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.
Los Angeles
Los Angeles
Beer Belly
I'm pretty sure LA is the only place that it can be hard to find a restaurant marked by a gigantic neon sign. That's because in a city that's made up of a string of strip malls, neon signs are easy to overlook. And this one is tucked behind the parking lot of an unassuming boba place. It reads 'park' above an arrow pointing one way and 'drink' above an arrow pointing the other way, towards Beer Belly.
Aptly named since (refreshingly for LA) there's not one remotely dietetic thing on the menu. Even the broccoli rabe is drenched in burrata, and don't get me started on the duck fat French fries. Or do, because they're the perfect combination of crispy and greasy.
And the grilled cheese might just be the best I've ever had.
The Foundry - Why Some Restaurant Grudges are Worth Giving Up
I hold restaurant grudges. Big time. If they take french fries off the menu and replace them with sweet potato fries (ahem, Melrose Bar & Grill), if I get sick from the seaweed salad (ahem, Reel Food Daily), if the take out portions are unreasonably small and unbelievably expensive (ahem, Nook), mark my words, I will never come back. EVER. But what happened the first time I went to the Foundry, might not have been entirely their fault.
I was starving and jet-lagged and I was with my then new, "not-quite-boyfriend" with whom things were getting increasingly awkward. We ordered vodka sodas while we waited for our table that wasn't quite ready, plopped ourselves into bar stools and took a much-needed sip of . . . tonic. I hate tonic. I'm actually allergic to tonic, but no one ever believes me when I say that. It was an honest enough mistake and was quickly corrected. But when we finally sat down, I noticed there were only four things on the menu. Four. Something with duck confit, some kind of lamb situation, veal and chicken. They were out of chicken. So Mr. Wrong left some money on the table, politely explained that I'd just gotten off a plane and we needed something a little less . . . fussy.
The Stand
Not only were we celebrating our nation’s birthday this past weekend,
but the birthdays of two of our closest friends as well, one born on
the 4th, one on the 5th. Since nothing says summer like burgers and hot
dogs, we all rendezvous'd to "The Stand" in Encino to get our grilling
fix with no preparation or clean-up necessary on our part.
This modern diner/burger joint is so right up our alley we couldn’t
believe we’d never heard of it before, especially since it’s only 15
minutes from our house in Studio City. My husband has an uncanny knack for sniffing
out any establishment that serves a true Chicago-style hotdog, so
perhaps its location on the west side of the always-congested 405
Freeway has something to do with his failure to find this place. I think the constant traffic must have jammed his radar.
The Hungry Nomad
Three weeks into all night shoots in Chatsworth on a low-budget indie
movie with the same caterer twice a day serving us burgers for
“breakfast” every single day (not even I can eat a burger every day, 4
times a week is my limit) and the least I can say is crew morale was
low. Hence my excitement that the upcoming Thursday we would go a few
hours early (and by early I mean late but time gets completely backwards
on a night shoot), and we needed to bring in a second meal, not only to
avoid paying meal penalties but, more importantly, to keep everybody
happy.
I took off to scour the Internet and find the best possible food truck to grace our set, and one willing to visit us at 4 in the morning. My best friend texted me a list of his favorites and one name stuck out: The Hungry Nomad. We had become sort-of nomads ourselves, living in motorhomes and camera trucks and pop-up tents as we set up in various locations to shoot a high-school-age-rom-com all over Chatsworth. And the name promised Middle Eastern food, or, as I soon learned, Middle Eastern Fusion, my new favorite genre.
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