‘Mid City’
Sausages are all the rage these days, and why shouldn’t they be? Who can turn down a good old fashioned tube and a nice brewski? For once, I could. You see, while I headed to Wirtshaus in Mid-City fully intending to tackle some sort of “wurst,” I surprised myself by going in a different direction. This direction was that of pretzel and schnitzel (and never fear, for I made sure to take down a brewski as well).
EDIT: Cooks County is now running around town going by the name of Market Provisions. No idea what that means for the food.
You may think that as a meat blogger I am constantly defining which restaurants my girlfriend and I eat at. Often that is the case, and for no other reason than that people are constantly giving me suggestions, but this weekend we reversed the trend and she took me out to dinner at a place from her own to-eat list. The place was Cooks County in Mid-City and although a quick Google search will reveal no county named Cooks, there is certainly at least one Cook County (in Illinois), which may be some sort of basis for the naming of this restaurant.
Once upon a time, I read an interesting review of The Tar Pit on LAist. It wasn’t exactly positive, but it only covered their happy hour and seemed to be more concerned with Chef Mark Peel’s children running around than with the food itself. Most disheartening, though, was Peel’s comments to the review. Needless to say, such a big time chef should not have been so concerned about one bad review and his concern made me less likely to go than the review itself. Yet, to The Tar Pit I went, and I was glad for it.
Rick Bayless is apparently a pretty big deal, and not just because he got his PhD at the University of Michigan. No, he is actually a famous chef who specializes in Mexican food. Now, when I headed off to dinner at Red O, I was entirely unaware of both the existence of man named Rick Bayless and the fact the Red O’s kitchen was run by him that he was Red O’s consulting chef. Clearly this was not going to be an everyday ordinary Mexican meal. The exterior had a design reminiscent of the Bird’s Nest in Beijing. The interior wasn’t too shabby either, but this style came at a price. One of our party was sporting khaki shorts and was nearly denied entry, despite everyone else in the restaurant wearing shorts. This almost knocked the place down a notch to me, but I was willing to forgive if they could deliver some amazing food.
Taking advantage of a special from Living Social, the girlfriend and I headed to Cobras & Matadors in Mid-City for a bit of a date night. The place specializes in tapas and is BYO with a slight corkage fee. We forgot the booze, so had to make up for it in food instead. The deal was for 70 bucks worth, so that meant we had a lot of tapas to eat. As usual, I eyed cheeses and meats, and was happy to be eating small plates because so much looked good.
On a beautiful morning, I got a call from my buddy who wanted to grab some brunch. He suggested Dougboys over in Mid-City. From what I’ve heard of Doughboys, I expected there to be a huge line, so I wasn’t too into the idea, but we still decided check it out with the intention to go somewhere else if the line was long. Fortunately, we found a manageable line and the fact that there were only two of us made the wait just about 5 minutes.
On a Saturday night the girlfriend and I were sitting around feeling lazy. Neither of us had eaten dinner, and we weren’t terribly hungry, but we knew that we needed some sort of food in our systems. It had to be light, and as I looked over my list of restaurants I wanted to try, only one seemed to tickle our fancies. This was a remotely new (8 months or so) restaurant called Tinga, in Mid-City.
The interior of Tinga has a nice wooden atmosphere that is almost like a bar except that it is BYO. In the middle of the small seating area is a long communal table and the walls are lined with stools. The ordering takes place at the counter and although the full menu is on the side wall, they also have paper menus for those who don’t want to stare awkwardly over the shoulders of fellow patrons.
Every once in a while, my girlfriend likes to say how much she wants to go to Campanile for grilled cheese night. Of course, this night is only on Thursdays and whenever I ask what she wants to eat on a Thursday, she has no opinion. Finally, after talking about it so much, the two thought processes finally collided and we made our way to Campanile on an actual Thursday for their grilled cheese night.
To grab some dinner, and take advantage of one of our seemingly endless restaurant gift cards, the girlfriend and I headed to Maggiano’s Little Italy next to The Grove. When we arrived, there was a pretty long line, but their bar had a first come, first served policy that had the full menu and we quickly found ourselves a nice table there.
Although Maggiano’s is a national chain, I’d never been and dove right in to the menu head first. I found a few things that looked great and had a hard time narrowing down to an appetizer and main course. Fortunately, I found that one of the main courses I was staring down also repeated as an appetizer. Such genius. This was the four cheese ravioli, mmm four cheeses. These were in some pesto-alfredo sauce with mozzarella. After a little browning in the oven, this ravioli looked great and tasted just as good as it looked. The pesto sauce was nice and creamy and although the marinara sauce was unnecessary, it was nice to feel thought-of.
Inspired by my own awesome burger list and having passed the new place last week, my girlfriend and I headed to Burger Kitchen on 3rd Street over the weekend. The place just opened two weeks before, so I figured it had worked out enough its kinks and was ready for a good old unvegan review. After looking over the 22 burgers (including one for $50 and another for $65!) for a bit and having a hard time deciding, the girlfriend discovered a great deal, The Champagne Brunch.