A couple years ago, the Michigan Alumni Association started gathering at South in Santa Monica. This struck me as strange, because Michigan is about as north as a state can get. Yet, any place willing to host the legions of Michigan football fans was a winner in my mind. Plus, it didn’t hurt to have Abita on tap. But in these years, I had not attempted their food until the past weekend. I heard some bad things, but sometimes you just have to eat.
A couple of years ago, some dude named Ilan Hall from Top Chef opened a restaurant in downtown LA called The Gorbals. The food scene of LA was pretty excited, and so was I, but downtown is a bitch to get to. So I waited. And waited. Until finally, a 30% off deal came to me from Blackboard Eats and I realized I had a golden opportunity to brave the nighttime downtown traffic.
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.
For a few months now, I have driven by El Nopal in Palms nearly every single day. And on just about every one of those days, I say to myself, “I want to eat there.” But it is not simply because I love Mexican food, it is because of what is written just below the name of the restaurant on their sign: Home of the Pregnant Burrito. I’m a pretty literal guy and assumed there was some sort of burrito fetus residing in the larger burrito. This proved to not be the case, but it does give me an idea for an awesome burrito if I ever open up my own Mexican place (read: never). Anyway, onto the burrito.
For a while now, I’ve been hearing about this place in Hollywood called Griddle Cafe. “Go to Griddle,” they say. “You’ll like what you eat there,” they also say. “They make pancakes with anything in them,” they continue, and then I get excited. You see, I like me a pancake, but a regular pancake can only be so good. Usually it tastes the best after a night of binge drinking, and it doesn’t matter if it comes from a box mix or the nicest brunch restaurant in the world. But I got excited about Griddle and finally made it out to Hollywood to see what all the pancake hype was about.
Hot dogs: the edible version of man’s best friend. Genius in conception and pretty easy to do well. But to do a hot dog great takes some skill and some food trucks have taken this easily portable meal to the streets to some success. Up in North Hollywood, The Wien brought its truck over to my office one day and I thought I should give it a try and see if it could compete.
Anytime you leave a place, you want to end on a high note. In the Cook Islands, we were planning on doing the same. After dropping off our motor bike and heading back to our hotel, we had one more meal in us before catching out red-eye back to the homeland. Fortunately, there was a restaurant in walking distance that had been recommended to us by a local and by a couple of travelers. It was called Tumunu and boasted a seafood platter as its house special.
Situated in the village of Tupapa on Rarotonga is an old colonial home. Built back in 1910, at one time, it was even the home of the British Consul. But all that changed in 2004, when a couple of restauranteurs decided this old colonial home needed to serve up some food. Tamarind House was born, and has been dealing in Pan-Asian culinary delights ever since. When we got ourselves seated, we quickly learned that Tamarind House was going to be a unique experience, and not simply because we were in an old colonial home.
Remember that show called The OC? Me neither, but apparently it existed at some point and produced some famous people. One of these people was named Mischa Barton and while the majority of her career has disappeared since that show, she has recently reappeared, looking better than ever.
Little-known fact: restaurants in Rarotonga generally close their lunch doors after 2:00 pm. This fact would have been great to know before the girlfriend and I rode our motor scooter around half of the island in search of a late lunch. Just when we had given up hope, I recalled a place called Roadhouse that we had passed many a time on our way from our hotel to Avarua. If they were closed, we were just going to have to snack ourselves away until dinner time. Fortunately, Roadhouse was open (from 11 am to 2 am every day) and sadly devoid of Patrick Swayze (RIP).