‘Sandwiches’
Houston’s is a restaurant that has been on my radar for a while. It had always looked like some generic and boring American restaurant until a buddy of mine told me it had one of the best burgers he had ever eaten. Nonetheless, it took receiving a gift card to the place to finally get me out to the Houston’s in Pasadena.
One of the newer and incredibly popular places in Pasadena goes by the name of Lincoln. Why? Well it’s on Lincoln Avenue, duh. It has a pretty trendy menu that seems to be pretty flexible and very much caters to people who have special needs. Except, of course, if your special need is the fact that you are an unvegan.
A lot can happen in 7 years. You could meet a woman, call her your girlfriend for a while, then fiancee, then wife and then mother of your child. You could move from LA to Pittsburgh to and then to Pasadena, with a brief sojourn into Buffalo. Or you could, you know, start a meat-centric food blog and keep it going for as long as Brad Pitt spent in Tibet.
Chautauquas are a weird thing. Apparently they were some sort of bizarre adult education/cult thing that got really popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s, starting out in Western New York and reaching at least as far as Boulder, Colorado. It was in that Chautauqua in Boulder that I spent a weekend and ate a majority of my meals in the dining hall. Never fear, though, this dining hall is open to the public so this review is still relevant.
Some people like to say that Pasadena north of the 210 is a sketchy place. Those people obviously don’t know Pasadena, as “north of the 210” is starting to feature some pretty exciting spots. Take, for example, Lavender & Honey, a coffee/sandwich shop that appears to attract displaced westsiders and eastsiders.
Not too long ago, Vietnamese food suddenly became cool. At first everyone was probably like, “What the shit are pho and banh mi and how do you pronounce these things?” but now they’re all like, “It’s pronounced ‘fuh,’ idiot.” Somewhere in the middle of all this, Good Girl Dinette appeared in the formerly sketchy turned contentiously gentrifying neighborhood of Highland Park. Yes, just like every other damn city, LA has a Highland Park of its own.
It has been an admittedly long time since I have eaten from a food truck, let alone one in LA. Yet, while the fad has ended, there are still plenty of food trucks to chow down with as the truck still offers a low-cost entry into food-slinging. One such truck goes by the name of CreativEats and breaks essentially all (two) rules I thought necessary for a food truck’s survival.
The Hat is one of those local LA fast food spots that has been around forever and seems to be in no rush to change. It has “World Famous Pastrami,” but is not limited to just one meat, because the place also serves burgers, roast beef dip and crazy big portions of sides. I mean crazy. Just look at that order of chili cheese fries on the left and try to comprehend how small the individual fries look.
On a quest for a good burger I found myself at Twisted Grove in Scottsdale speaking with a hostess. She said something about the fact that they did not have a burger to speak of. Yet, as I began to walk to the exit, she said they did have an amazing tri tip sandwich. Like any good unvegan, I turned back around and took a seat at an open table.
Down the street from my halfway home in Echo Park is a little spot called Trencher, serving a variety of sandwiches and salads. Normally this would sound boring, but Trencher actually has some pretty interesting options, like the Consigliere and a Fried Chicken Banh Mi. I, however, had my sights set on a different fried chicken sandwich.