A little more than eight months after my first taste of Kogi BBQ, I found myself once again standing in the parking lot of The Brig, eager to take on another food truck inspired by the fusion of Asian and Mexican food. If so much hadn’t changed in the food truck scene of LA since that first taste of Kogi, I would have felt some intense deja vu. Since the arrival of Kogi, it feels like a new food truck is unrolled every week. From the architecturally inspired ice cream sandwiches of Coolhaus to the beautiful women running Baby’s Badass Burger truck, I almost feel like LA offers more food on wheels than it does in restaurants, with more coming. Nonetheless, the official opening of the Vietnamese and Mexican fusion Nom Nom Truck was exciting for me, and I made my way to The Brig in Venice to see if I would have a new friend on wheels.

I arrived before the truck and was happy to find only a short line had

formed. When the truck did arrive, it took about fifteen minutes to get the thing parked correctly. While this was happening, the Fishlips sushi truck arrived to crash the Nom Nom party. Apparently this wasn’t an exclusive event and Fishlips knew there would be a lot of hungry people waiting in line at The Brig. Undaunted by Fishlips, the truck found its place and started preparing for the hungry horde of foodies that had gathered. I glanced back to see that Elijah Wood had taken a spot in the ever-growing line

behind me. This only made me more excited, for it isn’t every day you get to eat the same dinner as Frodo Baggins.

Although the menu on the truck had been placed far from the ordering window, I had determined what I would eat by the time I made my way to

the front of the line. I decided on the Lemongrass Chicken Tacos and made sure to mention Thrillist, since they were giving away either a free taco or spring roll to the first fifty people to mention Thrillist. I asked the nice lady what came on the tacos and she said “Chicken, carrots, jicama, some sort of pickles and cilantro.” True to myself, I asked for mine without the veggies or pickles, then waited to see the result.

When my tacos were ready, they appeared a little bare. I know I ordered without the veggies, but I expected some sort of sauce on it all. That said, there was no lack of chicken. I started eating and was pretty happy. The chicken was pretty good and the cilantro was just kind of there. Luckily the chicken had a little kick, which made sauce a little less necessary. I just couldn’t escape the feeling that without those strange

vegetables on the taco, I was eating something all-too similar to a regular taco truck taco. Perhaps for people who don’t follow the unvegan way, the taco with veggies will be an eye-opening experience. Unfortunately this was not so for me. Perhaps I will have to try again and order one of their Banh Mi sandwiches, but unlike when I first tried Kogi, I don’t feel an immediate need to return to the Nom Nom Truck.

The Green Mill (affectionately referred to as “The Mill”) in Duluth is a place I have to visit every time I’m in the area. It not only has good food and drinks, but it has a great happy hour as well. What used to be 1/2 price appetizers and wings has now become 5 bucks. This isn’t such a big deal, since the prices are still so low.

Through many visits, I finally discovered the best that The Mill has to offer, Dixie Wings. These are wings with a buffalo-like sauce that stings the mouth, but always leaves me wanting more. The Mill is also one of the few places where I opt for boneless wings versus the much manlier wings with bones. For some reason, the Dixie Wing sauce just seems to work so much better with boneless wings.

The only disappointing thing, which I encounter almost every time I order wings of any sort, is the additional veggies. I’m sorry, but I don’t need celery to cool down my mouth after eating hot wings. That’s what beer is for. Luckily these stalks of green had no impact on the taste of my food, other than making my plate look slightly less appetizing.

My friend told me about a relatively new “pizza” place called Riva in Santa Monica. I put pizza in quotes because in my mind a pizza place is like a parlor. This, however, was no parlor. Rather it was a posh and fancy restaurant that happened to have pizza as its specialty.

We took the bar-style seats that had a perfect view of the preparation area and the wood-burning oven. While sitting there, it was really unnecessary to look at the menu, because we could decide what we wanted based on what we saw in front of us.

In this case, I took a slight deviation from my usual unvegan pizzas. Instead of getting the meaty offering, I got the Patate Semplice, which is just a fancy Italian way of saying potato, rosemary, fontina and sea salt pizza.

In the meantime, I enjoyed the appetizer of Wood Fired Pizza Bread. With olive oil, it tasted pretty good, but almost seemed silly to order a partial pizza as I was waiting for a real pizza. Nonetheless, the wait was quite short, as I watched my pizza go in the oven mere moments before it was pulled out fully cooked.

I began eating my fresh pie and immediately encountered a problem. My first couple bites were great, until I discovered a hair in my mouth. The unfortunate discovery came as I was swallowing down and sent the hair irretrievably down through my digestive tract. As this point, I no longer had proof of the hair and couldn’t return my pizza. I tried to get the thought of hair in my stomach out of my head at I continued to eat my pizza. It was pretty good and the potatoes added a unique touch, only I could never get the hair out of my mind.

I know this was an isolated incident, but there really is something to be said about discovering hair at a restaurant. Ordinarily, I would have found the place passable for a fancy pizza restaurant. Instead, I was left with the thought that the pizza was certainly not good enough to merit a return and risk of eating more hair.

For my last meal in Rancho Mirage, I headed to The Right Bank. Why it isn’t called the Left Bank boggles my mind, but at least it isn’t called the West Bank.

As I sat down and looked at the menu, I couldn’t get over how expensive the place was, but then my grandparents revealed to me that just about ever night they offer buy one get one free for entrees. This was a pretty good deal, so I didn’t feel so terrible about ordering something decent.

I decided to get the Almond Chicken , which was only said to be topped with cranberry relish, so I figured it was a safe bet. Every dish comes with carrot croquettes, some sort of veggie soup and salad. This was a bit disappointing, as none of these fit into my eating regiment. Nonetheless, I had a real meal to look forward to. When my meal came out, I was actually impressed by the looks of it, at least aside from the vegetable garnishings that would go untouched. The chicken was actually fully encrusted in almonds. I had never seen this with almond chicken before and it was pretty impressive looking. The almost added a nice crunch to the chicken, kind of like shake and bake but much fancier and crunchier.

In the end, my main course left me fully sated. It would have been nice if it had come with something other than vegetables, but I guess when everything is two for one, I can’t offer up too much of a complaint.

One of the nights that I was visiting my grandparents in Rancho Mirage, we went to a restaurant called Thai Smile. There was a 20 minute wait, but I was assured that it would be worth it. Besides, I really had nothing better to do.

While waiting, we checked out the menu so we could order as soon as we got our table. It really took me a long time to decide what to order because the Chicken Spicy Peanut Sauce looked great except that it had green beans and peppers, while I could just create my own dish, but none of the customizable items looked as good as the chicken dish.

When we did eventually take our seats, I asked the waiter if I could get the Chicken

Spicy Peanut Sauce without the vegetables and he told me they couldn’t, because it was already mixed together. This was disheartening, but I took the chance anyway, hoping the vegetables would be big enough to avoid. My risk paid off, and when my food arrived I found it pretty easy to eat without the vegetables.

The chicken tasted really good and had just enough spice in it to make my nose run and my forehead sweat, but didn’t sacrifice any of the peanut flavor to do so.

Through my sweat and semi-runny nose, Thai Smile’s food really did make me smile. I would definitely go back next time I’m in Rancho.

While visiting my grandparents in Rancho Mirage, they took me to a great little breakfast place called Palms Cafe in Palm Desert. Knowing my grandparents would never lead me astray, I was pretty excited.

We took a seat outside and perused the menu. As most cafes go, they had a pretty good collection of food, but I sought out my favorite breakfast food, the omelet. Since I don’t think I had ever seen turkey offered in an omelet before, I ordered one with turkey and cheese. I also got some bacon on the side.

It came out pretty quickly and was one of the most interesting omelets I’ve ever seen. It almost looked like a breakfast burrito aside from the yellowish color the eggs produced. Inside, it was still similar to a burrito, with the ingredients kind of tossed in instead of cooked into the egg. This was actually pretty nice and a unique way of making an omelet. The turkey was good, although a bit salty and in chunks, rather than slices, which was also a nice change.

The best part, though, was the bacon. It was thick-cut and really crispy. It was so thick, actually, that it didn’t curl up like bacon seems to do when it gets really crispy.

I would definitely recommend the Palms Cafe for anyone looking for a good breakfast in Palms Springs. It offers a nice twist on the norm, but delivers it pretty well.

Bar Pintxo. How the hell do you pronounce this place?  It’s not an easy thing to do. If only the x moved back one letter to be before the t, things would be much easier. Alas, that is the restaurant I went to for some tapas.

Ordering at this tapas bar was kind of a double-edged sword for an unvegan. On one hand, I could take a look at all food available and decide what to order based on which tapas didn’t have vegetables. On the other hand, all the tapas were prepared ahead of time and I couldn’t order without the veggies.

Before, ordering, however, we had to get ourselves some libations. They had Stella Artois on tap for a pretty good price, but being at a tapas place, I ordered a sangria. This was also decently cheap. To start off, we ordered queso de Espana platter, which had some very good cheeses, including picon, idiazabal and manchego. It was slightly lacking in bread, but once we had used up all the bread resources, the waitress was happy to bring us more.

Then we started ordering the rest of our rounds. First we went with two of the best looking unvegan items on the menu. This was the chorizo with fried quail eggs and the dates wrapped in bacon with cabrales cheese. These were both quite a treat. The chorizo came in little pieces rather than in the sausage-like form I was expecting and the quail egg made it even more interesting. The bacon dates were heavenly and although I am not one of those people who advocates adding bacon to everything, sometimes it just finds itself in perfect harmony with other food.

We also ordered the huevos rellenos con vinagreta vasca. Since I hadn’t seen this dish at the bar yet, I ended up being pretty disappointed when it came out. Unfortunately the menu had made no mention that the eggs would be topped with some sort of peppers. I scraped these off pretty easily and was able to salvage at least a little good out of them.

.With that, we moved on from the tapas and ordered a couple main plates. First was the patatas bravas, which was a potato dish with salsa brava and roasted carlic aioli. This dish, although meatless, was really really good. It was so good, in fact, that even though I launched half of a potato covered with sauce onto my shirt and pants, I still had no hard feelings for the dish.

Finally, to finish the meal off, we ordered the tortilla Espanola. Although this came with carmelized onions, I didn’t order it without because my girlfriend wanted them. I figured I would just pick them out when it came. Unfortunately, when it arrived, I found this would be no easy task. Somehow the caramelized onions looked eerily similar to potatoes and I found myself mixing up the two on multiple occasions.

All in all, Bar Pintxo turned out to be a very good experience. It was a bit on the pricey side despite the little dishes all seeming cheap (very deceiving), but worth it for some pretty good tapas.

On my way to Taco Bell one night, I saw a beacon of fluorescence with the name “Teddy’s Cafe” on it. In a bold move, I decided I had to try the place out. On the outside it doesn’t look like much, and the inside is equally plain. Although it was around 9:00 on a Sunday night, the place was totally empty except for me and my eating companions.

A look at the menu showed a wide variety of products, all for an incredibly cheap price. Hoping to have an experience like I did at Mandy’s and possibly attempting to relive Thanksgiving, I ordered the Hot Turkey Sandwich, which came with mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce.

It came out pretty quickly (as you would hope for a restaurant in which you are the lone patrons) and didn’t look half bad. The first few bites were even pretty good. Then I kept eating and realized how incredibly salty it was. This may have just been due to the gravy, but since it had covered everything on the plate, it was unavoidable. A few times I bit into the turkey and found it too tough to chew. I also discovered a hidden lettuce leaf underneath the cranberry sauce, which thankfully wasn’t shredded and mixed into the rest of my food.

In the end, I wasn’t nearly as satisfied as I’d hoped to be. I felt good about getting off the beaten path and that the food was so cheap, but sometimes the price isn’t all that matters.

Living in close proximity, I’ve ordered from Thai Boom tons of times. I’ve always found it to be a safe bet for Thai food. The best thing about their menu is that they serve their lunch specials all day. This covers a wide variety of food, but aldo includes rice and a fried wonton.

Feeling adventurous, I ordered the Pla Prik Pao, which is sauteed roasted curry with basil. For my meat I chose tofu. Just kidding, I got chicken. I picked up my food from the carry-out and brought it home for eating. When I opened it up, I was a little taken aback. If this was chicken with curry, it was the strangest chicken and curry I had ever seen. On top of that, there were peppers, which most certainly were not included with my dish. It almost distracted me from the fact that there was a tiny little salad in the corner. Almost.

I decided to give my meal a taste test. I took some of the “chicken” into my fork and bit in. Fish. It was totally fish. How the hell did I get fish? I checked the receipt, which turned out to just be written in Thai. The sauce actually happened to be really good but it was definitely not a curry. I brushed aside the peppers and was so hungry that I ate the fish anyway. For being something completely different than what I ordered, it wasn’t terrible, but man, all I wanted was some Pla Prik Pao with chicken.

As an aside, I’ve eaten food from Thai Boom many times without any issue, I was a little disappointed that the one time I decided to review it, they screwed up my order royally. This definitely won’t stop me from eating there in the future…

Through a buddy of mine and my girlfriend, I learned of a burger place called Five Guys Burgers and Fries. Although originally from the east coast, Five Guys has an outpost down in Carson, which is about as south as you can get in LA County without crossing the border into the OC.

Anyway, I made the drive to Five Guys and checked out their menu. It had the basic food items any burger place should have, which included the Bacon Cheeseburger. I ordered this and the guy asked me if I wanted to make it a double. Of course I did. Then I found one of the truly beautiful things that Five Guys offers. Rather than automatically assuming people will want toppings (like tomatoes or other vile vegetables), they ask which toppings you would like. Viewing the list of toppings, I realized that most were vegetables, except for the sauces. It wasn’t a big deal because with a double bacon cheeseburger, you don’t really need anything but some sauce, but it still wouldn’t hurt for them to get some more unvegan toppings. I chose a sauce trifecta of A-1, BBQ and hot sauce. I also got some fries to join my burger.

While waiting, I got myself a tray of the complimentary peanuts they have hanging around the place. I checked my receipt while waiting and discovered something else amazing. My double burger was the same price as the regular. Whether this was some fluke or simply company policy, I was certainly impressed. When the burger came, it was a beautiful thing to behold. Smothered in the sauces, it still had the great flavors of beef, bacon and cheese. The patties were nice and juicy and everything came together beautifully.

The burger from Five Guys was one of the best I’ve ever had. I can’t really decide if it’s fast food, but if it is, it is definitely the best fast food burger I’ve ever had. If they would put a location closer to me in LA, I would never have to eat another burger again.

Oh yeah, and apparently Obama ate there once, but he got a load of veggies on his burger.