Tragic Sandwich

Category: Restaurants and Food

  • Potato Mania

    This weekend, Mr. Sandwich and I made a trip to Salt Lake City and Idaho. Well, mostly Idaho. And considering that we flew to Utah on Saturday and came back on Monday, there really wasn’t that much of anywhere.

    I can say, though, that Idaho is beautiful. We only saw the stretch along I-15 between Salt Lake City and Idaho Falls, but the mountains, valleys, and farmlands were breathtaking.

    As we were driving north, we saw a billboard that said only www.buyhashbrowns.com

    Then. as we approached the town of Blackfoot, we saw one of those brown highway signs that indicates a cultural or historical site. It said “Potato Museum, next exit.”

    I turned to Mr. Sandwich and said, “If we have time on our way back, I totally want to stop there.”

    This may seem odd, but I love potatoes. I love them so much that one year I gave them up for Lent. And it was the hardest Lenten sacrifice I ever made. I did really well right up until Thursday of Holy Week, when partway through dinner I said, “Wow. These potatoes are really good. These potatoes are. Oh. Potatoes.”

    After leaving the highway, we followed additional signs and wound our way through town for a couple of miles. And then we found this:

    Irresistible, no?

    But perhaps you need more:

    Lured in by the king of potatoes, we took the tour. It cost $2.50 each with the AAA discount, and the exhibits traced the origins and spread of potatoes (thank you, Columbian Exchange!) and presented an array of farming techniques and equipment.

    On our way out, the woman at the desk said, “Oh, since you paid for the tour, you get these.” She handed us each a carton of freeze-dried Nonpareil Homestyle Hash Browns. And do you know what it says on the top of the carton?

    www.buyhashbrowns.com

  • Panini Cafe

    Sometimes I go to a restaurant just often enough to know what I like, but not often enough to want to go beyond that. Right now, that’s the stage I’m at with Panini Cafe.

    I know I like the falafel wrap, although I could do without the pickle slices (?) that are included. The couscous, with nuts and raisins, is excellent (and generous–I brought half of this side dish home). But I also know that I want to branch out, at least as far as the chicken dishes. The chicken is marinated in and/or rubbed with incredibly flavorful spices, and is incredibly tender. One of my friends ordered this in a shish kebob, and we agreed on a chicken-for-couscous trade. Some day, when I have a kitchen in which I can actually cook, I may even learn how to make it.

    Oh, and did I mention that they also have panini? There are several different selections with chicken and turkey, and even a ham and brie panini. If I go there often enough, I may make it through all of them–with the exception of the eggplant dishes.

  • Shanghai Red’s

    For the life of me, I can’t figure out the name of this place. There is absolutely nothing Chinese about the food at Shanghai Red’s. A friend suggested that we meet there for brunch, and since I’d heard good things about the restaurant but had never been there, I agreed. Then I looked up the menu online and thought, “This had better be good. Because I normally save meals that cost this much for splurgy nights out with J.”

    You enter the restaurant through a tropical, quasi-Asian walkway dripping with ferns. The tables are spread through several rooms, some indoor and some out. The setting is terrific–in the heart of Marina del Rey, with views of the water and boats. And who doesn’t like looking at boats?

    There are at least three lavish brunch stations: a long room filled with hot dishes ranging from tamales to eggs Benedict to crab legs; an omelet and waffle station; and a room filled with desserts. Everything was excellent, down to the crisp-but-not-burned bacon (and I do love bacon).

    On top of that, I got to spend time with a good friend I haven’t seen in months. And really, you can’t put a price on that. Especially when it comes with delicious food. And boats.

  • Happy Birthday to Me

    It’s not my birthday. In fact, it’s nowhere near my birthday, which was in February. However, two of my friends gave me a gift card to Lawry’s. If you’re not familiar with Lawry’s, since the 1930s they’ve served prime rib with mashed potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, and the restaurant’s Famous Original Spinning Bowl Salad. My family loves Lawry’s so much that a homemade version has become our annual Christmas tradition, although we’ve never tried to make the salad.

    The salad is made by spinning a bowl in a larger bowl of ice, and the dressing is poured on in a continuous stream. The recipe includes canned beets, which I thought sounded horrible, but actually turned out to be a nice addition to the mix.

    The prime rib is carved tableside, in a large steel cart that is wheeled around the restaurant. And unlike the beef I’m generally able to buy for our traditional Christmas dinner, the prime rib is actually prime–more tender and flavorful than most steaks you’re likely to encounter. We also ordered sides of asparagus with hollandaise sauce, and creamed corn. Christmas dinner features creamed spinach in place of those, but based on tonight, I may want to introduce creamed corn to the tradition.

    One of the things I like about Lawry’s is that many traditional restaurants have male servers, as though somehow men are inherently classier than women. At Lawry’s, the servers are women–although the carvers, at least the ones we saw, were men. The service, by the way, was excellent. At the end of the meal, our server brought me a complimentary serving of the restaurant’s trifle (what’s a traditional English dinner without trifle, after all?).

    So in the end, what does it matter when my birthday really is? This would be a welcome gift at any time.

  • Quincy’s BBQ

    Quincy’s serves “the best BBQ under one woof,” which is a little cutesy. However, the pulled pork is quite good, and the chicken is really tender. After several trips up and down Ventura Boulevard–and a couple of meals at The Habit (excellent burgers, fries, and onion rings, BTW), we decided that Quincy’s was our next stop. Both food and service were good, and although it isn’t our favorite place in the Valley, it’s not half bad.

    Oh, and we put an offer on a house. How’s that for burying the lede?

  • TGIF

    This week seems like it has lasted forever, but it’s finally done! J took the day off but is working this evening. I guess that’s not much of a day off. But the result is that I got home and have been lazing around ever since. At some point I should probably figure out what I’m going to eat for dinner.

    Lunch was a bit of a challenge, too. There’s a new falafel restaurant in Westwood, but the line was too long for the level of hunger I was feeling (apparently I need to eat more than one packet of oatmeal for breakfast). However, I was in a falafel kind of mood. About two blocks away was a longtime denizen of Westwood–Falafel King. I remember eating there in college, although it was in a different location at that point.

    What I can’t tell you is whether Falafel King serves good falafel. I liked it–salty, slightly spicy, and fried. When you put it that way, what’s not to like? Certainly I walked away full, which itself was an improvement. And I figure that now I have a baseline for comparison, when I finally do get to the new place.

    Dinner, for the moment, remains a mystery. Also, I should probably make a run out to Whole Foods, so that I don’t have to go in the morning. In the meantime, though, I’ve stumbled across a TLC show called Say Yes to the Dress. What is with all the lumpy wedding gowns that seem to be out there? Yet another trend I do not get. Good thing that J and I are already married!

  • In-n-Out

    I came home with a headache and didn’t feel like cooking, so we went to In-n-Out. There’s a lot of discussion about what In-n-Out does well, and generally I agree. However, there is one thing that–mystifyingly–they do badly.

    The fries.

    They’re so strange. Mushy and bland, and undercooked. You can order them well-done, but then they’re overcooked.

    Plenty of people like them, so it’s entirely possible that it’s just me. And mind you, my dislike for them does not keep me from eating some of J’s when he orders them. But in general, I’ll stick to their burgers. Our sandwiches of choice? J likes the double-double with lettuce only, and I like the cheeseburger with grilled onions.

    Since neither a nap nor the burger seemed to fix my headache, I’ve now resorted to Tylenol. In the meantime, we’re watching The Conversation. That will move one of the Netflix movies from the shelf. And it only took two months!

  • Well, That Was Exhausting

    Yesterday afternoon, J and I drove down to Redondo Beach. The day before a race, we like to do a practice swim and practice bike ride, to get more familiar with the course. I suppose we could do a practice run, too, but that way lies madness.

    So we got to the beach and I decided very quickly that if the surf didn’t go down by morning, I was going to skip the race. It wasn’t stormy, but the water was pretty choppy. I really didn’t think I could cover 1/2 mile under those conditions.

    And I was probably right. The water was much calmer this morning–the waves were breaking fairly close to the beach, with rolling surges beyond that. It turned out, though that the rolling surges were much more rolling than I thought. In spite of the short distances, this was the toughest of the triathlons I’ve done, and that’s all due to the swim. The ocean was cold, murky, and dynamic (and it tasted bad–I don’t know what’s in the water in Redondo Beach, but it can’t be good).

    When I finally emerged from the water, it was with the slowest time I’ve gotten (30 minutes in the water, and my official time will be longer than that)–and a charley horse. My calf muscle loosened up over the bike portion, but then I developed a stitch in my side. Everything evened out a bit during the run (which I walked all of, except for the finish chute), but on the whole I’m amazed that the right half of me was able to finish the race.

    Of course it helped that I had a lot of support. My dad and stepmom and J’s parents came out in the wee hours of the morning to cheer us on, and after he finished his race, J walked the run with me. Interestingly, the run may have been my favorite portion. The company, of course, was excellent, but the course was fun too. It wound through the Redondo Beach pier and by the neighboring lagoon, which has been turned into a saltwater pool with slides.

    After the race, we all adjourned to the Redondo Beach Cafe for brunch. The service was really slow, but everyone seemed happy with their various entrees. I was quite happy with the Kitchen Sink Omelet, which had cheese, avocado, ham, and onions; other dishes at our table included French toast, multigrain pancakes, a tuna melt, a chicken-salad croissant sandwich, and a French dip. The whole wheat orange pancakes and the crepes sounded good, but what I wanted most of all was protein.

    In the end, I finished dead last with a time of 1:52:35–but I finished.

    Not bad for someone who, after waking up this morning, was so tired that she couldn’t focus her eyes.

  • What’s With the Strange Apostrophes in Restaurant Names?

    I came home from work to find J napping on the couch–he had come home early with a mild migraine. He was still feeling poorly, so I checked e-mail and read until it was time to go vote. California seems to have a lot of elections, although the timing isn’t quite as random as when I lived in Austin. Seriously, I’m pretty sure they sometimes held elections on Saturday there. Who votes on a Saturday?

    After voting, it was time for dinner. J was feeling better, although neither one of us had a specific yearning. We walked a little bit east on Venice Boulevard before deciding that we would rather head west. Eventually we decided to go to Howard’s, home of the Famous Bacon and Avocado burger. Alas, by the time we arrived (8:09), Howard’s had closed. We turned around and headed for The Ayala’s, a tiny corner restaurant featuring Cuban and Salvadorean food.

    J ordered the combination plate of chicken and shredded pork, while I had the garlic chicken. Both dishes came with rice, beans, and fried plantains, which allowed me to take all the plantains while J took all the beans. (I think this may be the secret to a happy marriage.) J found his food a little too tangy, but I really enjoyed the garlic chicken.

    The standout of the meal, though, was the appetizer of fried pork and yucca. Although it arrived at the end of the meal instead of the beginning, we decided that this was the dish to revisit–next time we’re at The Ayala’s, we’ll split the pork and yucca (which is crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside, as if it were deep-fried mashed potatoes) and order a couple of sides.

    At the end of the meal, we were glad that we had a bit of a walk home, the better to burn some of the calories we had just consumed. We also found several other restaurants that we want to try before we move away from this part of town. Venice Boulevard is home to quite an array of multicultural eateries, including Brazilian, Mediterranean, Cuban, Salvadorean, and a whole lot of Thai. Hopefully there are more welcome discoveries to come. Just before we leave.

  • Super Chicken

    The punctuation is odd, but the food is great. Roscoe’s House of Chicken’ n Waffles is an L.A. institution. The original location is in Hollywood, but we frequent the Pico location. “Frequent” might not be the right word; after four years of saying I wanted to go there, we made our first trip in February, for my birthday.

    Tonight marked our second trip. While we planned to go after the L.A. Marathon in March, the line was just too long. Regardless of location, Roscoe’s is immensely popular. (That day, we wound up at Johnnie’s Pastrami on Sepulveda.)

    Fortunately, seating seems to be fairly open at 6 p.m. on weeknights. J has a friend/former co-worker who has been teaching English in Korea for the past year, and is in town for a visit. As luck would have it, he’s a big fan of Roscoe’s–so we headed out for some food that absolutely is not good for us.

    I recommend the Scoe’s #1. In fact, it’s the only dish I can recommend, because it’s the only dish I’ve ordered. Two pieces of fried chicken, two waffles with syrup . . . excellent. Order the dark meat. Last time I really liked the macaroni and cheese, but this time it was a little dry. J enjoyed the red beans and rice, although I found them a little bland–I preferred the red beans (but nothing else) at M & M Soul Food.

    There are plenty of other L.A. landmarks left to visit, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be back to Roscoe’s.