For a night out on the town with the family, we decided to head to I Cugini at the recommendation of their concierge. This hardly pronounceable restaurant was in Santa Monica and had a pretty cool setup with an outdoorsy patio-esque seating area. The menu offered some pretty good-looking food, but the menu wasn’t as robust as a typical Italian place. Nonetheless, I was transfixed by an item on the menu that I had never seen before. It was called a “Bomba” and was mixed up with the pizzas, so I knew it had to be somewhat similar to pizza.
DineLA extended the LA Food week to make it almost a full month, so I made sure to experience another of the participating restaurants. This time it was One Pico at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica. It’s kind of tough to find, since very little of the building actually mentions the restaurant name, but once you realize that the restaurant is actually within a hotel, things become a lot more clear.
For a nice night out on the town, I went to the Library Alehouse in Santa Monica. After about twenty minutes of waiting, we were finally shown to our table, in an outdoor patio area. I always love eating outside, so this was a definite plus for the restaurant.
Although the menu had a bunch of good-looking options, the buffalo burger really stuck out to me. I always enjoy a good bison, so I hoped the Library would continue that trend. Plus, I try to eat like Native Americans as much as possible, and we all know how much they loved their buffalo.
It’s pretty rare, but sometimes it’s good to break free of Mexican fast-food and slow, yet still greasy Mexican food. To make this jump, I went to the Border Grill in Santa Monica and attempted to class-up my Mexican repertoire.
They actually had a surprisingly welcome selection of unvegan options and I was torn between a few of the dishes. The steep prices may have ended up playing a role in my final selection, which was still pretty pricey at $15. This was one of their specials, the Chicken Adobo Quesadilla. Adobo is a great seasoning, so I figured I couldn’t go wrong. It came with manchego, panela and cotija cheeses inside, and mizuna salad, salsa fresca, guacamole and sour cream on the outside. I ordered mine without the mizuna salad and although I’m not entirely sure what “mizuna” means, I know it involved vegetables I didn’t want to eat.
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.
Being so near to the ocean, you would think LA has a lot of good seafood. To test this theory, I went to Enterprise Fish Co. in Santa Monica.
After looking over the menu, I decided to get something from the “Traditional Favorites” section. Now, typically I am not a big fan of shrimp because I find it to taste only slightly different than rubber. Don’t question my knowledge of the taste of rubber. The one way I have found I can eat shrimp is when it’s fried, so I decided to order the Golden Fried Coconut Shrimp. The only trouble was that our waitress never really came to the table. After dropping off the menus, we didn’t see her for quite a long time. Then, after ordering, it felt like the meal took forever to arrive.
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.
Drink, Eat, Play has been spearheading a “Screw the Recession” effort by finding restaurants to offer 50% promotions while our nation suffers. In other words, if you still have your job, you can get some pretty awesome deals.
Recently, The Yard in Santa Monica was chosen for the 50% promo. I made some reservations and headed there for a semi-early dinner, hoping to take advantage of both happy hour and the promo. Unfortunately, upon arrival I was told that people doing the promo couldn’t partake in happy hour. What the hell? Nonetheless, I stayed the course and chose a couple dishes to split with my girlfriend.
On Sunday, I made my way to the Santa Monica Pier to take part in the
At $10 a plate, this was not a festival to attend alone. Instead, my friends and I divided up the place to get a few plates and sample each other’s. First, we checked out Southside Market and BBQ from Elgin, Texas. They were offering sausage and brisket (combined) sandwiches with no side dish. Despite the fact that the plate came with onions, this place was truly built for unvegans. The sausage was incredible, but the brisket was nothing special. It felt as if the brisket was just kind of forced in order to make the plate worth the $10, because there was no way to tackle two of those sausages.
NOTE: While this location may be closed, this review unquestionably applies to all other Tommy’s
When I first moved to LA, a friend of mine told me a story about Tommy’s Burgers. Apparently the success of the original Tommy’s spawned a multitude of strange chili cheeseburger places with various spellings of the word Tom or Tommy. In all this confusion, I didn’t know where to find the place that started it all, until my friend enlightened me to the location of an Original Tommy’s in Santa Monica. Now, even though it is called Original Tommy’s, the true Original Tommy’s is on LA’s east side. Confused? I was too. At least until I got to Tommy’s.
Once I got there, everything became clear to me. Having just finished a game of tennis, I found the way to reproduce all the calories I had incidentally burned, the Mega Combo. This combo featured a triple chili cheese burger and chili cheese fries, with a drink bigger than my office’s water cooler. This Mega Combo is not just a meal, it’s a gamble that you’ll survive eating it long enough to look back on it with pride, like storming the beaches of Normandy. I had to make it mine.
