It Is Happening Again

Ok imagine you're a baseball fan, say a Yankees, Dodgers or D-Backs fan, and one day the rules were changed so that every other day a new stadium for your team opened in the team's (and your) town and official major league players were added in for each stadium so lots of games ended up being added to the season schedule for each team. This would probably result in your being very excited that there would be many more games to see each week, each night even, and this would spur you on to see all the games in your now bigger baseball club but then you'd start to think about it realistically and wonder, how would you ever have enough time or money to go see them all?

Welcome to my world. I'm a foodie. And this is the hell I'm again living in.

Things were under control in Los Angeles when I got here in 2006. Being a food lover/obsessive is actually one of the reasons I moved here from that other city you've probably heard me talk about, New York.

Huh, you say? Why would that be? Moving from one to the other because of food? Doesn't sound logical in this case really, especially since then you'd expect me to move from New York to Chicago or San Francisco, not Los Angeles! Okay let me put letters to visual paper so you can hear me...

Living in New York City is like living within the churning and expanding contents of an overly-reactive petri dish. Things keep growing and moving and you're living inside of it, merged and in sync with the molecules in the dish every breathing moment. While it's exciting to be in such a volcanic environment, it's rather exhausting to be growing and moving all the time but you must stay with it, you have no choice!

For instance, art and culture were rather set in NY, with X amount of museums in X neighborhoods. Then came Chelsea, with its galleries and oh then came Williamsburg, with its many hipster galleries. Then outdoor art hit Central Park with The Gates, and those paper-maché cows and then baseball team Statues of Liberty on every major street corner. Art was everywhere, in more and more places, so if you liked art there was suddenly no rest for you.

The same can't really be said for baseball, but it can be said for theater, and it certainly can be said for bars and restaurants. As a resident living in the supernova also known as Brooklyn, I wasn't a foodie for no good reason. My job then was to know what was going on in the city's food world due to my employment at a large restaurant firm. A foodie job for a foodie is a great fit, however when the world around you is exploding into a new bar and/or restaurant every single day, all of which sound amazing and worthy of my hard-earned cash, it simply becomes an exhaustive effort to keep up with all the new places to check out.

So I left. Not just for that reason but it was suddenly no longer fun to explore every new place, read and jot down notes every week from NY Magazine (on Monday) and Time Out Magazine (on Thursday) and the New York Times (on Wednesday), plus walk past very exciting fresh cubbyhole spots with unique menus yet with no time to go in so you merely look at the menus and want it all but can't have it all.

Los Angeles is home to wonderful low-key ethnic food, and some high-end Beverly Hills mover-shaker places that I couldn't really care about. So upon landing on these shores my foodie needs subsided naturally, and my brain reveled in the change since it was so tired. With that in mind, LA and I got along just fine.

There were a handful of places I frequented when I got here, and slowly other ones sauntered my way. Actually, while living here I've experienced the lost joy of being a repeat customer! Back east, that was close to impossible. Perish the thought that I was ever able to visit a favorite haunt more than once or twice a year. It simply didn't work. In LA from day one, my foodie driver's seat was on cruise-control for the first time in years and I flourished. One time I even went to a place-of-the-moment three times in a week, and 14 times within several months! New Yorkers, can you imagine? Okay also, I mean sure, having restaurant variety is why I don't live in Tulsa, but must we all go crazy learning about the next great new place every single day?

So here I was enjoying LA, gingerly discovering new places, and eventually, admittedly, a little frustrated by the lack of great food if you want a reasonably priced sit-down meal. Then, recently, I noticed a change. It started slow, and has picked up a sudden momentum. Perhaps due to a backlash from Angeleno restaurateurs resulting from LA's first Michelin Guide a few years ago having a very low number of star-rated restaurants, or perhaps just because it was my dumb luck, I recently realized it is happening again.

What is happening? I'll tell you what... that this month one of Gourmet magazine's cover stories is "Explore America's most exciting Chinese Food" and it's an article about the San Gabriel Valley, a sprawling Asian neighborhood in LA County. What about this months' Bon Appétit magazine, a theme issue called "Best of the USA" with the article "Food's Golden State," about California's bounty including where to find LA's best taco truck (see pg 3). Note: In the same issue is an article titled, "A Scene Grows in Brooklyn," about Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and seeing it brought up a momentary combo of hypersensitivity and guilt about all the Burg places I hadn't visited yet in my life, a knee-jerk reaction from my not-so-defunct-after-all New Yorker peripatetic foodie brain.

See it's one thing to read "Best LA Restaurants" articles in LA Magazine, the LA Times blog or from the local Tasting Table email. It's quite another to start seeing articles appear about the food of LA, my proudly safe haven of the relaxed quasi-foodie lifestyle, in national food magazines.

The energy is building here in a way it hasn't yet, and I suppose it's inevitable. Now, I fear, my list of Los Angeles bars and restaurants to visit has grown exponentially on this blog and that old familiar mind exhaustion is setting in. It's a pressure, like the summer movie season, where you know you want to see all those movies or the list will pile up and if you don't see as many as possible now you never will. Or it's like baseball, if each major league team kept adding more teams and players like I said.

How does a person keep up you say? Is there a way to Tivo a restaurant? No. There isn't. You have to get off your ass and go. I hear you, it's definitely a good thing too, to watch the bar finally rise on interesting restaurant choices, food quality and expectations in this sunny city. And of course I love going out, but back east isn't that how I gained weight and got into debt in the first place? Then subsequently lost that weight and paid off that debt while living out here? Sigh.

Cake Story

With the exception of pudding, I have not eaten a decadent chocolate dessert in a while, and that’s too long for someone like me. That's why recently I’ve been thinking more often than usual about chocolate cake. And that’s what brought me back to a tale from the Broadway days, about really great chocolate cake, and the meanest boss ever.

Flashback

In the early 1990's I worked in Times Square at a Broadway theatrical advertising agency. Lucky for me my account group had the best client in the office. His name will not be posted here due to the efficacy of Google search engines. I will, however, tell you that he is from the United Kingdom and there is a tribute DVD about him on Amazon.com (click here for link) that I wish I owned. This post will refer to him as (code name) Seth. He is, in my opinion and many others, one of the world’s great theatrical producers and visionaries. And in spite of his success and the global popularly of his productions which include "Phantom of the Opera" and "Les Misérables," he is a highly respected, brilliant, and good man.

My first few months at the agency happened to coincide with the opening of Seth’s next great show, "Miss Saigon." For some reason this show is usually the show people see less of than the more-famous others, but to me "Miss Saigon" has always been my favorite of the popular trinity. This could be due to several reasons. Was it because it was the first Broadway show I worked on as an account person? Or because I felt more of an emotional impact watching this show than the others? Or was it because of the show's controversial nature, in one part due to its then-highest ticket price in town for front-row mezzanine seats, which I got to sit in for no charge, allowing me to be at neck-level with the swirling blades of the working helicopter? Or, was it because of cake?

Whatever the case, I loved that show! Working on the advertising and promotion for it before opening night was a thrill. So one day my group was meeting about "Miss Saigon" promotional strategies. My boss -- who we will call for the purposes of this post Barbara, and who in the privacy of my mind I usually referred to as Hitler (for very good reasons that won’t be mentioned in this post) -- asked the group for opening night present ideas. It’s the tradition to send gifts to the people putting on the big show, and the norm is Champagne, an engraved trinket or the like. Seth had received so many opening night gifts in his long career that Barbara thought we should think out of the box on this one. That's when I came up with a pretty good idea.

"How about a cake?" I told the group that on the upper east side there’s a fantastic cake shop called Creative Cakes. I lived nearby and saw it on some TV show some time in the 1980's. It’s famous because they make cakes that look like anything! You know, like a 3-dimensional Empire State Building or a Monopoly board. At the top of their game, they'll pretty much recreate whatever item you ask as a cake, with precision of design and color to boot. The only rule is that the cake itself must be chocolate with butter cream icing. No exceptions! This place had been on my mind for years, even though my microscopic salary wouldn’t permit me access to such a cake. But an opening night present paid for by the company, that I could do.

My suggestion was to have the cake shop create a delicious replica of the "Miss Saigon" poster and give it to Seth. As I spoke I took short breaths for fear that the wrath of Barbara would cut me if this was the stupidest idea ever. She loved it! She said it could be my project and I was thrilled. The poster (see photo above) was simple in some regards yet very complex with reference to the logo, which was a sort of triple-entendre using calligraphy. First your eye sees a generic Asian letter character. Then you see a girl’s face as part of the character, and then the character reveals itself to look like a helicopter, superimposed over a rising sun. Talk about a challenging thing to recreate in icing! But I had faith that Creative Cakes could do it.

As the meeting was about to adjourn and all felt well, my boss Barbara belatedly resumed her normal, more psycho personality, and she halted the meeting adjournment with a loud “Wait!” Then she looked me in the eye. Her voice had all the dank seriousness of Vincent Price introducing a horror film when she said, “There’s only one way this will work. You must make the bakery match the poster color… EXACTLY!…or Seth will HATE it.” (Cue to bats flying out of brain and into the Manhattan sky. Scene.) Barbara continued, “Go to the art department and get the PMS chip for the poster and bring it with you to the bakery. Tell them you need ICING samples sent over so we can pick an EXACT MATCH. IF they can’t match that color exactly from the poster IT’S NOT WORTH IT and we’ll do something ELSE! Don't forget to GET SAMPLES!”

Ok so to bring you up to speed on the term PMS if you don’t already know, PMS stands for Pantone Matching System. The system enables printers anywhere in the world to have the ability to print an exact color match on anything being printed, for an extra fee. Things like posters, flyers, food packages, etc., and usually branded items where color cohesiveness is important. It's why the Coke logo is always the same color when you see it. (Coke used to have a PMS color for its trademark red, at one point dubbed “Coke red,” so when printers all over the world made Coke cans and ads and logos, there would be no misunderstanding of what that red should be. Now they have a different system but click here for an interesting note about the PMS status of “Coke red” from Coke.)

And so, the Pantone company prints books of every PMS color, that you can tear into little chips for sending to a printer. People pay good money for PMS colors to be used, because it’s like an insurance policy. When my agency inherited the London-designed "Miss Saigon" poster, it came with a PMS color attached for that maroon background. What Barbara was saying was I had to force a baker to adhere to this PMS color or else. Hmm. Really? I wanted to say to my boss, “Ya see to me, Seth is very important but also very nice. Don’t you think he’ll be pleasantly pleased to receive such a unique gift, that'll look just like the poster? Do you really think he’ll be MAD and REJECT THE CAKE on the opening night of his latest mega-million dollar baby if the ICING IS NOT A PERFECT PMS COLOR MATCH!!?!?!?!?!?” You know I couldn’t say this, for fear of Barbara’s death eye (which I actually mastered and used against her in later years). Powerless to say anything to the contrary, I simply said meek as a mouse, “Ok.”

Quaking through the doorway of this most famous cake shop, I feared they would very well throw me out upon hearing this crazy request. But I did it, sheepishly approaching the counter with my "Miss Saigon" poster and "Miss Saigon" PMS maroon-ish color chip in hand. And guess what I learned? Since the shop was a place for the elite of NY, and located on the snooty upper east side, it was used to rich people making demands. That was their business. (Like the person who spent $2000 for a cake that had to look exactly like her poodle for the, ahem, poodle’s birthday party.) And thus the baker did not laugh at me, but he also didn't smile. He simply told me that in order to match the PMS chip he’d have to charge extra, due to his need to create several color samples, which he would send over to my office in a few days, and if we didn’t like the samples he’d try again, and again, until we picked one. Oh good, I knew then that I would get to live another day. Since money was no object in this case, it was a deal.

A few days later I expected our messenger service to send over a few small cups of icing for us to review. To my joyful surprise, the baker sent over (insert Oprah’s voice here) THREE MINI CAKE SAM-PLES!! I'm talking a good 5"x5" square cake, done up with icing three times! And damn if the baker didn’t do a spot-on job of matching that color. When Barbara walked over I held my breath, so afraid she’d reject them all due to her evil madness but lo and behold, she liked one. Big collective amen in our minds. Then the heavens sent more blessings after Barbara approved the color on one of the cakes, because that's when she allowed me and my fellow plebes to eat them. (It was a moment straight out of "Oliver!") Yes, after all those years of unrequited Creative Cake dreams, after fantasizing of what that chocolate cake with butter cream icing would taste like, the cake was mine and I didn't have to take out a personal loan to get it! That was probably one of the happiest food moments in my life, and the cake did not let me down. It was such a fine piece of cake too, a very moist and delicious buttery sugary icing-y chocolate cake.

When I called the baker and told him that one of the colors was approved, he finally let slip a little attitude, sighed a huge diva exhale and thanked God above. Sure there are the elite rich in New York who order his cakes, but he confessed no one had ever brought in a PMS color chip for the icing. I mean, seriously, it’s a fucking cake. After people eat it, it’s gone.

We had the cake delivered to our office so we could see it and take some photos. Then a few of us painstakingly carried it through the crowds of Times Square over to the stage door of the Broadway Theater, right before curtain on opening night. Seth, I heard, loved the cake, which indeed turned out to be an exact replica of the poster, and color. I would still bet money that on Seth’s brilliant Broadway opening night for "Miss Saigon," the last thing on his mind was going to be whether or not the icing on a cake was a poster's perfect color match.

Oh well, whether you’re an office slave in a big agency in NY dealing with silly demands, or just on a diet years later in LA, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. At other times, it's ok not to, so tonight I think I will be eating cake.

Until we eat again,
Marly

I heart Carmine's, and now you know

Carmine’s is and always has been one of my favorite New York restaurants, and that’s surprising, since I’m not a person who particularly cares for “red sauce” Italian cuisine. As one of the city's busiest and most profitable dining establishments, this convivial family-style Southern Italian simply does it right. And as happy as I am out west, it’s a place I think about and miss quite a bit.

Owned by small restaurant group Alicart, Carmine’s has two Manhattan locations, my favorite being the newer, grander Times Square/Theater District one. Carmine’s had its following on the upper west side all along, but opening the second location in the early 90's in heavily trafficked real estate truly stoked their reputation. My office happened to be across the street at 1515 Broadway, so those were the years I fell in love with the place, and learned a few things about Carmine’s too:

1. Never attempt to dine there after a Wednesday or Saturday matinee, nor any time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.
I say this because it’s just too dang crowded, though it should be noted: when you walk in the door and it's crowded – because it always is – that’s part of the charm. If you walk in feeling blah, you will soon feel un-blah. Walk in feeling dead, you will soon feel undead (hmm, metaphor doesn't really work here)...you will soon feel alive!

2. You can make new friends while waiting for a table at the bar if you order the calamari.
This is where “family-style” makes its first appearance. The famous calamari appetizer arrives on a white platter measuring roughly a foot and a half long. The calamari on the platter is piled about 6 inches high, and this is why you shouldn’t be shocked that the ever-climbing price for the best calamari in the city is now topping out at $25.50 a plate. No one can finish this on their own, so the thing to do is order it, eat what you will, then pick a neighbor to your left and/or right to pass it down to when you’re through. That is what’s done, almost expected, and is all part of the homey feeling inherent in the place. The best is watching the shocked and pleased faces of newbie tourists crammed at the bar anxiously waiting for a table, when you start to pass down the calamari, look 'em in the eye and say “Please, I’ve had enough. Enjoy.” Even when you've had your fill, the platter looks untouched! So it is a little confusing for sure. But by the time the tourists nervously utter “oh, um, that’s ok” the bartender has already moved the platter in front of them and insisted on your behalf, to which the tourists take a sigh of relief that New Yorkers are ok afterall while they start chowing down on their free calamari.

3. The bigger the group the better: try for more than two, and never go alone.
It’s more fun and more economical to go with a party of at least 3 or 4, or more. See, you may think $25.50 is crazy for an appetizer. But this feeds 8 people! In most city restaurants these days, entrees run $20-$40 and up per person. At Carmine’s most dishes cost somewhere in the mid-$20’s, the cost of a cheap NY entrée if you’re lucky, but these entrées serve 5. In fact, I once took some visiting friends from Norway with terrible jet lag who therefore only ate one piece each of my favorite chicken scarpiello. The leftovers fortuitously became all mine (no refrigerator in their hotel room) and I had lunch for 5 straight days. If you want leftovers, sure, go with one other person, but otherwise it really is fun to go with a group and get so much for so little.

4. Garlic is king.
Every dish has tons of it with no apologies, yet the kitchen never makes it overpowering. So even if you think you don’t have garlic breath, take advantage of the free mouthwash in the bathrooms and do your dining companions and yourself a favor.

5. The service is bawdy, which is part of the schtick.
The servers aren’t rude, just a little gruff and commanding. Go with it. They’ll take charge and you can relax. Hallelujah!

6. The atmosphere is alive.
Your psuedo-Italian family just invited you to dinner, and Sinatra is playing. Wine is poured into traditional tumblers instead of frou-frou glasses. The room is huge and dimly lit, old-world style. The décor warm, the energy electric. It's fabulous. If you'd rather have a quiet romantic dinner, take a short walk to restaurant row on 46th Street (between 8th & 9th Avenues).

7. The food is great, no matter what the food snobs say.
Between 2000-2006 I worked at a restaurant company, also near Carmine's, and my colleagues respected my taste as a foodie, but not after they heard that as a Zagat voter I consistently chose Carmine’s as one of my top 5 restaurants in the city. Yes, there are almost too many bastions of fine Italian dining in NY – Lattanzi, Il Mulino, Del Posto, even Da Silvano – but whatever, you can also have a casual Italian restaurant be just as good in its own way.

8. The menu never changes – what a relief!
Also when at the restaurant company, we had weekly meetings that included talks on how to increase food sales. It was here that I'd remind my colleagues – who liked to change our restaurants’ menus frequently – that Carmine’s is great because their menu is always the same, year after year, with the same dishes posted on the wall so you always know what to expect and can order your favorites again and again. Now to be fair, while Carmine's menu never changes, the prices have to every now and then, though I don't judge. Rent is high in Times Square.

9. You always leave with fond memories.
This is a big one. I have so many wonderful memories of dining at Carmine’s through the years. I could list them all for you, but that's ok. Instead, I'll tell you that whenever I’ve been there, for whatever the occasion and no matter whom I was with, I have always felt happy. My first time set this expectation up, perhaps, as I was a last-minute guest in a big group with a generous host and the big food platters kept coming. I grinned ear-to-ear for hours and thought in awe, "how did I get here?" The times after that, there was laughter and kinship and a feeling of total satisfaction I can't really explain. Maybe just seeing the shocked, joyful faces of guests in the restaurant when they see their first Carmine’s platter of food come to the table sums it up. It’s a big party that you’re a part of, and it won’t break the bank. And you can come back whenever you want! So whether at a table for two (which is not recommended) or a group of 8 or more, when you walk in the door at Carmine's you usually feel right at home...and if home also means getting drunk at the bar for an hour while you wait for a table, even better.

10. The food is consistently consistent, delicious and flavorful.
Why is this important item #10? Because as you can see, there are many reasons to love Carmine's besides the food, so it’s an added bonus that everything tastes great too. My favorite dishes have not changed much through the years, and here they are:
* Hot antipasto platter – many morsels sitting in a platter the size of a garbage can lid
* Carmine’s salad or special salad – when Caesar is not your mood
* Stuffed artichoke – huge, bread-crumby, lemony
* Spiedini a la romana – a loaf of bread with slices of melted mozzarella in between covered in a lemon butter caper sauce
* Chicken scarpiello – heavenly, different from any other, with a sweet & sour brown lemon rosemary garlic sauce and caramelized garlic cloves
* Chicken saltimbocca – my first saltimbocca experience, perfectly executed
* Sunday pasta special – 4 different homemade pastas in 4 scrumptious sauces
*Strawberry shortcake – the size of a small planet, or perhaps I exaggerate :)

11. As of this past December, people not in NY can try Carmine’s food too!
So after all that, the reason for this post today is that when I was in NY last month for Christmas, no I did not get to dine at Carmine’s. However when I walked by the Theater District location past their giant holiday crowd, in the window was this amazingly good news: “On Sale: Carmine’s Family Style Cookbook.” This means I can now make…You can now make...Carmine’s food at HOME! In LA or anywhere! Ahhhhh! :D

Can you tell this makes me happy? I am de-lir-i-ous. The one thing I fear in recommending the cookbook, though, is that regular home stovetops don’t give off the high heat level of a restaurant stovetop, so my chicken scarpiello chicken pieces may not achieve the same golden level of luscious caramelization needed to thrill. However now that I have the recipe for that ultimate favorite brown lemon rosemary garlic sauce, and all of their other recipes, 2009 promises to be the best year yet.

Until we eat again,
Marly

Yes I am REALLY surprised

Ok, so I am really surprised that there are things that I like, even love, in the food world that I thought I would never like, accept, or do. And some things I’m surprised about in general, that’s here too. So let's roll it.

1. I do not like home fries at breakfast, or ever. The only potato I tend to eat at breakfast is the McDonald’s hash brown. Flavorless, oily home fries on my breakfast egg plate are always ignored. Not the same at The Red Lion in Silver Lake. Their home fries, listed on the menu as German potatoes, are a steaming, glistening pile of flavor: sliced potatoes sautéed in some magic fat with onions and bacon. What you say? Most home fries are sautéed in fat with onions? Pah! You have no idea what you're talking about. The flavor on these is stupendous. I highly recommend, along with a low cholesterol exercise and diet plan after.

And while on the subject of breakfast…

2. I thought arriving at a local cult breakfast spot when the doors opened would guarantee an empty restaurant. Not so at Griddle Café in Hollywood, home of the 10”-larger-than-the-plate-it’s-served-on pancake stack (yes I measured). Getting up early one Saturday and driving to the corner of Sunset & Fairfax by 8:45am still resulted in a PACKED restaurant. Sure I’d heard about weekend waits if you arrive after 9:30-10am, but 8:45am?? These people weren’t partiers who never slept, they had bedhead and sweatshirts on. This was very surprising. And more about those pancakes, they look like they come in a stack of five, sometimes filled with pumpkin pie filling (or butterscotch chip/coconut/oat/pecans filling, or strawberry and frosted flakes filling, or many others) and everyone, including macho men, get their uneaten pancakes to go. If you saw these frisbees you’d get it. Which is probably why my waiter gave ME a hard time for not finishing my delicious only-one-on-the-plate gingerbread waffle. So I didn't cut it like the resident lumberjacks, so what. I prefer sleeping in anyway.

3. I love beer, and have had exquisite brew sensations in various corners of Europe: Munich, Paris, Copenhagen, Belfast, Berlin (see delicious photo of such above). And my favorite beer on local soil is a Blue Moon on tap or the occasional Hitachino Nest White Ale from Japan. Though sometimes, I actually prefer a nice cold pint of Miller Lite. Not because Miller is my last name, and not because I am white trash like some of you judgers are thinkin'! It's because at a recent happy hour at the 901 on Fig they had a decent selection of 2-for-1 pints and for some reason I went with the path of least resistance, the Miller Lite. That’s right, 2 pints for $4 (plus tip, every day, 4-8pm, you heard it here). Drinking it was easygoing, light and refreshing. Yes I love good beer and especially love a swell Belgian white ale or Hef, but sometimes the non-gourmet choice wins. No, not if that beer is say, a non-alcoholic Bitburger that's been sitting in a basement at a Berlin McDonald's for eternity, but yes when you're talking about a good old pint o' swill, which sometimes is a-okay.

Also on the subject of imbibing…

4. For some reason I didn’t realize this til recently… Who knew that cheap wine by the glass at one place can be leaps and bounds better than at another place. It’s true. I had no idea. Let's just say that my Chardonnay at Honda-Ya was drivel (their thing in all fairness is sake and ice cold beer), while the Chardonnay at Golden Gopher consistently pleases. In addition, the recently sampled Chardonnay at the 901 Bar & Grill was even better than at the Gopher. So don't continue on thinking all cheap wine at non-wine-ish restaurants is bad (hmm, maybe you never thought this; maybe it's just me), because seriously, some of it is pretty good.

5. As much as I hate eating peppers, it has been recently discovered that when they are grilled I can and do enjoy them. I still hate them raw, or when still in every frozen entrée item you make Lean Cuisine! But now this “hold the peppers” person is reconsidering that closed-minded habit.

6. If you eat a dish one time at a restaurant and don’t like it at all, if you go there again and try something different you may become a raging fan! This happened to me at Chano’s. The first time there I had some steak thing with cubed meat and it was a straight-up “eh.” (Note: if you didn’t know this about me, my preferred style of Mexican cuisine meat is shredded, never cubed. This also holds true at Chinese restaurants, where I will never order Kung Pao chicken for this very reason, as well as for that dish's inclusion of, uh...peppers.)

Sure it’s possible the cubed meat wasn’t the only issue with my first Chano’s visit. Turns out I was also stone-cold sober. See Chano’s is the place every college town has, that late-night spot where the food becomes more delicious the later it is and the drunker you get. Well a few weeks ago Neil and I went back to Chano’s after I’d had two fat glasses of Chardonnay in me. I quickly declined ordering anything at the drive-thru, while Neil ordered his standard carne asada burrito. It smelled so good in the car and he offered me a taste. I took a bite and was wa-wowed with a capital W-W. Intrigued by this now, I started to peek inside the bitten burrito when Neil exclaimed, "Don't look! Don't look inside!" "Why not?" I asked. He wouldn't say, but later confessed he didn't want me to discover any fat on the meat, a highly probable thing in a Chano's burrito, and a known verboten thing on Planet Marly. It's true, seeing any fat in the burrito would have negated the whole damn experience. So I didn't look, and Neil took his late-night snack back and then for some silly reason (perhaps it’s called trust?) he left me in the car alone with the burrito for a moment and there I was sans witnesses with a miracle of shredded beef strips and cilantro and tomatoes. Yum! (My bites were small enough so he wouldn’t notice how much I ate, and then I sadly gave it back to him.) Was it the wine that changed my Chano’s tune or was it the menu item selected by a true Chano’s patron? Whatever the case, I’ll be going back, and if I get the carne asade burrito I will take Neil’s advice to never look inside it and just eat it.

7. Who doesn’t love brownies! Well I love them too, and making them, especially from scratch. So would you believe that Smart & Final, that mini-Costco marketplace around LA, sells a brownie tray that is very tasty. This shocked me last week, when I had a brownie at a meeting and thought someone in the room made it at home (from a box mix, but still). No, she said, it was from Smart & Final. Well mustn’t I take my brownie ego down a notch now!

8. On a similar note, I feared moving to LA would mean I could no longer eat a respectable Buffalo wing or Philly cheesesteak, due to my personal theory that regional foods taste best when eaten as close to that region as possible. With Buffalo, NY sitting 2540 miles away from Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, PA 2714 miles away, this had me justifiably worried. BUT... it turns out that passionate foodie ex-pats can be anywhere, and there are some great ones in this city. The best just-like-home traditional hot wings I’ve had here are at the Hot Wings Café. The best cheesesteak I’ve had is from either Phil’s at the Farmer’s Market or South Street in Burbank. Now I try not to eat these favorite snacks o' the east too often after Sunday brunches of German potatoes at the Red Lion, though it's still comforting to know they're around whenever I want them.

And speaking of wings, there are even more places out here to get great ones, including a place that is so surprising to me, I've tucked it down here at the end of the list since I still feel a little weird shouting its praises from the rafters...

9. As an egalitarian urban-raised woman, I am now a new shocked fan of...Hooters restaurants. You heard me. For my entire life I – and as I just found out, my Mom too – would not step into a Hooters for fear it was an objectifying place of business. Thing is, I love Buffalo wings right, and friends (Mark) have always insisted I give the place a try. My answer was always "No! Never!" Sure enough, a few months ago I went along with a group decision to go to the Pasadena location. And the wings were good! They weren't great but they were definitely good (specifically the "naked hot wings," in this case naked simply refers to an unbreaded chicken wing, so take your mind out of the gutter!). The Blue Moon on tap was a pleasure of course, and the football games on TV fun to watch, however the service was just ok. So I thought, it's just ok at Hooters, I'm not going to run back because it's just ok.

Then a few Sundays later Neil and I went to watch football in the Burbank location. This time the experience was excellent. The staff was friendly, and the waitresses took away all my preconceived notions by being really friendly and talking as much to me as to Neil. And the added bonus this time was in my trying the boneless hot wings, which were outta this world. I said outta this world! A group of us went again last weekend and there was even more magical food goodness! I can't stop thinking about it -- had to order those boneless hot wings again, and the table ordered a new special treat called Lots-a-Tots, an addictive pile of fresh fried tater tots topped like a baked potato with bacon, cheese, sour cream and chives. In addition the Blue Moon on tap kept on coming, and a newly tried item, the naked cajun wings, turned me into a practical wing werewolf. Those wings weren't what I ordered, so I am very thankful for Neil's wing magnanimity. Now not only do I like Hooters, I'm a fan! This is the biggest surprise of all.

All in all these are a bunch of things, pre-conceived food and drink notions really, that were toppled before my eyes. So I'm thinking the next time I'm about to form a closed-minded foodie opinion, it would be better to sit back and give the thing, the wing, or whatever it is, at least an open-minded try.

Until we eat again,
Marly

"I'd like my burger rarebit, please."

I may never have mentioned this to you but I have been on an unofficial food Quest for a long time. So long that it was forgotten! To bring you up to speed on the specifics, here's an inquiry I wrote to Gourmet Magazine four years ago.

My note to them

To: Gourmet, Feedback
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 3:53 PM
Subject: in search of a great cheddar sauce

Hi,
When I was a teenager, my mother brought me to a local low-down restaurant for dinner one night in town. The town = Cranford, NJ; the place = Dunn's Garage.

I was thrilled to eat their cheddar burger and haven't forgotten it. You would walk up to the bar and order, and the bar man took the bare, juicy burger and ladled on a heap of warm, thick and gritty cheddar cheese sauce. To this day this is my favorite burger memory. Since Dunn's Garage has been closed for ages, do you at Gourmet know of a recipe for a similar type of pourable, thick real cheddar cheese sauce for topping burgers? I have tried to recreate this at home with no luck.
Regards, Marly

Their initial response was sent an hour later!

From: Gourmet, Feedback
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 4:46 PM

I'll send your note around, but I think it's a long shot. I did notice the following listing: Dunn's Garage Automotive (908) 245-0108 601 W Westfield Ave Roselle Park, NJ 07204. It sounds like an actual garage, but perhaps someone there can help you. If I get anything back from anyone on staff I'll let you know.
Best, James
Gourmet

On the following business day they wrote again...

From: Gourmet, Feedback
Sent: Monday, September 20, 2004 5:01pm

I just heard back from one of our food editors:
"I don't see why the Welsh Rabbit sauce wouldn't work. We did it in the Dec. 2003 issue, p. 206*. As for the gritty part, I don’t know exactly what that means, but I'm wondering if it is an indication of overcooked cheddar-- where the cheese has broken down from being heated for too long. If you do the Welsh Rabbit rabbit, you can always increase the amount of cheese to taste."

Hope that helps.
Best, James
Gourmet

(*see recipe from Dec. 2003 issue, p. 206 here)

Well. I was very pleased with their quick response, even though I don’t eat rabbit. (Welsh Rabbit rabbit?) Although I’d heard of rarebit, is that what they meant? Perhaps I heard it first as a child when watching the Bugs Bunny show. There was an episode with a play on words--rabbit vs. rarebit--with reference to when someone wanted to cook Bugs, they told him he would be served with "wish-te-shish-te-shire sauce.”

Anyhow, in later foodie days, I came to know rarebit as some old British Isles recipe where you take a Cheddar cheese sauce and pour it over toast. Sorta a grilled cheese, though with no pan since the cheese is already melted. Imagine this on a burger. Instead of a stiff, separatist slice of cheese that merely half melts, I’m talking about a cloud of oozy cheesiness that dominates the burger and slides down its sides like lava. Yes I believe we understand each other now.

For some reason unknown to me, after the Gourmet letters I dismantled the Quest. Ok really, I just forgot about it. Until two nights ago. I met up with Neil at Tam O’Shanter’s, a delightful old Scottish pub and restaurant near Glendale that's a part of the Lawry’s Prime Rib chain, yet not a chain itself, and it's been operated by the same family since 1922. It is cozy and has a charm all its own--a great place to go!

The unofficial plan then two nights ago was to order a drink and a snack. Neil’s plan was to order a drink and dinner. His plan was better. After almost ordering a French onion soup and salad, an item called the “1922 Tam Burger” jumped off the page at me. This is its menu description:

1922 Tam Burger
Certified Angus chuck served open-faced on toasted sourdough bread with Neuske's smoked bacon and Thousand Island dressing topped with Scotch Rarebit.

Did that say “Scotch Rarebit”?? OMG could it be? Hmm, I also saw they had this appetizer on the menu, which pretty much confirmed it:

Scotch Rarebit
An authentic Scottish recipe of cheddar cheese, beer, cayenne and nutmeg. Served with buttery sourdough toast.

OK. Wow. So there was no question. I ordered the 1922 Tam Burger. It…was…the Quest! A burger on toast (not part of the Quest but who cares), with crispy high-end bacon (which is always a Quest), plus a molten heap of thick Cheddar sauce on top and dripping down the sides. The Quest! It tasted just like the Cheddar burger of my youth. And there were bonuses!... 1) enough cheese sauce to use as a dunk for the crispy fries, and 2) the smokiest bacon ever. I’m talking campfire smokey, lapsang souchong tea smokey. Looove it!

Now that my Quest has been fulfilled, I must start exercising far more (More x Zero = Zero?) in order to eat enough of these 1922 Tam Burgers to make up for the lost years. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Until we eat again,
Marly

Bagels & Some Lox

Writing about bagels & lox was not an immediate idea. I was thinking about salmon really, and have lots to talk about there. Then I remembered how the arrival at the perfect bagel & lox experience is not automatic, nor obvious. I arrived at it only through the guidance of others, though living near great bagel shops and markets helped too.

Even though I come from a secular Jewish household, family gatherings – from my memory at least – did not include the ubiquitous bagel & lox platter. Oh I’m sure there was lots of lox, and white fish, but I suppose as a young person with typical palate limitations I was attracted only to the lox-hidden-in-the-cream-cheese spread. And no complaints there. This bagel preparation was delightful and the end of the road for me at the time. Real lox was just too icky.


Fast forwarding... At some point in my 20’s I worked for 9 months at a small city ad agency run by a father and son. The son was a lovely person, as well as one of Gourmet magazine’s top eligible New York City bachelors at the time. This made going to work fun. Unfortunately the father was a very mean person, a nouveau rich sort who took all his former life persecutions out on the rest of us, or maybe just me.

One day it was near holiday time and, regarding our office celebration, the father wanted to do it right. A bunch of us got in the father’s town car, with the father, to go out and find some food to bring back to the office. Our office was near the U.N. building, around 46th St. & 1st Ave., yet the driver took us all the way across and up to the upper west side. Before we knew it we were pulling up right outside of Zabar’s.

Zabar’s is a famous New York City institution, beloved by Woody Allen (who shot a scene from “Manhattan” there) and many other NY Jews and food afficionadoes for their massive array of bagel accoutrements. I say they specialize in bagel accoutrements, rather than bagels, because less than a half block away is a store called H&H Bagels, the city's most famous bagel shop. (They ship bagels overnight, btw, for about $50). People always go to both stores.

So far this was an unexpectedly adventurous field trip, to a famous gourmet store during work hours with the nice boss’s nasty father. When we got to the lox counter, Lauren Bacall (or Kathleen Turner) was ordering something and that was cool.

Then the father, who’s normal personae had suddenly morphed to that of giggly kitten, put some cash in my hand and said “Go get some lox, for 10 people.” I said, “Ok.” This sounded easy enough, but in the moments that followed the command I sidled up to the lox counter and there was a heck of a lot of lox. My original plan had been to order “lox,” and my new plan was to eavesdrop on Lauren Bacall’s (or Kathleen Turner’s) order, since her loud, specific commands to the lox man seemed pretty good. But then the father called out to me among the bustle “Get the belly lox! Don’t forget! Belly lox!” And when I said that to the lox man, it worked!

Back at the ranch we laid out the spread and I was instantly converted to the belly lox. This type of lox – heretofore unknown to me -- was incredible, soft, creamy, melt-in-your-mouth and didn’t have that fishy thick taste I'd gotten to know a few times from tasting regular lox cuts. To this day I can say that belly lox is the one nice thing that man ever did for me.

Now there were bagels in my life before the days of belly lox. In the early 90’s I was at a NY job that blessed the workers with Friday morning bagels and cream cheese. The bagels were large and fresh and came from a place called Ess-a-Bagel. (These remain my favorite brand, even more so than H&H.) Every Friday I’d take an everything bagel, force on some cold salted butter, then spread on the cream cheese. As years passed I could actually alter my weight via whether or not I partook in bagel day.

Eventually I learned my favorite way to eat a bagel was a toasted everything bagel with scallion cream cheese. I think a lot of people enjoy this combo. You’ve got your bagel with all those savory seasonings baked in – minced garlic and onions, sesame and poppy seeds, paired with the fresh green onions in the cream cheese. It’s perfection.

One morning during rush time, I ordered my favorite in the typical fashion, “Toasted everything with scallion,” at a new deli, and all was well until the counter guy asked me, “You want jelly too?” This stopped me in my non-caffeinated-coma tracks. My mind raced… I’m sorry, what about my order did you not understand. Savory bagel with savory spread. Why the F*** are you asking me about JELLY. I couldn’t have looked more squinty-eyed incredulous when I replied, “No!!” Listen, sweet cheap grape jelly + salty savory perfection isn't a thought that should ever be. Really, it’s like asking if you want grape jelly squirted on your French onion soup, or your strip steak, or...anything! It's wrong. But guess what, he squirted on the jelly when I wasn’t looking. At the office I discovered the treason, walked very pissed off all the way back to the deli for a re-do and never went there again, because the sanctity of a person's bagel preparation should never be tampered with, especially not in New York.

It was also in the mid-90’s that I received the best lesson on how to prepare a bagel, from my friend Matthew. He took such pride in this, he really taught me the glories of the experience in a way I did not know before.

The demonstration began one morning in our apartment, with fresh H&H’s in hand. We had brewed coffee in mugs (a very important go-with ;), and Matthew systematically began the bagel-prepping ritual while explaining it to me, since he was sincerely surprised that another Jew from Jersey didn’t have this knowledge inborn. Note: It’s been a few years and I can’t say Matthew said these exact words, but it is how I remember it. He said:

“First you take the bagel and you cut it in half with a big, serrated knife. Take the bottom half and put on the cream cheese. Not too much! Slice up a big beefsteak tomato. Make sure it’s ripe. The slices should be thick! Place a nice thick tomato slice over the cream cheese. Then take a red onion. Slice that up. Put a big onion ring or two over the tomato, just like that. Sprinkle on some salt, then some pepper. Top that with the other half of the bagel. Mmmmm, now look at that! And THAT’S how you make a BAGEL!”

It was crunchy, perfect deliciousness! I'll always remember that bagel. Hey Matt, maybe you can make me another one of those in December! :)

Until we eat again,
Marly

It's Poutine Time

Greetings, oh fans of the potato and all things starchy. It's time to open your mind to new delights of the spud. As a girl from Jersey, you may say I've been inclined to diner out at midnight with some disco fries (french fries with gravy and melted cheese), and maybe that's true! (It is true.) However our neighbors to the north have another way of saying it, and making it, that is near and dear to those who know it, and also appears in a Google search when you type in disco fries (as in, "not to be confused with..."). The name of the dish, seen above, is poutine.

Now I have a habit when traveling of seeking out regional specialties in the most accessible, ie. cheap, places: supermarkets and fast food chains. On my second trip to the lovely city of Montreal, during cold season, I walked underground in that if-you've-been-there-you-know- what-I-mean beneath-the-city mall. So as said, per what I usually do when traveling (never at home ;) I looked into an underground Burger King and noticed they served a potato dish beyond french fries: the poutine! This was very exciting, so I sidled into a line to order a BK poutine, loonies (Canadian $1 coins) in hand, when my elitist Toronto-born boyfriend said “You don’t want to have your first poutine at a Burger King do you?” This was the tone in which he said many things, except this time he kinda made sense. So I skipped it, figuring I'd try poutine another time. Another time never came, and it’s 10 years later.

That is why this Canadian dish-of-affection is always in the back of my mind, and when I was having an e-conversation with a fellow (USC) Trojan from Ottawa, I mentioned the poutine and he wrote back a wonderful overview of it, including where to get it in LA! I asked his permission, then, to feature his story in my blog, and with that I present to you the rest of this post, as written by Planet Marly’s first guest blogger, Theodore.

Theodore's LA Poutine Story

As a Canadian ex-pat living in Los Angeles, every so often I come down with a craving for some Canadian cuisine. Until recently I had been making a bi-monthly pilgrimage to this restaurant in Monrovia called the Canadian Café. Unfortunately, they recently closed shop which I attribute to the fact that they were located somewhat remotely at the intersection of the 210 and 605 freeways and that warmer temperatures in Southern California don't really warrant such high-fat foods such as back bacon sandwiches and poutine.

Having grown up on the border of Ontario and Quebec, however, poutine is something that is dear to my heart and after some extensive internet research I was pleased to discover that there are four other venues in Los Angeles that serve the "delicacy."

Redondo Beach Cafe
1511 S Pacific Coast Hwy
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
(310) 316-1047

Dusty's
3200 W Sunset Blvd
Silver Lake, CA 90026
(323) 906-1018

Soleil Westwood
1386 Westwood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90024
(310) 441-5384

Alibi Room
12236 Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90230
(310) 313-1404

In the course of my research I located a few photos as well (click here), from someone else in LA who is apparently as obsessed with poutine as I am. So far I've only been to the Redondo Beach Cafe. They use real curds, a medium-dark gravy, and thick cut fries. Judging from the pictures, the poutine at Soleil looks to be quite authentic as well, albeit with shoestrings, which is more like something you'd find at a ski lodge in Canada.

The poutine at Dusty's also looks tasty, but it is a little spurious as to whether or not they use real curds. I recall reading a review of sorts indicating that they do, but it's not really possible to tell if the curds had melted in the photo or if they had simply used shredded cheese.

The Alibi Room is more of a bar, so I'm thinking one of these evenings I'll make the trip out there for a beer and a poutine.

My only reservation about the poutine I've had here is that the curds are larger and more uniform in size (like a bunch of scallops), which may or may not be a function of their Wisconsonian origin. I like poutine best when the curd size varies from little bits to large chunks; it makes for a more even distribution of cheese and a more varied mouth feel. (See photo here.)

Signed Guest Blogger,
Theodore