Some people like to say that Pasadena north of the 210 is a sketchy place. Those people obviously don’t know Pasadena, as “north of the 210” is starting to feature some pretty exciting spots. Take, for example, Lavender & Honey, a coffee/sandwich shop that appears to attract displaced westsiders and eastsiders.
I once swore I would never return to Dallas. That’s because I went for a weekend and it snowed and the whole city shut down. Plus I was coming from Michigan and hoping for, like, good weather. Alas, I was unable to keep that promise and recently returned, swearing I would eat some good BBQ before leaving. Thus, I found myself at Bone Daddy’s House of Smoke, which would never top any lists of the best spots in Dallas, but was close by and traffic in Dallas is stupid.
Once upon a time, a little place called 800 Degrees decided it could redefine fast-food pizza. Needless to say, it was a success. And that success inevitably led to copycats like Blaze Pizza. Surely this is not a bad thing in general because it will ultimately lead to better or more affordable food, but in the short-run I set out to see if Blaze could deliver (figuratively, of course).
Not too long ago, Vietnamese food suddenly became cool. At first everyone was probably like, “What the shit are pho and banh mi and how do you pronounce these things?” but now they’re all like, “It’s pronounced ‘fuh,’ idiot.” Somewhere in the middle of all this, Good Girl Dinette appeared in the formerly sketchy turned contentiously gentrifying neighborhood of Highland Park. Yes, just like every other damn city, LA has a Highland Park of its own.
When you name a restaurant Grassroots, you have to assume that meat lovers will be fearful. Aside from awesome 60s music, the name evokes a hippy dippy vegan spot. Yet, it is anything but. Sure, this Scottsdale spot caters to the veggie-loving crowd, but it caters to unvegans no less so. Plus, let’s not forget that it does harken to the 60s music crowd.
Often when I eat Italian food out, I am left thinking I could have just made the same dish at home. That’s why I usually go for gnocchi, which seems harder to duplicate at home. Nonetheless, When the wife found a little hole in the wall spot called Luciano’s in Pasadena, I wasn’t expecting anything amazing simply because there was too much on the menu. Not only that, the menu made it seem like everything (pizza, pasta, sandwiches) would be wonderful and that is often a bad sign.
It has been an admittedly long time since I have eaten from a food truck, let alone one in LA. Yet, while the fad has ended, there are still plenty of food trucks to chow down with as the truck still offers a low-cost entry into food-slinging. One such truck goes by the name of CreativEats and breaks essentially all (two) rules I thought necessary for a food truck’s survival.
The Hat is one of those local LA fast food spots that has been around forever and seems to be in no rush to change. It has “World Famous Pastrami,” but is not limited to just one meat, because the place also serves burgers, roast beef dip and crazy big portions of sides. I mean crazy. Just look at that order of chili cheese fries on the left and try to comprehend how small the individual fries look.
Just off the main drag of South Lake in Pasadena is a little Thai spot that goes by the name Nine and Nine. What the name means is lost to me, but what wasn’t lost to me was their lunch specials for $7.50, which captivated me as I browsed the menu. Like most Thai places, the lunch specials menu was a small fraction of the whole, but it had curry and that’s all a guy like me could ask for.
When you need to get away from it all (say from a 3 month old child and the busy streets of LA), Cliff’s Edge in Silverlake is actually a pretty good way to do it. You see, just off of busy Sunset Blvd, Cliff’s Edge feels like it might as well be Middle Earth. There’s a real tree growing right in the middle of the place and the whole place really does feel like an earthly Lothlorien. There was no Lembas bread to eat, but there was plenty to be found.