poverty rate to something like the 150% or 185% levels. But we accomodate the public interest in fractions above 1% by including the inflated poverty benchmarks. It *is* interesting to know that food security in the 185% poverty category for children decreased 80 basis points from 2009 to 2010 from 2.9 to 2.1% - even though most of the general public doesn't use the term 'basis point'.
I think I would actually like to see the return of plain wrap, but they'd compete with store brands and probably wouldn't do so well. The American poor. How poor are they?
There's only one problem with New American - which is that they tend to assume that everyone is on a diet. It's a fair assumption because most people who can afford to blow 100 bucks on a meal are probably that fastidious. Me? I just like to eat good food and tell off-color jokes. Since I had the private dining experience at wd-50, I could laugh as loud as I wanted.
Even for jaded road warriors like me who are apt to say about different food combinations - it all goes down the same hole - I have never seen such a variety of ingredients combined. Dude must be back there with a Kabbalah random number generator to come up with these. Two words, tobasco & caviar. I didn't try that one, but that's your first clue.
What I did have was an amazingly poofy foie gras with beets and sweets that made me hungry for more wine and thirsty for the main course which was a multitextured sea bass. It seemed almost engineered to have a marvelously crispy skin outside of the moist meat - like they cooked them in separate heats or methods and then stitched them together for presentation.
Maybe I'm thinking about Molecular Gastronomy, which is what Chef D is pioneering out here. Don't ask me about the details, but the results are kinda fascinating.
Service is the new world class, in the way that Steve Jobs makes business casual. You get the best, but it's all dressed in soft cotton, not starched. Or maybe it's something about the best New York waitstaff that don't need to be actors and thus puff up their presentation. Every motion spoiled us and the surprises kept coming.
So here's the thing that makes the rank of the fifth star, which as my readers know, is only given when I get something I have never gotten before. This time that magic word is dirt. Yes dirt.
Have you ever been in the open air after a summer shower and you smell the fresh dirt? If you know that experience, you know how wonderful it is to be alive. But have you ever thought for a moment how somebody might translate that into something edible? That's what I experienced last night. I don't know how, but there was this crumbly stuff in my palate cleanser after the main course, presaging something in my desert that was like eating earth. It was such a magnificent surprise that it completely blew away my fat gutted snark about the minimalist California portion trend in New American. (Especially considering my recent trip to JacquesImo in New Orleans). Maybe that was the Forbidden Rice or one of the other exotic ingredients for which I have only the slimmest vocab, but it was a sock knocker.
They say that the job of the best restaurant is to delight, which is a tall order for us rich, jaded, spoiled, loud mouthed Americains. How do you provide such a casual luxury? I only know it when I see it, and that's what wd-50 did.
The best thing about Galco's is that getting home and opening up the sodas is not anti-climatic. In case you've been under a rock (which is often a good place to be when it's raining Tiger Woods stories), you should know about Galco's Soda Pop Shop. I was made aware a couple weeks ago, and now I hear there's an NPR story. Today there was even a book signing. First to the video that hipped me to the deal.
When I found that this guy and his joint were just 15 miles away from my house, I knew that I'd be making several trips. And so this weekend was the first.
First thing was that I had to herd the cats of my family which is getting more difficult to do by the day. We managed to get everyone together by 11am from sleepovers and sleepins and take the Pasadena freeway up to North Figeuroa into Highland Park. We made a quick stop at BofA and then turned left on York and headed to Avenue 54. That's because the Estrella Taco Truck is there. Yes a taco truck. The al pastor burrito (no guac, no sour cream) is a perfect balance. Just spicy meat held together in a perfect tortilla with the right amount of sauce, onion, & cilantro. You know there are still Americans who don't know what cilantro is. I know, hard to believe.
We wheeled back down York and pulled into Galco's. A bunch of dudes were hanging out in front eating and drinking sodas. In a glance I could tell they were either YouTubers or Oxy students. But it was the second incongruous group I'd seen in this East LA style 'hood. My family of course was the first.
Inside it is as bright and cheerful as in the color drenched video. Except the florescents weren't giving the color balance you saw in the video. But the excitement of seeing candy and soda from long lost memory was just as extraordinary as you would expect. The proprietor was there, and a bunch of employees were busily restocking shelves and pointing folks in interesting directions. The photographer took a shine to my kids. I grabbed a cart and went at it.
It took me a while to figure out what Nese, the owner, was on about when he talked about CRV and the monopolization of recycling by Coke and Pepsi. But by the time I got in the store I had figured it out. As soon as I saw a bottle of BubbleUp I remembered that I used to put them in my wagon and return them to Boys Market on Crenshaw for a few pennies each. It was the market that paid me the money and got me back in the store. They sent the bottles back to the bottler who washed them and reused them. Well the accounting geniuses at Coke and Pepsi realized that if they could get a good enough deal on recycled glass, it would be cheaper for them to make new bottles than to wash and relabel the old ones, especially as you realize many of the bottles were painted. So they argued for the support of CRV and that took their rewashing factories out of the supply chain. And it took the markets out too. So now the states run the CRV programs and they get the kickback from the bottlers, not the markets. You can argue that it's just a penny or two per bottle, but those pennies add up, and none of them go to the Galcos of the world.
But going to Galco's is not about sour grapes. It's about Nugrape and Big Red and Faygo Rock&Rye and Kackapoo Joy Juice and all those old brands you thought were gone. It's about crazy flavors you never knew existed much less made into a soda. I can't even imagine a Dandelion and Burdock soda, but there it is right at eye level on the shelf.
Moreover Galco's is about experiencing the kind of long tail personal retail that is a very rare thing in this country. There's a man running that store who reminds us that quality doesn't necessarily mean rarified and overpriced. Some of my favorite business success stories are about the man who didn't do a lot of market research or focus groups on a product, but instead assumed that the customer shared his own passion. Those guys don't often make the big time, but they make the 99th percentile because they can control the details.
You wouldn't think that there are details in soda, but there absolutely are. In fact, soda is exciting again. We've all been dumbed down with the mass market sodas, because as soon as you open the top on one of these rare brands you smell it. When is the last time you appreciated the smell of a soda before you chugged it down? I'm telling you it's a new experience. Not just shopping for the stuff, which is a delight in itself, but actually drinking it down.
My new favorite soda is Curiosity Cola. It's an astonishing drink. If you've ever had an IBC or a Jones, then you know how different a good soda can be from the mainstream brands. In my book the Fentimans are up a significant notch from them. I tried it with some Captain Morgan and it's an entirely new drink. Can't wait to taste it with Jack. Next I am dying to make a cucumber martini.
Now it's just like me to become a soda snob, but instead I have this wave of sadness in the realization of how we've all been ripped off and deprived of one of life's simple pleasures. It ought to be a no-brainer to go to the store and marvel at what kinds of goods are available after the culmination of thousands of years of beverage making. But we've just been swallowing swill. Galco's selection (and they're supplying restaurants too) is waking us up to something marvelous and oh so sweet. Tell your favorite bartender to get on board.
It doesn't stop there. Galco's has old school candy. Yes including Nikl Nip wax lips and candy cigarettes. They have Flicks, Chick O Stick and Fruit Stripe gum. They've got C Howard's Violets, Razzles, Pop Rocks and Giant Pixy Stix. It's like going back in time.
I expect Galco's to get slashdotted, and that's cool. He's not great because he's small, but because he's great.
Long wooden tables, beer, sausages, loud tall men.. where have we seen
zis before? We haven't although it feels as if we have.
Across
the street from where Al's Bar used to be, we have Wurstküche. The food
is simple as it is exotic. I am a huge fan of beer and sausage, but I
tend to stray away from places where the people's teeth are too white
and exoticism is sampled for its own sake. That said, I'm going to have
to give this joint another sample because maybe the exotic is just what
I need.
You see I got a bockwurst with onions and peppers and
a Curiosity Cola, and the cola was by far the better experience. Maybe
next time I'll get the duck & bacon with jalapeno. Part of the
fault of this was mine, having left my reading glasses in the car I
parked *four blocks away*, I had to rely on looking at what I could see
in the case, rather than eyeballing everything on the small paper menu.
Sure I could see Rattlesnake & Rabbit in the case, but not the
italics on the menu wich would tell me 'buttery but mildly spicy'.
That being the case, I would have seen no adjectives whatsoever after
the Bockwurst which would have indicated the lack of pride they
proprietors take in their 'classics'. I've had better wursts from
hotdog stands. The other part of my fault was my anti-foo foo attitude
which was probably initiated by seeing the guy walking out of the joint
with his underwear on the outside. Not shocked mind you, nor
particularly disturbed, just rolling my eyes. It would have helped if
they had better music playing, alas it didn't. So either Bockwurst is
completely boring (I've never had it before, and the pale whiteness of
it stood out) or their's is. Even though I'm writing about it, it's
nothing to write home about.
Since I'm still in a lather about
Galco's Soda Pop Stop, as should every restaurateur in Los Angeles, I
savored my two bottles of Curiosity Cola and said later for the beer.
And I did so despite the warm and chummy extraordinary service given by
Wayne who took the time to set us up with some fine samples. I liked
the Christmas Ale best.
So this is a joint that's definitely up for a re-run. Maybe next time if I drink the beer, all will seem better.
The Melting Pot gives you the feeling that you're living in a parallel
universe. Everything is very much like you would expect in a luxurious
restaurant except there are some fundamental changes that are both
subtle and dramatic.
First off the place is gorgeous. It's
dark and intimate with deep woods, frosted glass, dramatic lighting and
inviting carpets. The staff is handsome, courteous and prompt - all
decked out in black. For a new restaurant, it's moving very smoothly.
The building is circular and the theme repeats itself in large and
small curves. The bar and private rooms over to the left are just
begging for a Hollywood movie crew to shoot. Although it was fairly
quiet when we arrived, I can see this becoming quite the spot.
I know what it is. It's like Gulfstream or Houstons, except it's round! That's the vibe. But that's just the beginning.
The
menu is half wine, and as soon as you walk in the door, you can see
that they are nuts for wine at the Melting Pot. They have several
hundred bottles on display in a glass case that reminded me of the
house in Thirteen Ghosts. Very cool. But since you know I'm not a wine
guy, that's about all I have to say about that. But if you must know,
they had some bomb cocktails. I myself had a lemonade, vodka and basil
concoction that was frosty and chock full of strawberries. It didn't
knock me over, nor was it too fruity. It was pleasantly different -
parallel universe style, and it didn't make me feel like I was
experimenting with my masculinity.
The other half of the menu
is what the Melting Pot is all about and it is about as different as
possible. What the Spousal Unit and I had was called the Lobster
Indulgence. It was a huge, delicious, continental meal. Now you've had
teppan, Benihana style, and you may have even had Korean Barbecue
cooked right at your table, but you have never had fondue, so get
prepared.
It works like this. There are four courses, three of
which center around two hot pots cooking in the center of your
marble-top table. Or just one if you're a party of two. Fondue is all
about dipping and boiling. You get a huge variety of foods brought to
you and you dip it or cook it right at your table. Yeah. Different! The
first is the appetizer. In this you have six choices of cheesy treats
as a basis to cook up in your two pots. We had the triple Wisconsin and
the spinach and artichoke. Hey. Hot spinach dip is like Houstons, but
we're in the parallel universe and the server prepares it right in
front of you. For dippin', we had apples, celery, carrots, cauliflower,
crusty breads and tortilla chips. Aha, now I know what those big long
skewer forks are for.
Now since the restaurant is new, the
servers don't have their speil down while they're preparing, but
knowing what we know of Benihana, we can be sure that they're going to
have some entertaining banter as time goes by. This time I decided to
dominate the conversation. Next time, we'll see.
Next comes
salad. I had Southwestern Cobb. Mmm bacony! The Unit had a ceasar with
pine nuts. Really superb. Hey, I'm getting full already.
The
main course for the Lobster Indulgence is what this is all about. I'm
going to try to spare you some details because I'd be here all day. And
by the way, when you go to get this which is the full-on treatment, you
had better bring your appetite, have three hours (seriously) and a
watch. Lobster, beef tenderloin, salmon, spiced chicken, shrimp. Those
are your meats. Mushrooms, red potatoes, broccoli. Those are your
veggies. Two boiling pots of broth - we chose the Coq au Vin French and
the Mojo Caribbean. And nine, count 'em nine sauces. Pick a meat, pick
a veggie, fondue it for 90 seconds or 120 seconds in a pot, shag it
onto your plate and pick a sauce. The combination of tastes is
astounding. How is it that food so familiar can be so different? It
must be a parallel universe.
I never do dessert. 99% of the
time, I'm too stuffed or make some kind of excuse. I'm telling you now,
there is no way to resist a simmering pot of chocolate for dipping. We
had two, one with milk chocolate the other with cherries jubilee en
flambe swimming in dark chocolate. For dipping? Rice Crispies Treats,
marshmallows in graham cracker or Oreo dusting, cheesecake, poundcake,
bananas and brownies.
I'm trying to remember how I got out of
the joint under my own power. As you know, I only give five stars when
a restaurant shows me something I didn't know and didn't expect. This
was out of this world. I've got to go again.
21525 Hawthorne Boulevard
Torrance, CA 90503 (310) 316-7500
There have been several drunks in my life that I have lived to regret. I know them each by name. I'm not talking about other people, I'm talking about me. There were exactly 3 until I got to Pazo and now there are 4.
The reason is threefold. The first is that I didn't have any breakfast or lunch that day. The second was that I was in stellar company and feeling extraordinarily loquacious and friendly. The third was my bartender's invention - the Prairie Fire Martini.
I am sad to inform you that I cannot recall the name of my bartender, although he did an excellent job of serving up the fire. The tapas on tap was superb, and although Baltos(?) may find Pazo a bit pretentious and expensive, I was rather impressed by the very idea of dinner on big fluffy couches.
I was a bit surprised that the joint closed down at 10pm because I needed another hour to de-libate, and I wasn't about to go about it the bulemic way. But I was forced into the street much to my compatriot's chagrin. I managed to get back to where I once belonged without incident, though it took the better part of 90 minutes and a stop at Burger King, but the Pazo experience was still fondly remembered through the purple haze.
The Pitcher House is probably one of the
best dive bars that's neither completely a dive, nor completely what
one considers a normal habitable night spot. Which basically means if
you go there once a week or more there's something wrong with you, but
if you go once a month, it's cool. The one exception to the greater
than once a week is if you're a pool shark, in which case there's a 30%
chance that you're a very cool person. On the other hand, if you're
sharking at the Pitcher House, how good can you actually be?
The
Pitcher House is nice and spacious and it's a great place to go if you
like to roll a pack of Marlboros or Camels in your t-shirt sleeve or
show how cool you look in cowboy boots. That goes double if you're a
chick. There's lots of basic beer and basic drinks, but I've never
bothered with mixed drinks at the Pitcher House. It's all about the
pitcher, duh. Well, and the tequila and the Jagermeister. Still, it's
not an excellent place to get sodding drunk because it's too well lit.
You can't hide your drunkeness and somebody is going to call you on it.
In other words the assholes are in plain sight at the PH, and like the
other guy said, that makes for fightin'.
2920 Jefferson Blvd
Los Angeles,
CA
90018 (323) 735-9023
Harold & Belle's is basically the bomb old school New Orleans joint of Los Angeles.
I
grew up down the street from this restaruarnt and I remember when they
first opened. They are just off of 10th Avenue on Jefferson. Let me
give you a little history. Up until the mid 80s, this part of Jefferson
Boulevard still had trolley tracks in the street. They never came over
to this part of town to dig them up and fix the street. And just past
10th Avenue was the end of the trolley line headed West. So the trolley
would turn around making a left turn just past 10th Ave. The RTD
inherited this property and buses still stop at 10th. Right next door
to that is Johnson's Barber Shop, but more about that another time.
Harold
& Belle got one or two hype reviews in the LATimes in the late 80s
and then they exploded. The restaurant itself is very simple, the food
is perfect. I'm telling you this so you know, my family on my mothers
side is French & Indian Creole from a certain part of New Orleans
where that makes all the difference. It still does if you appreciate
original New Orleans jazz and Creole cooking. And of course if you ever
had (no you didn't, sorry) my Anna Maux's gumbo, you'd know what I know
about real good eats. Where dem folks be making groceries. I know of
what I speak. Harold and Belle's excels by those standards. And now
that many great chefs have been displaced by Katrina, you ain't gonna
get this stuff just anywhere.
They used to have a live Jazz
band come in on Friday's for happy hour and you could get a bucket of
crawdads and sit five feet from them having a good old time. The
oysters were the freshest and you could practically taste the bayou in
them. It's been a while since I've been around old Harold and Belle's
but I know it's still a very popular joint.
In fact, the last
time I went to my barber, Nicky he told me our old pal Zeus got his car
stolen there, not long ago. That's kind of funny considering Zeus, you
know the big wrestler, Tiny Lister? That Zeus. Yeah the neighborhood's
crusty but unless you're driving a big fancy Hollywood kind of car, you
don't have anything to worry about. They do have a private parking lot.
I think Harold & Belle will always be there, but I'm going to get
down there again before too much time passes. I can't remember the last
time I had great jumbalaya.
5120 Rodeo Rd
Los Angeles,
CA
90016
(323) 291-5555
"New Panda Buffet is one of my kids' favorite joints, and any time
we go to Grandfather's house in that neck of the woods, they beg me to
go.
This
is my old stomping grounds and I remember that this building was the
first black owned and operated Sizzler Restaurant franchise on the West
Coast. Man we were proud to go to Sizzler and get that fat toast. That
was then.
Today, Asians run the joint swiftly and efficiently
and pack them in every day. If you're headed in on the weekend, be
prepared to wait a little while or get there just before the brunch
rush on Sunday. The wait is not bad, maybe 15 minutes, but once you get
inside and start smelling all that food, you get itchy to get a table.
New
Panda is really your standard buffet. Well that is if you are
accustomed to the kind you find in NYC in midtown. I'm not talking
about Hometown Buffet or the kind you find in Georgia. I'm talking
about sashimi and maki, cold shrimp, chow mein, broiled salmon, fried
chicken, char shu pork, big chunks of all kinds of melon, fresh
pineapple, corn nibblets, chinese style BBQ ribs, potato salad, jello,
everything fried rice, short ribs, whitefish, fried catfish... man I'm
drooling just talking about it. So actually it's got more than your
standard NYC buffet. It's right at the edge of a large strip mall near
the old Baldwin Theatre so there's plenty of parking in the huge lot,
but you may have to walk a bit.
Of course it's all you can eat,
so you best believe that you're going to find some world champion
eaters in this joint, so you'll need to move aside when they walk by.
It's a good deal if your kids are under 10, and if I remember correctly
they have 3 price ranges by age.
It's a loud happy family place
and on Sunday it's pure chaotic pandemonium. You get a table and the
waiter gets you a fork and a tall cup. You tell him what you want to
drink and then you're off. There are something like three or four hot
bars and a huge cold bar. So you're off to get a plate and pile on. But
don't pile too much because they don't like throwing away food, and
they won't take your plate until it's empty. Then you're free to go get
another and another. That's the best way to do it, even if it means you
take four trips. But at least that way, the waiter will be happy to
take away your empty plates and refresh your drink.
I guarantee that you will wobble out of New Panda Buffet very happy. Bring your biggest appetite. You won't be disappointed."
This is a great little brewpub. It's got everything you want and need.
Me?
I need beer and sausages. There is really nothing to compare to a warm
evening on the open air part of the pub with a tall Shanghai Red Ale
and Lil Hoot's Sausage Sampler. Oh mama!
This is authentic
neighborhood pub filled with a great mix of folks. The music isn't too
loud, nor are the patrons, but the place is never the same all the
time. Sometimes there's a live band, sometimes it's a bunch of guys at
the bar watching the game. Sometimes it a nice dinner in the evening
with the family. And there are always different brews on the
blackboard. If you can get a James Brown, get it.
Parking is a
bit tough to get and you might have to hike past a derelict or two on
your way, but it's worth it. See, this is a classic no BS kind of bar.
It's the kind that people from the Northeast don't believe exist on the
West Coast, but you'll find men and women of all ages in this joint.
I've overheard conversations with dockworkers, software people, tatoo
artists and first responders. This is not a pick up joint, well, it is
when the rock bands come through. You gotta love it.
If I
remember correctly, they've got some old pinball machines in the back.
There's something you don't see every day. The theme is nautical slash
British brewpub, and every time I go there I notice something
different. Bring some pals and live it up.
First of all, whose grandmother
died and willed her garage to this restaurant? OK I'm harsh. But this
place does remind me of your strange aunt who is always interested in a
very odd part of your body and mind. Like looking at your finger webs
and asking you when is the last time you thought about using aloe vera
on them to remove the lines.
People say, of course, that you're
really going to flip about the macaroni and cheese. These are the same
people who really like your strange aunt. Not that there's anything
wrong with that. That's kinda what you leave Icon thinking. That wasn't
as bad as I thought it was going to be, and it's Not Bad.
Hmm. How many ways can I say that.
Icon
Grill is a known quantity. It's a safe bet. It's a reasonable
alternative. It's an adequate selection. It's just fine. It's really
not bad at all, and of course you could do a lot worse. Bring a friend
or two.
1725 W Carson St Ste B
Torrance, CA 90501
(310) 787-7344
I only give five stars to restaurants that change my ideas about food. Musha's is absolutely, positively brilliant.
So
how do I describe this joint to you? It's small and woody feeling,
almost spartan. There can't be more that 12 tables, and the sushi bar
is pretty small. Maybe 7 people can fit on the bench, yes bench. The
guys behind the counter are young and kinda spiky looking, with that
cool Japanese slacker look.
What they do with the food is just
incredible. It only takes little bites for you to enter a world of
flavor unlike just about any other. They offer a kind of combination of
sushi and tapas. I can't even describe it properly, but it's magical.
Truth
be told, you should get the rissoto in the cheese wheel and eat just a
small bit then take the rest home. What you can do with it the next
morning with eggs and breakfast meats is stunning.
The place
is going to be crowded with some locals and some tourists. With any
luck you won't be sitting next to the tourists who drink all kinds of
sake just in case those unpronounceable things are.. like.. you know...
icky, fer sure.
Musha's is in a very cool little minimall on
the edge of Torrance but they're not open for lunch. Next door is a
very cool Korean BBQ and on the other side is a very cool karaoke joint
with private booths. So there's all kinds of Asian flavor inside and
outside.
In a way, I wish I could keep this joint a secret, but hey. The concept is bound to spread.
All I do these days is write restaurant reviews. I need to cross-post them here because that's all I can think about. Yeah I know Bernanke's in a bind, and the Iranians are misbehaving yet again, but I can't stop thinking about my favorite restaurants. So get ready for a whirlwind foodie style.
This weekend, my anniversary weekend, the Spousal Unit and I had a bit of a getaway to the Viceroy Hotel in Santa Monica. Splendid place, extraordinary style. We had the most exquisite meal I've had in a very long time.
The Unit, of course, works in the food business and we've been foodies for a long time. But since she's such a great cook, we don't go out to restaurants as often as I imagine other couples do. Plus, when we do go out, we're mostly just satisfied, but very rarely thrilled. This time we pulled out all the stops and actually did get astonished.
Here follows the best I can do with words to describe what we sampled. We stared off with a nice bottle of Veuve Cliquot which is just about the only champagne I like. Our appetizer and first course was a quail & fennel affair in a tiny pile on top of a cucumber slice, dotted round with a green olive oil. Delightfully light and playful flavor.
Next came a perfect square of melt in your mouth savory foie gras complimented by a bracingly fresh persimmon and raspberry chutney. Now I was getting revved up. What could they possibly do to outdo what they've done?
The Sous Chef, Kelly came out with the next course which was a special from the kitchen, and it was an absolute marvel. Tasting this next dish has me thinking that there's something I am just learning that chefs can do, that I couldn't imagine. But here you have these monstrously meaty prawns atop a bed of frisee and they are grilled to perfection. But let me describe this sort of perfection. The edges of the prawns are crisp and in the insides squish with all the flavor plus what tastes like a splash of the ocean. What I am tasting is perfected ocean in the middle of a giant jumbo shrimp. Still, it took me a couple minutes to get to that because on the right of the very same plate is a tiny cup of butternut squash bisque with a square of brie floating on the surface. It was, by far, the greatest soup, chowder or bisque I have ever tasted, which is saying a whole lot considering the corn bisque at Bambara in Salt Lake and the lobster bisque at the Plaza Hotel in Boston. One spoonful transports you instantly into the warmth of a ski lodge fireplace. The texture on your tongue is just fabulous and you know within seconds that you are eating in a way that you imagine you would like to every day if you were incredibly rich. This is just not food you can get anywhere. It is completely other, and magnificent.
I have another slice of the delicious rosemary bread and as much as I want to savor the prawns and squash I just cannot eat it slowly. A mountain of flavors are mixing in my mouth with the velvety warm squash and the sea-frothy prawns with savory little cubes of pancetta and the bitter accents of the frisee. It's really miraculous.
On to the next course I hardly know what to expect, but sure enough there's more wonderfulness. This time it's a delicate flute, which is a fish like a flounder. In flavor it's light and would be very much like your standard Chilean sea bass except you don't butter it down and it's got more texture. It's somewhat more firm that trout and yet still flaky like sea bass. With sweet carrots and spinach. Very nice.
Right about now I'm filling up, but wait there's more. This time yet another exotic. Venison chops with cherry glaze and risotto. Bam, right down to earth. I got a bit overly dramatic since this was my first taste of venison and made a big deal of the first bite, which was a mistake because I chose the more well-done of the two chops and I don't like my meats well-done. So I got a bit more earth than I bargained for. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that doing venison right is pretty difficult, but I caught on finally to the direction they were going with the cherries. There should have been yams instead of risotto if you ask me. A righteous yam with the right spice would work that venison into a good combination.
Now I'm full, and dessert is coming. I can only take a few lush spoonfuls of the pumpkin trifle and I'm done. But I manage to get down a fresh cup of joe and sip on their deliciously complex 2002 Kracher Beerenauslese.
The service was top notch of course, and the ambiance was just right for fine dining. If you've got a few extra bucks to drop and you want to try some truly unique and splendid dishes you definitely need to head to Santa Monica and check out Whist.
Recent Comments