For a delicious gift, my girlfriend’s parents gave us a gift card to Fleming’s Steakhouse. I’d never never been to Fleming’s, partially because of the price, but also because I had never really heard much about the place. Apparently, though, they have a pretty good reputation for snazzy steaks. For a nice little date, we decided to go get ourselves some red meat at the El Segundo.

I knew that I would be getting some steak, but I wasn’t totally sure which steak I would need. I looked at the menu and found the biggest Filet Mignon they had and knew it had to be mine. This was called the Main Filet Mignon and sounded delicious. The steak came a la carte, so I also got some of their Chipotle Cheddar Macaroni and Cheese. This sounded like a perfectly delicious unvegan combo to me.

When the food came, I saw just how huge this steak was. By size alone, it was worth the $40, even though I wasn’t paying. The mac and cheese was beautiful as well. I dove into the steak and started eating. I was surprised to find that the steak was actually a bit tough. Filet Mignon is known to be the most tender part of the cow, which made this a little strange. On the other hand, the flavor was delicious, something that the filet sometimes lacks due to being so lean. In those respects, the steak didn’t exactly meet my expectations. Perhaps it was simply too big of a cut of meat. I saw the girlfriend’s mini steak was much more tender than mine, which may have been a better choice. In this situation, quality is certainly more important than quantity.

The mac and cheese was pretty awesome, though. It was perfectly baked, creamy and had just a touch of that chipotle spice. If you have the kind of money to spend at a fancy steakhouse, Fleming’s is a pretty good way to do it, but to be honest, I’ve definitely had some better steaks for better values.

Although it seems like I’ve reviewed just about every truck on the streets of LA, there are still a few waiting for an unvegan visit. Lomo Arigato is no longer one of these. This truck dishes out Peruvian food and although they don’t fuse this with any sort of Japanese food, they still threw the word “arigato” into their name. This confused me, but I couldn’t let the strange name distract me from food. There were only three dishes in their menu and although they all looked pretty good, I decided to order their namesake, the Lomo Saltado.

About ten minutes later, my food was ready. I opened up my styrofoam box and took a look inside. There were no vegetables to be found and all I could see were meats and carbs, with a little cilantro. It looked to be a great unvegan meal. I started eating and was pretty happy with it. As my first lomo saltado experience, I have nothing to compare it to, but they seemed to have done a good job. The meat was plentiful and the fries were nice and crunchy, but after a few bites I realized that this dish was quite salty. Perhaps it was an over-use of the soy sauce or the fries happened to be super-absorbent, but either way, I really needed the rice to help tone down the saltiness.

Well my real work life (yes, I have to do real work sometimes) has taken me from LA’s South Bay to North Hollywood, but for one of my final lunches in the South Bay (for now), I went to a little Italian place called Deluca Trattoria in El Segundo. They had a great little express lunch menu that I spent a lot of time looking at in order to decide what I wanted. I suppose all this time spent looking at the menu defeated the purpose of an express lunch, but I couldn’t help it. After much deliberation, I decided to order their Pizza Bianca, which came with garlic, oregano and gorgonzola. The lack of meat on this pizza was troubling to me, so I asked to get some chicken on it, and they happily complied.

As I waited for the pizza, I chowed down on a whole lot of delicious bread. The olive oily dip it came with was really tasty and so by the time my pizza came, I was almost full. Whatever, though, I can eat a lot on a full stomach. Except not this time, because the pizza was actually really doughy. Especially for an Italian-style pizza. The ingredients, however, tasted pretty good, so I wasn’t too disappointed. The chicken was definitely a nice touch, because the gorgonzola was strong and the meat helped to tone it down.

Despite the thickness of the dough, the pizza was pretty tasty. It was good that I customized it, because it was definitely a better pizza for that. There is definitely better Italian-style pizza to be had in LA, but if you’re craving some in El Segundo, Deluca Trattoria isn’t a bad choice.

On that note, I’m definitely looking forward to what sort of food North Hollywood will have to offer me…

If you’re getting tired of food truck writing, well, you are in luck. Today unvegan is jumping back into the brick and mortar world with a visit to Paul Martin’s American Bistro. Paul Martin’s is exactly the kind of restaurant a lot of Americans are looking for in the new decade. A creation of restaurateur Paul Fleming and Brian Bennett, it isn’t too expensive, but is definitely upscale. Perhaps more important than that is its supposed dedication to serving organic, sustainable and local foods. It’s a great concept that I can get behind, but pretty ineffective unless the food is good. Using my heightened unvegan senses, I checked them out for lunch to see if organic, local and sustainable translates into a good meal.

Looking at the menu, I was torn among a few options, eventually narrowing it down to the Bistro Burger and the Short Ribs. When I asked the waitress to decide for me, she heartily recommended the Short Ribs. Hopefully this wasn’t because they cost more. These ribs were braised, had a horseradish cream and only came with mashed potatoes. All of this was perfect for an unvegan and required no modifications.

They arrived doused in a sauce, which was a little bit frightening. I know this isn’t a steak, but sometimes when the sauce is the most noticeable thing on the plate, it draws question to the preparation of the meat. I started eating and realized this wasn’t a huge deal. The meat was juicy and fatty, like it should be, but there was still just too much sauce on it. One thing that is great about short ribs is that they rarely have bones, and these were no different. Sure, bones play a great role in the cooking of other ribs, but for these short ribs, there was no need. The mashed potatoes did a great job as the carb portion of my meal and tasted great.

I definitely recommend these Short Ribs from Paul Martin’s, but I would ask them to go light on the sauce. Also, remember that although it looks like a steak, it is still ribs and there will be fat and that fat will taste delicious.

EDIT: The truck is no more, but apparently the food can now be found at Willie Jane’s in Venice…

As I sat on my couch in the morning, waiting for my English Muffin to toast, I realized that I didn’t actually have a Newsweek to read. This was very disappointed, so I turned to my iPhone and checked Twitter. Thinking nothing new would be there at such an ungodly hour (8:30), I was just hoping to kill time. But then I saw it. The Buttermilk Truck was already on the streets and serving up breakfast in El Segundo, essentially across the street from where I work. I shot up from my couch, grabbed the English Muffin from the toaster and tossed it back into the fridge, then hit the road to get some breakfast from a truck.

I arrived to find a relatively small line at the truck. I had expected the corporate people in El Segundo to flock to this thing, but perhaps I had already missed the rush. They were featuring the Buttermilk Brick as a special (which is usually a night thing), but I thought that would be a bit too heavy and might put me in a coma for the day. Amazingly, this truck had no trace of vegetables in any dish. Breakfast might just be the perfect meal. I ordered their breakfast sandwich with bacon. This sandwich came with egg and cheese on a biscuit. For an extra buck, I ordered some rosemary garlic hash browns. Then, for a breakfasty dessert, I also ordered the pancake bites, which were red velvet chocolate chip pancakes.

I forked over my money and waited a while for my food to be ready. Finally, my name was called and I headed to work to eat, as I was already running late. My food looked nothing less than awesome and I hoped it would taste just as good. First, I tested out the sandwich, which put every other breakfast sandwich to shame. I’m talking about you, McDonald’s. The biscuit was fluffy and oily, while the bacon was perfectly crispy. The egg could have been a little runnier, but that is really just a personal preference. The hash brown was kind of like a gourmet latke or potato pancake, but was also good and the rosemary wasn’t overwhelming. Finally, the red velvet pancakes were amazing. I’m not the biggest fan of chocolate, especially in my breakfast, but these pancakes have changed me.

Either one of these would have made a meal in itself, but combined they created a breakfeast. I will definitely be returning to the Buttermilk Truck and would recommend it to anyone looking to shake up their breakfast or late-night snackery.

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.

I had never been to The Tavern on Main for food before, as I had always thought of the place as more of a bar than a restaurant, yet I wasn’t going to turn it down when I found out some people were going.

We sat in a back room, which almost looked like a real restaurant, despite the fact that you still had to go through the bar area to get there.

I deliberated with the menu for quite a long time, since a lot of the burgers and sandwiches looked really good. Ultimately, thought, I decided I needed to add some spice to my meal, so I ordered the Buffalo Chiicken Wrap, which came with bleu cheese, lettuce, tomato and ranch dressing. The lettuce and tomato would not make a good unvegan meal, so I ordered without. The wrap also came with a side order, so I asked for the mac and cheese.

When my plate came, I looked upon it with fury. Someone had decided that a pickle would go nicely with a perfectly unvegan meal. This was terrible news, and had to remove the offending vegetable before proceeding with the eating. Luckily, the wrap looked like it was prepared according to my needs.

I started eating and was pretty happy with what I tasted. The wrap was definitely lacking in the aforementioned ranch sauce, but it still had a tasty buffalo sauce. The mac and cheese made a great side, but I was sad when I finished the thing about two bites.

The Tavern on Main turned out to be a decent place to eat. The wrap was ultimately pretty generic, but they did generic pretty well.

When you walk into Kaya Sushi, there is a massive glass waterfall blocking your way. Do not be deterred, though, because you can easily circumvent this waterfall by walking to the left or right. If you make it past, you’ll find yourself in the posh new sushi restaurant in El Segundo.

The place had an apparent brush with Korean as well as Japanese, since the lettering in their logo was distinctly Korean and there were even a few Korean items on the menu. Their sushi roll list was quite extensive, but I managed to find the least sushi-ish dish on the menu for myself.

This glorious piece of work was called the Kaya Taco Roll and consisted of spicy tuna and avocado in an egg roll skin, deep fried and topped with mozzarella cheese and with some sweet eel sauce. I ordered the delicious-sounding roll with intense excitement. While waiting, we all were given some miso soup to sip on, but this was fluff compared to the roll I was so excited about.

When my roll arrived, I looked upon it in disappointment. Topping each section of the roll was half of a cherry tomato. Nowhere on the menu did it say that I would be forced to look upon a tomato trying to impersonate a cherry. Luckily there were no veggie bits tucked inside the rolls and the tomatoes were pretty easy to remove with my agile chopstick abilities.

With the tomato party crashers removed, I was free to dig in on my roll. This was the way sushi should be eaten. Each bite was tastier than the next, and even better when dipped in that eel sauce. The tuna and avocado danced on my taste buds and the mozzarella made it all taste better. I think it’s strange that other than cream cheese, cheese has not been experimented much with sushi. It’s time for this to change, because cheese makes everything better.

Kaya Sushi gave a me a completely new outlook on sushi. In the Sushi Kaya world, sushi is a much more ambiguous term than I had always thought. It paved the way for me to order something I never before would have considered sushi, and it was delicious. Now if only they could tell me ahead of time that they will be tainting my experience with cherry tomatoes.

Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to find that Marked5, one of LA’s multitude of food trucks, was making its way down to El Segundo, just in time for my lunch hour. I looked up Marked5 online real quickly to make sure I knew what I was getting into and saw that their menu consisted of a sort of American and Japanese fusion. They made burgers, but instead of regular buns, they used rice. I had no idea how this would work without the rice falling apart, but I was eager to find out.

When I got there, there was a line of people waiting for food, but most had already ordered. I quickly looked at the menu of $5 burgers and knowing I may never see the truck again, I decided to order two of them. The variety wasn’t too shabby for a food truck, but I went with the Torakku Beef and Chicken Curry. I asked for them both without vegetables and also got a fried egg for the beef burger.

It took about 20 minutes for them to make my burger, which isn’t long for a restaurant, but is pretty long when you’re just standing and waiting outside of a truck. Finally my name was called and when I went to grab my food, the guy told me to eat them kind of like a burrito. This meant I should keep the burgers wrapped in paper except for the part I was currently biting into. This would ensure that bit didn’t pop out the back and probably also kept the rice buns from falling apart.

First, I tested out the beef burger. According to the menu, it was marinated in a

secret Torakku sauce. I bit in and it tasted a bit fishy. Like literally. I found that the back of the bun was connected with seaweed, but I still hadn’t bitten down to that point. Perhaps their special Torakku sauce had some fish-like ingredients. If this was true, it didn’t really go well with the beef. I loved the idea behind putting seaweed on the bun in a sort of throwback to old-fashioned onigiri, but there was just so much that the taste of it overpowered the taste of the beef. Plus, I found onions on the burger that had to be picked out. The beef burger left me a bit disappointed and I hoped my backup burger would be better.

I bit into the Chicken Curry burger and was pleasantly surprised with what I found. The chicken was deep-fried in a cutlet style. It was covered in tasty Japanese curry that somehow didn’t make the fried parts all soggy. It wasn’t the best curry I’d ever had, but certainly the best that has been served to me from a truck. This burger was definitely a mess to eat and even the paper wrapping couldn’t save me from needing two napkins. It was all worth it, though. I never thought I would eat chicken cutlet curry as a sandwich, but now that I have, my life is in a much better place.

A little word on these buns. Despite keeping them in their wrappings, I was pretty amazed at how they stayed together. There were points during the eating of my burgers where the outer part of the buns were crispy and although in regular rice this would mean overcooked, I looked at more like a bun that had been toasted to make it taste better. Also, eating that much rice got pretty heavy. I ate two burgers just because I wanted to taste them both, but one burger and a side would probably be enough to keep the average person full.

With that said, if I ever hear Marked5 is back in my neck of the woods again, I will be sure to follow them to get another Chicken Curry burger. It just goes to show that fusion food trucks don’t need to be limited Asian food combined with Mexican.

The most exciting food news to hit El Segundo since Chipotle is most certainly The Habit. Taking over the dilapidated former building of the Grand Cafe, The Habit put up signs months ago and began renovations. Just this week they opened for business, and I knew it was time for me to see what The Habit was all about.

When I arrived, the line was coming out the door. I hoped and prayed that the line would move fast and my wish was granted. In only five-ish minutes I was at the counter and ready to order. The menu is pretty basic if you stick to burgers, but they also offer salads and other non-burger sandwiches. On the menu, the burgers are called charburgers, which really leaves the impression that they will be overcooked. I hoped this wouldn’t be true and ordered the BBQ Bacon Char. Cheese cost me an extra 50 cents, which I wouldn’t have noticed if they had just added the change to the regular price, but since they didn’t I was a little upset. Honestly, who (without a lactose intolerance) orders a burger

without cheese these days? By default, the burgers included mayo, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes and caramelized onions. I ordered mine without any of those offensive toppings, then ordered fries and a chocolate malt.

There was about a ten minute wait before they called my number, but I was happy to find that the burger was exactly as I had ordered it. The meat was pretty good and not at all charred. The bacon was nice and crisp, just the way I like it. I was a bit disappointed by the overall size of my burger, which would have to be a lot thicker to quench my meaty appetite. The fries were cooked perfectly, despite being a little over-salted. The malt was actually pretty disappointing, as it tasted virtually the same as a milkshake should have. For the extra 50 cents that it cost me to get the malt, they should have put in a much heftier amount of malt powder.

In all, despite the diminutive scale of the burger, I left The Habit fully stuffed. And the best part was that the whole meal cost me less than 10 bucks. In fact the receipt came out to exactly $9.99 including tax. Not too shabby.