I spent the morning in chinatown, the afternoon in altadena (don't ask me where altadena is; having just gone there, I still don't know) and I had to get to venice by evening. It's a good thing I drive a hybrid or my carbon foot print would be out of control. With two hours to kill before my rehearsal in Venice I came up with the fabulous idea to hit up the Robertson car wash. You can imagine my dismay when it started raining literally the second I got my keys back.

Not only was my car no longer clean, but there was bumper to bumper traffic since LA drivers immediately forget how to drive the second even one drop of rain falls from the sky. That's when I realized I that I hadn't eaten in over six hours (which for me is just enough time to come close to death by starvation). To make matters worse I was in that no man's land part of west LA and I was sort of late to rehearsal. That's when I found it.

In a strip mall on Pico and Westgate. A little Israeli restaurant called Habayit. Hebrew for "home". I opened the door and looked around. The peach colored faux brick walls, the oversized sconces, the framed picture of the Jerusalem dome. I was home. And it smelled delicious. I had the best chicken shishlik sandwich I'd had since I was last in Tel Aviv.

And when I got back in my car it immediately stopped raining and miraculously my car was still clean. And I wasn't even late to rehearsal. Well, not that late.

 
Habiyat
11921 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90064
(310) 479-5444

 
Maia Harari is a writer and choreographer. Her most recent credits include It's All in Your Head, 2003 and Danse Macabre, 2000, and she is currently working on Confetti, an episodic internet series chronicling the lives of twenty-somethings running wild in LA. She currently lives in Los Angeles.