More than anything else on their menu, the Gobi Manchurian is what keeps me coming back time and time again. The first time I visited, it was described to me as “sort of like a vegetarian fried chicken.” From the first bite, I was hooked. It’s actually cauliflower marinated in garlic, ginger, chilies, and soy sauce, but the fried chicken comparison does seem quite apt, provided you marinate the fried chicken in ten gallons of awesome before serving it up hot.

According to the Woodlands website, Jonathan Gold is a fan as well:

Still uncommon is the ALL-VEGETARIAN Indian restaurant serving the intriguing foods of India’s southern region. . . . If you’re looking for value and tasty food, you will certainly find it here.

If you’re ever up in that corner of the Valley, you should do yourself a favor and check this stuff out. You won’t be disappointed. Unless you come on a Monday, that is; they’re closed on Mondays.

Five Guys El Segundo, open at night

I’m a big fan of Five Guys burgers and fries, but rarely make the trip down to Carson. So it was a nice surprise at about 9:30 the other night, after a day of negotiations down in the South Bay, to be driving up Sepulveda Blvd. just short of LAX and to see the red and white Five Guys sign on the east side of the road. A quick maneuver into the parking lot, and more luck as Five Guys was open until 10 p.m. I saw, I scarfed. It’s in an office park-nice little shopping plaza with a courtyard and outdoor tables.

Five Guys also has other locations, and planned locations, in and around the Los Angeles area. Of these, the El Segundo outlet may be the most dangerous for me. The In-N-Out Burger just on the other side of LAX may have better views, but I’m partial to Five Guys’ food.

I was mortified at the number of unused Roasted Garlic Tomato Sauce jars I had (6), jars of Hearts of Palms (5), cans of organic black beans (6) and containers of olives I had (can’t even count em).
Forget about tallying up the gross amounts and varieties of pasta, rice, and quinoa stacked in my cupboard. It’s as if I expected that the world was gonna end and I had to have a stockpile of food to hold me over until spring vegetables could grow.
So now, part of my New Year’s agenda is to make every meal use some of the canned, jarred, dried or packaged food I have lurking in my cupboards. I should be able to cook til April.
I googled Trader Joes Recipes and found some on their site, chow hound and several more. Any ideas welcomed!

I’m also planning a trip to a shelter to share some of this discovered bounty!
I guess getting out the old broom is good every once in a while cuz we all win!

Oinkster Pastrami with Fries and Garlic Aioli

The Oinkster in Eagle Rock was our stop for dinner last night after the Auto Show. I learned about this place from my neighbor who gets around the city even more than I do. I was impressed.

Not being shy about hurling superlatives let me tell you that the “Oinkster Pastrami” was just about the best, scratch that, The Best pastrami sandwich I have ever had.  It is your classic corned beef that is hand pickled and roasted there.  It is the perfect blend of spice to slow cooked beef flavor without being too salty to enjoy.  It is on a french roll with sauteed onions, melty Gruyere cheese and red cabbage slaw.

Even the fries aren’t standard fast food fries. They are billed as Belgian Fries” and are double dipped for a nice crunch.  They are served with a nice garlic aioli…nice because yes you taste the garlic but its not so strong that it kills your taste buds for anything else.

My son opted for the pulled pork sandwich and had their homemade ketchup with the fries instead of the aioli.  Their ketchup was really nice, thick and tomatoey with none of that cloying sweetness you get in the off the groc shelf stuff.  He enjoyed it and joined the “clean plate club” in due course.

The vibe is a jovial college crowd with a nice dash of hipster.  That could well be enhanced by the variety of nice microbrews on tap.

It has both indoor and outdoor seating available.   A caveat to this is that the place does pack up fast and you do run into lines getting your order placed.  On rainy day be prepared to run into seating problems as the place loses half its capacity.

The bill came to $24.47 for the two of us by the time you added in the cost of drinks.  Not fast food cheap, but certainly way better quality than one would find at a fast food joint.

Everything you could want to know about their burger and pastrami menu can be found on their website HERE.  They also are on twitter and don’t post so much as to blow up your twitter feed.
The Oinkster
2005 Colorado Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90041
Map HERE

That being said, I tried Roscoe’s, and I was immediately won over by it. So when I joined some friends for a meal at Green Leaves (an establishment that has previously been challenged about being truthful regarding its menu) and discovered that they had “Chicken” and Pancakes on the menu, I had to give it a shot.

The verdict on this menu choice is in: I have ordered nothing else during all of my subsequent visits to Green Leaves, and so it seemed worthy of a Menu Mining post here at Blogging.LA. It purports to be vegan, and even gluten-free, but I make no claims about its value in either of those respects. The “chicken” has a nice crispy breading and tastes simply wonderful, especially when dipped twice the way I was first taught at Roscoe’s: once in the spicy and once in the sweet. Sure this isn’t Louisiana Red Rooster hot sauce, but it does the trick.

If you happen to be in Los Feliz or West Hollywood and looking for something different, don’t hesitate to check out the “chicken” and pancakes. The pancakes are also available in tropical version, if you’re into the fruity stuff.

Marky Ramone getting some California Sun

East Coast vs. West Coast rivals laid down their Glocks and picked up spoons last Saturday, as Marky Ramone, former drummer of the Ramones, flew in from Brooklyn to the Venice Whole Foods to promote his new pasta sauce. The sauce is called Marky Ramone’s Brooklyn’s Own Pasta Sauce, a fittingly complicated name from someone whose job it was to keep time for the rapid Ramones.

Marky sat down while a small line formed to have him autograph each purchased jar (including smiley faces on the lid and bottom). The sauce sells for $6.99 per jar, which isn’t bad considering (a) it’s Whole Foods; (b) Rao’s sauce sells for $8.99 a jar there, and what band was he ever in?; and (c) you could probably sell your autographed jar for quite a bit more on eBay. There were a couple of tasting stations nearby, and this former New Yorker can attest that the sauce is excellent, with a simple list of ingredients, ending with the words “Drums not included.”

Marky was very friendly, down-to-earth, and happy to talk to each of us for as long as we wanted. In fact, there was a young boy on line in front of us who told us that he plays the drums (yes, a little drummer boy), and who had dragged his mom there so he could meet Marky Ramone. Marky engaged the boy in conversation for a few minutes. Who knows, perhaps the boy will become a famous drummer and this cycle will repeat itself in 30 or 40 years.

Bizarre? Sure, but that’s what I call rock ‘n roll.

To kick off the series, Cornerstone is hosting “Creative Seeds: An Exploration of Hunger,” a two-week event starting November 7 and stuffed full of panels, discussions, art events, workshops, and demonstrations with Farmers, chefs, artists, performers, and food writers.  On the 10th, for example, popular organic peach farmer David Mas Masumoto will be part of a “Who’s Your Farmer?” roundtable (if you haven’t read his Epitaph for a Peach, go and get it, now), and on the 15th, our homegrown Jonathan Gold will part of a “Food Critics” panel discussing what “different generations of food critics hunger for.”  And, because this is a theater company after all, there will be an evening of one-minute plays for those whose attention lasts as long as their (in)ability to compose an wildly interesting 140-character tweet

The panel discussions are free, and most of the other events request just a modest donation.  See the full schedule here, and reserve your tickets here. And, if you want to start your food drive contributions straight away, you can donate non-perishable food items at all Creative Seeds events.  This looks like a good one, guys.  Go on. Five years will be here and gone before you know it.

The Red Lion Tavern in Silver Lake is a German Gasthaus and Beer Garden that was established in 1959 as an English pub. When the ownership changed in 1963, it took on its German theme. There’s food, lots of beer, and atmosphere at the Red Lion. Come out this Friday, November 4th at 7pm to have a bite to eat, a drink, and hang out with writers and readers of Blogging.la. If you missed a chance to celebrate Oktoberfest, now you can!

Classic Eats #15
Friday, November 4th at 7pm

Red Lion Tavern
2366 Glendale Blvd 
Los Angeles, CA 90039-3209

The Red Lion Tavern is about 5 miles north of downtown L.A. It’s located just south of Silver Lake Boulevard. Limited parking is available in lots on either side of the building. There is also plenty of street parking in the vicinity. Leave a comment or drop me a line if you plan to attend.

Here at Blogging.LA, we’ve always got an eye out for a good cafe to #occupy while we bang out our freelance writing, novels, screenplays, and even an occasional blog entry. We Valley-dwellers don’t have much to choose from, and the list gets even shorter when you knock off the places that lock up for the night when it’s still early evening. Sure, there’s the mandatory minimum 1.0 Starbucks/square mile ratio, but we all know that doesn’t really count. Studio City’s Coffee Fix, on the other hand, does qualify.

I’ve been living in the southeast part of the Valley for a little over a year now, and while I have been a big fan of M Street Coffee for weekend afternoon writing sessions (they close early), or Aroma Cafe as the obligatory location for first dates arranged through online dating sites (they seem to busy to be a good place to write), more often than not when I’m looking for a good place to write on a weekday evening I end up at some greasy-spoon location drinking diner coffee and trying to talk myself out of apple pie a la mode. Blogging.LA’s Travis Koplow mentioned the Coffee Fix to me at least once or twice, but it took me until just this afternoon to finally check it out. While I would agree with some of the Yelpers who seem to suggest that the place is a little dingy and unpolished, I actually find that quality a bit endearing.

Here are a few things I liked about Coffee Fix:

• Ample seating, with a few outlets interspersed.
• Open ’til 10pm daily.
• Iced americano tasted better than Starbucks and Coffee Bean. (Low bar, I know.)
• Free Wi-Fi.
• Fair amount of parking.
• Standard coffee-shop type food menu.

Okay, so I guess this isn’t entirely a ringing endorsement for the place, but I’m excited to have an alternative to the diners. And the Coffee Fix offers a brownie a la mode that might help me stop eating so damned much apple pie.

One of the big finds that I found to be a lot of fun was over in the Home and Garden center.  There’s a wine, beer and olive oil tasting room!  Of the hundreds of wines submitted for judging in the LA County Fair 436 are available for tasting.  Tasting fee for a flight?  A very reasonable $11 for 5 tastings.  They have a list sorted by suggested tasting order and number your glass to match what you select which also happens to be the order you taste.  Loved it.

Meandering about the grounds we stumbled upon the “Angel of Tears and Hope.  Its located in a little pond with twin fountains on either side of it with a placard dedicated to those that lost their lives on 9/11/01.  It is inscribed with the words of JFK: “Let every nation know, whether they wish us well or ill, that we shall bear any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty”.

In the Millard Sheet’s Center for the Arts was a couple of fun exhibits.  First was “eclectic collections” that focused on unsual collections of stuff.  Tightly curated and very much fun to look at imaging what would possess them to collect such a thing, IE furniture made out of soft drink pull tabs.  There was also a really nifty exhibit of “neon art” old neon signs saved and preserved in that collection.

Lastly, the shopping district is pretty interesting in its own rights, that is if you enjoy a good meander through a swap meet sifting and sorting through plain old junk and some real treasures.  Among the interesting things we found in there was a Chinese accu-pressure massage.  It was bargained down to $10 for 10 minutes of sheer relaxation that went from head to toe…literally.  It was done by a day spa called “So Relax” located normally at 6600 Topanga, Canoga Park and in Building 6 of the Shopping District at the LA County Fair.  Worth the money and the few minutes it takes for a complete rub down.

The LA County Fair runs until 10/2/2011.  The the info you could ever want regarding attractions, hours and admissions on their WEB SITE.