Greenspans is tiny and sandwiched (no pun intended) in between a bar and some tacky Melrose clothing store on the old Tommy Tang strip of Melrose, where Evan Kleiman opened Angeli Cafe all those years ago. Back then all of the good actors in town could be found in Milton Katselas’s Mon and Wed night class at the Zepher Theater just across the street, and Chianti was down the block serving up perfect stracciatella soup. That stretch was something back in its day. (Pardon the walk back 30 years).
Well, seasoned chef Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese is going to bring that block back. It’s good. It’s real good.
My friend Sandy emailed me last week. “Just came back from a place that’s right up your alley”. My friend Sandy is a woman in the know and she certainly knows what alleys I frequent.
She’s also very discriminating and not prone to false alarms or wasting anyone’s time, so my interest was piqued. When I heard the name, Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, I was more than curious, I was out the door. Not being a lady who lunches, my friend Sandy was a bit surprised, and I hope delighted, that I emailed her straight back asking for a lunch date.
When I originally conceived of taking a self-led tour of the LA food
trucks with some friends it was to see who was trying to capitalize on
the success of Kogi BBQ, the crossover Mexican-Korean taco truck, and
their use of Twitter to let people know their current
location. Supposedly Kogi is the originator of the hip and cool LA
food truck and, as some have told me, has the best food of all the taco
trucks. My plan was to find trucks that had just rolled out, are newly
popular, or ones that I know nothing about and see if Kogi would hold
up against the rest.
Driving on the freeway, looking at the streets and neighborhoods below, I often wonder what fabulous restaurants I'm missing. 
Everybody has them. Those neighborhood joints you walk/drive by a
million times but never go into. For no good reason. The place looks
nice enough and clearly has customers, but you always just pass it by.
We've lived in the Valley for over a decade, within walking distance of
the Great Greek and we never went until last month. Our friends, S and
K (who used to live nearby) were horrified. Turns out the GG is one of
their all time favorite places. Or so they claimed. You'd think if that
were true they would have drug us there long before the night K was due
to leave the country for an extended length of time. Of course, it was
the one restaurant she just had to eat at one more time before she
left, so that has to count for something. I guess there isn't a lot of
Greek food where she's going.
People who don't live in Southern California forget that in the winter, the temperatures can drop into the 40s and even the 30s at night.
That's mild compared with the weather experienced by our friends and relatives who live in other parts of the country.
