‘Bacon’
Over the weekend, I was invited to the St. Felix in Hollywood for a free Bloody Mary brunch. Ordinarily, I would have dismissed such a notion. After all, Bloody Marys consist of many of the things I hate most in the world in drink form. But something caught my eye and pulled me in: Bacon Vodka. I figured if anything was going to get me to try a veggie-based drink, bacon would be it. Some say it makes everything better, and this would be quite the test.
When I think of Serbia, things like Darko Milicic and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It’s just about never that the mention of Serbia gives me thoughts of food, but a little place called Metro Diner (or Cafe) in Culver City might just change that for me. Metro Diner is situated at the bottom of a Travelodge, and judging it by its cover, it would appear to be a dilapidated old diner. But while the majority of the menu items are reminiscent of a diner, it has a touch of Serbian.
After my team posted a huge victory in our rec basketball league, we decided to grab some burgers to celebrate. This led me to San Francisco Saloon, which is not located in San Francisco at all, but rather in West LA and has been serving LA since 1934. The place is more sport bar than saloon and actually has a good sports bar vibe. The burgers are named for LA and San Francisco sports teams like the Giants and the Trojan, with a few non-sports names like Hickory to join them.
My buddy, DCo, is a bit of a pizza snob. It works out well for me, because he likes to point me in the direction of awesome new and old pizza places. Recently, he told me about a new place called Lago D’Argento over in Silverlake. It took a bit of convincing, but finally I had a real reason to go to that part of town and decided to make a run for pizza while there. I invited another buddy, Jeff, to join and we checked the place out.
EDIT: This review is of the original. The new Salt’s Cure is apparently bigger and better. We shall see…oh yes…we shall see.
My continued quest for amazing burgers took me to a place called Salt’s Cure in West Hollywood. At this particular intersection, only one of the corners lacks burgers, as the other two are populated by Fatburger and Astro Burger. And while Salt’s Cure isn’t strictly a burger place, a quick look at the high priced menu on the wall when I walked in all but guaranteed I would be eating their burger.
The great thing about this whole Unvegan Hero/Unvegan Villain thing is that there are so many opportunities to praise Detroit/Michigan athletes and knock down their rivals. But when I found out a little something about Jeff Francoer, I knew I had to give a rival his due.
On the way to basketball one night, I stumbled upon what appeared to be a food truck festival in a high school parking lot. I am nothing if not a man who takes advantage of such opportunities, so I pulled up and saw what they had to offer. A few of the trucks I had seen and eaten before, but some were new to me. One of these, freakishly painted as a Brisk iced tea ad, had just what I was looking for. Called The Greasy Wiener, this trucked dished out…well…hot dogs, with a side of sexual innuendo.
There’s something about a gimmick that alienates people. You go to Hooters and while they have good wings, a small part of you feels dirty because it was a gimmick that brought you in in the first place. Many times I drove by Tinhorn Flats in Burbank and wrote it off because it looked like an Old Western saloon, which to me screams out gimmick. Little did I know that Tinhorn had been around since 1939, which makes it one of the oldest things in LA. If it was simply a gimmick, it never would have lasted these 70+ years. So when my coworker encouraged me to check it out, I roped in the troops at work to head east on Magnolia – straight for the Old West.
Here we have a long-awaited new guest blog from none other than @RGspiegel. Catch more of his writing here.
Disclosure I: David Marcus, one of the owners of Smoke Shack, is my second cousin.
Disclosure II: I’m starting a movement such that cousins are classified only as first or second cousins. How much better is that than trying to figure out your exact relationship to your dad’s first cousin’s son with somethingth-cousin-somethingths-removed? A lot.
Disclosure III: Smoke Shack was legitimately awesome.
Now that my and Unvegan’s journalistic integrity are squarely intact, I can begin the review of my glorious Saturday lunch at Smoke Shack, a BBQ restaurant that opened up about a month ago in Milwaukee’s third ward.
Da Burger Boss is part of the newer wave of food trucks and while they aren’t brand new, they’re still plenty new to me. Their schtick is naming burgers after mob terms like The Strongarm, The Collector and so on. It’s an interesting schtick that has produced some interesting-looking combinations, but the sole reason I found myself waiting for Da Boss was to partake in The Patrolman.
You see, The Patrolman is no ordinary burger. Sure, it’s filled with a half-pound patty, bacon and blue cheese dressing, but after that the burger goes in a frightening and exciting direction. First is the cran-apple reduction, which is not crazy on its own, but when you throw in the grilled glazed donut bun, things get goddamn nuts. Yes, I said a grilled glazed donut bun. I was unsure of how any degree of this would be pulled off and figure it was worth the 9 bucks to find out.