‘Echo Park’
LA has never been and will never be known as prime destination in the world of pizza. Sure, there are some great spots for a variety of pies, but there is no such thing as LA-style pizza. Nonetheless, LA does its best to make transplants from other pizza cities happy. Take, for example, Masa of Echo Park, which dishes out some of the deepest dishes this side of Chicago.
Oh the park at Echo Park. While it is unquestionably a Mecca for local Hispanic family picnics, it is also unquestionably working hard to attract the local hipsters. Hence, Square One at the Boathouse exists literally in the boathouse where people can rent paddle boats and serves up some good-looking if not exciting-looking food.
Down the street from my halfway home in Echo Park is a little spot called Trencher, serving a variety of sandwiches and salads. Normally this would sound boring, but Trencher actually has some pretty interesting options, like the Consigliere and a Fried Chicken Banh Mi. I, however, had my sights set on a different fried chicken sandwich.
Mohawk Bend in Echo Park is a scary place. No, it’s not in a bad neighborhood or perched precariously upon a cliff along a fault line. It’s scary because its menu defaults to vegan. Yes, you read that right. If you don’t want to eat vegan you have to find something on the menu with (NV) after the name of the dish. That presumably stands for Not Vegan and they were the only menu items worth looking at.
It can probably be said that nearly everything on the East Side is trendy, essentially catering to the crowd of hipsters that have overtaken Echo Park, Silverlake and Los Feliz. One of these places is a restaurant called Ostrich Farm in Echo Park that has no ostriches to be found, but it does have a brunch.
In LA, the word Rodeo usually means one thing: a shopping street in Beverly Hills. Sometimes it means another random street on the west side and occasionally it means the thing with cowboys and stuff. Almost never does it mean dinner, unless you happen to find yourself strolling along Sunset in Echo Park and stepping into the first divey Mexican place you can find that just so happens to go by the name of Rodeo.
Pittsburgh may be a great city, but it was unquestionably missing the riches of Mexican food that can be found in LA. When I told people about my new digs in Echo Park, a number of them said I had to check out Guisados, which was apparently home to amazing tacos. I took these recommendations to heart, pushed them on my family and set out to pick up a number of these tacos for us to eat.
As I walked towards The Echo in Echo Park for a night of dancing to soul music, I passed a little joint called Two Boots Pizza and just knew that by the time the night had ended their pizza would make its way into my extensive digestive system. So when the wee hours of the morning found me stepping out of The Echo, I stepped right into Two Boots and got a looksie at what they had to offer. Although they sold whole pies, a quick look at their slices told me I would be ordering by the slice. These slices were some of the most unique I had seen in a long time, perhaps in forever.