‘Crabs’
Where were you when you ate the greatest meal of your life? Until I went to Liverpool House in Montreal I wasn’t quite sure. You see, Liverpool House is the sister restaurant to Joe Beef, which is often considered one of the best restaurants in the world. Yet, after paying a visit to Liverpool House I can’t imagine how Joe Beef could be any better.
Perched in the top of a building on top of Mount Washington and featuring a bar design that hasn’t been updated since the seventies or was intentionally painted to look that way is Monterey Bay Fish Grotto. Monterey Bay features one of the best views of Pittsburgh’s three rivers and downtown. It also features fish in a menu that even made me believe seafood could be a viable food source.
As a meat blogger, I am often asked what my favorite steak or steakhouse in LA is. My usual answer is, “I’m not freakin’ rich, back off of me,” but usually I’m able to come up with a place that has served me a good steak. Smokehouse in Burbank and Fleming’s have both treated me pretty well, but as much as I love me some steaks, it is simply not economically feasible for me to eat them as much as I want. Enter my wife’s bosses, who decided to take us and her dad to Mastro’s in Beverly Hills as a wedding gift. Well, my friends, we have a new winner.
It was a perfect day on July 18th, 2010, the kind of day on which the Manifest Destiny that led us to Southern California seemed determined to fulfill its promise, unfurling a crisp blue sky unmarred by cloud or haze. There was heat, sure, from the brilliant sun lighting every corner of the sprawling pitch, fresh and newly restored green after an early-summer blight brought on by prolonged dog-sitting, but it was tempered by a cool breeze bearing that distinctively salty sea air.
It was a day made for joy, for leisure, for flying a kite or laying out on a brightly-colored towel along with that Victorian-era novel you always meant to read but for which you could never quite find the time until now. But today was not a day for joy. It was a day for battle.
After hearing so much about seafood in Boston, we finally got the chance to test it out with a visit to Legal Sea Foods. We were told it was a “very Boston” thing to do, and that was really all we had to hear.
When we arrived and saw that there are Legal Sea Foods restaurants located all over the East Coast, we a were a little disappointed. I guess it wasn’t simply a Boston thing. Still, I could not penalize the restaurant for someone else leading me on.
Despite my not being the biggest fan of sushi, I found myself at Sushi Mashiko in Culver City one night to once again eat some raw fish. Sushi Mashiko was in a very nondescript location in a strip mall without any real sign. I only found it when I looked inside each store front and saw a small sign with the word “Sushi” on it. The place was supposed to be really great, so instead of ordering some sort of chicken or noodle dish, I decided I may as well test out their sushi.
After a long look at the menu sushi menu, I decided on two decent-looking rolls: softshell crab and tuna avocado. Since I would be the only one partaking in my personal sushi, I ordered mine uncut so I could turn the sushi into finger food.