‘california’

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Pre-Hiking at the Park Rock Cafe

June 2nd, 2010 Tweet Facebook Digg Stumble Reddit

These lentils have been cracked.

Before spending a weekend of hiking in Joshua Tree National Park, we stopped at a little shop near the visitor center called the Park Rock Cafe.  We didn’t need too much before a day filled with jerky and trail mix, but we at least wanted to get ourselves a square meal.  There weren’t a lot of options, as you would expect.  It was mostly sandwiches and all of them had some sort of vegetable plopped inside to ruin it.  Despite this, I still chose their Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich, which came with onions and peppers.  I ordered mine without those sandwich killers and then was given a choice between soup and salad.  I made the obvious choice for soup, which was cracked lentils.  I don’t really know how you go about cracking a lentil, but I do know that lentils are more of a legume than a vegetable, and legumes are just fine by me.

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The Hidden Treasure of Jasmine Market

March 23rd, 2010 Tweet Facebook Digg Stumble Reddit

Biryani me!

I’m not totally sure how it happened, but at some point in the last year I heard about a place called Jasmine Market in Culver City.  Unfortunately, life happened and it took me until recently to finally get to pay the place a visit.  Jasmine Market is unique because it is both a market and a restaurant, but even more interesting than that is that they serve Burmese food.  Never heard of a Burmese restaurant?  Well neither had I.  In general I’ve avoided things related to Burma (Myanmar) for fear that anything I did would seem like I support the military junta there.  But you don’t find a Burmese restaurant too often, so I knew I had to try it out.

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Memories of the Elephant Bar

February 5th, 2010 Tweet Facebook Digg Stumble Reddit

Made with real elephant. Wait. No.

As a child of 13, I went to the Elephant Bar in Palm Desert and loved the perpetually moving straw fans on the ceiling.  Of course, that was all it took for me to like a restaurant at the age of 13.  Now things are a little different.  Those fans still cater to my easily distracted mind, but my taste buds require something more.  A quick look at the menu made me feel like the Elephant Bar was suffering from mild schizophrenia.  While most of the menu was filled with American fare, for some reason a whole page was devoted to Asian stir-fry-esque meals.  This threw me off and made me feel like this place wasn’t made for Asian food.  I flipped back to the American comfort zone and found what I wanted.

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Being Seasonal at Mimi’s Cafe

February 4th, 2010 Tweet Facebook Digg Stumble Reddit

Brie-tacular.

Recently I paid a visit to the desert, aka Rancho Mirage, to visit my grandparents.  For dinner one night we headed to Mimi’s Cafe, which is apparently a chain that I had never heard of and was very appropriate for a meal with the grandparents.  This was all new to me, though, so I was excited to see an entirely new menu of good food.  It was obviously prepared with the health-conscious in mind, since it had its own little healthy section.  Some of this section was even unvegan, but I was not in the mood for health.  Instead, I found my way to their seasonal menu and their Brie Chicken.

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Legendary Meat at Langer’s Deli

December 21st, 2009 Tweet Facebook Digg Stumble Reddit
In cursive, so you know it's good.

In cursive, so you know it's good.

All-too-often restaurants claim to have “the best” blah blah blah in the world, but sometimes there is a restaurant that makes no claim to have the best of anything and lets the customers tell the good news.  Langer’s Deli is one of the latter.  Located in the not-so-posh neighborhood of MacArthur Park, Langer’s has become known for their pastrami.  Many who have tried it have claimed it is the best ever, so to do the unvegan world a favor, I had to try it out myself.

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Beer Me Some Bell’s Oberon

Look like summer to you?

It’s really not summer until you’ve had some Oberon.  Sure, the weather may be warm, the grass may be green and the county may be forcing you to water your lawn only on odd-numbered days, but in truth, none of this matters until you get some Oberon in you.  Now, you may be wondering, “What is Oberon?”  If you turn to Wikipedia (the source of all knowledge), you will be lead to believe that Oberon is the king of the fairies.  But this is just hogwash.  In fact, Oberon is more likely to be a king of beers.  No, not the king of beers…some brewery in St. Louis has that copyrighted.

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