‘Bar Food’
There is a certain awesome feeling that comes with flying thousands of miles and arriving in a place with the food comforts of home. Such is The Waterfront of Cape Town. The place has just about every type of food imaginable, and on our first day we made our way to Ferrymans for a drink and a bite.
Hot’s Kitchen in Hermosa Beach recently made the news for finding a loophole in the California’s foie gras ban. And while this reminded me of the place, it had originally made the news to me a year or so ago when my buddy told me they had an awesome selection of burgers and wings. Not knowing totally what to expect of the place, I set out with the wife on an adventure and found the city of Hermosa Beach as dead as the zombie apocalypse.
There are few things in this world that go better together than football and wings. So when I was taken to Zipps Sports Grill in Scottsdale to watch Michigan play some football, I decided that wings were the only things fit to go in my mouth. Well, wings and fries. Zipps offered a few different wing flavors, and I ended up going with one that looked pretty interesting – Golden Spicy.
Pretty much since I first started visiting my fiancee’s parents in Carefree, I’ve had Brisam’s and their supposedly amazing burger pointed out to me on nearly every trip through Cave Creek. Finally, I had enough and demanded we go so I could check out the burger for myself.
Brisam’s is essentially a sports bar and things probably get pretty crowded at night, but we ended up going for lunch and got a quick seat and a quick look at the menu. While their signature Brisam’s Burger probably attracts the most eaters, I couldn’t get into it due to the pile of mushrooms it claimed to have. Instead, I opted for the Blackened Burger, which had some Cajun-style spices and was topped with blue cheese. It came with lettuce, tomato and onion on the side to add to the burger, but I told the waitress that they didn’t need to waste those veggies on me. On the side I had a choice of a couple salads, cole slaw and fries and went with the obvious choice of salad. Err…I mean fries.
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.
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.
Situated right across the walking street from Pizzeria Bianco in downtown Phoenix, one has to wonder how many patrons of The Rose and Crown are people who tired of waiting for Pizzeria Bianco and decided to eat at the next closest place. We ended up in a similar situation, in which a reservation miscommunication led to us without ample room at the pizzeria. So off we went to The Rose and Crown for some British Pub food. A quick look at the menu revealed that this was no ordinary British Pub and it actually had some unique-looking options.
Somewhere along the way, someone figured out that sex sells. I don’t know when this time came, but I’m pretty sure everyone in the room looked at each other and nodded in agreement without a word. In the ’80s, Hooters took that genius concept to the restaurant industry and became a household name. And while Hooters is still going strong, the look has become a bit dated. Enter Tilted Kilt, which has taken the Hooters concept, splashed it with Scotch and trimmed the uniforms significantly so that even flat girls have cleavage and they all show some midriff. In other words, the girls at Hooters almost look like nuns in comparison. Yet, while Hooters is gimmicky, they still have pretty tasty wings. Would Tilted Kilt have good fare to offer with their good looks?
Pop quiz: What are the only five-letter sovereign nations that contain two Is? If you and five of your best trivia-playing friends can’t come up with India and Haiti, you probably don’t want to be at The Irish Times in Palms on Tuesday nights. You see, every Tuesday is Trivia Night and begins sometime between 9 and 9:30, but were it simply a bar with trivia it would not be worthy of meat-blogging. Fortunately that is not the case, because every Tuesday also means $5 buffalo wings. And while they have a full kitchen and a decent bar food selection, there is really no other option in my mind.
Ever walk into a “pizza parlor” that actually functions as more of a full-on Italian restaurant? Or how about a “Japanese place” that only serves sushi? We are constantly being misled into restaurants that either offer a lot more than expected or a lot less. And then there is Hinano Cafe in Venice, which only a crackhead would consider to be a cafe. You see, Hinano is pretty much the definition of a dive bar. Sawdust coats the floor, there are maybe five real tables and the two guys behind the bar take turns dishing out beer or flipping burgers on the lone griddle in the middle of the bar.