As you might expect, there are a number of harbors in Southern California. Some are better than others, but the best are full of a series of shops and restaurants. Dana Point has one of those harbors and in fact it harbors a restaurant called Harbor Grill. Most people would expect to get seafood at such a place and that probably would have been a wise decision, but I am not most people.

Instead, I ordered a burger. It was creatively named the Bacon Burger and came with cheese, mushrooms and onions. I had no need for the mushrooms and onions, so I ordered without and asked the burger to be cooked medium-rare.

When the burger came out, it appeared that the mushrooms and onions had been replaced with half of a salad on a bun. The good news was that it was served open-faced and I could easily remove those nasty veggies. After the removal I persisted and found the burger to be decent. Bacon was crispy, cheese was cheddar and melty. The patty itself could have used some more thought, but alas this was a seafood restaurant.

If I went back I would probably get the burger again. It wasn’t anything to write home about, and hardly something to write in a meat blog about, but it sure beats seafood almost any day.

There can be no doubt that I am a man who loves his poutine. In a lot of senses I am a purist, but when a place gets the right kind of creative I can get behind it. The Kroft in Tustin, Orange County started lighting up my social media feed months ago with some beautiful food pics. It took a while to find an excuse to get down there, but when I did I couldn’t help but make a stop.

It took a lot of chatting with the woman behind the counter, but I finally decided on the Country Fried Chicken Poutine. It came with country gravy as opposed to the usual thin beef gravy, chicken nuggets, bacon, cheese curds (because without that you can’t call it poutine) and a little bit of green onion. Oh, and of course a base of fries.

I had never had such a poutine before, but wow this was good. There was plenty of cheese and the chicken nuggets were really fried boneless chicken as opposed to the kind you might find at a fast food spot. The country gravy was really tasty, but the one thing it was lacking was the ability to add enough lubrication to the poutine. Thus, I had to occasionally grab some water to help continue moving the food down the gullet. Regardless, the poutine was packed with delicious flavor and a great balance of all of the flavors.

The only trouble was that I was alone. Had I been with others, I would have loved to try so many more things. As it was, I was stuck with just one (albeit delicious) poutine. Fortunately, there’s another location in LA that I can get to much easier should the need for creative poutine like this again.

San Clemente is a quaint little town on the California coast that is definitely worth a visit. And if you make it down there, you could do a whole lot worse than a visit to H.H. Cotton’s, a gastropub right in the middle of town. We wound up there completely by accident, but then isn’t that the way many great stories begin?

While the little one was distracted by football, I went ahead and ordered The Longhorn, based on my waitress’s recommendation. The Longhorn, by the way, is a burger topped with bacon, chopped brisket, crispy shallots, cheddar and BBQ sauce. As for my side, I opted for fries. Try out the Phentermine alternatives.

When it arrived it looked pretty basic. Just a nice, reasonable burger topped with a reasonable amount of delicious toppings. But then I turned my plate around and was greeted with what looked like a bun vomiting out toppings. Like, in a good way. This burger turned out to be filled to the brim with unvegan goodness. It was all I could do to stem the tide and begin the feeding.

It turned out that there was nothing to complain about with the burger. Each flavor shone through in delicious meaty, cheesy or fried up glory. It wasn’t easy to eat, but I did it with gusto. The burger was even cooked medium-rare.

The Longhorn doesn’t exactly earn points for creativity, but it was certainly a well-executed beast (or combination of beasts) and I am a sucker for a load of meat. Regardless, it was definitely the best burger I’ve had in Orange County, which should mean something, right?

Yes, you read that right: A First Time for Olive Garden. Somehow this Italian chain restaurant, which finds itself in every big or small city in the country, has evaded me for my whole life. But on Friday that all changed. I found myself at Olive Garden for the first time and I was eager to find out what all the fuss was about. It all started with bread sticks.

Of all the things I had heard about Olive Garden in my life, the bread sticks always seemed to stick in people’s minds. And with good reason. These light, fluffy bread sticks were seasoned with the perfect amount of butter, garlic and salt. Plus, they just keep coming until the real meal comes. Of course, by then you are so stuffed with these bread sticks you wish you had ordered the rest of your meal to go.

As for the main course, they all seemed to come with a soup or salad. Both of these were also unlimited and I chose the chicken and gnocchi soup. This creamy soup was the first time I had ever experienced gnocchi outside of a normal dish. I was surprised to find that those delicious potato dumplings worked great in soup, making it almost like gnocchi with a watery alfredo sauce.

And in order to get said soup, I first had to order a main dish. That dish of choice was the Five Cheese Ziti al Forno. I had a hard time making this choice because I wanted something meaty, but I couldn’t resist getting five cheeses in my belly. When the dish I arrived I added one more cheese to the mix – fresh grated parmesan. Then I went to work on devouring my dish. It was pretty delicious. The sauce was light and not overpowering, but still packed some great flavor. Although there was marinara involved, the cheese was definitely the dominant flavor. I would have liked some meat in it, but it was still a tasty meal.

So after holding out for 26 years, Olive Garden was definitely worth the wait. The unlimited bread sticks, creamy gnocchi soup and ziti were just what I would have expected from the place and although the main course didn’t blow me away, it still did what it had to do.

Just off of Main Street in Disneyland, there is a little cart that sells corn dogs. But these are not just any corn dogs, these are dogs of corn that personify the Disney difference. Where another theme park might be content to boil up some prepackaged corn dogs, the corn dogs of this stand are battered and boiled in-cart. Although a typical corn dog isn’t nearly enough to fill up this unvegan, I was told these were some heavy dogs and took my chances on just one.

Coming in at $5.99, the dogs come with a choice of chips or apple slices. Having tackled a half-pound burger for lunch and just about do down a similarly-sized corn dog, I opted for the apple slices. Within moments, my corned dog was ready for eating. We headed into the restaurant nearby to escape from the freezing (50 degree) weather and sat down to chow on some dogs.

This was one hell of a huge hot dog. It was hard just to get my mouth around it, but when I did, I bit into something delicious. This was a corn dog done just perfectly. It was nice and crispy on the outside, warm and gooey on the inside and had that delicious tube steak in the middle to provide balance. To steal a line from There’s Something About Mary, “I don’t think there are enough meat on sticks” and a corn dog like this proves the point. Not only that, but you know how a hot dog or even a corn dog is seldom enough food for a whole meal? This corn dog was some heavy stuff, so full of fried Disney magic that I was pretty sure it would settle in my stomach for happily ever after. When I was done even the apple slices seemed like too much to eat.

For the size, price, taste and heaviness, the corn dog cart off of Main Street is a great place to grab a meal at Disneyland. It doesn’t seem like much, but the supposed snack is a true meal that packs a punch of meat and won’t keep you away from the rides for too long.

In my most recent trip to the land of Disney, I encountered many new experiences. In one, I found myself on a train traveling through the Grand Canyon and the land of dinosaurs. In another, I found myself in a cart shooting darts at 3D plates. But despite the plates, these did not involve actual food until I ended up at the Storytellers Cafe in the Grand Californian hotel of California Adventure.

First off, I didn’t even know the Grand Californian existed, let alone a restaurant within it, but we took our seats and I checked out the menu. In it, I didn’t find the most inspiring dishes, but I did find a great-looking burger. Differing from the burgers typically served in the park, this was a half-pounder with a harvest bun as opposed to the more normal buns. It was offered as turkey, veggie or beef and was cooked in the char-broiled style. I went with beef, of course, ordered it cooked medium and with some fries on the side instead of the fresh fruit that was my other option. I asked if anything else came on it and the waiter told me lettuce and tomato, but he could also throw some onion on it if I wanted. Clearly he had no idea who he was dealing with. I told him I wanted none of it, and hoped he got the message. Then I got a glass of Malbec to join it, because who doesn’t like to drink at Disney?

When my burger came out, it looked like a definite improvement from the typical Disney burgers. Plus, at $11.99 it was hardly more expensive than their regular burgers. Fortunately, I saw that the waiter had recognized my distaste for vegetables, as the burger was left with just cheese and bun. I took a bite and found the bun to be quite delicious, and the burger itself wasn’t too shabby either. As it was char-broiled, it wasn’t exactly cooked medium. Instead, it was brown all the way through, but still pretty good. The cheddar cheese was good, but not too inspired. It was a great burger for California Adventure, but probably something I would have been disappointed in if it had been a fancy burger place. Yet, for the price and the place, I couldn’t complain. And that 40% off cast member business meeting discount certainly helped.

Tuckered out after a day of rides, standing in line and more rides, the girlfriend and I headed to Downtown Disney for some fine dining. We ended up at Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen, a New Orleans-style restaurant. The menu was pretty pricey, even for Downtown Disney, but with my 20% discount, we figured the meal wasn’t outside our price range. We took a seat in their upper level and decided what to order. When the waiter came, I was struggling a bit.

There were some delicious-looking entrees, but each one had a vegetable with it that was not welcome on my plate. The Grilled Medallions of Beef came with bacon and pecan-crusted green beans, while the Black and Blue Filet Mignon had butter-poached asparagus. Leaning more towards the medallions because at least their veggies had bacon, I decided to ask the waiter about substituting. Flashing a Disney smile, he told me I could substitute any of the sides. This pushed me over to the filet ($33), and I substituted the nasty greens for some andouille grits. The filet also came with blue cheese dauphinoise potatoes and was topped with a blueberry-Merlot demi glace. This all seemed to add up to tastiness.

Although I was content with just the filet, the waiter made a quick pitch for their Southern Garlic Cheese Bread ($8) and made it sound so good we had to order it. The bread came out relatively quick and looked beautiful. Cheese was oozing from the inside and I snagged a piece as quickly as I could. It tasted good, but something was missing. The waiter obviously noticed and pointed out the lemon on the plate. He told us it was strange, but effective, so I gave it a shot. And he was right. The lemon added a delicious new dimension to the bread that really made the order worthwhile.

Then came my filet and it looked beautiful. Sitting in a pool of blueberry whatever glaze, I sliced off a piece and found it was cooked perfect. The beef melted in my mouth and the blueberry stuff enhanced the flavor rather than masked it. After a few delicious bites, I took a break from the steak and tried out the sides. The grits turned out to be a delicious companion and also tasted great in the blueberry sauce. I just love that mix of sweet and salty. The potatoes were also an awesome part of the meal. Stacked neatly and sliced into perfect layers, the blue cheese made these potatoes very interesting. I’m more partial to regular old au gratin potatoes, but mixing in some blue cheese wasn’t such a bad thing.

Overall, I was a very impressed unvegan. This was definitely a restaurant that could stand alone outside of Disney. Then it came time to pay and I handed over my badge to get my discount. The bill with the discount applied came back and left us confused. I asked the waiter if the tip had been included and he adamantly stated it wasn’t, then he realized why I was asking. Only 10% had been discounted and apparently that was the policy of the Jazz Kitchen. Somehow they set themselves up a on a pedestal above the rest of Disneyland and didn’t offer the full 20% discount. This left a bad taste in my mouth, but fortunately the meal was good enough that the taste didn’t linger. I probably won’t be back to Jazz Kitchen out of principle, but it is certainly worth trying if you aren’t expecting to get 20% off. And even without any discount, the food is pretty worth it.

Picture a huge grizzly bear wandering the forest and willing to take down anything that stands in the way of its food. Imagine that it stumbles upon a sleeping family out camping for the night. Each of them has bits of food in their tents and the bear can smell it. It tears apart the tents in search of the food and the family barely makes it out alive, carrying battle scars with them. That’s what I think of when I picture a hungry bear, but the folks at Disney probably weren’t thinking about that when they named the Hungry Bear Restaurant. Located in the heart of Critter Country in Disneyland, there was nothing but happiness and little chance of being mauled by a grizzly. We walked the long ramp up to the restaurant to see what the friendly Hungry Bear could offer us.

Although Disneyland has specialty restaurants that serve Italian, French, Mexican and more, Hungry Bear was good old fashioned American food. The type I imagine Walt would have loved. Feeling like a hungry bear myself, I spotted the bacon cheeseburger and never looked back. It came with tomato and lettuce on it, but if I wanted it without, I would have had to wait 10 minutes. My hunger was more powerful than my hatred for vegetables, so I took mine straight up. It cost $9.50, which is a bit overpriced for a burger, but with a little 20% discount, the burger fell into a very reasonable range.

I grabbed the burger at the counter and brought it to my table to undress. After removing the unwanted vegetables, I discovered a bountiful layer of bacon just itching to be devoured by yours truly. I splashed some BBQ sauce on and dug in. Surprisingly, the burger wasn’t bad at all. They had found a pretty good bun, the bacon was tasty and the patty itself wasn’t bad either. It wasn’t cooked to order, so I couldn’t get it cooked medium, but it also wasn’t dry.

Now for the bad part. If I wasn’t at Disneyland and in a sort of captive setting, I might have been a bit disappointed. But considering Disneyland does have a captive audience that is going to need food no matter what they serve, they could have created a burger far worse than this.

Heading into La Sirena Grill in Laguna Beach, I really had no idea what to expect. I had followed a friend there and hoped for the best. Walking in, we were somehow immediately in line to order from the counter. The line wasn’t terribly fast, though, so I had some time to figure out what to order. I was pretty impressed to see that the place used only grass-fed beef and free-range chicken. I don’t usually go out of my way to find restaurants like these, but I’m always happy when I do. Most importantly, though, the price of the food hadn’t been jacked up like it usually is when something is green or organic.

Finally, I made it to the front of the line and ordered some their Chicken Enchiladas Plate. This came with rice, pinto beans and a choice of red or green sauce. I went with green to keep with the theme of the restaurant and then made sure to order without cabbage and pico de gallo. Veggies like these can have a devastating affect on trying to eat a humane meal. After ordering, I filled up a couple cups of salsa from their salsa bar and took a seat to wait for my green meal to come.

The green sauce on the enchiladas was very flavorful, but with very little spice to it. Good thing I had been to the salsa bar and added some hotter salsa to the mix. This made the enchiladas pretty good. The rice and beans were just what you would expect and went nicely with the enchiladas.

La Sirena Grill was a pretty good stop for some reliable Mexican food, and although eating free-range chicken didn’t make the enchiladas taste any better, it made me feel better as a person. What more could an unvegan ask for?

First off, yes I know that Christmas was weeks ago, but sometimes it takes a while to get these meaty blog posts written, so back up off of me! As usual, my Jew Christmas led me to Chinese food. Only this time I was down in Dana Point, Orange County, which isn’t exactly known for a high Jewish population. With luck and a little help from Jesus err umm the internet, I found a Chinese restaurant within walking distance of our beautiful hotel. The place was called Peking Dragon and was surprisingly full. We had to wait a while for our table, but when we were eventually seated, we had spent enough time looking at the menu to figure out exactly what we wanted.

Except then we watched the waiter bring an entire duck out to the table next to us. That was frigging awesome and I scoured the menu to look for their duck section. Peking, of course, is famous for their Peking Duck. Thinking about this reminded me of the time I was in Beijing with my mom and sister. The conversation went kind of like this:

Me: We have to try Beijing Duck while we’re here.

Mom/Sister: What’s the big deal, we only know about Peking Duck.

Me: Well, family, Beijing IS Peking.

So there you have it. Have you always been confused about what happened to the elusive city of Peking? It is now called Beijing and has always been called Beijing by the Chinese, so it’s not one of those crazy Istanbul/Constantinople situations. So there is your daily history lesson, but back to the food!

Unfortunately, the menu stated that duck had to be ordered a day in advance, so we stuck to our original plan. We split the chicken fried rice and I ordered their Garlic Fried Chicken. This chicken was deep fried with garlic green onion and some sort of spicy sauce. I didn’t order it without the green onion, knowing it can be difficult for them to change up orders when it comes to Chinese food. Instead, I hoped the green onion would be minimal.

Our dishes arrived quite fast and looked great. The fried rice, as always, had vegetables in it, which I tried to avoid, but my garlic chicken was almost entirely vegetable-free. Yes, there were a couple tiny green onions, but they were so tiny that anyone but an unvegan may not have noticed them. I delved into my chicken with a hungry fury and my taste buds leapt for joy. It just tasted so good. No, it wasn’t like the food you would get in China, but who cares when it tastes so good? I cleaned my entire plate of chicken, which must have amounted to at least a whole hen. Not to mention all the chicken fried rice I ate.

Peking Dragon was a great stop for a delicious Jewish Christmas dinner, and it’s probably even better on nights when you don’t have to wait in line to be seated behind the rest of the Jews in Orange County seeking sustenance.