‘Bar Food’
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.
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).
Not too long ago, a new bar/grill opened in Culver City called Rocco’s Tavern. If you are at all from my generation, the name Rocco evokes memories of one of the greatest Nicktoons ever: Rocko’s Modern Life. Okay, the name is spelled differently, which may explain why neither wallabies nor turtles were on the menu. Instead, the menu was chock-full of some typical bar food. With the Tigers game on the TVs surrounding the bar, I sat down, ordered a happy hour beer (2 for 1 from 3-7 everyday) and decided what to order.
As a Michigan football fan, it is often difficult to pull myself out of bed and get to a bar for those awesome 9 am games (12 pm for those in Eastern Time). Thus, if I am going to a bar and not watching the game in the comfort of my abode, food is key. Now, I am a big fan of bar food, but it is the rare bar that has delicious breakfast. This week, the bar of choice was The Parlor on Melrose and my number one hope was that Michigan would destroy San Diego State and my number two hope was for some delicious breakfast. I can tell you now that I got at least one of those (spoiler alert: Michigan was a victor).
Gourmet burgers and their associated gastropubs have been predominantly the domain of LA’s greater west side. Father’s Office, Umami Burger, Comme Ca and The Foundry all have roots on the west-ish side. So when I heard Laurel Tavern in Studio City was not only a gastropub, but had a burger worth writing home about, I was surprised. Gourmet burger? In the wretched valley? I had to try it out. And try I did. More than once. You see, Laurel Tavern is not the easiest place to get into. Not because of some dress code or something stupid like that, but because they simply have an extremely small space. On weekends, it’s nearly impossible to get in unless you show up mid-afternoon. But when I heard some friends were going on Labor Day, I felt my odds were pretty good and I ventured out to Ventura Boulevard.
When striving to live the high life, there is nothing better than a good, honest unvegan meal at a tasty price. In Chicago, and I imagine in all other major metropolitan areas, knowledge of the specials around town allows us to fulfill our unvegan needs without crippling the budget, especially on weeknights.
On Wednesdays, Rocks, a bar with very good burgers and locations in Lincoln Park and Lakeview, has a special of $5.00 burgers and $5.00 24 oz. beers. The latter is a distinction in which I differ a little bit from some other unvegans. When I am eating, my first choice for accompanying beverage is cola and my second choice is water. As I tend to eat really fast, I really don’t like consuming alcohol with my food.
Located just south of President’s on Highway 53 in Superior, Wisconsin, is a restaurant in a box car. I’m not sure how, but it somehow got the name of Choo Choo Bar & Grill. Although it is plenty old, it seems that Choo Choo has been renovated recently and has the look of a new dive bar that will not look new for very long. And if anyone knows how to test out the food of a dive bar, it’s this guy.
Many times I have lamented the lack of a microbrewery in LA. Sure, I’ve heard there’s one in Eagle Rock, but in 3+ years of living in LA I haven’t set foot in Eagle Rock and probably couldn’t point it out on a map. Plus, that’s one (allegedly good) brewery for a city with a metropolitan area of just under 18 million. Blech. But Michigan is another story, with plentiful great microbreweries. One of these is CJ’s Brewing Company in Commerce. And while I’ve had some delicious beers there, as with most microbreweries, the food is just as good.
Up near Yosemite National Park is a place called Bass Lake. Bass Lake has itself a little village, and this village is dominated by a huge lodge called The Pines Resort. Inside this resort is a fancy restaurant called Ducey’s on the Lake. We wanted no part of this, so we found Ducey’s Bar and Grill, with a swanky patio and a much more reasonable and fun menu. We grabbed a table outside and sorted out what to eat. I had sworn a couple days off of burgers after tackling a couple bad ones in the last couple days, but there was a burger on this menu calling out the unvegan name and I couldn’t resist.
Well, someone finally beat me to the punch. Ever since I moved to the west side of LA, I’ve thought that downtown Culver City has needed a real bar. Kay ‘n Dave’s and Rush Street are good places, but they are first and foremost restaurants. Finally, the guys behind Rush Street have pumped out City Tavern (in the location that formerly housed the Meltdown grilled cheese joint) and I don’t think I could have done it better myself. I arrived a solid 45 minutes before my friends, which gave me a chance to put our name on the list for a table and to sample the beers they were purveying.