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May 26, 2008
Donut Man and Donut Hole — Los Angeles Road-Trip with Stuart Paap
Filed under: Eastside, Eat, Expert Opinions, On the Road, San Gabriel Valley — StyleGuide @ 9:54 am
Expert Opinions are tips from L.A.’s ultimate insiders. Today’s contributor is Stuart Paap, who teamed up with StylishGuide for a doughnut-crammed road-trip documentary (or is it, “doughcumentary”?):
Stuart Paap is a comedian in Los Angeles who hosts a live interactive comedy talk show every Tuesday night at 8 p.m. at TheStream.TV! He also loves his dogs, likes his cats and tolerates his neighbors.
Related links | more deep fried delights:
May 12, 2008
Hot reader tip: The Coop Pizza in Palms
Filed under: Eat, Westside — StyleGuide @ 6:51 pm
According to a 0.26-second Google search, New York is the birthplace of Hip Hop, Punk, Memorial Day, Teddy Roosevelt and the U.S. Navy. All great stuff, but on reflection, one of the state’s top contributions to mankind must be New York-style pizzas. Distinguished by thin, flexible crusts, light on the cheese and sauce — they are huge and filling and greasy and marvelous.
Because of this, finding great New York-style pizza joints in Los Angeles is an avocation adopted by thousands of NYC transplants, and The Coop — recommended by Stylish Guide reader Kate — delivers.
In its Palms location since the beginning of time (in L.A. terms, the 1960s is the beginning of time), The Coop doesn’t exactly make it easy to enjoy their great, low price pizza.
They only take cash — so hit the ATM on the way. The friendly staff will move slower than rush hour traffic on the adjacent 10 freeway — so call ahead or stick with ordering a slice. The inhospitable, elevator-sized counter area doesn’t offer even a lowly barstool to waiting customers — so get your pizza and get out!
When you do finally get a fresh-from-the-oven-hot pizza, aromatic with basil-infused sauce and flour from the hand-tossed dough, squirrel the box away to your car. Forget decency as you steam up the windows, huddled together as you slide generous slices out of the box. Carefully lower it into your mouth baby-bird-style. Marvel at how your annoyance at their skid-row-motel-style service fades away into grateful bliss with each bite.
Bottom line? Come for a simple slice to eat on the run, or call ahead so your pizza pie is waiting when you walk in. With all due respect to Teddy Roosevelt and Hip Hop, you had me at the pizza, NY.
Price: $
Call: 310.837.4462
Where: 10006 National Boulevard, Los Angeles, Ca
Related links | More slices:
April 29, 2008
Great French Bakeries in Los Angeles
Filed under: Best Of, Downtown, Eat, Midtown, Westside — StyleGuide @ 7:15 pm
If I had to guess, I’d venture that my love of bakeries came from my mother. Her idea of lunch out was splitting a sandwich five ways so we could main-line Napoleons, cream puffs, pain au chocolate and cinnamon rolls.
I’ve spent a good part of my life ever since searching for great pastries. For rich, inexpensive breakfasts, afternoon treats, or part of a healthy lunch (according to my mother), here are some of my favorite local French bakeries:
1. Hotcakes Bakes: When I visited the Mar Vista shop, there were actual French people running the shop. Seems authentic to me. Try the delightful canele.
2. Frances Bakery: Head downtown for artful French baked goods, Little Tokyo style. The sweet almond croissant will make your eyes glaze over — they’re that good.
3. Delice Fine French Kosher Pastry & Bread: On Pico west of La Cienega, a Kosher bakery with light buttery flaky croissants. Mmmmm….
4. La Maison Du Pain: Two sisters living the dream — dumping corporate jobs to open a French bakery on Pico in Mid-Wilshire. Croissants, tarts, bread – this is the kind of place where you’ll want to eat your way through the line-up.
Where else can I find great French baked goods? Share, share, share!
Related links | More sweets:
April 23, 2008
Four Dining Splurges in Midtown Los Angeles
Filed under: Best Of, Eat, Midtown — StyleGuide @ 8:21 pm
There are occasions when a bucket of fried chicken just won’t do (even if it is as good as Golden Bird). Maybe it is that all-important second date. Maybe it’s just that someone else is paying.
When I want to go out, without going “all out,” I hit these four stylish supper splurges in Midtown L.A.:
1. Osteria La Buca: The owners built a neighborhood Italian trattoria on Melrose – and brought Mamma back from Italy to cook. Carbonara on tagliatelle is like a fat boat straight to heaven — worth every creamy mouthful. $$$
2. Meals by Genet: A study in contrasts in Little Ethiopia: Hands-on communal dining … set on white tablecloths. Fresh local ingredients … with spices imported from Africa. Family-style dining can keep costs down, and the vibe makes any occasion feel like a celebration. $$-$$$
3. Lou: A place famous for smoky, spicy, super-sweet bacon pieces called pig candy? A reason to celebrate in and of itself. You’d never guess that a super mod interior and artisanal cheese and sausage hides in this strip mall on Vine. $$$
4. El Cholo on Western: Five simple words will set you up: Cadillac margarita. Green corn tamales. $$-$$$
Related links | More Midtown eats:
April 9, 2008
Mateo’s: Smoothies, Ice Cream and Juice to make you forget Jamba Juice
Filed under: Eat, Midtown, San Gabriel Valley, Westside — StyleGuide @ 8:19 pm
This stuff is so addicting they should be selling it in little packets on the corner.
Instead, the smoothies that will hook you like a junkie are sold out of bright, clean shops in dingy neighborhood strip malls.
The local Mateo’s mini-chain serves up smoothies, juices, ice cream and popsicles in the Oaxacan tradition — rich, creamy, and chock-a-block with fresh ingredients.
The best way to get started? Choose a smoothie — something fun like orange/papaya/mango. Consider it a gateway to their 100 percent vegetable and orange juices. Called Vampiros, a single sip will make you feel like you’ve added a year to your life. Beets — the not-so-secret ingredient — give them their blood-red hue and a slight sweetness (think sugar beets). I personally know of people who would pawn grandma’s pearl necklace for carrot/beet/celery/strawberry Vampiros.
You can get your pleasure to-go with Mateo’s rich, fruity popsicles, $1.50 apiece. Scoops of ice cream or sorbet in flavors ranging from the familiar (strawberry, cookies and cream), to the interesting (watermelon, walnut) to the exotic (smoked milk, soursop), are stimulating choices as well.
Just don’t come crying to me when you blow your paycheck on a wild, fruit-crammed weekend, and your pants get a little snug.
Price: $
Where: Four locations:
1250 S. Vermont Avenue #105, Los Angeles, Ca, 213.738.7288
4222 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, Ca, 323.931.5500
4929 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City, Ca, 310.313.7625
522-B E. Vine Avenue, West Covina, Ca, 626.919.2090
March 4, 2008
Great L.A. Pizza? Help me…
Filed under: Eat — StyleGuide @ 9:20 pm
Pizza’s a great StylishGuide.com food. You can feed a crowd for a few bucks a head, snack for days on leftovers — even cut pies into little squares for party appetizers. And the town that invented BBQ Chicken Pizza certainly can boast some top-notch pie-makers.
I find Village Pizzeria’s Veggie II to be tranformative, and their homemade sausage and pepperoni pizzas are wonderful, too. Eagle Rock’s Casa Bianca Pizza Pie has dreamy pies if you can bear the long lines, and the mad-genius combination of Nancy Silverton’s pizza crusts with Mario Bateli’s meat toppings at Pizzeria Mozza on Highland is a fun splurge if you don’t mind dinner at 4 p.m. (the only time I seem to be able to get a table).
But I need more. Where do you go for great pizza? I’m dying to know.
February 27, 2008
New eco-friendly lawn mower? How about $100 from AQMD.
Filed under: House + Garden — StyleGuide @ 9:09 pm
Of course, the most Earth-friendly idea is to replace grass with something less thirsty like drought-tolerant plants. If you can’t go cold turkey on the green stuff, you can make your lawn the tiniest bit more Earth-friendly by trading up to an electric mower.
Using a typical gas mower for one year can pollute as much as 43 new cars driven for a year. That’s why the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) is making it easy to switch to a ”green” mower.
Their lawn mower exchange program allows residents to turn in their working gas-powered lawn mower and purchase a new cordless rechargeable electric mower for only $100. The new mower, made by the Neuton Lawn Mower Company, is a $400 value. It operates for 45-60 minutes on a single charge of the battery, and it comes with a rear-mounted bag as well as a mulching kit.
The one I got is easy to use, powerful and efficient, and does a great job keeping our small patch of lawn looking clean and trimmed. The simple self-mulching features means no clippings to throw away.
You must pre-register, and registration for the 2008 Lawn Mower Exchange Program will begin on March 18, 2008 at 9 a.m. AQMD will send you an email reminder of when registration opens if you sign up now for the Lawn Mower Exchange List Serve. Enter your e-mail address twice and then select the Lawn Mower Exchange List Serve from the list of options.
To be eligible for this very stylish deal, you must live in AQMD’s four-county jurisdiction, which includes all of Orange County, most of Los Angeles County (excluding the Antelope Valley), almost all of Riverside County, and the non-desert portion of San Bernardino County.
Price: $$$$
Where: Sites in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties in California
When: Different Saturdays in April and May, 2008
Call: 888.425.6247
http://www.aqmd.gov/tao/lawnmower.html
Into green yard care? Check out cheap composters from the City of L.A. here.
February 20, 2008
Tale of Two Toasts: bld and King’s Hawaiian Bakery and Restaurant
Filed under: Eat, Midtown, South Bay — StyleGuide @ 12:46 pm
Could it be obsessive-compulsive disorder? Or my post on making French toast at home? Whatever it was, it meant that I didn’t spend the weekend registering voters or flossing or recycling. Instead I devoted my time to something as crucial as the search for great French toast.
Saturday we tried a nice place that is a little pricey. bld on Beverly serves up inch-and-a-half thick slices of brioche, lacy browned on the outside and as creamy as custard on the inside — bread pudding in toast form. Unbelievably delicious, but a splurge at $11.
Cash-wise, I needed to take it down a notch. So Sunday we tried King’s Hawaiian Bakery and Restaurant.
King’s Hawaiian bread, the summit-shaped sweet bread in the “Hawaii Orange” plastic sack in grocery stores nationwide, comes from a 150,000 square foot facility in Torrance. In the 1980s, the restaurant opened not far from the factory. Today it is a busy place; the collosal decorative pineapple and dunk-tank-sized aquarium qualify it as a bit more interesting than Denny’s, but the feel is similar.
The French toast is sliced from their sweet Hawaiian bread, cooked with egg and cinammon and delivered sponge-light and dreamy sweet. French toast runs $8.75 — plus two eggs and a side of bacon or sausage.
I knew I’d found a winner.
February 14, 2008
Buddy Greco’s Dinner Club, Cathedral City, Ca
Filed under: On the Road — StyleGuide @ 8:34 pm
There are good things about not coming of age in the 1960s. As a woman, I don’t have to wear a girdle. I don’t get to choose any career I want, as long as it is secretary, nurse, teacher or flight attendant.
However, sometimes I feel I missed out on three-martini lunches, a diet focused on steak, potatoes, cream and Jell-O in a pre-cholesterol-level-awareness heaven, and the chance to see greats like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin perform live in tiny clubs.
On that last count, though, I may have found a sliver of space to recapture the past. Buddy Greco, world-renown singer and pianist, opened an intimate, contemporary nightclub in Cathedral City, outside of Palm Springs.
Besides performing with Dean-O and Ol’ Blue Eyes themselves, Mr. Greco has had special appearances with Benny Goodman, Buddy Rich, Sammy Davis Jr. and Bob Hope. With his wife, singer Lezlie Anders, he now shares songs in the Sinatra vein from a grand piano on a small stage in a tiny club (every seat is probably no more than 30 feet from the stage).
If you ever want the Goodfellas experience of a living legend crooning pop standards in a venue only slightly larger than your living room, this show may represent your last, best chance.
At $45 per person, plus a $30-40 dinner entree (or $60 per person plus cocktails that run about $12 each), the show is a vacation investment.
Nevertheless, I found it a small price to pay for a glimpse into the very best of 1960s nightlife — the three-martini meal without the girdle.
Price: $$$$
When: In season
Where: 98805 E. Palm Canyon Dr., Cathedral City, Ca 92234
Call: 760.883.5812
Pack in the fun on your next get-away — learn about another great Palm Springs show here.
February 12, 2008
Riverside Rendezvous – Breakfast at Art’s Bar and Grill
Filed under: On the Road — StyleGuide @ 8:14 pm
Some people spend romantic weekends in Paris pied-a-terres. Others squirrel up in palm-fringed Santa Barbara resorts, or drink in the sun a deux in Mid-Century Modern Palm Springs hideaways.
We spent our anniversary in Riverside.
I won’t go on about the extenuating circumstances that brought us to that point. Suffice it to say we made the best of it, and ended up having an amazing time.
Turns out Riverside really is for lovers.
First we took a room at the Mission Inn (saving $40 booking through hotels.com). Occupying an entire square block in downtown Riverside, it is a meticulously maintained, eclectically designed, ironically constructed and completely bustling Spanish hacienda — a lovely place to wile away a weekend.
For breakfast, we asked the concierge to recommend a local greasy spoon. This very young woman, who threw out words like “awesome” and “dude” when she spoke on the phone, did not inspire faith.
Nevertheless, she knew what she was doing. She pointed us to a moody dive bar three blocks away, which at 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning was filled with daiquiri-drinking women and beer-swilling older gentleman, alongside a couple of families with small children.
We started with Bloody Marys, wonderfully boozy little things that went down like water on a hot summer day, garnished with a dill pickled green bean (which I started craving even as I was eating it, and have not stopped craving since). From the full menu we chose Art’s Breakfast: two eggs, toast and potatoes (or biscuits and creamy gravy), and a choice of meat. We picked a butter-tender filet tenderloin steak and some of the best meaty, smoky bacon I’d ever had.
The price for this glorious repast? A mere $8.25.
As we sank into our 1950’s style breakfast, we were reminded of an important lesson: When life hands you Riverside, make it to Art’s Bar and Grill.
Price: $$
Where: 3357 University Avenue, Riverside, Ca 92501 (at the 91 and University)
Call: 951.683.9520