Los Angeles

On this very hot day I can’t stop thinking about the strawberry milkshake I inhaled for dessert at Pono Burger a couple weeks back. Strawberry was all time childhood ice cream fave flavor.

But somehow I abandoned it in adulthood in favor of the “more interesting” salted caramel, brown bread, you know the drill. But seeing those frosty glasses brimming with pink creaminess being carried across the room seduced me. I wish I had one right now.

Strawberry is Back!

I’ve passed the quonset hut at the corner of Broadway and 9th many times, wondering what it was but never stopped in. How lame! Turns out it’s Pono Burger and as treat we ladies of Good Food went for Pono’s first anniversary dinner to meet Chef Makani.

When I first met my husband, I told him that I’m part Native American. I’m also half Jewish. This is when he said to me, “You don’t live on a reservation…you make them.”

I’m sorry, but you will not be able to make a reservation at Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, a new pop-up restaurant on Abbott Kinney housed in what was once Capri. Well, you can if you are a party of six or more. Since I am a huge micro-manager, my suggestion is go, leave your name if there’s a wait, and walk around, going in and out of the great stores. They will even phone you when your table is ready.

It’s rare that I’m blown-away by a restaurant, but I have become the town crier for this one. Which is funny because the woman who once dubbed me the town crier because I like to share all my finds, is the one that called me late one night, sated, and told me every detail of her experience at this one. She mentioned that they only serve beer, wine and water, a fact I chose to ignore. So, the very next evening when I dragged my husband to an early dinner there, I tried and failed to order iced tea.

I recently joined Facebook and that is another story for another time, but its relevant to what I’m telling you because I’ve never made a friend this way until recently.

I was reading my favorite magazine, The Believer. I always turn to Sedaratives when I first get it and this month it was written by a girl named Julie Klausner.  It was very funny and caused me to look up her web site where I read some of her other material. Even funnier. I wrote on her “wall” telling her how much I liked her writing. One thing led to another and I was taking her out to lunch because she was here from New York on a book tour. Her book, I Don’t Care About Your Band, had some of the funniest things I’d ever read about relationships. 

When trying to figure out where to eat, she assumed that I might have that “California” thing and be all ‘food restriction-y”. I told her I was a native and that kind of crap was usually behavior adopted by people who move here. One thing we got out of the way right immediately was that neither of us was a vegan or vegetarian. We had some really arch things to say about people who are, but I’m not going to repeat them because you never know, right?

So, I thought, “Burgers!”

I love breakfast.  Pancakes that taste like cookie dough at Hedley's, Huevos O'Groats, I'll even drive to Ventura for the chorizo skillet at Golden Egg or go to Barney Greengrass in New York for nova, onions and eggs.  So I was excited to try Tart, the cute cafe next to the Farmer's Daughter hotel on Fairfax.

It's adorable inside.  Quaint, cozy, the owner, who looks like Yosemite Sam, bouncing around in an apron, like someone's dream of what a breakfast place should be.  So I didn't mind that we got seated right next to the door on a particularly chilly Angeleno day.  And I didn't even mind that it took almost a half an hour to get our coffee.  It was Saturday, and they were busy.  But the coffee was burnt and watery.  Like it was scraped from the bottom of the dispenser. 

I returned it and ordered a cappuccino to compensate. It took twenty minutes to arrive AND it came with lipstick smeared all over the mug.  Not mine, by the way.  I sent it back, and suggested that since it had been forty five minutes and there was no sign of our food, maybe we should abandon ship...

My friends weren't having it.  They'd waited this long and we were starving.  So we waited.  And waited.  And waited.  A concerned bus boy finally came to check on us.  When our food finally did come, it was a disaster.  I honestly don't know where to start.