A couple of years ago, some dude named Ilan Hall from Top Chef opened a restaurant in downtown LA called The Gorbals. The food scene of LA was pretty excited, and so was I, but downtown is a bitch to get to. So I waited. And waited. Until finally, a 30% off deal came to me from Blackboard Eats and I realized I had a golden opportunity to brave the nighttime downtown traffic.

I tried in vain to get a reservation, but despite being 2 years old, it was still impossible to get one at a good hour. In lieu of this, the girlfriend and I decided to take an adventure and risk a long line. Arriving around 6:30, we found no line and a good amount of empty tables, so we figured we were golden. And we sure were wrong. Apparently every table was reserved and would be until sometime past 9:00. This was absurd, but fortunately the bar had some seats and the full menu, so we made our way there and checked out the goods.

The signature dish, or at least the most well-known, of The Gorbals is the Bacon Wrapped Matzoh Balls. Yes, this is sacrilege on a plate, or what some might call a fusion of Ilan Hall’s Jewish and Celtic ancestry. We tried them out and found them to be an interesting dish. A matzoh ball out of soup has a strange texture and is not necessarily bad, but also not possibly as delicious as my mom makes them. They came in a creamy horseradish sauce that I would usually expect on gefilte fish, instead of matzoh, but it worked well enough. The bacon wrapping was a nice touch, but I felt like these were more of a tasty gimmick than a truly amazing dish.

But the next three items we ordered really were amazing. The first was Bone Marrow. This guy came with toast, walnuts and garlicky oyster mushrooms with malt vinegar. Unfortunately, The Gorbals has a no addition, subtraction or substitution policy, so the mushrooms remained, but my girlfriend was more than happy to eat them up. I love me some bone marrow and this was definitely a nice cut of bone. It wasn’t as jelly-ish as marrow can sometimes be and the texture worked really well with the toast.

The toast with the bone marrow, however, was not the only toast to be had this evening. We also ordered the Welsh Rarebit, a big slice of toast topped with beer cheese and a fried egg. Beer can be a pretty difficult thing to cook with, but whatever they used for this rarebit was awesome. It had a distinct beer-y taste that was probably from a heavy stout or porter, but didn’t have the nasty or skunked beer taste that can sometimes come from cooked beer. The egg could have been a bit runnier, but coupled with the beer cheese, it didn’t taste dried out at all.

Finally, there were the Chicken Croquettes. These fried little balls of awesome were served with a sambal honey mayo, which gave them a nice, sweet spiciness. As opposed to other croquettes I’ve consumed, these weren’t very oily and avoided tasting dry by having that sambal honey mayo.

Surprisingly, we were both full after those four dishes. I expected to be hungry for more, and certainly I was ready to try The Gorbals again, but my full stomach stopped me from ordering anymore. Surprisingly, when the bill came, even the pre-30% price was really quite reasonable. You don’t really expect that from a “Top Chef restaurant and it was pretty refreshing. The Gorbals is definitely worth visiting, but just be prepared to eat around some vegetables.

Although it seems like the last Dine LA Restaurant Week ended a couple months ago, it seems that it has returned, which means a lot of food and some difficult choices for the unvegan. These difficult choices usually stem from the fact that it is tough to find a veggie-free prix fixe menu. Fortunately, Culver City has a relatively new restaurant called Waterloo & City with an unvegan-friendly restaurant week menu.

Waterloo & City is named after a Tube line in London that consists of two stops – one called Waterloo and the other called…Village. Wait, no, it’s called City. As you may be able to guess by the name, the restaurant serves English food. That’s right, English food, also known as the worst international food ever. The kind of food where when people go to England, the favorite thing they ate was Indian. Well somehow the English food at Waterloo & City had garnered the place accolades for being one of the best new restaurants in LA, so despite the ancestry of their food, they had to be doing something right.

The appetizer that appealed to my unvegan sensibility the most was their Pan Fried Blood Cake, which came with fried organic egg and toasted pain poilane (which is just fancy-speak for toast). I wasn’t entirely sure what blood cake was, so before committing, I asked the waitress and she told me it was really like a cake made with pig blood and pig fat. I guess blood cake sounds a little better than fat cake, so that’s where the name blood cake came from. With a tinge of fear, I ordered it, still not quite knowing what to expect. When it did arrive, I was at first disappointed by the heirloom tomatoes upon my cake. I brushed these off and then took a look at the blood-splattered plate. Not exactly red velvet, the cake looked like Hannibal Lecter’s version of marble cake. Unlike your average cake, this was like a spread, which I wiped across a piece of toast. Then I took a bit of egg to put on top and bit in.

It’s kind of hard to explain the taste, which wasn’t bad at all, but also wasn’t especially good. It was kind of like a savory jam, where the bits of fat were like chunks of fruit and the rest of it tasted kind of like your own blood when you cut yourself. Do to my lack of experience with eating blood, I can’t really say if Waterloo & City did a very good job, but I can say I was glad I tried it and don’t really have any desire to try it again.

With the blood gone, I moved onto my main course, a Prime Beef and Bone Marrow Pie, with Potato Puree. Since this dish wasn’t on the normal menu, I kind of expected it to be some sort of mass-produced Shepherd’s Pie with marrow, but it turned out to be no such thing. Instead, it was a massive, yet individual pot-pie-looking dish that resided in a pan with a giant marrow bone sticking out of the middle. And the potato puree wasn’t even part of it and came on the side in its own bowl. Although the thing was taking forever to cool, I couldn’t wait and started digging in. Inside the delicious, crispy crust, I found some of the meatiest and tastiest pie-filling in the world. After some mild mouth and tongue burns, I found the beef inside this pie was perfectly tender, juicy and flavorful. Plus, every bite got a nice little spoonful of marrow, which add some nice gelatinous flavor to the already-perfect pie. The potato puree made an unnecessary, but delicious addition to the meal. Where the pie packed a powerful punch of flavor, the puree sort of balanced the mouth out with a much simpler flavor.

I also ate some of the House Merguez & and Slow Cooked Lamb Shoulder, which the girlfriend had ordered. Unbeknown to us, the Merguez was actually a sausage. I would think an English restaurant would have food items written in plain English, but this was not the case. Luckily the sausage was tasty, but it wasn’t as good as the slow-cooked lamb shoulder, which was so tender it almost melted like butter in your mouth. I think we both would have liked if the dish had a higher lamb shoulder to sausage ratio, but it was still a nice dish.

Finally, there were the desserts. Since there were only two choices, we each got one of them. The first was the Glazed Doughnuts with Jam and Custard. These looked more like doughnut holes, but also looked nothing short of delicious. Glistening in the dim light, I couldn’t wait to take a bite, and when I did I was not disappointed. Differing from normal doughnuts in the US, the English doughnut was less cakey and more bready. There was no lack of sweet, though, as the glaze was loaded with what I thought was caramelized sugar. The best part of the doughnuts actually happened to be the salt crystals that had been sporadically sprinkled upon them. This added a subtle, but much-needed balance to the doughnuts.

The second dessert was Sticky Toffee Pudding with Milk Ice Cream (didn’t realize there were other kinds of ice cream, other than vegan). By the time it arrived, the ice cream was mostly melted, so that was a bit disappointing. On the other hand, the toffee flavor was really good and almost made up for the ice cream. The doughnuts ended up being the better dessert, but had the ice cream been unmelted, the matchup would have fared better for the toffee pudding.

My Restaurant Week experience at Waterloo & City was a surprisingly delicious experience. The surprising part was because it was English, but the positive reviews I had heard turned out to be correct.

On of the big perks of running a meat blog is the number of restaurants people recommend to me. I always do my best to check these places out, but no restaurant has been recommended to me quite as voraciously as Animal Restaurant. But Animal is not the kind of restaurant you visit every day. It resides in that level of restaurants deemed “For Special Occasion Only.” But last week a special occasion rolled around: my birthday. And to celebrate the fact that I have remarkably survived on this planet for 26 years, my perfect girlfriend wanted to celebrate by taking me to dinner at Animal. Like I said, perfect.

When I arrived, Animal wasn’t quite what I expected. First off, there was no signage (save for an old Muppets lunchbox with Animal on it) inside or outside the place letting you know its name. Also, it was surprisingly fancy-looking. I had kind of expected a badass sort of restaurant to match the name, but instead the place was kind of mood-lit and snazzy. Fortunately for me, the interior of a restaurant is of little consequence to the taste of the food.

Before even looking at the menu, I took a quick look at the drink selection. There were some unique-looking beers and since I didn’t want to cause any taste bud conflicts with my food, I ordered the simplest, called Mama’s Little Yella Pils ($5). Then we got to looking at the great selection of food on the menu. The menu is constantly changing and it looked like we had caught them on a good night. It was tough to choose from all the great animal-based options, but we finally got our choices down to five. I know five seems ludicrous, but the food here was kind of a middle-ground between tapas and entrees. We also had to be particularly picky with our choices, because the menu said, “changes and modifications politely declined.” So without further adieu, here’s what we got:

Quail Fry ($15)

The menu said this came with grits, chard, slab bacon and maple jus (not pronounced “juice” which to me would simply be syrup). Being fried, this quail pretty much doubled in size. The breading on the bird was some of the best I’ve ever had. In fact, I found myself eating the crumbs long after the bird had been fully consumed. The quail itself was pretty tasty and since quail isn’t exactly a meaty bird, the bacon was a great addition. It was perfectly crunchy and flavorful. The grits were more creamy than usual, but some of the most flavorful I’ve ever had. Finally there was the chard, which I was able to fully avoid thanks to the girlfriend.

Marrow Bone ($9)

The bone came with chimichurri and caramelized onions. Although onions are one of the banes of my existence, I decided to trust the geniuses at Animal on this one. Marrow was definitely something I wanted to eat here and I wasn’t going to let some onions get in the way of that. It also came with two slices of toast to spread the marrow on. I’m not really sure what creature the bone came from (possibly lamb?), but I do know that it would have been happy in death, knowing how masterfully its bone marrow would be prepared. The gelatinous marrow tasted great on the toast and the chimichurri had an almost pesto-like flavor to add to the jelly. I probably could have done without the onions, but they were a necessary evil for me to make my way into the marrow.

Barbeque Pork Belly Sandwiches ($12)

These little sandwiches weren’t even on our radar until we saw another table order them. Although they came with slaw, I knew I had to get some pork belly in my own belly that night. As many people know, pork belly is the basis for bacon, so you know you can’t go too wrong. Even though the sandwiches came covered in slaw, I managed to scrape all the bits of mayo-ey lettuce off of mine.

Then I got down to business. Wow, this sandwich was amazing. To start, the bun was buttery, crispy and all-around joyful. I would have been happy to eat the bun alone, but it was even better with the belly. The barbecue sauce slathered on the pork was delicious and belly itself was cooked perfectly. Sometimes pork belly can be too fatty and flavorless, but this belly of pork was like a dream come true…in my mouth. It was definitely the highlight of my meal.

Poutine ($15)

To start off I have to be clear that this is simply not poutine. Sorry, Animal, but you can’t just throw gravy, fries and cheese together and call it poutine. It’s gotta be made with cheese curds. Any other cheese just doesn’t cut it. With that said, this mix of fries, oxtail gravy and shredded cheddar cheese was still mighty tasty. The fries miraculously remained crispy through the end and the oxtail was tender and delicious. It was more of a stew on fries, which was great once I pushed the thought of this being poutine out of my mind. My only complaint was that by the end, the dish became too salty. Obviously I should expect that with such a mix of foods, but I still like to think it could have somehow been avoided.

Flat Iron ($25)

The steak came with asparagus hash and truffle parmesan fondue. It was the last of our pre-dessert items and we were both pretty stuffed by the time it arrived. In fact, even though we ordered it medium-rare, it took a solid fifteen minutes to reach our table after we had finished the “poutine.” The steak was drenched in the parmesan sauce, but we found our way to the meat and started slicing away. The steak itself was pretty good, but I felt like it was a bit overwhelmed by the sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love combining cheese and steak, but this sauce just seemed like it could have found a better place atop some kind of chicken. Nonethless, like every other dish, it had been cooked perfectly. I avoided the asparagus, but the potatoes it came with tasted great with the sauce.

After all this, the meal was not quite over yet. We still had to find the small spots in our stomachs for dessert. We decided to try out two of the four choices. The first was the obligatory Bacon Chocolate Crunch Bar ($7). This was a slab of chocolate with little bits of bacon sprinkled across the top. I’ve had bacon chocolate before and didn’t really love it, and sadly the same was true for this bar. It had nothing to do with the bacon, though. I actually felt like the bacon was the best part of the bar, but the chocolate was just too rich for me. Admittedly, I’m not a chocolate lover, so the allure of this dessert might just be lost on me.

We also ordered the Pound Cake ($7), which came with “macerated” strawberries and cream. I don’t know what macerated means, but I’m pretty sure it’s violent and I completely condone violence against strawberries. This was definitely my favorite of the two desserts. Sometimes it’s just good to wash down a meal of meat with some fruity goodness.

Finally, we were stuffed. We had eaten the meat of at least five different animals (quail, pig, sheep, ox, cow) and so much more. Each dish was amazing, with my favorite being those pork belly sandwiches. Unfortunately, for a restaurant called Animal, they happened to use a lot of vegetable ingredients. I was able to avoid most of these, but it would have been nice to order without them. Yet, these vegetables were a necessary evil that I had to overcome in order to have one of the best meals of my life. Thanks Bina!