When Jonathan Gold’s latest rendition of the 99 best restaurants in LA came out, I was amazed to find an Indian place basically in my backyard. No, I don’t have an actual backyard because I live in LA, but you get my drift. Fortunately, my body had been craving Indian and I easily convinced my girlfriend that we had to order some carryout from there. While the menu appeared to have typical Indian fare, Mayura actually specialized in South Indian food. With that in mind, I was excited to get down with something new.

But before I could make it too far down the menu, I came upon the Kerala Special Chicken Curry. Chicken curry is usually my go-to Indian dish and I was excited to see what Mayura could do with it, but I didn’t stop there. I also ordered their Butter Masala Dosa and in a surprise twist opted for Poori instead of plain old naan. When I arrived to pick up my order, my meal wasn’t quite ready, so I took a moment to speak with the guy who seemed to either own or manage the place. He was pretty excited by the dosa I had ordered and asked me if I had ever had one before. I replied that I had and he was quick to assure me that whatever I had before would pale in comparison. It was quite a boast, but then he pointed to the issue of LA Weekly with the 99 best restaurants. It had been open to the page with Mantee on it and covered with a clear plastic tablecloth so anyone sitting at the table could see. I tried to tell him it was open to the wrong page, but failed miserably.

Soon enough, though, my food was ready and I got it home as quick as possible (with a short pause to pay).

When I opened up the bag of Southern India, my worst fear was confirmed – I had ordered way too much food. Yes, that is the thing I was most scared of. But everything looked and smelled amazing. Even better, it tasted amazing. The curry was a little more viscous than I am used to, but it was packed with intense flavor. It was definitely on the spicy side and I needed water to keep me cool, but it wasn’t overwhelming and definitely did not distract from the delicious flavors. The chicken itself was perfectly tender and made for a great curry conduit.

The poori also made for a great curry conduit. This fried flatbread had a sort of fried donutty taste to it, without all the sweetness. A bit of cinnamon and sugar would have made it into an Indian elephant ear, but as it was I just ripped and dipped into the curry and the coconut chutney that had come with my order. Speaking of the chutney, I love coconut and this did a great job of delivering coconut flavor without overdoing it. As for the poori, while I definitely liked it as a change of pace, I think I’ll be sticking to good old-fashioned naan as my go-to Indian bread.

Finally, there was the Butter Masala Dosa, which was an Indian crepe stuffed with spiced potatoes. It was also disappointingly filled with peas and carrots. While these were easy to avoid and hardly noticeable when bit into, I was still a bit upset. Yet, while this meatless wonder may have been fit for a vegetarian, we unvegans love our potatoes as well, and I must say the dosa was certainly fit to have a place next to meat. It was definitely large enough to be an entire meal, but I was happy that I ordered the chicken curry to have some real nutrients in my meal. Nonetheless, the man who told me I had never eaten a better dosa was correct. It doesn’t mean better dosas don’t exist, but I haven’t found any (not that I’ve exactly been searching for them…).

Mayura was definitely a delicious meal that I recommend for anyone with a stomach strong enough to handle Indian food. It’s some of the best Indian food I’ve ever had and has some unique flavors to differentiate it from your typical Indian. Being in my backyard, it’s going to be my new go-to Indian, but for someone who doesn’t live on the west side, similar if not better Indian can probably be found nearby. In any case, I know where I’ll be ordering from next time I’m home and in the need of food from the subcontinent.

Many months ago, someone was telling me about a delicious pizza chain from the Midwest called Godfather’s. Being from the Midwest, I was a bit surprised until he told me it was from that other Midwest. You know, like Kansas and stuff. Then Godfather’s started getting a lot more attention because of some dude named Herman Cain that wants to be President. So when I ordered some pizza delivery from a place called Godfather’s that recently appeared in Palms, I was thinking this was one and the same as the fabled Godfather’s I had heard so much about. I was wrong, for the first time.

Godfather’s in Palms is not some pizza chain, but an Italian restaurant with a pretty big selection. I was clearly in the mood for pizza though, so pizza I got. They had some interesting choices, but I ultimately decided upon the Medium (12 inches) Buffalo Chicken Pizza, which consisted of chicken, hot sauce and blue cheese. A perfect pizza without any of those flavor-stealing vegetables like celery or carrots that crazy people seem to love with their buffalo wings.

When the delivery arrived, I popped open my pizza box and was face to face with one of the prettiest pizzas I had ever seen. The blue cheese and hot sauce were nicely swirled around the pizza with purpose, but it would take more than just beauty to make me like Godfather’s. Fortunately, it had that other component – taste. You see, those swirls of sauce were not only good to look at, but they also ensured that each bite I took had a perfect combination of flavors. There was never a bite with too much or too little of anything. Instead, each bite had the perfect balance of chicken, hot sauce and blue cheese. With such great flavors, the dough itself was little more than a conduit with which to deliver toppings. And the dough was good, in a California Pizza Kitchen kind of way. It didn’t scream authenticity or New York, but it did its job well.

So, while it may not be a part of some legendary Midwestern chain, Godfather’s Pizza in Palms is certainly worth visiting and ordering from. Now that I have the Buffalo Chicken under my belt, I’m eager to see what they can do with their Philly Cheese Steak pizza.

On a quest for Indian food, we found ourselves staring at a vegetarian restaurant on Venice that shall remain nameless. Realizing we had made a huge mistake, we went to the next-closest Indian place, just down the street, but for some reason it was closed on a Tuesday night at 7:30. Poor business tactics, but it would prove to be a blessing in disguise. For although the Indian place was closed, we realized we were standing in a strange little corner strip mall in Culver City with restaurants serving Japanese, Mexican, Italian and Thai food, in addition to Indian. Presented with such choices, we opted to check out the Italian place, called Giovanni’s Trattoria and crossed our fingers in the hopes that it would be any good.

The first thing my little girlfriend asked for was a glass of wine and we were politely informed that they served none, but it was BYO. Sad for the moment, but happy to know that such a place exists so close to our residence. With fresh glasses of water, we perused the menu and I decided upon an antipasti and a pastato quench my meaty appetite.

The antipasti I chose was their Polpette, which is just some fancy Italian word for meatballs. These were three mid-sized balls made of beef, topped with marinara and some melted mozzarella. As far as taste went, I found them to be pretty good, but not spectacular. I loved the touch of the melted cheese and the marinara was pretty tasty, but the meatballs themselves didn’t jump out at me. The beef was a bit chewy, and although the seasoning was good, it wasn’t anything amazing.

Yet, while the meatballs could have been a little better, my main course left me very little to complain about. This was their Ravioli di Pollo Piccante and was composed of ravioli filled with chicken and ricotta, covered in tomato sauce with a kick and roasted garlic. The moment I saw it, I knew it had to be mine, and I never regretted that decision. The ravioli was so fresh it had to be either house-made or made somewhere just down the street. On the inside, the ricotta/chicken balance was delicious and I was impressed with the structural integrity of the ravioli itself, which did not fall apart at all, which sometimes seems to happen when it is freshly made and cooked. The spicy tomato sauce provided some good flavor, but the spice wasn’t strong enough to distract from the pasta itself. And for the garlic, which I love, I could actually see chunks of the bulbs in the sauce and it comforted me.

So while I didn’t find the meatballs necessary, I do feel like I have an awesome Italian place within walking distance. Plus, they deliver, which would save me all the trouble of lugging a bottle of wine down the street. Such a buzz kill. I’ll definitely be back to see what other delicious Italian offerings Giovanni’s Trattoria can give me.

This guest blog comes courtesy of @RGSpiegel. He blogs sports too.

Perhaps one of the most uniquely puzzling marketing campaigns of the last year has been that of Domino’s Pizza. In extolling the virtues of their “new recipe” pizza and remarking on how much it has improved, Domino’s is tacitly admitting that their old pizza was not, for lack of better words, particularly good. Given that we were marketed to relentlessly by Domino’s back when their pizza was “not particularly good,” why should we give our valuable pizza dollars to them now? Even with their new recipe, Domino’s is only marginally better than upper tier oven pizzas. The answer, though, lies in their prices. Their special of three medium pizzas for $5.99 each is unmatched, right? Not so fast.

(Imagine Billy Mays reading the next paragraph).

In Chicago, a chain called Sarpino’s has sprouted up which matches the $5.99 deal and has objectively better pizza. But wait, there’s more. Where Domino’s charges a $2.00 delivery fee, Sarpino’s delivers for free. But that’s not all! If you order online at GoSarpinos.com (which remembers your favorite order and gives you the opportunity to order it with one click), you get 15% off. Therefore, in Chicago where there is a 10.5% sales tax, Domino’s pre-tip will add up to $21.86 whereas Sarpino’s adds up to $16.88 for a savings of about $5.00 (23%). Given that Sarpino’s is open until 4 a.m. on weeknights (and 5 a.m. on weekends!), delivers reliably fast with text message updates, and tastes much better, Sarpino’s is a no-brainer.

So, it was without great fear and trepidation, after a late night on the town that I ordered Sarpino’s at about 3:30 a.m. early Sunday morning. Quickly confirming my standard unvegan order of one sausage and two pepperoni pizzas (it’s so easy a drunk man could do it), it was time to play the waiting game. I did not have to wait that long. Before 4, the delivery man was at my door and my roommate and I were ready to chow down. Polishing off one medium pizza between the two of us, which enriched our voracious appetites, if not our self esteem, it was time to go to bed full and fulfilled. Sarpino’s is made in the same style as Domino’s but I think that its sauce is better seasoned, its crust more enriched, and its meat more succulent.

As great as Sarpino’s was that evening, that was not the best part. Due to the size of the order, there were invariably leftovers. For some reason, and I am not exactly sure of the science behind this fact, Sarpino’s is actually better in cold, day-old form than it is fresh and piping hot. Ordering late night Sarpino’s is the gift that keeps on giving – as of this writing (36 hours after devouring my first slice), I still have three pieces left that I am eagerly anticipating for lunch.

No one would ever confuse the quality of Sarpino’s pizza with great Chicago pizza restaurants like Piece, Pequod’s, or Lou Malnati’s but that is not its point. It is late-night or struggling-from-a-late-night-early-the-next-afternoon pizza delivery that is easy to execute and cheaper than its ultimate value, so I highly recommend getting the waitr food delivery app and ordering through them. With a three dollar tip, Sarpinos adds up to $19.88. Given that I would say half of a Sarpinos medium pizza is enough to reasonably be considered a meal, the total order gives you six meals at $3.31 each. My roommates and I order Sarpinos at least once a week and my roommate has exclaimed on many occasions that Sarpino’s is like crack. It may very well be, but as far as vices go, you could go worse than being addicted to pizza. The value of Sarpino’s is unparalleled in Chicago, even from oven pizzas. If you are in Chicago, go Sarpino’s.

Working late one night, I decided I needed some pizza to keep me going. Fortunately, there is plenty of pizza to be found around my office in North Hollywood. One place, called Pizza Man (sadly not a superhero who fights off villains with pepperoni and tomato paste), always has a sign to advertise their $5 large pizza, so I looked them up and gave them a call. A man with an indistinguishable, but quite pleasant European accent answered the phone. It turned out that the special was only for plain cheese, but they had a two-topping carry out special for $6.99. This price was comparable to Papa John’s and other fast food pizzas, so I felt good about the price.

For toppings, I chose the two unvegan staples, pepperoni and sausage. The friendly voice told me it would be ready in 15 minutes, so after a few minutes more of work, I took a stroll to Pizza Man. The pizza was ready by the time I got there and smelled so good I could hardly wait to start eating. At first, the pizza tasted great. The dough was a bit sweet, but tasted pretty good with my savory toppings. Unfortunately, as my hunger faded, I found that the pizza wasn’t quite as good as I had originally thought. This wasn’t because I was getting full, but because the pizza was actually kind of dry. This was a slight problem for the cheese and toppings, which had little to no grease on them, but especially true for the dough. The crust was crunchy and flaky, and not in the good Italian pizza way, but in the overcooked or under-oiled way.

Despite the dryness, I found the sausage to be surprisingly good. It’s possible that this was because they were the juiciest part of the pizza or because they were actually good. Kind of like Chris Bosh on the Raptors. Although with Bosh we’ll see the truth in Miami, whereas with this sausage we may never know.

Nonetheless, this wasn’t really a bad pizza. $6.99 was a good deal and if they can lube up their pizza a little bit, the deal could be even better.

In an attempt to try out some new pizza while at the girlfriend’s place, we looked into a little place in West LA called Brooklyn Pizza. Knowing that we were not actually in Brooklyn, I thought this might have been some sort of a misnomer. But misnomer it was not. Instead, it seemed as though they were trying to create the sort of pizza that you could get in Brooklyn and seemed very excited to tell us over the phone that their tomatoes and cheese came from New York. This seemed nice, but are the cheese and tomatoes really the things people love about New York pizza? I thought it was the dough, but perhaps I am wrong. Nonetheless, I checked out the menu and found their Double Pepperoni looked appealing.

Excited again, the guy on the phone said that there Double Pepperoni wasn’t simply extra pepperoni, but two different kinds of pepperoni. How exciting! We placed the order for my pepperoni pizza, a lesser veggie pizza for the girl and a salad for her and her friend. I didn’t catch the price over the phone, but I figured it was just two pizzas and a salad, how expensive could it be? We were told the pizza would be over in about 20 minutes, but after 45 minutes or so, the doorbell finally rang with our pizza. The delivery guy handed me the receipt, which came out to a whopping 53 bucks! And not only that, but these pizzas were just the same size as the average Papa John’s large. This was madness, and I fully expected this pizza to blow me away.

I got down to business and started eating. The first thing I noticed was that this pizza did not blow me away. Not by a long shot. The pizza was a bit on the soggy side, probably due to the fact that they had taken too long to deliver it. Plus it was quite doughy as though it might have been rushed out of the oven. Other evidence of this was the lack of crisp in the crust. The tomato sauce and cheese were decent, but again, they were nothing spectacular and it seemed to me that the place wasted a lot of effort getting ingredients that added little-to-nothing to the experience.

Then there was the double pepperoni. A look at the pizza revealed that all the pepperoni looked exactly the same. Even so, I thought by taste I would be able to tell that I was eating two different special kinds of pepperoni. I was wrong. I could tell no difference amongst all the pepperoni. In fact, the pepperoni didn’t even taste special.

I love the concept of specialty pizza and am totally willing to pay a premium to get something special. Unfortunately, Brooklyn Pizza was nothing special and tasted like a pretty big waste of money.

I’ve passed by Mulberry Street Pizzeria in Beverly Hills a few times and been curious about what sort of pizza may lay within. Finally, I got down the courage to ask my girlfriend, a seasoned veteran of the LA food scene, if it was a pizza worth getting. She assured me it was and within a few days she had ordered some Mulberry Street pizza for us to partake in.

Before the pizza arrived, she told me she had ordered a half pepperoni, half mushroom pizza. These halfsies pizzas always scare me because it’s nearly impossible to get all the ingredients perfectly on one side and it always seems to be those veggies that are the overflow culprits. Also, half a pizza is rarely enough for me.

But when the Mulberry Street pizza arrived, I saw that it was no ordinary pizza. This thing was massive and size-wise seemed worth the 20ish dollars it cost for one pie. They also seemed to have done a pretty good job of dividing up the toppings correctly. There were certainly a couple funghi stragglers on my side, but it only took a few seconds to remedy that situation. Once de-shroomed, I ripped off a slice and tore into it. It was a huge slice and quite tasty. The pizza is in the New York style, and I would say they do a damn good job of it. This is, of course, coming from a guy with very little knowledge of New York pizza. But whether this was like New York or not, it was a delicious pizza on par with the Village Pizzeria.

While great and huge, this pizza was still pretty pricey. It’s definitely good to drop 20-plus bucks on a pie every once in a while, especially one this big, but sometimes this kind of pizza is a bit more than an unvegan like me can handle.

Ever since graduating from college, it hasn’t been easy find great deals on pizza. Not so long ago, I was in the habit of ordering two large one-topping pizzas for the amazing price of ten bucks, including delivery! While days like that will likely never be seen again by this hungry unvegan, there are still some decently cheap pizza places out there. Lenzini’s 241 Pizza (get it? two for one?) in Plams is one of these places. All the pizzas on their menu come with a second pizza of equal or lesser value. The prices are slightly inflated, but it was definitely worth a try the last time my girlfriend and I had to order a bunch of pizzas.

The foodpanda delivery took about a half hour and the pizzas came looking like they were just pulled from the oven. I tried out the pepperoni and I was pretty impressed. The cheese was loaded on there and took a little teeth grinding to get through each bite. As a big admirer of cheese, this was not an issue for me, but I can see how some people could get cheese overload. The sauce was minimal and the pepperonis were just as you would expect from a delivery pizza. The dough was nothing special, but cooked pretty well.

Nothing about this pizza was amazing, but it was definitely a good break from the normal delivery places. And if you like a lot of cheese, with little sauce, you will love this place. The prices are great and as long as you aren’t expecting some special Italian or gourmet pizza, you won’t be disappointed. Especially if you order on the days they offer three for one!

It was a night for delivery and looking through LAbite, we found a good-looking Mediterranean place to order from it was called Best of Mediterranean (BOM), which is quite a boast to be put in a name, even for a place in West Hollywood. Obviously a place by that name had to be checked out. I was too hungry for a schwarma sandwich, so I ordered the chicken schwarma dinner plate. This came with hummos, tabouli, rice and garlic sauce. Knowing that tabouli is some strange mix of greens, I tried to order without it, but the website wouldn’t allow me. This was a big fail on the part of both LAbite and BOM, because many other restaurants allow you to customize dishes. Unfortunately, I knew that vegetables would be dying for my sake that night and wouldn’t even have the pleasure of being digested.

My food arrived and I opened it up in the hopes that somehow they had forgotten the tabouli. Unfortunately, this was not the case, but luckily they has relegated it to a corner of the styrofoam that ensured it didn’t make contact with my real food.

The real food tasted alright, but not great. The chicken was semi-rubbery and although the garlic cause was good, none of it really added up to the Best of Mediterranean that it boasted to be. I would recommend this place for a quick, easy delivery, but there are many better Mediterranean options to be explored in LA.

For lunch one day, I ordered from a little Asian place called Asia House. They claim to be “Fusion Thai Cuisine,” which in my mind means they are mostly Thai, but threw in some other assorted Asian dishes to please people afraid of food named Pad Kra Pao and Kang Mus Mun. On this day, I chose to be one of those people and ordered the Orange Chicken even though it is by no means an actual Thai dish.

They have a lunch special, which comes with soup, a fried wonton and steamed rice, so I made sure to take advantage of that. The delivery came pretty quickly and also brought some surprises. As a thank you for being awesome, Asia House also brought me some egg rolls and a Thai iced tea. These were great additions to the already cheap lunch I had.

I opened up my orange chicken and was almost blinded by the intensity of the orange color. In all my years of eating orange chicken, I had never seen a restaurant take the orange part so literally, at least color-wise. I started eating and found that they had really put more emphasis in the color than the flavor. The chicken was sweet, but not especially in a citric way.

Having never tried Thai iced tea before, I was amazed to find how orange it was. I assumed it would be sweet and milky, but was once again surprised by intense orange. The strange taste took some getting used to and the drink was especially heavy, but in the end I enjoyed my first Thai iced tea.

In the end, the food was enough to fill me up and keep me full til my next meal, but didn’t do anything mind-blowing other than with its crazy colors. If I need decent Asian food for cheap, I’ll order from them again.