‘American’
On a quest for a good burger I found myself at Twisted Grove in Scottsdale speaking with a hostess. She said something about the fact that they did not have a burger to speak of. Yet, as I began to walk to the exit, she said they did have an amazing tri tip sandwich. Like any good unvegan, I turned back around and took a seat at an open table.
MB Post (or Manhattan Beach Post to some) has long been a spot I wanted to get to. Two years in Pittsburgh derailed those plans temporarily, but I was glad to find out upon my return to the West Coast that MB Post had not shuttered after a brief trendy phase. This meant that it was truly a place worth visiting and we decided to make a “Bangin’ Brunch” (their words) out of it.
Down the street from my halfway home in Echo Park is a little spot called Trencher, serving a variety of sandwiches and salads. Normally this would sound boring, but Trencher actually has some pretty interesting options, like the Consigliere and a Fried Chicken Banh Mi. I, however, had my sights set on a different fried chicken sandwich.
Mohawk Bend in Echo Park is a scary place. No, it’s not in a bad neighborhood or perched precariously upon a cliff along a fault line. It’s scary because its menu defaults to vegan. Yes, you read that right. If you don’t want to eat vegan you have to find something on the menu with (NV) after the name of the dish. That presumably stands for Not Vegan and they were the only menu items worth looking at.
It can probably be said that nearly everything on the East Side is trendy, essentially catering to the crowd of hipsters that have overtaken Echo Park, Silverlake and Los Feliz. One of these places is a restaurant called Ostrich Farm in Echo Park that has no ostriches to be found, but it does have a brunch.
In a back alley of Pasadena known as One Colorado sits a place called a/k/a.What it stands for the world may never know, but it does bill itself as “An American Bistro.” Now I should mention that this back alley does not correlate to hole in the wall types of food. After all, this is Pasadena, so a/k/a definitely has one foot in the upscale level.
Ever since arriving in Pittsburgh, I have been told to make my way to Root 174 in Regent Square. It took me a while, but that wait ended recently when the mother-in-law paid a visit to the ‘Burgh. The menu was nothing short of beautiful, but we started out with a little something called Devils on Horseback. This is, of course, dates stuffed with chorizo and manchego topped with a port wine reduction. It was a solid, if not spectacular start, but it whet my appetite for what was to come.
Down under the Ambassador Bridge that connects Detroit to Windsor is a wait that challenges that of the border crossing. It’s called Green Dot Stables, on the Detroit side, and when we arrived we were told the wait would be more than an hour. Considering the fact that the majority of Detroit is abandoned, we were shocked, but also excited by the prospect of people finding more excuses to head into the city.
Uptown Grille in Commerce, Michigan is pretty much the most popular place in the metro Detroit area. It’s all at once a bar, restaurant and cafe and somehow draws an absurd number of visitors. So absurd, in fact, that when we dropped in on a weekday for a late lunch, we literally got the last table available. The menu is pretty vast, containing everything from salads to burgers to sandwiches to pizzas and in-between. And each of these items had a ton of options, leading me to worry that Uptown Grille might fall victim to trying to do too much.
Over in Old Town Scottsdale is a spot that has Scottsdale written all over it. It’s called Cowboy Ciao and is kind of a blend of the cowboy-ness of the area and the hoity-toity as well. After a quick look at the menu, I realized that with a few slight changes to the menu I would love to eat just about everything. That is, because just about everything had a hint of vegetable to please the “ciao” crowd in addition to the “cowboy” crowd.