For lunch one day I headed out to Joey’s Smokin’ BBQ in Manhattan Beach. I had heard that Luke Walton of the Los Angeles Lakers was somehow tied to the restaurant, which actually made me a little worried, but I still wanted some BBQ. The place was pretty small and other than the Lakers championship pennant, there was really nothing else denoting that this was in any way related to Luke Walton. Besides, half the restaurants in LA have Lakers pennants (I later found out that Walton essentially wrote a big fat check to get the place started, but it pretty much runs without him). With this in mind, my fears of a generic BBQ restaurant were slightly assuaged.
With a long layover in Houston, Texas, I needed something to eat. Although eating at a chain would have been a safe bet, I like to live on the edge. I also wanted to make sure I got something unique to Texas. When I found Caritas Ranch Bar-B-Q, I knew I had to have it.
The place didn’t offer much in terms of options for the main course or for sides, but it was an airport so I let it slide. The best-looking thing on the menu to me was the sliced beef sandwich, so I ordered one. I then watched as they sliced the beef right in front of me, threw it on a bun and drizzled BBQ sauce over it. I had to admit, it looked pretty good, despite being cooked in an airport.
After a long day of hiking, there’s nothing better for an unvegan than beer and greasy food. Luckily, just a few steps from my hotel in Lake Tahoe, there was a nifty little joint called McP’s Irish Pub & Grill.
We took our seats in the upstairs and outdoors dining area, just outside the doors of a small performance. As we looked at our menus, there was a small child dancing like a crazy person to the sound of the music from within. This was infinitely more entertaining than the menu, but food had to be ordered. There was plenty of good-looking food on the menu, and eventually I decided to get the BBQ Beef Sandwich.
In my never-ending quest for the perfect happy hour in LA, I wound up at Gyu-Kaku in West LA for Japanese BBQ. With five minutes left in their Happy Hour, we arrived and were told there was a ten minute wait. Discouraged, we still decided to make the best of it and took our seats after the wait. Our zealous waiter checked his watch as he arrived at the table and disappointedly reminded us that we had just missed happy hour. We told him that we knew, but we had tried to arrive on time and had to wait. Quickly thinking, he told us he was actually a manager and he would give us happy hour prices for our first round of ordering. Score!
The American Independence Day is just around the corner, which usually means a weekend of fireworks, BBQs and patriotism. For an unlucky UK man, a recent BBQ traded in fireworks for lightning bolts.
Eric Brocklebank was innocently cooking some sausages when lightning decided to make a rapid pass through his body via a BBQ fork. Miraculously, he survived and had only one thing on his mind: sausages. According to Brocklebank, “I was told the only thing I could say as I was drifting in and out of consciousness was ‘sausages.'”
After attending the LA BBQ Fest, all I wanted to do was find a good BBQ place to go to whenever I wanted to. I heard some great things about Baby Blues BBQ and saw their mac n’ cheese at the BBQ Fest, so I decided to try the place out.
The restaurant looks like a BBQ place should, reminiscent of a shack and nothing fancy by any accounts. The wait to sit inside was pretty long, while outside seating was pretty empty. We decided we may as well sit outside and eat because it would probably take just as long to get our food and eat outside as it would to just wait out there for a table inside. Does that make sense? Well, it does in my head. Anyway, the waitress was there in an instant to offer my girlfriend use of her jacket, which was one of the nicest things I’ve ever seen a waitress do, and she accepted the offer.
On Sunday, I made my way to the Santa Monica Pier to take part in the
At $10 a plate, this was not a festival to attend alone. Instead, my friends and I divided up the place to get a few plates and sample each other’s. First, we checked out Southside Market and BBQ from Elgin, Texas. They were offering sausage and brisket (combined) sandwiches with no side dish. Despite the fact that the plate came with onions, this place was truly built for unvegans. The sausage was incredible, but the brisket was nothing special. It felt as if the brisket was just kind of forced in order to make the plate worth the $10, because there was no way to tackle two of those sausages.
To this little unvegan, few things are more incredible than a buffet. Where else can a man choose from such a vast collection of meat products? Whoa, are there vegetables in the general vicinity of this chicken dish? Too bad, I guess I’ll just move on to the next one. A buffet is a place of choice and almost literally a microcosm of the fulfillment of the American Dream.
As the dream goes, there is no greater collection of delicious buffets than in Las Vegas. It’s no stretch to think of Vegas as the buffet Mecca, and the Kaaba in this Mecca must surely be Rio’s Carnival World Buffet.
When I was seated, I didn’t even take the time to sit down, as I just threw my jacket on my seat to begin my feast.
Round 1: Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese and a meatball.
Round 1
There was no need to take it slowly. It is a fact that it takes twenty minutes for the mind to realize that the stomach is full, so I had to get as much food as I could before my crazy stomach decided it was full. Since I had been drinking all day, I went straight for the fried food. The fried chicken was a good heavy hitter to coat my stomach. The mashed potatoes were great as a side, featuring a healthy amount of butter and even some cheese. The single meatball stood strong for a loner, while the only disappointment was the mac and cheese, which needed a lot of salt and loving.
They claim to have the world’s best BBQ, which I had my doubts about, having eaten BBQ in Kansas City. Nonetheless, I ordered the 10 oz. Prime Top Sirloin Steak, cooked medium, which is from Cornfed Midwestern Beef (does this make the meat eerily similar to corned beef?). The steak came with a choice of rice pilaf, mashed potatoes and french fries. I went with the fries because of of the winos from nearby Los Olivos recommended them. Next was the tricky part, because it also came with a choice of soup, salad and shrimp cocktail (I got to choose two).
