It’s not easy to go across town for breakfast or brunch. Especially if you’re like me and consider noon to be the beginning of the day on a weekend. But, I managed to pull myself out of bed for brunch downtown at a place called Artisan House. Surprisingly, it didn’t just have the kind of upscale brunch items I have grown used to, but a couple items I hadn’t seen before.

One of these was called Brioche Toad in a Hole and consisted of two eggs over easy INSIDE two slices of brioche toast. These were then topped with a truffle parmesan sauce. I knew they had to be mine, but I was told they might not quite be filling enough. Thus, I opted to split them and the Chicken and Waffles with my buddy.

Unfortunately I had failed to notice that the toads came with a mixed greens salad or I would have swapped it out. So, while it may have ruined the picture, I can safely say that it went uneaten and did not ruin the meal. My toad in the hole turned out to be really delicious, with the egg being perfectly cooked, the toast being perfectly toasty and the saucy being perfectly saucy. But, as I was not on a diet it really was not enough food.

As for the chicken and waffles, the portion was a bit off as well. Except in this case there was plenty of food, but too much of it turned out to be waffles. This meant many bites of just waffle or little bits of chicken to try to preserve the combination. From a taste perspective each component was delicious and the chicken was crispy and tender, but the balance simply could have been better.

I left Artisan House feeling like it had been a mixed bag of decent and delicious. There was nothing to truly dislike, but a couple tweaks could have gone a long way to glory.

A lot of good things are happening in Downtown LA these days. One of these things is B.S. Taqueria, which is kind of like a spin-off from Broken Spanish, a restaurant that I have never been to and probably never will. Not surprisingly, it specializes in tacos. After a bit of a wait, we made our way to the back section that felt like eating outdoors at a taqueria in the tropics.

After a bit of deliberation, I made an executive decision to go with the Chorizo Cheeseburger, which is a beef patty topped with chorizo and a miniature Squeeze Inn-esque cheese skirt. It was nothing short of stellar, perfectly made for an unvegan. It had a perfect balance of cheese, double meat and buns as conduits and buffers.

But just for good measure, I also ordered a taco. I went with chicken, which also came topped with beans and guacamole. Compared to the burger it was disappointing. It truly just tasted like it was lacking in flavor, but I can’t say if that was because the burger was so rich or because it was truly just tasteless. The good news is that the burger was so good that I very easily forgot about the taco.

B.S. Taqueria might want to change its name to B.S. Burgueria. But even if it doesn’t you can rest assured that the burger is the right choice to make.

In a city filled with all kinds of fun events, one event (aside from a plethora of farmer’s markets) can be counted on every week. It’s Smorgasburg, which originally started over in Brooklyn, and it’s kind of like a miniaturized, hipster version of 626 Night Market. On my first venture, I made my way to Ugly Drum Pastrami.

Truth be told, once I saw the pastrami being sliced up, I couldn’t see myself eating anything else. The trouble was that the price was pretty high, so I only snagged a half sandwich. It was sliced up and weighed precisely before being added to the bread.

I took a bite and…it was nothing short of fantastic. The rind was packed with peppery flavor (among many other things) and the rest had a smokiness that made it kind of like a mix between Jewish pastrami and BBQ brisket. Probably most important of all, it was super tender.

This was undoubtedly a perfect mix of BBQ and Jewish food. I’d hate to call it fusion, because that makes it seem like it was more intentionally mixed together. Rather, it’s just a different take on an old world favorite and one I could get behind any day.

The latest issue of Los Angeles Magazine boasts an impressive list of the 10 Best New Restaurants in LA. But the magazine went one step further and set up a celebration at the Architecture and Design Museum downtown to feature a number of them, as well as a few other restaurants. Thus, I made my way there to see what passes for “best” and “new” these days. Here are the highlights:

The Bellwether: Nancy’s Day Boat Scallops

I’m not usually one for scallops, but these were like butter and the pairing with duck bacon, sprouted lentils and an orange creme fraiche just enhanced the slurpy experience. I’ve been visiting a variety of restaurants and comparing copycat recipes of my favorite ones and using it to achieve my favorite recipe.

Baran’s 2239: Quail Indian Egg

What’s a quail Indian egg? Oh, just a quail egg wrapped in lamb sausage and curry jus with a cucumber salad. I can’t speak to the salad, but I never knew a quail egg could be so delicious and not simply disappointing because of its size.

Howlin’ Ray’s: Nashville Hot Chicken Wings

Despite the fact that I made the mistake of ordering mine hot (aka like licking a powdery version of the surface of the sun), this full-sized wing did nothing more than make me want to go to the actual location.

Scopa Italian Roots: Handmade Cavatelli

I’m a sucker for handmade pasta. I’m also a sucker for cheesy sauce. Thus, this cavatelli (aka mealworm-shaped pasta) with black pepper and pecorino crushed it for me. It didn’t hurt that they had some cheesy bread as well.

As this was an LA Mag event, there were also a few drink options. I zoned in on the Duvel beer, but there was also plenty of wine and Bombay Sapphire gin to be had. There was even a spot of Infiniti-sponsored cookie shots from the dirty cookie. I couldn’t resist and snagged one to round out my meal, although it would have been nice to have it next to me when I tasted the Nashville Hot Chicken.

I can only imagine what this next year in restaurants will bring…

LA isn’t an easy place to have sustained success. And I’m not just talking about the entertainment industry, I’m talking about food. You see, one day you can’t get a reservation at a place and the next it’s being replaced by a hot new thing. Yet, there are exceptions, like In-n-Out. But also Bestia, an Italian spot downtown that still requires reservations months out.

But reserve we did and set to work on tackling what looked like the best things on the menu. It began with the Burrata Pizza. This pie was topped with castelvetrano olives, oregano and fermented chilies. To be honest, I couldn’t have cared less about what kind of olives they were because I wanted no part in them, but allowed them for the team. Even with a couple olives picked out, this pizza kicked some ass. The chilies added a bit of a kick, but most importantly the burrata cheese, tomato sauce and dough worked in holy harmony together.

Thus, we moved on to the Roasted Marrow Bone. Unlike your typical marrow, which is served with some sort of toast and maybe salt or another thing to sprinkle on the marrow, this bone was found in a bowl. It was surrounded by spinach gnochetti, bread crumbs and aged balsamic. The idea was to scrape the marrow out, mix it up with the gnochetti and then go to town. Marrow purists may have thought this was silly, but I loved it. Sure, I wouldn’t have chosen spinach as my typical gnochetti flavor, but I still love gnocchi (which is grown up gnochetti) and the combination of these two made for something special.

For our main course, we picked two pastas to pick apart. The first was the Agnolotti alla Agnello. For lack of a better explanation, this dish consisted of braised lamb stuffed into ravioli-like pasta with a saffron sauce, currants and pine nuts. It was unbelievably good and I especially enjoyed the bits of currant that added a sweetness and tartness to the dish and gave it great balance. You can market food online, as well as retail stores if you have a food business. Check out more information here.

The other pasta was the Cavatelli alla Norcina, which had ricotta, housemade pork sausage, black truffles and grana padano cheese. Like the dish before, this pasta was just incredibly complex in its flavors and each felt like it had been thoroughly thought-out and executed to perfection. I loved the mix of sausage and black truffles, but it just wasn’t quite as good as the Agnolotti. Perhaps it was the lack of currants or the fact that there seemed to be just a bit too much sauce, but the consolation prize here could have easily taken first place anywhere else.

And so Bestia bested this unvegan. I left fully satisfied and just the right amount of full. The dishes are by no means big, but they make up for their size with flavor. Sometimes quality is better than quantity and Bestia’s quantity of patrons that make getting a reservation here insane seem to prove that point.

A lot changed in Downtown LA while I was gone for two years. The Arts District, which is adjacent to Little Tokyo, had already had a bit of a resurgence that has kinda blown up. On top of that, Chef Neal Fraser, who is behind BLD, has popped out a couple new spots. When you combine these, you get Fritzi, which is like an affordably upscale fast-casual concept (yeah, I said it).

Ordering is done at a counter, and behind that counter is a giant rotisserie filled with half-chickens dripping their juices and setting off delicious-sounding flames. Yet, as good as those chickens looked, I was caught by the bacon-beef blend burger. This came topped with fontina fondue, iceberg lettuce, calabrese relish and thousand island, with the choice or tots, fries or something called a potato waffle. I ordered mine without the veggies and then just had to find out what the potato waffle was as my side.

It turned out the potato waffle was not the waffle fries that you might expect. Instead, it was like someone mixed hash browns and eggs in a waffle iron and let it rip. Oh, and then they added shredded cheddar on top. It probably could have used a bit more potato, but it was unquestionably delicious.

The burger turned out to be a conundrum. It was good, no question, but it didn’t taste as special as you might expect from a bacon-beef blend. The bacon added some additional saltiness, but not so much in the smokey department. Plus, due to the bacon component, it had to be cooked a little more and wasn’t as juicy as I would have liked. On the other hand, the combination of fontina fondue and thousand island was like a perfect condiment.

I’m glad I checked out the burger and the waffle, because I really just had to. In the future, though, I’d probably find myself chowing down on that beautiful chicken instead.

I have always been a fan of downtown LA’s Grand Central Market. And while the place is flush with old school spots that I have reviewed in the past, there are now new school spots intermingling with the old in perfect harmony. One of these goes by the name of Eggslut. How it got this name may forever be a mystery (well, at least the “slut” part), but it is undoubtedly a hit that draws crazy lines on the weekends at prime brunch hours.

So I’ll first say that if you don’t want to wait in a long line, arrive sometime after 2. But if you’re prepared to wait the 45ish minutes to order it’s also not so bad because the food comes out within minutes after ordered, so it can just be chalked up to a typical wait at a diner.

But I digress; what matters is the food. I ordered the simple Bacon, Egg and Cheese sandwich, which is made with the aforementioned bacon, cheddar, an over medium egg, chipotle ketchup and a brioche bread. Eggslut unquestionably knows how to prepare an egg. That goes double for the perfectly crispy bacon and just-right melted cheddar. In fact, everything was in perfect harmony for my first couple of bites.

Unfortunately, that was followed by a series of bites that were overwhelmed by the ketchup. I should state here that I am a fan of ketchup. It is something that has played a joyous role in much of my life, but it is a good thing that there can be too much of, especially when it covers up the delicious taste of eggs, bacon and cheddar instead of enhancing them.

It was surely worth the wait to get a taste of Eggslut; and the breakfast sandwich almost set a new bar for combining egg, cheese and bacon. Yet, it wasn’t the perfection I had hoped for and if there’s a similar line next time I’m at Grand Central Market there are a number of other great options that will keep me from going hungry.

It has been an admittedly long time since I have eaten from a food truck, let alone one in LA. Yet, while the fad has ended, there are still plenty of food trucks to chow down with as the truck still offers a low-cost entry into food-slinging. One such truck goes by the name of CreativEats and breaks essentially all (two) rules I thought necessary for a food truck’s survival.

The first rule is that the food has to be easy to eat with your hands – requiring no utensils and preferably only one hand. CreativEats does have sandwiches, but it also has rice bowls, crab cakes and salmon. The second is that the food should be highly specific and specialized – not everything for everyone.

Well, CreativEats doesn’t fit that mould, yet their Chicken Cutlet sandwich attracted me. It was made with cream cheese, brie, prosciutto and arugula, but yeah I ordered it without the arugula. Strangely enough, the sandwich turned out to be open-faced. I don’t know if they were running low on bread or doing a public service of lowering carbs, but this was a disappointment.

On the other hand, the single slice of bread was pretty thick. Plus, the chicken was slightly breaded and really after a few bites that another slice of bread would have made the sandwich too, well, bready. I could hardly taste the cream cheese, so it was probably there just to keep things moist and played its role well. The mix of brie, prosciutto and chicken worked really well, though as CreativEats managed to pack some good flavor into the chicken and really you can’t go wrong with brie or prosciutto.

It may not have been the most creative eat I’ve ever had from a food truck, but the sandwich was certainly something I would have happily eaten in a fancy sandwich shop. And hey, maybe CreativEats will be the exception that proves my food truck rules.

Chipotle is kind of the gold standard of Mexican fast food (I mean, unless we’re talking Taco Bell). You can find it pretty much anywhere, the prices are pretty good and there is no doubt that it’s fast. But it is not alone…all over there are copycats and similar joints that may or may not have existed before the rise of Chipotle. Ocho Mexican Grill in downtown LA is one of those copycats…sort of. A combination of my buddy Joel and a 50% Scoutmob discount convinced me to visit this downtown twist on Mexican fast food fare and I entered with high expectations.

I quickly found Ocho to be a twisted version of Chipotle. It offered burritos, bowls, salads and tacos, then just like Chipotle, there were troughs of ingredients to pick and choose from. I learned that the “Ocho” stood for the 8 different “meat” choices and I use meat in quotes because one of those choices is vegetarian. This was definitely more options than Chipotle, with the exotic options of mahi mahi and tiger prawns making things a bit exciting.

I opted for the grilled steak and then moved on to where Ocho truly upped the ante – toppings, salsas and sauces. Sure, I went with classics like their organic brown rice and organic pinto beans, but got a little crazy with their hica-mango (a mix of chopped jicama and mango. They had intriguing yellow and fiery habanero salsas, but I decided to play it safe with red hot, which was one spice level below the habanero. Finally, Ocho made it just a little more interesting with sauces like southwest, agave vinaigrette and buttermilk ranchero. There was only one sauce that I had my eyes on, though…three cheese. Oh and let’s not forget the regular shredded cheese on top of that. Then, while I usually shun away from chips at Chipotle, I put my 50% off to good use and picked up some chips and guac.

Once it was all rolled up, my burrito looked a bit stubby and while I lamented the larger size of Chipotles, I also considered the resulting food comas and thought this might just be the perfect size. I tore away the foil and went to town. Town was delicious, by the way. They had clearly stuck to the safe side as far as the Chipotle elements, as the combination of steak, rice, beans and hot red salsa were right on par. But where these parts lacked in originality, the hica-mango and three cheese sauce took the burrito to a shiny new level. And while I hate to say it, the cheese sauce was even better than Qdoba. The chips and guac were quite tasty, but indistinguishable from Chipotle in the same vein as the steak.

It’s hard to review a place like Ocho, because while it is awesome and brings a few new things to the table, it seriously lacks in originality. I hated to mention Chipotle so much in this review, but it was too hard not to. Cafe Rio took the Chipotle concept and completely blew it away with unique offerings, but Ocho seemed content to maintain much of the status quo. It’s executed well, and the new choices make for a great meal, but in the end it is just a damn good copycat.

Apparently some place called The Lazy Ox downtown is a big deal or something. I wouldn’t know because I haven’t been, but supposedly the guy behind it, Michael Cardenas, is also a big deal. Such a big deal, in fact, that he took it upon himself to open another restaurant, called Fat Spoon. The new place is down in Little Tokyo and is conceptually a Japanese curry house. As a man with a fair amount of Japanese curry experience, I definitely wanted to check the place out, and it didn’t hurt that I had one of those Blackboard Eats 30% off printouts either.

We arrived for a late dinner on a Saturday night, but fortunately Fat Spoon keeps their doors open until midnight for hungry curry-lovers. With a group of people, we decided to go all-out, order a bunch of things and eat them family-style. This was pretty easy to do with the modest prices, and even with the vegetable choices that my foolish friends made, I felt like I was getting a fair share of meat.

But before I get into the mass of food, I feel the need to mention the beer I ordered with my meal. It was a Sapporo, which was the only beer they had on tap and when it arrived, it seemed to be lacking in bubbles. Upon tasting, the flatness was confirmed. Sapporo isn’t an especially great beer in the best of conditions, and being flat certainly didn’t help. We let the waitress know and she brought us a second round, which was only slightly better. It was a shame to have this as my first taste of the restaurant, and I hoped the real meal would make up for it.

It started with a round of jalapeno, cheese and curry fries, which was a strong start. The combination of flavors made it into a sort of Japanese poutine. Instead of gravy, there was curry, and instead of cheese curds there was shredded cheese, but the spiciness added a nice twist. Even bites without the actual jalapenos had a bit of a kick, which was nice. The fries themselves were thick-cut and crispy enough on the outside to survive the curry without coming out too soggy.

Next, I moved on to our two main curry dishes. The first was the beef curry, which was made with short rib meat. It looked awesome and tasted pretty good too. Yet, the spiciness that had been a part of the fries was lost in the regular curry, leaving me wanting a little more. Of course, Japanese curry is not known for being spicy like Indian is, and I could probably order it spicier in the future when I don’t have to share with spice haters. The meat was damn good and short rib was a nice change from the chicken cutlet I usually find myself eating with Japanese curry. I also tried a bit of the seafood curry, which had the same sauce, but a nice variety of invertebrates (shrimp, calamari, scallops and clams) swimming around in it. As not much of a seafood lover, I preferred the beef, but the seafood was definitely worthy.

For a fake dessert, we followed up our main courses with some curry pan. Pan means bread in Japanese and these were like crispy eclair donuts, but with curry in the middle. The panko crust that covered the pan gave them an awesome crunchy texture and the ground beef curry inside made them nothing short of awesome. They were a great way to close out a pretty tasty meal.

As a self-proclaimed Japanese curry expert, I was pretty happy with Fat Spoon. It doesn’t quite measure up to the standards set by Hurry Curry of Tokyo, but is definitely a solid establishment with good food for even better prices. Next time, though, I’ll pass on the beer and order my curry extra spicy.