Tragic Sandwich

Category: Restaurants and Food

  • Swimming and Biking and Cupcakes, Oh My!

    One of my friends describes a cupcake as “the perfect ratio of frosting to cake,” and I think she’s got a point. She also describes my brother as “a sweet little cupcake baked by the devil,” and I think she’s got a point there, too. Someone’s got cupcakes on the brain, and I’m keeping her company.

    A few weeks ago I made a trip to Sprinkles for cupcakes. Today I continued my unofficial cupcake tour of Los Angeles with a visit to SusieCakes on San Vicente. Our refrigerator now contains three cupcakes–one vanilla, one lemon, and one coconut. I, on the other hand, contain one vanilla cupcake. SusieCakes describes their cupcakes as “frosting-filled,” and based on the one I’ve eaten so far, I have no idea what that means. It was delicious, though, and I’m looking forward to the other flavors.

    The cupcakes came on the heels of a strenuous afternoon. J and I did our first ocean swim in preparation for the triathlon (less than two weeks away! Aaaaagh!).

    Here’s what I learned today: sixty-degree water is very cold. It’s extra, extra cold when you leave your wetsuit at home. But I steeled myself to the cold water and swam. I actually did get used to the temperature, but I missed the buoyancy provided by the wetsuit.

    After that we went biking on San Vicente, which has excellent bike lanes–even for me and my fear of biking downhill. San Vicente is not at all steep, but I’m a downhill wimp. I admit it. Oddly, I’m not bad on the uphill portions.

    Oh, yes, I earned these cupcakes.

  • More Disappointing Than Tragic

    What does a girl have to do to get a meatball sub in this town?

    Yesterday J set out for adventures with friends, and these adventures included using the car, which meant that after my friend picked me up for coffee, I was on foot for most of the day.

    For the portion of the day that included laundry, this was no big deal. However, when J called to say that he and his friends would be eating copious quantities of BBQ at the Bear Pit (previously discussed here), I realized that I would need my own hearty late lunch/early dinner.

    One of our favorite local haunts is The Coop, a tiny hole-in-the-wall pizza place with no seating, cash-only sales, and amazing New York style pizza (New Yorkers, don’t start with me. It may not be exactly what you’re used to, due to the water–see, I know–but it’s good). Since J doesn’t like vegetables on his pizza, and I can’t eat oregano, we usually get a large pepperoni and Canadian bacon. That provides plenty of meat and avoids the sausage.

    The Coop also makes excellent meatball subs. Their posted Saturday hours are 11-9, so I figured I’d call and place the order, then walk over and pick it up. But no one answered. That suggested that they might be closed, particularly given the holiday weekend. Just in case, though, I walked over and discovered that they were, indeed, closed. On the way back I stopped at the sandwich shop on the corner of Palms and Motor. I can’t remember it’s name, it’s changed ownership at least once since we moved here, it’s nothing special. And, as it turns out, they do not have meatball subs. I toyed momentarily with the idea of a Philly cheese steak sandwich, but then realized that I had no confidence in their ability to make one–and that it would not meet my needs. A cheese steak sandwich, no matter how good, is not a meatball sub.

    From there, I headed over to Kristina’s Italian Kitchen, on Overland. Now, according to the Citysearch-provided menu, they do have a meatball parm sandwich. But their in-house menu showed no sandwiches at all (thanks a lot, Kristina’s!)

    In the end, I came home and reheated the leftover portion of a chicken quesadilla from Baja Fresh.

    Distance walked: 1.4 miles

    Meatball subs eaten: 0

  • A Food-Themed Post

    To begin with, I should probably mention that the sandwiches in the new blog header were not tragic. They were from a friend’s birthday tea, and were delightful. In fact, this was the tea that introduced me to chicken-cranberry salad sandwiches, which were so good that they left me saying “Why haven’t I thought of that?” I’m sure everyone else has been eating chicken-cranberry salad for ages.

    Also, I’ve obviously been playing with the blog theme and header. This probably will continue.

    Today I had a blatant opportunity to act on my 29-Day Giving Challenge, and I took it. As I walked toward Whole Foods on my lunch hour, one of the guys who sits on the benches along Gayley Avenue and asks for money asked me for money. I said, as I do, “No, sorry,” at which point he says, “A cold drink?” I said, “Sure,” and he said something that I was reasonably sure was “Snapple.” That’s when I recognized him as the guy who has specific requests when it comes to food. But I’m always happy to give people food, and a cold drink of any sort seemed like an extremely reasonable request when the temperature is in the 90s. Fortunately, it turns out that Whole Foods does in fact sell Snapple.

    Both of us have been tired all week, so for the second time in four nights, we’re ordering pizza from our favorite local place–The Coop. It’s a tiny storefront with no seating, and they only take cash. However, they do deliver, and they make excellent pizza. It has a thin-ish crust with a sauce that is exactly the right degree of spicy, and it’s delicious when topped with our choice of pepperoni and Canadian bacon. The downside is that it often takes a long time, because the place is so small (tonight’s wait is 75 minutes, for example). But it’s worth it, particularly since it means that they’re getting lots of business. It’s one of the places I’m really going to miss when we move. But I still want to move.

    View my page at the 29-Day Giving Challenge

  • I Should Be Working Out

    But I’m not. However, that still is one of my goals for this afternoon, while J is off on a road bike ride in Malibu.

    It’s been a busy weekend, and it’s barely Sunday afternoon. Yesterday we decided to see Iron Man, so we headed over to the theater to buy tickets. However, we soon found that between us and the theater was a huge traffic jam, due to a nearby car show. We decided to continue with our errands and go to a different theater once we were done. The next stop was at the Goodwill donation point, where I gave away the first item for the 29-Day Giving Challenge–a lawn bag full of clothes. Now, there were probably more than 29 items in the bag, so I suppose I could have doled them out over the course of the Challenge. But that doesn’t seem to be in the spirit of much of anything, so I’m counting the bag as one item.

    Next, we went to the pool, where I swam 900 meters and J swam 1100. I’m hoping to be swimming twice a week, and doing 1000 on one of those swims for at least a few weeks before the triathlon. We also need to do some ocean swimming, and I still need to get on the bike. Well, not this weekend.

    After the pool, we ate at The Stand. This is probably the fanciest hot dog stand you’ll ever eat at. J had the Chili Dog and I had the Kraut Dog. The sauerkraut didn’t have the tang I was hoping for, but the hot dog and bun were quite good. This is a little splurgy for hot dogs, but I’d come back. Oh, and they have Thomas Kemper cream soda on tap, which is very nice.

    We made a brief stop at home, where we learned that the car show was over, and headed out for Iron Man. The movie was a lot of fun, and Robert Downey, Jr., did a great job as Tony Stark. I’m still not all that taken with Gwyneth Paltrow, but I think the problems I had with Pepper Potts had more to do with the writing than with Paltrow’s performance.

    Back home again, I said, “How do we not own Raiders of the Lost Ark on DVD? Check TiVo and see if it’s showing tonight.” J did and said, “Believe it or not, it’s starting in 10 minutes.” So we watched Raiders (as edited for television) for the umpteen-millionth time. It’s always good.

    Today has been a little slower, although of course there was plenty of laundry to do. When J left on the bike, I headed out with a grocery bag full of movies on VHS. We’ve been replacing our VHS tapes with DVDs wherever possible, and the stack of outbound tapes was getting pretty high. This seemed like a worthy second day of giving for the Challenge, so I dropped them off at one of the local libraries.

    I’m not sure how I’m going to fulfill the Challenge during the work week, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out. I do know that I need to get up off the couch and work out!

  • Remembrance of Black Bean Sauce Past

    All of my life, we’ve eaten a lot of Chinese food. When my brother and I were very young, our family didn’t eat out much. One of the few excursions we could afford on a semi-regular basis was dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I think there were two reasons for this. For starters, Chinese food was proportionally cheaper than it is now. And also we would only order three dishes–one for my mother, one for my father, and one for both my brother and me (that one was usually Beef with Oyster Sauce).

    Later, it turned out that we just liked Chinese food, although the restaurant name wasn’t supposed to be that all-encompassing. In my mother’s opinion, a restaurant that didn’t specify its region wasn’t going to be any good. It wasn’t enough to advertise “Chinese food,” it had to specify Szechwan, Hunan, Cantonese, etc. We liked them all, so a specific region wasn’t the deciding factor. She felt that if the restaurant didn’t have a predominant regional identification, the owners and/or cooks didn’t know enough about the food they were making. Interestingly, many of our favorite restaurants did not meet this standard.

    In Rockville, Maryland, the Far East Restaurant was our establishment of choice. Although the naming principle doesn’t seem to have held here, we always noticed that the Chinese patrons got porcelain teapots, while the European-descended patrons got plain metal teapots. These days that policy has changed, and there is equality of teapots at the Far East.

    We moved to San Antonio, where we found the Wah Kee Seafood Restaurant. After several years in San Antonio, a multiplex movie theater opened near us, and the Wah Kee opened up in the adjacent shopping center. Another favorite was the Chinatown Cafe, which we liked so much that in 2004 J and I had our wedding rehearsal dinner there.

    I found good Chinese food right away when I moved to New Jersey (good Mexican food proved more elusive). Unfortunately, several months later the restaurant burned to the ground. While that was definitely a loss, I can recommend Lotus Cafe in Hackensack and Taipei Noodle House in Teaneck.

    There is a surprising lack of good Chinese food on the Westside of Los Angeles. About the best you can do is Hop Li. It’s pretty good, but not what it could be. No doubt this is largely because the center of Chinese restaurants in the area is in the San Gabriel Valley, but it’s still surprising that so densely populated an area can’t do better. When my grandparents lived in Monterey Park, my favorite restaurant was the Dragon Regency, where one night the chef made me a special dish of lemon cod fillets. I never ordered anything else, and eventually they put it on the menu. My grandparents and I were such loyal patrons that not only did they make me special dishes, they also gave me impromptu birthday celebrations, complete with bean cakes and gifts. Prior to our wedding, J and I went to Engaged Encounter (we will never get that weekend back), and I suggested that we have dinner at the Dragon Regency on our way to the seminary. I was devastated to find that the restaurant had closed, and I have yet to find anyone who can make that perfect lemon cod. Not even the excellent NBC Seafood, where we had dinner with two of J’s friends last year, can manage that particular dish.

    So Chinese food has always played an important role in my family’s meals, although these days I haven’t got the slightest interest in Beef with Oyster Sauce. Chinese food was my brother’s comfort food when he was home sick from school, and I love it so much that one year I gave it up for Lent. And it’s one of the ways that my brother and I choose to honor my mother on her birthday. The two of them both loved Peking Duck, so that’s one of the dishes he’s sure to order. I don’t order any particular dish–but aside from the Dragon Regency’s lemon cod, I’ve never had one.

    Tonight J and I had dinner at Yang Chow, in L.A.’s Chinatown. We found it a couple of years ago with my brother and his girlfriend (now his wife), and it seemed like the right place to celebrate my mother’s birthday this year. That was a good choice, as was the Beef with Black Bean Sauce that the chef made on request (oddly, the menu does include black bean sauce–but only on squid).

    I just wish she’d been there to join us.

  • New Eats in Westwood

    There’s a Chipotle in Westwood. The portions are fresh (as advertised), big, and delicious. I recommend the burrito with carnitas, particularly with pinto beans. But then I do love pinto beans.

  • Newcomb’s Ranch

    After an afternoon of snowshoeing on Mt. Waterman, why not stop at Newcomb’s Ranch for a hearty meal? First of all, after snowshoeing you’ll definitely want a hearty meal. Second, Newcomb’s Ranch is the closest restaurant by a long shot. Third, it’s delicious. Our group had fish and chips, broccoli-cheese soup, chicken tortilla soup, chili, and a steak sandwich. Everyone walked away happy, and the prices (while not cheap) were reasonable for the portion size and quality.

  • The Scent of Red Mango

    Today I stopped by Red Mango in . This is far superior to Mr. Snowberry; the big clue is that I’ll actually go back to Red Mango.

    It’s not exactly like Pinkberry. The yogurt seems creamier, and it’s not quite as tart. However, it’s still distinct from ice cream. And the pineapple was fantastic.

    Their website tells me that one of the stores is coming to a strip mall near me. That’s good news.

  • More Eats on Kauai

    I need to catch up on our Kauai eats.

    First, more on garlic shrimp. Savage Shrimp, on the corner of Lawai Road and Hoonani Road in , is housed in a lunch truck. It may move in the next two years, depending on what happens with the shopping center that is supposed to be built across the road–but for now, the truck can be found mid-day, with Susan dishing up freshly cooked shrimp in a handful of preparations. We had the Garlic Scampi and the Bahia Scampi, both of which were delicious. It’s worth noting that the prices are a tiny bit higher than indicated in the Roadfood.com review, but only by a dollar or two. Portions are generous and flavorful.

    Next, Hamura Saimin. This is a small place on shabby Kress Street in , but it’s good for a cheap bite. The menu is small, but the Special Saimin is quite good. Try the lilikoi pie–light and fluffy. At one end of the restaurant is Halo Halo Shave Ice. Their hours are limited, but the shave ice is vastly superior to the mainland Sno-Cone and its kin. We had it plain, without ice cream at the bottom, and found it very refreshing–just the thing for a hot day. The serving was big enough for both of us, so keep that in mind when ordering.

    The Camp House Grill in offers enormous, messy breakfasts with spicy-but-not-too-hot gravy in the morning and big, tasty burgers in the afternoon and evening. Be sure to have pie. They excel at pie.

    If you’re in (and why wouldn’t you be? It’s delightful), try Polynesia Cafe. Their plate lunches and fish sandwiches are quite good, and they’ll provide you with fuel for hiking (at least part of) the 11-mile Kalalau Trail, which begins at and provides cliffside views of the Na Pali coast. Even if you only make it to the first overlook, you’ll have worked off your lunch and seen truly spectacular scenery.

    That’s it for Kauai, unless I remember something else that I just have to share. Eat hearty.

  • Fine Dining in Poipu

    When in Kauai, our favorite restaurant for a nice dinner is Plantation Gardens, in .

    My parents came here in the early/mid 1970s and loved it, and we had a terrific meal at the same place during our honeymoon. This time, we started with the tempura plate and moved on to surf’n’turf and the fish of the day, which in this case was a pan-roasted ono. Everything was cooked perfectly, and the sauces for each dish were fantastic.

    Plantation Gardens is in the Kiahuna Plantation Resort, and is definitely worth a visit–no matter where you’re staying on the island.