On the corner of Magnolia and Laurel Canyon in North Hollywood, there is a Taco Bell. Across from that Taco Bell sits Yum Yum Donuts. And just next to that Yum Yum Donuts is a burger joint called Big Time. Although it has the looks of a hole in the wall, Big Time occupies its own piece of real estate and has looked inviting to me ever since I began working in North Hollywood. Some of the best food in the world comes from places like this, so I was excited to find out if Big Time was one such place.
Over in the land of Silver Lake on LA’s east side, my sister, girlfriend and family friend converged upon a restaurant called Home. The place looked nothing like my home and the menu items barely had some items I’ve ever seen at home, so I assumed the name was derived from some sort of Silver Lake hipster irony. We sat outside on a relatively cold Saturday for LA and I watched as the workers fumbled helplessly to try to keep the heat lamps lit while the women tried desperately to keep warm. It was unintentionally entertaining, to say the least, and I hoped the food would at least be half as good as said entertainment.
On a funky little corner in Culver City, there resides a hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint called Tacomiendo. I originally read about them a long time ago because they served good food at cheap prices. Finally, after residing on my to-eat list for so long, I got around to taking a ride out to try them out. Not terribly hungry for this dinner hour, I skipped over the big ticket items like burritos and tortas. Instead, I went with their namesake, a taco.
In the realm of places in North Hollywood that are in walking distance, there is one place I have avoided for a while. It’s called Eclectic Cafe and the reason is not because I’ve heard bad things, but I’ve heard expensive things and “expensive lunch” is not often a term that finds itself in my vocabulary. Nonetheless, I recently had reason to eat lunch there and was curious what I would find.
Joining the ever-growing ranks of custom burger joints is a little place in Hollywood, called Juicy Burger. Just opened last year, Juicy Burger quickly earned rave reviews, and in a burger-wild city like LA, that isn’t easy to do. The custom burger concept is something I never tire of, because the very core of the concept protects me from vegetables, but how many do we really need? And what sets Juicy Burger apart from its delicious competition?
Although it seems like the last Dine LA Restaurant Week ended a couple months ago, it seems that it has returned, which means a lot of food and some difficult choices for the unvegan. These difficult choices usually stem from the fact that it is tough to find a veggie-free prix fixe menu. Fortunately, Culver City has a relatively new restaurant called Waterloo & City with an unvegan-friendly restaurant week menu.
Waterloo & City is named after a Tube line in London that consists of two stops – one called Waterloo and the other called…Village. Wait, no, it’s called City. As you may be able to guess by the name, the restaurant serves English food. That’s right, English food, also known as the worst international food ever. The kind of food where when people go to England, the favorite thing they ate was Indian. Well somehow the English food at Waterloo & City had garnered the place accolades for being one of the best new restaurants in LA, so despite the ancestry of their food, they had to be doing something right.
On a Saturday night the girlfriend and I were sitting around feeling lazy. Neither of us had eaten dinner, and we weren’t terribly hungry, but we knew that we needed some sort of food in our systems. It had to be light, and as I looked over my list of restaurants I wanted to try, only one seemed to tickle our fancies. This was a remotely new (8 months or so) restaurant called Tinga, in Mid-City.
The interior of Tinga has a nice wooden atmosphere that is almost like a bar except that it is BYO. In the middle of the small seating area is a long communal table and the walls are lined with stools. The ordering takes place at the counter and although the full menu is on the side wall, they also have paper menus for those who don’t want to stare awkwardly over the shoulders of fellow patrons.
On our way to get some ramen for lunch in North Hollywood, we passed by a place called Twin Castle. The sign looked like it had been there since 1940 and the logo was similar enough to White Castle’s that we thought they might serve up some real sliders like back east. Since the sign said “Hamburgers” we knew at the very least the place had burgers. Our minds quickly jumped from ramen to burgers and we turned around and parked.
In my continuing quest to find the greatest buffet in Las Vegas (and eventually the world!), I may have found one to stand toe to toe with Rio’s Carnival World Buffet. Situated in Planet Hollywood, the Spice Market Buffet doesn’t fit into the Hollywood theme, at least in name. It also doesn’t bear any resemblance to a Spice Market. Nonetheless, it does use spices and the walls are adorned with food-related movie posters like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (two very similar movies). The lunch buffet cost 25 bucks, but as soon as I looked around, I knew it was going to be well worth the price.
Although I am well aware of the crazy mix of people residing in North Hollywood, I was still amazed when I discovered the clientele at Jack’s Classic Hamburgers. A moderate walk from my office, I knew this would be a perfect place for me before I even saw the menu. This was because 1) they were mostly men and 2) they all seemed to be blue collar men. No yuppies in white shirts and skinny ties here. Instead of that, there were construction workers, cable men, an Iron Mountain driver and finally a dude who might have been related to Dog the Bounty Hunter. I was a little ashamed having come from my well-ventilated desk job, but I was ready to devour a burger just as manly as any of these guys.
