Not too long ago, a new place called Burger Lounge made its way into Beverly Hills. Well, new is a relative term, as the place has been hanging out in San Diego for years. As with all intriguing burgers, I knew I had to test out it and recruited my buddy from San Diego to accompany me. He had frequented the lounge down in SD back in the day and I thought he would be helpful in my quest.

I immediately realized he was a good choice, as he started recommending various things on the menu. Of course, there was only one thing I was really after – the Lounge Burger. Yet, I followed his lead by ordering a Mini Vanilla shake and splitting the Half and Half onion rings and fries. But before I get down into food details, I first need to mention that nothing about the place was “loungey.” In fact, it looked like just about every other fast-casual restaurant I had ever been to.

But I was not there for the decor. I was there for food and drink. The drink part, my vanilla milkshake came first and was quite tasty. I hadn’t had a shake in a while and this was a pretty good one. My only gripe, though, is that it came out way too quickly. Even drinking conservatively I finished it long before my burger arrived.

When it did arrive it looked quite awesome. I had ordered it without its onions, lettuce and tomato, then opted for white cheddar as my cheese (it was either that or “organic American”). It also came with house-made 1000 Island dressing. One thing that did not look awesome was the cheese, which was clearly not white. Yet, for its part the American cheese was better than I expected. The burger had a pretty thick grind and hand-shaped feel that I didn’t expect and was cooked really nicely. The outside was slightly crisp and charred, while the inside was nearly a medium-rare. I say nearly because half the burger (like one side of it) got deep pink, while the other side was at a relative medium. I don’t know how they did it, but it was better than expected. And the bun was pretty perfect, holding together strong when the burger got juicy without interfering with the flavors.

The Half and Half turned out to be a great choice, despite coming in a strange conic container preventing us from digging for onion rings. Ultimately, we had to pour out the contents onto the plate that came with them. Burger Lounge is supposedly “Certified Green,” but this egregious waste of paper really made me wonder. Nonetheless, the seasoning in the onion ring batter and on the fries were great. It wasn’t your average seasoning salt, but something more complex and more worthwhile. Yet, I have to say I was disappointed by how stubby the fries were. It was like we got the remains at the bottom of the bag, because finding an inch-long fry required a whole lot of digging.

In the fast-casual landscape Burger Lounge scored some winning marks. They definitely had a few kinks to work out, but are likely safe in their realm of burgers.

For most, Burger Month ended on May 31st, but I have never claimed to be like most and feel like every month is Burger Month. This is why, despite being the first week of June, I’ve opted to tackle a burger. This particular burger comes from a little place in Beverly Hills called The Hill. By day and early night, it is a restaurant, but when night comes around is a bar in no uncertain terms.

Despite the Beverly Hills address, the menu was packed with good old fashioned American food at reasonable prices. One burger, though, was anything but old fashioned. Called the Surf and Turf Burger, this thing was topped with lobster tail, garlic aioli and asparagus. Then, like many other burgers, it also came with lettuce, tomato and onion. I ordered without the asparagus and the other veggies, then picked fries out for my side.

Soon enough, the burger arrived and not only did I find it packed with veggies (other than asparagus), I also found a frightening pickle spear threatening my entire meal. A couple of fries had already succumbed to its juices, along with a bit of bun, but I removed the pickle from the scene before any more damage could be done. With my unwelcome guests evicted, I got a good look at the burger and found it to be a sort of clash of burger cultures. The lobster and garlic aioli were certainly from the gourmet side of the burger world, while the bun and the patty were more along the lines of a diner or sports bar.

And in this case, looks were right on the money. It made for an interesting juxtaposition of flavors and textures that ended up falling a bit short of its potential. Surf and Turf is something I consider near the epitome of fancy, but this burger only kind attempted to reach that standard.

I am all about diner burgers and I am all about gourmet burgers, but this one ended up in a strange middle ground. I applaud The Hill for not turning their burgers into something pretentious, yet I left more happy about trying their burger than excited about the taste and any possibility of a return. The pickle spear and other assorted vegetables didn’t help them out either.

To celebrate yet another Dine LA Restaurant Week, we found ourselves at Simon LA in the Sofitel Hotel in Beverly Hills. I’m not usually one for restaurant ambience unless that ambience is dingy and dirty, but I really appreciated the way that Simon LA was decorated. In our little booth, we were seated near the middle of the restaurant, yet felt like we were in our own little world because the booth was half-surrounded by some really cool woodsy decor. Not like backwoodsy, but modern and classy. I looked at both the Dine LA menu and the regular menu, then quickly came to conclusion: Dine LA was dead to me.

Okay, not really dead to me, but the Dine LA menu was just so limiting and regular menu had a couple things that jumped out to me instead. The first was called “the meatloaf” and was described as their special recipe with garlic mashed potatoes. The second was a side of truffled macaroni and cheese. But, instead of getting the mac as a side, the waiter offered it up as an app so I wouldn’t feel left out when everyone else got their apps and salads. It was a good idea and I accepted the brief respite from loneliness.

When the mac and cheese came out, it had a healthy yellow color and some nice browning on top that showed it had been cooked for the perfect length of time. I dug in and found myself a pretty nice bowl of mac and cheese. It had a great gooey consistency and didn’t feel overly oily. It did, however, get a little too truffly at parts. Yes, I never thought I would say, but it is possible to have too much truffle. The mac and cheese didn’t quite get there, but it was teetering on the edge, just beckoning of a little more of that delicious oil that apparently must be eaten in moderation at times.

Soon, the meatloaf arrived and I stared at it aghast. This was no ordinary meatloaf. This was a ball of meat, which some might call a meatball. It was giant, but it was also apparent that this wasn’t just sliced off some loaf of meat. It was topped with what I can only describe as meatloaf sauce and sitting on top of the potatoes was a pile of vegetables that seemed some distant cousins of the carrot. I quickly removed the vegetables that had not been mentioned in any way on the menu and got to work. My initial reaction upon cutting into the ball of meat was that it had some really good seasoning that reminded me of the meatloaf I used to eat growing up. Unfortunately, it was missing something pretty essential to meatloaf – moisture. Yes, it seemed that the cooking style of a traditional meatloaf helped retain the essential juiciness of beef. The ball of meat at Simon LA, however, was on the dry side and reminded me more of an overcooked burger than meatloaf. Perhaps that was why “the meatloaf” was in quotes on the menu…

The mashed potatoes were also a bit disappointing. They were quite viscous and not very flavorful for supposedly being of the garlic variety.

Perhaps I would have been better off sticking to the Dine LA menu, but I really had faith that they could handle meatloaf and mashed potatoes. I guess I was wrong.

Ok, I have a confession to make. Longtime readers know it already, but newcomers may be a little surprised. That confession is that…well I don’t eat meat for every meal. Yes, it’s true. Sometimes, a breakfast of pancakes or a dinner of mac and cheese satiates my appetite just as much as a steak. But most importantly, these meals are devoid of vegetables. After all, unvegan principles are more anti-veggie than pro-meat. One such meatless meal occurred at BLD.

Although the name of the restaurant sounds like some twisted version of bacon, lettuce and ummm Doritos, BLD actually stands for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Supposedly it covers all three. We arrived on the Saturday of Carmageddon to see what BLD was all about. Certainly, we expected a wait, but were seated within minutes. Thank you Carmageddon! I quickly discovered by looking at the menu that BLD was true to its acronym and covered a nice variety of food. I was thinking breakfast.

There were definitely some meaty options, like the Baked French Toast that happened to be stuffed with bacon or the section simply called “Breakfast Meat,” but I was told the real highlight was BLD’s Ricotta Blueberry Pancakes. The waitress confirmed that this was the right choice and I ordered away.

The well-rounded pancakes arrived soon enough, with a nice little extra crisp sticking out that seemed to scream homemade to me. Despite the awesome log cabin-shaped dispenser carrying the syrup, I opted to simply spread some butter and get to work. I figured the blueberries would add all the sweetness I need…and I was right. Of course I’ve had blueberry pancakes before and as my favorite fruit they have been delicious, but the addition of the ricotta elevated BLD’s pancakes to a level of culinary genius rarely found in breakfast.

You see, I am huge fan of the sweet-salty mix. Some of the greatest food combinations (kettle corn, salt bagel with strawberry cream cheese, etc…) involve this blend and while the risotto wasn’t too salty, it added just enough to keep the tartness of the berries, the sweetness of the batter and the sweetness of the berries in harmony.

I don’t mind admitting it: I’m glad I went meatless at BLD. Breakfast like that is hard to come by in a world of egg white omelets and granola yogurt parfaits.

With the ever-growing popularity of vampires in silly stories like Twilight and edgy television like True Blood, it seems that something important to our very human survival has fallen by the wayside. That is garlic, the fabric of our lives…errr…the thing that vampires hate. For some reason. One place you’ll never see a vampire hanging out at is The Stinking Rose, a restaurant in Beverly Hills. The reason is that apparently “stinking rose” is another term for garlic. I disagree with calling it stinking because I like the smell of garlic, as long as it hasn’t yet been eaten, but perhaps pungent rose was already taken.

So like I said, the place is named for garlic, because virtually everything on the menu has garlic. The one place it seemed lacking was on the drink and dessert end, although there was a garlic wine and garlic ice cream. Now, for some reason, the restaurant looks kind of like a circus, which is actually pretty cool because it gave my date and I a sort of private setting for our meal. Although not so private that the people in the tent next to us couldn’t understand every single word we said. But because they weren’t cracking up after every other thing we said, we assumed they weren’t listening.

On to the food, which starts out with a garlicky bang of bread. Not only is there garlic baked on top of the bread, but each table is equipped with one of those little salsa containers, but instead of salsa there is an intense diced garlic spread. This starts the experience off with a kick of garlic to the face. We devoured the garlic bread and spread like garlic-loving hyenas. To follow that up, we ordered a garlicious appetizer to continue the whetting of our appetite. We settled on the Garlic Filet Mignon Chili. Filet as chili was an interesting concept even without the garlic, but that made it especially intriguing. It arrived quite quickly, and to my disappointment, red onions were displayed across the top of the bowl like some twisted mating ritual of a bird of paradise.

I quickly asked my date to remove the offensive parties so I could dive into the goodness. And it was goodness. The chili was tasty and the filet beef chunks were quite tender. It wasn’t an especially interesting chili though. I thought the garlic would draw out some crazy flavor in it, but instead I could hardly taste the garlic. This may have been an after-effect of the destruction of multiple taste buds following the consumption of multiple heaps of that raw garlic sauce, or because they felt the chili was good enough. Well it was good enough, but I would have liked awesome.

But then the awesome came, my main course. I ordered their Garlic Braised Boneless Short Rib, which came with garlic yukon gold mashed potatoes. It also came with an added bonus, a disgusting pile of creamed spinach that had not been listed on the menu. Shame on you, Stinking Rose, at least your vegetables did not corrupt my meal. After clearing these away, I dove mouth-first into the short rib. This was the perfect kind of short rib, which required no knife whatsoever. In fact, it didn’t need any sort of cutting motion at all by my fork. All I had to do was stab, pull away and voila – a forkful of short rib. It tasted damn good as well, with some extra cloves of garlic in case I hadn’t had enough. The mashed potatoes were also quite delicious. Although the garlic didn’t stand out as much as it would have in any other meal, they were still quite flavorful.

So now that I have had my first Stinking Rose experience, I am ready for more. Although it is now days later and a drop of my sweat would probably melt a vampire, I am completely okay with that. The Stinking Rose makes it worth it.

For a nice little Sunday brunch with the grandparents in Beverly Hills, we headed to an LA icon. This icon is Nate ‘n Al and it’s been hanging out in Beverly Hills since before the hillbillies. Started in 1945 by two good old fashioned Detroiters named Al Mendelson and Nate Reimers, Nate ‘n Al brings the comfort of Detroit delis to Southern California. Supposedly. But I would be the judge of that.

The interior looks just as you would expect from a deli. Reddish-brown booths line the walls and none of the wait-staff seem to have any desire to be actors or models. It really does feel like walking into a deli in Detroit. The menu was huge, with sandwiches galore, but being breakfast I limited myself to some morning options. Yet, breakfast or not, I was not willing to let a little something like time prevent me from eating pastrami. I ordered their Pastrami and Two Eggs Scrambled for the SoCal price of $10.25. I was given the option of having the pastrami scrambled with the eggs and was all like, “hell yeah.” On top of that, I had the choice of tomato, potatoes or cottage cheese and another choice of toast, bagel, roll, English muffin or bialy. It wasn’t easy, but I went with hash browns and a salt bagel with cream cheese.

But how did it taste? Well, kind of like you would expect if you scrambled eggs with pastrami. Essentially, in every bit I looked forward to chowing down on the pastrami more than the egg, because…well…egg just really isn’t the best conduit for pastrami. The flavor of the egg competed more than worked together with the pastrami and it left the pastrami feeling kind of flavorless. Or at least I’m pretty sure it was the egg that made it flavorless. It’s also possible that I’m just spoiled by the pastrami from Langer’s. This was too bad, but it taught me a valuable lesson: If I want to know the truth worth of a deli, any time is sandwich time.

As for the sides, I couldn’t have asked for more. The hash browns were cooked to a perfect crisp and needed only minimal salt to turn them into potatoey perfection. The salt bagel, conversely, was overly salted. They all tend to be that way, which is cool with me, especially because by the time it had been desalinated, I found a bagel most similar (in LA) to the bagels of Detroit. Nice and dense, the bagel was a great side that really tied the meal together.

Although Nate ‘n Al gave me some mixed feelings, it is definitely a place I want to go back to. But next time I’ll be sure to scrap the eggs for a really deli sandwich, or one of those delicious-looking hot dogs.

Everyone knows The Cheesecake Factory for their namesake. And those people are also probably aware that The Cheesecake Factory is a full-on restaurant with a restaurant about as massive its portions. Sadly, when I went to Cheesecake in Beverly Hills, my stomach wasn’t treating me as well as it usually does. So naturally, as an unvegan, I turned to fried chicken. Yeah, that’s right.

So what fried chicken did I turn to? Cajun Chicken Littles.

At 13.95, these seemed to be well-priced and the sides of succotash and mashed potatoes seemed agreeable to my ways. But I have to say that this was not an easy decision. Like I said before, the menu is just immense and the portions are huge, so calling the chicken “littles” seemed perfect for a meal that I wasn’t very hungry for.

Well I was way off. While the pieces of chicken could (in some alternate universe) be considered little, the portion most certainly was not. On my plate I found a stack of 14 pieces of chicken. Yes, 14! Plus the mashed potatoes and succotash. No small portion indeed. I started my attempt to chip away at the chicken portion and realized I could do little damage, due to my hunger. Nonetheless, this did not get in the way of my enjoyment of the little I did eat. The breading had been fried to the perfect crisp and while these were essentially chicken strips, there was definitely a touch of Cajun spice in them. I would ordinarily have liked some stronger spice, but I think my tender stomach was happy the flavor was so subtle.

I was glad to see that the succotash was mostly corn and made sure to pick away at said corn while avoiding peppers, cucumbers and whatever other terrible veggies they decided to throw in. The mashed potatoes were packed with delicious skin and a flavor that needed no salt. They made a delicious side and certainly would have been a perfect buffer if the chicken had been spicy enough to require one.

So despite my stomach, I really did enjoy my Cheesecake Factory experience. The leftover chicken sustained me for two more meals and although the subsequently reheated chicken wasn’t as good as the original, I was still quite impressed. I’d love to head back to Cheesecake on a better stomach to tackle the Cajun Chicken Littles in one sitting, but this time I’ll be sure to ask them to add some more kick.

EDIT: This location is gone, but you can find the same over-peppered steak at The Capital Grille elsewhere.

Found in or around malls all around the country, The Capital Grille is a reliable, upscale steakhouse and I’ve never met anyone who isn’t a fan. So the combination of the girlfriend’s parents visiting and an awesome coupon led us to grab some dinner at the aforementioned grille. Despite having a reservation, we still ended up waiting a good 15 minutes for our table, then finally took our seats.

From the get-go, it was apparent that the place was understaffed. Our waiter was running around non-stop, but it was obvious that all his running wasn’t helping to get us served very fast. This gave us a good amount of time to check out the menu. I had a tough time deciding until our waiter came back and told us his favorite steaks. It just so happened that I already had my eye on one of these, called Dry Aged Steak Au Poivre with a Courvoisier Cream Sauce. He described the steak as having peppercorns rubbed into it and the cream sauce made with cognac sounded like it would be great. We also ordered a side of the Lobster Mac ‘N’ Cheese for the table, which sounded incredible. It was made with Mascarpone, Havarti, Grana Padano and white cheddar cheese. Then on top of that were panko crumbs, which I thought sounded like a nice twist on bread crumbs.

When the steak came out, I was surprised to find the entire top and bottom covered in peppercorns. Shit this was a lot of peppercorns and not what I expected. Nonetheless, I assumed they knew what they were doing and dug in. What I found was a whole lot of peppercorn flavor and not much of anything else. The steak was juicy, tender and cooked to the perfect medium that I know and love, but I could hardly taste it. After a few peppercorned flavors, I finally took a stand and started scraping them off. This was a great decision and improved my meal dramatically. I have no problem with using peppercorns to enhance flavor, but it shouldn’t be the only flavor in my steak. After the scraping, the steak still had peppercorn flavor, but at least it now had it’s own flavor, which rhymes with relicious.

As for the mac, this was some pretty incredible stuff. As expected, the panko crumbs were an awesome addition to the mac and gave it a delicious crunch. I found the lobster to be full of flavor and there was no fishiness about it. This was a huge deal because fishy lobster would have completely ruined every bit of mac and cheese that it touched.

If it weren’t for a whole boatload of peppercorns, this would have been one of the best steak dinners I’ve ever had. Even with the peppercorns, it was still a great steak dinner. If and when I do go back, I will just be sure to stick with a simpler steak that is sure not to be over-peppered.

Ever since beginning my meat blog, Fogo de Chao in Beverly Hills has been in my sights. I’ve eaten Brazilian food before, but I have been told over and over again that Fogo is the king of meatiness. But it’s expensive. Like a fixed price of $56.50 expensive. But when Restaurant Week comes to town, that ridicu-price drops down to a more reasonable $44 bucks, including dessert. So for my first Fogo experience, I made sure to go during Restaurant Week and was amazed with what that price bought me.

Fogo de Chao boasts a selection of 15 different meats. This doesn’t mean 15 different animals, but 15 different cuts of meat from 4 different animals. The animals are pork, chicken, beef and lamb and the cuts are called picanha (top sirloin with garlic or just regular seasoning), filet mignon, beef ancho (rib eye), alcatra (more top sirloin), fraldinha (bottom sirloin), costela (beef ribs with garlic), lamb chops, leg of lamb, bacon-wrapped chicken, chicken drumsticks, costela de porco (pork ribs), lombo (pork loin crusted with paremesan), linguica (sausage) and finally bacon-wrapped filet. Wow, that’s a lot of meat.

But before I get to my own meat-eating, I’d like to talk about Fogo’s attempt to trick customers. You see, they have a huge salad bar and it’s not your average unvegan unfriendly salad bar. Sure, there is lettuce, but there is also bacon, cheese, bread and delicious-looking cold cuts. I avoided this area at all costs and figured I would pay it a visit in case I had stomach room after consuming my weight in meat. They also try to distract you with starchy sides like mashed potatoes, fried polenta, fried plantains and cheese-stuffed rolls. Fortunately I have an iron will and managed to avoid these until after the meat as well.

Now, the Brazilian Churrascaria is no ordinary buffet. Instead of doing your own work, people come around with skewers of meat to slice off for you. Buy how do they know you want food? Great question! Every diner is given a coaster-shaped disc with green on one side and red on the other. If the green side is up, the food comes. If red is up, the food stops. There is no yellow, so when it rains meat, it pours meat.

Honestly, I can’t get into each individual meat. Partially because I don’t have enough room to write, but also because at some point the meats begin to blur together. Overall, I ate 14 of the 15. Yes, somehow the garlic picanha escaped me, which is a shame because the picanha was my favorite cut. It was moist, tender, juicy and flavorful. In sure a lot of the flavor came from the huge layer of fat surrounding the thing and for that I was happy. They call it the house special, and with good reason. The filet was also delicious and I surprisingly found the bacon-wrapped chicken to be better than the bacon-wrapped filet. The flavors just seemed to work much better together.

The beef ribs were tasty and the pork ribs fell right off the bone and into my mouth. The assorted sirloins were decent, but seemed like a waste of space compared to the picanha and filet. The same went for the lamb and sausage. They weren’t bad. Really nothing was bad, but I only had so much stomach space and wanted to fill it with something better. About midway through, the meat gave me the dizzies, but I rallied and finished with a stomach stuffed with meaty deliciousness. I even had a little space to offer to the sides. Each of them were tasty, but I was glad I had concentrated on the meat instead.

The dessert was pretty good, but I honestly couldn’t be a very good judge at that point. I ordered the key lime pie and also tried the cheese cake. The cheese cake was better, but again at that point in the meal, my tastebuds were so savory that any sweetness tasted like it came from a different planet.

In the end, I was one full and happy unvegan. Fogo de Chao is truly a meat-lovers paradise, as long as you are a meat lover that can afford it. Restaurant Week is definitely the time of year to do it, because even though it only comes twice a year, it would be pretty tough (and too delicious) to handle Fogo de Chao more than that.

To many people, P.F. Chang’s is just phony, mainstream, American Chinese food. And for all those things, I agree. But in truth, my last trip to P.F. Chang’s was about ten years ago and since the girlfriend and I were given some lovely little gift cards to the place, it was time to pay the Changster a visit. We walked in on a Friday night and found the place surprisingly empty. I know it’s a recession and all, but I would think that any decent restaurant in Beverly Hills should have a decent number of people on a Friday night. I guess not; we were seated immediately.

The girlfriend is attempting a gluten free diet and although I’m not a big fan of diets, at least the gluten free one allows you to eat as much meat as you want. P.F. Chang’s actually has an entire section of the menu catering to the unfortunate coeliac population. We started off by sharing one of these glutenless dishes, a simple fried rice. I’m not sure what goes into fried rice normally that would have gluten in it, but this fried rice had egg, soy, scallions and a choice of meat. We chose chicken and the fried rice was at our table within five minutes. One look and I realized that the menu had lied to me. I was okay putting up with scallions, but this rice also had carrots and bean sprouts. These were difficult vegetables to avoid and although the rice was tasty, this definitely tainted the experience. Both the rice and chicken had a good, salty and oily taste that required no additional soy sauce.

For the main course, I chose Chang’s Spicy Chicken. This is their version of General Tso’s chicken, so I figured if I was eating at an Americanized Chinese restaurant I may as well get the most Americanized dish they had. The menu said it didn’t come with any vegetables and unlike the fried rice, this dish stuck by its word. The only things vegetable-like were the 2 or three scallions tossed on the chicken. Otherwise, the chicken looked shiny and delicious. The glaze had a perfect amount of spice to it, which gave the taste buds a bit of a nudge, but not so much that it sent me running for water or rice to buffer the heat. This glaze went great with the crispy breading on the chicken, and the breading retained the crispiness throughout the meal. Inside, the chicken was juicy and flavorful. It may not have been authentic, but it tasted quite good.

Overall, I had a pretty good experience there. The rice may have had a few too many vegetables, but the rest of my food made me wonder why the place was so empty. Then came the fortune cookies. I cracked mine open, hoping to find something funny to tack “in bed” onto. Instead, this fortune was devoid of humor. It said, “Your health is important. Eat your vegetables!” What?! What the hell kind of fortune is that? My issue with this fortune is two-fold. The first is that this isn’t a fortune at all. This doesn’t say that something will happen to me. If it said, “If you don’t eat more vegetables, something terrible will happen to you!” I would have only had one problem with it. And that problem is that this fortune somehow associates vegetables with health. We all know that I am in tip-top shape, a healthy model of unveganism. Damn you, P.F. Chang’s for trying to push something on me that goes against all the fibers of my being. I was just about to praise you in my review for having such tasty phony Chinese food, but this fortune hurt me inside and I’m not sure I will ever be okay with that.