The Spanish town of Segovia is famous for a few things:
Its Roman aqueduct — still standing since it was constructed in 50 A.D, it consists of 163 arches made of 20,000 granite blocks and not a drop of mortar.
The Alcazar — the castle which inspired Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty castle at Disneyland.
And Cochinillo Asado, a roast suckling pig that’s supposed to be insanely tender and flavorful.
Not too long ago, a new place called Burger Lounge made its way into Beverly Hills. Well, new is a relative term, as the place has been hanging out in San Diego for years. As with all intriguing burgers, I knew I had to test out it and recruited my buddy from San Diego to accompany me. He had frequented the lounge down in SD back in the day and I thought he would be helpful in my quest.
In a location that once housed Beechwood in Venice, the legendary Roy Choi has taken on the cuisine of the Caribbean and given it the name Sunny Spot. You may remember Choi as the man behind Kogi and West Side delights Chego and A-Frame. When I first learned about Sunny Spot, I marked it down for a bike brunch visit and just happened to make my way there this past weekend. I had heard the Yucca Fried were something special, but what I found went way beyond what I had imagined.
The food court at Century City mall is one of the best. It may have some chains, but it is a long way from the fast food filled food courts of the world. Strangely, there is some turnover in restaurants, but they always seem to be replaced by a similar restaurant with the same name. Case in point: Sorabal, a Korean place, was replaced by Bibigo, a – you guessed it – Korean place. Sure, Bibigo is a different concept from Sorabal, but my point still stands.
Indonesian food is one of those peripheral Asian varieties like Burmese or Khmer. Unlike the Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Thai restaurants that dot nearly every corner in the city, you have to work to find these more unique options. Of course if you are of Indonesian descent, you likely know where to get the best Indonesian food, but for someone like me it isn’t so easy. As it happens, though, I heard from the mouth of an Indonesian that Simpang Asia was awesome and I knew I had to try it out.
Like its cousin in Farmington Hills, The Hunter House in Birmingham is home to a true slider. It sits in a building reminiscent of White Castle with simple black lettering proclaiming its specialty: Hamburgers. But not just any hamburgers, these sliders are the stuff of legend. Skinny, greasy patties with buns steamed on top while cooking at The Hunter House were enough to get them named the best hamburgers in Michigan in 2009 by the Food Network Magazine. But for a place that’s been around since 1952, the accolades were hardly necessary.
EDIT: This Sammy’s is closed, but you can still get their decent pizza around LA and Vegas.
In dire need of portable food while in Studio City, I wandered into Sammy’s Woodfired Pizza. Apparently Sammy’s has locations throughout Southern California and Nevada, but this was the first I had ever seen or heard of such a place. I took a quick look at the menu and while there were a couple of mildly interesting pizzas, most were pretty basic. Faced with such choices, I went with old faithful: pepperoni.
For my birthday dinner this year, my lovely wife-to-be took me out to the Los Feliz part of town as a surprise. It’s not a part of town we spend much time in, and we made our way to Little Dom’s, an Italian place that hovers between fancy and neighborhoody. The menu had a lot of great-looking options and we decided to start things off with an appetizer and wine.
My story of breakfast from Corner Cottage in Burbank is one of blind trust and bacon. My morning started out like any other when I received one of the greatest text messages of my life. It read:
“Hey Zack. I’m going to pick up a burrito from Corner Cottage this morning. Want one? Bacon, sausage or even double bacon is really good.”
It came from one of my coworkers and my response was a “Hell yeah!” followed by a request for double bacon and to avoid all vegetables. Like most well-informed and educated people in the world, he was aware of my meat blog and disdain for vegetables, but I still had to make the request.
Near Century City there is a building that only houses restaurants with five letter names that have two of the same letters in a row. It is there that my friends and I dined at Sotto, which finds itself below Picca. ‘Twas a night of the first ever Summer Restaurant Week by DineLA, but these plans had been made without Restaurant Week in mind, so that kind of just turned out to be a bonus…for some people, because I decided to stick to the real menu.