Not to be confused with C & O Trattoria, C & O Cucina is just down the street in Marina Del Rey. Although the location is completely different, the menu seems to be the same as the other C & O. One thing it is missing, though, is the fun outdoor atmosphere. Nonetheless, I had a restaurant.com gift certificate so I had to try it out.
One day I received a random Twitter follow from @derbsgourmet. It piqued my interest so, I decided to follow them and found out that they were a new food truck called Derb’s Gourmet and set to launch in a couple days. Not only that, but they were launching at a bar right down the street from me, Bigfoot West. The sheer convenience was a sign that I had to try them out.
I arrived at 10:00, since that was supposed to be their launch time and saw that this was no normal food truck.
In an article in the New York Times, Natalie Angier has challenged some of the basic principles that vegetarians like to cling to. Namely, that plants are a gift to humanity to be eaten, while animals don’t want to be eaten. She is hardly the first person to tell the world about this, but doing it in the New York Times certainly helps it reach more people than the average plant research paper.
French fries go great with a burger, breadsticks are delicious with a pepperoni pizza and mac and cheese is the perfect partner with some ribs, but beer is amazing with any meat. It is difficult (although not impossible) to be an unvegan without having a great taste for beer and as any real beer drinker knows, not all beers are created equal. In my world, there is Leinenkugel’s Honey Weiss and then there are all other beers.
EDIT: This spot is closed, but obviously Chick-fil-A and its bigotry against beef continues to thrive.
Other than having hyphenated names, In-N-Out and Chick-fil-A have some other eerie parallels. For a long time, Chick-fil-A kept itself to the south, but has since expanded. In-N-Out, on the other hand, has kept itself to the west and has hardly expanded outside of California. Both still carry an air of mystery, as they are not readily available like McDonald’s or Burger King. They are also pretty religious, with Chick-fil-A closing on Sundays and In-N-Out printing bible quotes on their packaging. And finally, their menus are both incredibly simple. Yet, their simple menus are what makes them such opposites. In-N-Out only has burgers, while Chick-fil-A only has chicken.
I didn’t even realize Chick-fil-A existed in LA until a friend told me about one in the South Bay Galleria Mall in Redondo Beach. One day for lunch, we headed over there so I could see what Chick-fil-A was all about.
EDIT: The truck is no more, but apparently the food can now be found at Willie Jane’s in Venice…
As I sat on my couch in the morning, waiting for my English Muffin to toast, I realized that I didn’t actually have a Newsweek to read. This was very disappointed, so I turned to my iPhone and checked Twitter. Thinking nothing new would be there at such an ungodly hour (8:30), I was just hoping to kill time. But then I saw it. The Buttermilk Truck was already on the streets and serving up breakfast in El Segundo, essentially across the street from where I work. I shot up from my couch, grabbed the English Muffin from the toaster and tossed it back into the fridge, then hit the road to get some breakfast from a truck.
A lot of vegans get down on carnivores, claiming that they live better and longer and whatnot, but when it comes down to it, they are just spouting out words without reason. We unvegans know the truth, or at least the research, and this research tells us that the reason we live as long as we do is because of our meat-eating.
All-too-often restaurants claim to have “the best” blah blah blah in the world, but sometimes there is a restaurant that makes no claim to have the best of anything and lets the customers tell the good news. Langer’s Deli is one of the latter. Located in the not-so-posh neighborhood of MacArthur Park, Langer’s has become known for their pastrami. Many who have tried it have claimed it is the best ever, so to do the unvegan world a favor, I had to try it out myself.
As a child with an appetite pickier than a vegan, I remember going to The Moose Preserve in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and being amazed by the selection of interesting foods on their menu. I always went with a burger because I wasn’t adventurous yet, but as I grew up, I tried some more things. The Moose Preserve was the first place I ever tried a buffalo burger, and I loved it. In fact, at the time I tried it, I had never seen buffalo on a menu anywhere else. Despite trying buffalo, there was one thing on the menu I was always in fear of. This was the Road Kill Grill. Although not actually composed of road kill, this meal had enough strange (to me) animals on it to keep me away. On my last visit to Michigan, though, I decided it was time to take on the road kill.
The phenomenon of the Coney Island is one of the greatest aspects of eating out in the Detroit area in Michigan. Completely unrelated to the actual Coney Island in New York, these restaurants are a result of the mixing of Greek and American foods, with the addition of the famous Coney Dog. Everyone has their favorite Coney Island, and sometimes the favorite one is just around the corner. I grew up with Farmington Coney Island half a mile away and would go at least once a week.