At first glance, Lucifer’s Pizza seems like a sort of one-trick pony. Their schtick is having multiple heat levels for their sauces, hence the name. They don’t wood-fire their pizza and like most local pizza places claim to have fresh ingredients. Yet, upon visiting Lucifer’s on Melrose for the first time, I found they were more than just a pizza place with spicy sauce.
Have you ever accidentally swallowed a fly and been told it’s good protein? Well, it’s true and flies aren’t alone in the bug world as a good source of protein. And in some places the bugs are eaten deliberately. I’ve seen scorpions and tarantulas eaten in China, heard about eating silkworms in Korea and now have my own bug-eating experience in Zimbabwe.
Deep in the recesses of my To-Do Lists, I maintain a list of places I want to eat if I find myself in a particular city. Of course, the list doesn’t get much play, but when I found myself in Atlanta for the Final Four, I whipped out the list and found some delights I had only dreamed of. The first place I went to was the Edgewood Corner Tavern. I didn’t go because of some suggestion that they might have good food, I was there for one thing only.
Laguna Beach may be an artsy community, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t able to fit some upscale restaurants in. And while I’m not usually the upscaliest sort of guy, my wife and I were taking my mom out to dinner for her birthday and we wanted to go upscale. For us, this meant a visit to The Beach House. With a view of the ocean and the feeling that we were literally eating in a massive house, The Beach House was just what we were looking for.
Tucked into the back of the Planet Hollywood hotel in Las Vegas is a creatively named restaurant called Cheeseburger. Seriously. And I really mean that it’s a creative name, because the overall ambiance of the restaurant is not cheeseburgery at all. It’s Hawaiian. But, you know, something about what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Although they border each other and both speak English, South Africa and Zimbabwe couldn’t be more different. Granted, my only basis for comparison are Cape Town and the town of Victoria Falls, but you know, they seemed pretty different. Essentially, Victoria Falls and Zimbabwe are poor. Like dirt poor. As in, so poor that their own currency has no value and they use American dollars instead. So with all this poverty, we were surprised to find a tapas restaurant called Lola’s in the middle of Victoria Falls.
Recently, a restaurant calling itself LYFE Kitchen threw its hat into the ring of downtown Culver City. More than just a terrible misspelling, LYFE is an acronym that stands for “Love Your Food Everyday.” It’s an acronym I can appreciate, because it’s something I strive for. I mean, who doesn’t want to love their food everyday? When I checked out their menu, or should I say menus, I found that this would be a tough place to love.
The ostrich is a strange creature. A relic of a world ruled by birds, it is both flightless and the largest bird on Earth. These factors combine to make it ideal for food, and if it weren’t the fastest bird on the planet, I have a feeling its meat would be a bit more ubiquitous on the dinner plate. Ostrich is certainly not the strangest of meats, as it can be found as beef alternative in healthy burgers. Yet, it is unquestionably abnormal.
Typically one can expect prices to go down when traveling to a country in abject poverty, such as Zimbabwe, yet when we arrived in Victoria Falls, we were greeted by prices that rivaled fancy pants restaurants in LA. The people certainly could have used the money more than us, but I was still shocked when I sat down to eat lunch at the Buffalo Bar in the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge and found myself staring at a $15 burger.
I’ve been to Hawaii once. For a ten hour layover. So, while that island paradise is within the country I have spent most of my life, it is less of a home to me than China and Japan. Yet, I have always been intrigued by the Hawaiian restaurant known as Back Home in Lahaina. Maybe it’s the awesome name that evokes nostalgia for nothing I have any right to be nostalgic about. Or maybe it’s that Hawaiian food is both fascinating and delicious to me. Whatever the reason, I found myself at their Carson location for lunch.