Oh, Little Little Tokyo, the gem of the LA’s west side. Aside from Little Ethiopia, there’s really nowhere else that you can be driving along regular LA streets, suddenly find yourself in a foreign country for two blocks, and then pop back out into regular LA again. There’s a pretty steady stream of awesome restaurants and stores in this foreign territory and for this review a group of us headed to FuRaiBo. In order to be seated immediately, we had to sit in their floor room (like a tatami room, without the tatami). This meant sitting on the floor. While this sort of seating is not common in modern Japan, it certainly still exists. The trouble with this seating at FuRaiBo, however, is that their floor seating gives a distinct lack of leg room, such that my legs couldn’t even get under the table. Nonetheless, while seating played a role in the meal, it didn’t define it. Continue Reading»
‘Chicken Wings’
Tastes of the Northwoods, Part V: Crave
July 10th, 2009 Tweet Facebook Digg Stumble RedditBefore leaving the Northwoods, I made a stop at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota to eat at Crave. Although the Mall of America can hardly be considered part of the Northwoods, it’s close enough to be included in my weekly special.
Crave was a nice and spacious restaurant that came highly recommended by my family that was taking me there. A whole lot of food on the menu looked great and we started by ordering appetizers. We got the Mini-Burgers, which the menu said came with bacon, cheddar and rosemary. We also ordered the Lemon Garlic Wings, which came with “Amablu cheese dressing” and cucumbers. Since the family likes cucumbers, I didn’t order the dish without them and just hoped they didn’t touch any of the wings I wanted to eat. Continue Reading»
Rants and Raves
Living Dangerously
October 12th, 2009Apparently Russian roulette isn’t the only way to live dangerously. In fact, eating that side salad that came with your meal is like playing Russian roulette with your stomach. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, leafy greens are the most dangerous food you can eat. This has been determined by how often they cause outbreaks, which apparently is a lot. And the greens aren’t alone. They are joined by vegetable cohorts like tomatoes and sprouts in the top ten list.
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Charlito’s Way with Sausage
Last week, an unexpected parcel arrived. I immediately suspected anthrax and was ready to detonate it in the street when I noticed it was from my future brother-in-law. For some, this may be further reason to suspect anthrax, but Dustin has never me reason to believe he’d want me dead. I opened it up and found a pair of sausages with an awesome letter welcoming me to the family. Truth be told, had I known sausages were in the mix, I’d have popped the question long ago.
The letter also informed me the sausages came from a friend of a friend of his in New York who had recently started up a sausage company called Charlito’s Cocina. I was excited to try them and although it took me a few days to get to it, I was safe knowing the dry-cured sausages could handle it. But aside from being dry-cured, what kind of sausages were these? The answer is Trufa Seca, which means they were full of black truffle. Aside from that, these were pork through and through with sea salt as the final flavoring ingredient. According to the website, the pork was a heritage breed and pasture-raised, which made me feel even better as I sliced off my first bit.
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