When you need breakfast or brunch in Encino, where do you go? Well, when the opportunity presented itself to me I found myself at Claudine, which is like a bakery and restaurant in one. You order at a counter, and seats are hard to come by on the weekend, but I managed to snag a table right out from under an old lady. To be fair, all she needed was 2 seats and we needed 6 so I found another table for her. Sheesh.

As for the foodstuffs, there was one thing on the menu that called my name annoyingly loudly. It was called Breakfast “Naan”-zza, which is fancy bakery-speak for pizza on a piece of naan bread. The menu said this was to be topped with gruyere, sausage, bacon, a farm egg, jalapeno relish and grilled onions. I wanted nothing to do with the onions and ordered thusly. While Claudine heeded my order, they failed to tell me that this naan-zza would come topped with a devious handful of arugula.

I don’t know what the hell they were thinking, but you cannot be so damn careless with arugula. Maybe they thought that nearly $13 for a mini pizza with those toppings would be an easier pill to swallow if they added one more ingredient? However, this was subtraction by addition and it’s one thing to throw the mess in a bowl or on the side, but strewn atop my pizza was something that could not be forgiven. And that’s a real shame, because everything else about the naan-zza was great, including the explosive yolk of the egg.

Instead of leaving Claudine singing the praises of the naan-zza, all I was left with were the thoughts of what might have been.

The drive from North Hollywood to Encino on the 101 during a Friday lunch hour is quite possibly the worst 10 mile stretch of road in the nation. Yet, to meet my girlfriend for lunch, I made that drive without seeing nary a Brennan Frasier-shaped caveman. We met at Coral Tree Cafe and after such a terrible drive I was craving some comfort food to counter the traffic blues I was feeling. We walked up to the counter to order and my eyes quickly made contact with their Baked Macaroni and Cheese. It wasn’t what you would consider an ideal food for a 90+ degree day in the Valley, but looked like it would hit the spot.

This wasn’t your average, run of the mill baked mac and cheese either. Sure, they threw in multiple cheeses like sharp cheddar, monterey jack and parmesan, but they kicked it up one step further with Danish blue cheese. Then they topped it all off with a Panko flake crust. When I first dug in, I was greeted with the bluest mac and cheese I had ever tasted. But where I typically think of blue as sort of a dry cheese, this stuff was as creamy as Eric Clapton. The Panko added some delicious crunch to the mac and cheese and I devoured it with all my heart and possibly some other vital organs.

As the consumption continued, I found myself a bit overwhelmed by the blue cheese. Yes, blue cheese was an awesome and welcome addition to the cheese-fest, but it actually got to the point where I could hardly taste the other cheeses. In fact, towards the end I even dipped one of the pieced of bread that came on my plate into the cheese sauce in an attempt to buffer the blue a little bit.

Yet, there are far worse things to be done to a mac and cheese than putting in too much blue cheese. So, Coral Tree Cafe, I applaud you for getting creative with your mac. Tone down the blue a little bit and I would consider another trip to Encino in lieu of busting out another box of Kraft.

So apparently it’s been a while since I’ve had Burger King. In fact, since starting my meat blog I hadn’t set foot into a BK until now. Was there a reason for this? No, not really, except for the fact that I feel like LA has such better options for fast food burgers. Yet, with their new Smoky Cheddar Steakhouse XT, I felt like they deserved a visit.

I ordered a combo meal and made sure to order the burger my way. Hey, if any place is going to cater to an unvegan like me, it should be the place that once boasted, “Have it your way.”

I unwrapped the burger and found that no veggies had touched it. But I also found a most unappetizing burger. Burger King claims to flame-broil their burgers. This patty looked like it had fallen into the flames and was used to cook the rest of the burgers. It was essentially black on the outside.

But maybe they were trying some new sort of char-broiling method. I guess I wouldn’t find out until I bit in. New method or not, this thing was burnt and dry. And it wasn’t just the outside, the inside was also dry and pretty tasteless. There was a distinct smoky flavor, but I wasn’t sure if that was from the BBQ sauce or because the burger had literally just been on fire.

I made it through the whole burger, but not happily. This was supposed to be larger than the average fast food burger, but it seemed as though most of the size had been burned off.

Had the Smoky Cheddar Steakhouse XT actually come from a steakhouse, I would have sent it back. I know it’s fast food, but it should still resemble real food. I guess there was a reason I hadn’t been to Burger King in so long.