Los Angeles91423
In my short visit to LA, I made my way to just about every corner of the city. This inevitably took me to The Valley and a newish gastropub called The Woodman in Sherman Oaks. The place is known for a good happy hour (with prices that are still higher than Pittsburgh), but I couldn’t quite make it in time for that. Instead, I paid for full-price beer and food like some sort of normal human.
In Sherman Oaks and a few other places in LA, there is a breakfasty-dinery type of restaurant called Jinky’s. But it is no ordinary breakfasty-dinery joint. I mean, sure, it has pancakes, eggs, burgers and sandwiches, but it also has something you don’t really see on too many menus – chili. Twenty different kinds of chili, in fact. Not every variety is available every day, but there is always some sort of chili and Jinky’s finds all sorts of ways to mix it into its extensive menu.
Up in the valley is a place called Stanley’s that I have been hearing about pretty much from the day I started dating my fiancee. Very little about the valley is exciting, but Stanley’s is in a stretch of Sherman Oaks on Ventura that’s pretty cool, so I found myself surprisingly excited to go. Previously, I had heard they have delicious wings, but we were in a rush and I am not a man who rushes wings. Instead, I went with my arch-nemesis.
In a clear trend of awesome, Brats Brothers is one of the newest gourmet/exotic sausage/bratwurst places to hit LA (okay, they’ve been around since 2007, but just moved to a new location). Within 48 hours of learning of its existence, I made my way out to Sherman Oaks for lunch to see how it stacked up against its brethren. Made up to look all German-like and with a hostess/waitress that was also decidedly German (accent and all), Brats Brothers seemed a little more authentic than hipster-loving joints like Wurstkuche.