Recent Eats: Buns, Fries, Ice Cream and More

It's been a long time since this was a food blog, but I still get asked a lot about where I've been eating, so I thought I would do a brief, totally eclectic post which actually covered Sku's recent eats.

Republique, in the old Campanile space on La Brea is phenomenal.  The food is served family style on communal tables.  I went with a big group, and everything we had was very good; about half of it was mind blowing. And Jonathan Gold is absolutely right that these are the best fries in town and that the Bernaise sauce is nearly drinkable on its own.  Other highlights were the eggs and uni on toast, duck confit, and for dessert, a chocolate cherry bread pudding.  The cocktail menu was sadly unimpressive for a restaurant of this quality.

I was so impressed that I stop by for breakfast and they have what may be the best breakfast in mid-city.  The breakfast is a much more casual affair.  You order at the pastry counter and take a seat in the dining room.  This place has wondrous eggs.  The eggs on toast with asparagus and arugula was as simple as it sounds, but it was one of the best breakfast dishes anywhere.   The scrambled eggs are so pillowy soft and creamy they are almost a custard, sliced asparagus spears were perfectly cooked with just the right crunch, add toast from their bread and the slight bitterness of arugula with sea salt and...its hard to describe how good this dish was.  On top of that they had a perfectly executed kimchi fried rice.  At the bakery items are more standard but you must try the canelles.  The burnt sugar on the outside is crisp and sweet almost to the level of  a creme brulee crust which gives way to a creamy, custardy center.  I may have enjoyed the breakfast more than the dinner menu (though I would have liked a side of those fries)  

The Bun Shop. This new Koreatown shop is one of those Asian fusion food trucks that opened a restaurant.  This one is a great concept, Chinese style bao buns stuffed sandwich-style with all manner of fillings: pork belly, bulgogi, spam, chicken katsu and more.  They are slider sized and come with an order of macaroni salad or marinated edamame.  These things are great and highly addictive.  They make a great snack anytime, but you could see how this place could become a major late night craving, though it closes at 10 pm.  This place is all sorts of fun. Go there now!

Sweet Rose Creamery.  This Brentwood ice cream shop now has a branch on Beverly across from Pan Pacific Park.  As a huge ice cream fan, I'm always happy to see more great ice cream, and this is indeed great, with fresh ingredients and creative (though not insane) flavors. They have a standard menu with silky smooth salted caramel, strong coffee and other standard flavors and a changing list of seasonal offerings.  The seasonal offerings are particularly good, utilizing fresh cherries, orange and other seasonal ingredients.  This place immediately rockets to the top tier of LA ice cream; hell, it may be the best.  They also have homemade sodas and toppings, but the ice cream is so damn good that I've never gotten around to them.

I've never had much of a wait at Sweet Rose despite the fact that people continue to line up around the block for the mediocre ice cream at Milk, just down the street.  Just as well, hopefully those Milk drinkers won't find out that Sweet Rose puts their overly sweet  concoctions to shame.  They also make great coffee using Caffe Luxxe beans.

SnowLA. I'm not sure if snow ice has reached other parts of the country yet.  I first had it in Hawaii a few years ago, but it's been in the San Gabriel Valley for a while and is starting to make in-roads in Koreatown. An ice cream/shave ice mash up, snow ice is made by placing a large block of ice cream in a shave ice-type machine; then toppings are added that would be typical for shave ice or frozen yogurt.  The thin, ribbon-like shaved ice cream at Snow LA is airy and light and melts in your mouth.  I particularly like it topped with condensed milk and dulce de leche as well as "popping boba" that burst with mango, yogurt or strawberry flavor when you bite into them.  The snow ice at SnowLA on Sixth Street is the best I've had with a really fine texture and good toppings.

Isaan Station.  Great Thai comes to Koreatown.  Alright, we're not that far from Thai Town, but still, it's rare for good Thai to be available south of Santa Monica Boulevard.  Issan Station, on Western at First (just down from the Bun Shop) brings some T-Town to K-Town with its classic Thai street food.  Really great sour sausage, loads of larps and papya salads as well as soups and noodles.  This will definitely become a regular spot for me.

The Oinkster.  The Oinkster, the fast-casual-gourmet-hipster joint in Eagle Rock recently opened a Hollywood branch.  Despite all of the praise heaped on the Eagle Rock joint, I never went because I consider Eagle Rock to be nearly unreachable by major freeways and boulevards, and for some reason, it seems to take me longer to get there than to Monterey Park.  So I was excited to finally get to try Oinkster, where everything except the beer is homemade.  My favorite here was probably the pulled pork sandwich, which had a nice Carolina style vinegar based BBQ sauce.  The burgers were nicely flavored if over cooked. The pastrami, which is house cured, was quite good, though more in the style of The Hat (thin cut, greasy, fast food stand style) than Langer's (thick cut, juicy, deli style).  The homemade condiments were very good, particularly the chipotle ketchup (and I seldom like homemade ketchup), but the fries and onion rings were lackluster.  When you call your fries Belgian, you have a lot to live up to, and these were not crispy enough and needed salt.  The breaded-style onion rings were similarly bland.  All in all, pretty good food, though expensive (but that goes with the category).  A good option for that area of Hollywood.


Eat up!

In-N-Out Super Secret Menu

You may have heard about In-N-Out's secret menu, but I bet you've never heard about the super secret menu and the special product that will be discontinued on July 1.

Good Burgers Great Spuds: Short Order at the Farmers Market

Short Order is the new Nancy Silverton burger spot at the Third and Fairfax Farmer's Market. It features a fairly slim menu of grass fed beef burgers as well as pork, lamb, tuna burgers. A brunch menu will be added in January. And they are working on too sister establishments: Short Cake - a bakery and Single Origin - a coffee bar.

I tried the Frisee Lardon Raft, an open faced burger topped with frisee dressed in a light vinaigrette, lardons and a fried egg. The components were all very good, but the burger didn't come together. It felt like an egg on top of a salad on top of a burger, not a single composition. I also sampled the patty melt with pimento cheese sauce, which was good but not any sort of revelation.

I liked these burgers, but they didn't blow me away, and when you are paying $14 for burgers during an LA burger renaissance, you expect greatness.

Now, the "Short Order Spuds" were a different story. These fabulous nuggets are tater tot sized, deep fried potato chunks (including skin). You can get them with a sour cream and chive dipping sauce or with truffle salt. Fried to a golden brown, the shape of these things (almost like mini-potato skins) maximizes the surface area giving you plenty of crunchy crust. They are highly addictive. I could have eaten a much larger serving than the little pail.

I'll probably head back to Short Order, but I may just get a beer and some spuds.

Short Order
6333 w. 3rd st. (The Original Farmers Market at Third & Fairfax)
Los Angeles, CA 90036

New York Report: Minetta Tavern

Every spring I get back to Manhattan (where I spent time as a student) and take some time to see what's new and fun in the Village and adjacent food scene; over the next few weeks, I'll be filling everyone in on my latest trip.

It seems that New York is busting with food, even more than usual if that's possible. There suddenly seem to be a million more gelato places than I remember in the Village, Eaterly (which I didn't get to this trip) towers over Chelsea and the food truck trend has definitely migrated east...I saw everything from a legit looking taco truck to a truck called Kimchi Tacos (gee, where did they come up with that concept?) One place I'd been meaning to get to since my last year's trip was Minetta Tavern in the Village to try their famous Black Label Burger made of all kinds of prime cuts of dry aged beef.

The Tavern has a great old-school feel with lots of polished wood. I arrived early as a walk-in and had no trouble getting a seat at the bar, where I enjoyed a house specialty Dodd Cocktail, a flip made with bourbon, absinthe and peach bitters; I love a good flip (guilty pleasures you know), and this was a smooth and lovely drink; foamy, cool and slightly fruity, it was the perfect thing for a hot New York afternoon. I was less pleased with the Maple Sazerac, a sazerac with maple liqueur. Any maple notes were drowned out by absinthe, which was of the artificially bright green and overly sweet variety (might have been La Fee). As a disclaimer though, I should say that I'm very picky about my sazeracs.

Then onto the burger. Instead of fries, I opted for the punched potatoes, smashed white potatoes fried in duck fat with rosemary and garlic. The burger, served with caramelized onions, was very good, cooked medium rare it was a nice bright red in the center. It had a rich meaty taste but was a bit less funky-beefy than I might have hoped for. It's a high quality burger, but it didn't strike me as a revelation. I'm not sure that it was significantly better than my favorite LA burgers, and at $26, it was $10 more than Comme Ca's burger, for one, though this is New York and a ten dollar mark up from LA is probably just par for the course. The potatoes were quite tasty, but again, not a revelation. I found myself wishing there had been more fried surface area and bits, that they had punched harder.

Overall, a fine meal in a nice atmosphere, but not one that I will be dreaming about.

Minetta Tavern
113 MacDougal St.
New York, NY 10012
(212) 475-3850

Nostalgia for an Age that Never Existed: Cafe 50s

Cafe 50s is a 50s theme restaurant that opened about five months ago on Vermont north of Melrose, right across from LACC. There is another branch in West LA.

This place is like Johnny Rockets on steroids. Seriously, the place looks like Nick at Nite threw up all over it. The walls and ceilings are covered with a distractingly busy montage of period magazines, movie posters, campaign literature and other kitsch. The wait staff wear retro waiter uniforms, there is a predictably nostalgic soundtrack and each booth has the obligatory mini-jukebox. I half expected to find "white" and "colored" bathrooms, but luckily, that wasn't the case.

The menu here looked promising. It included plenty of old school classics like a monte cristo and chicken fried steak but with some updates like sweet potato fries and a bacon blue cheese burger. The food, though was uniformly mediocre. The burgers are sad little overdone patties with iceberg lettuce and unripe tomatoes (I guess that may well be what you would have gotten at a real '50s diner). The monte cristo had a decent crust but was cold in the middle, and while the regular fries and onion rings were decent, the sweet potato fries were flavorless and the garlic fries were just regular fries with a pile of raw garlic on top.

The thing to get here, the only thing, are the milkshakes. The menu lists nearly 50 shakes of every variety, but I'm a simple guy, so I opted for a vanilla malt. It was wonderful...thick and creamy with a goodly amount of malt in every sip (lack of malt in malts is one of my pet peeves). The excess is served in the metal cup, as it should be. The only thing that would have improved it would have been homemade whipped cream on top instead of the canned variety, but overall it was great shakes.

So if you are in need of a shot of nostalgia skip the food, grab a shake and an order of fries and enjoy the nostalgia for an age that never existed.


Cafe 50s
850 N. Vermont Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 906-1955

Counter Intelligence: Meat vs. Toppings

Burger and hot dog lovers generally divide into two camps: the meat lovers and the topping lovers. Meat lovers are purists who judge their burger or dog on the standard of the meat. Is the burger juicy, rare and made from high quality chuck? Is the dog well spiced and does it snap when you bite into it? You'll find these folks at Cassell's, Skooby's and Carney's. The topping lovers, while they appreciate good meat, are most interested in innovative and high quality toppings. They want garden fresh veggies, a wide choice of cheeses, house made sauces and all kinds of add-ons. They hang out at 25 Degrees and Slaw Dog. I tend to be a meat lover, but I'm not averse to occasionally jumping into the toppings fray. The Counter is definitely a place for the toppings lovers.

Since its founding a mere seven years ago in Santa Monica, The Counter has enjoyed massive, bacteria-scale growth such that it now boasts 25 locations across 9 states and three countries. I had never been to any of The Counter's locations when I recently stopped by the Studio City branch on Ventura Boulevard.

The Counter's concept is the customized burger. You choose the burger meat (beef, veggie, chicken or turkey), cheese, toppings, sauce and bun. There is a vast array of toppings to choose from though none of them are what I would describe as out of the ordinary such as, say, the artisanal cheeses offered by 25 Degrees.

I went with a beef burger with bacon, blue cheese, roasted peppers, pickles, grilled onions and Caesar dressing. It was good and the whole thing came together well. The burger itself is good but not the kind of meat lover's delight that the meat camp would flock too. As I said, this is a toppings place, and they do the toppings well.

The Counter's fried sides were also very good. The thin french fries and sweet potato fries were both good, though I preferred them plain to the aioli that was served with them. Deep fried pickle slices were also good, though again, I could have done without the sauce, a sweet, gloppy concoction.

I would definitely go back to The Counter for their solid, have-it-your-way style burgers. Who knows, maybe next time I'm in Dundrum, Ireland, I'll stop by.

The Counter
Various Locations

Koreatown Gets Burgers: Kalbi Burger

My home neighborhood of Koreatown is a food mecca for many different genres of cuisine, including Oaxacan, Central American and a million varieties of Korean. What we lack are good burger joints. Ancient Cassell's keeps on truckin' with their big, meaty patties and excellent patty melts, but they close at 4:00. When the burger craving strikes at dinner or later, we have to haul ourselves up to Umami or Fatburger in Hollywood. The recently opened Kalbi Burger just might change all of that.

Nestled into a busy strip mall at Wilshire and Wilton (valet parking is free so don't sweat it), Kalbi Burger opened a few weeks ago. Undoubtedly inspired by Kogi, their house specialty is the Kalbi Burger, a burger made 50/50 from ground chuck and kalbi in a barbecued kalbi sauce. The Seoul Burger is a regular ground chuck burger that includes sauteed kimchee. All of the burgers had good flavor, good use of condiments and a homemade-style bun that stood up nicely. I especially liked the rich flavor of the kalbi burger; I could definitely taste kalbi with every bite, but that could have been the influence of the sauce as well. The burgers are cooked medium well, which is a bit too much for me. I didn't notice until after I ordered that you could request a different doneness.

The menu includes other theme burgers, a build-your-own burger option and hot dogs. Sides include a number of different french fry options and onion rings. We tried the salt and vinegar fries. The fries were very nicely fried to a crisp, golden brown, just the way I like 'em. They had a subtle malt vinegar flavor and specks of sea salt that gave them the perfect amount of salt.

The place is new and they are still smoothing out some rough spots in the ordering process, but the service is very friendly, and the owner is out front talking to customers with a contagious enthusiasm for his recipes.

Kalbi isn't going to compete for one of the best burgers in the City, but it's a welcome addition to the neighborhood, and I'm sure I'll be headed back when the burger craving strikes.


Kalbi Burger
4001 Wilshire Blvd., Unit E
Los Angeles, CA 90010
(213)738-7898

A Burger Sequal: Umami Returns

I ventured out to the new Hollywood outpost of Umami Burger to check it out.

I never made it to the original Los Feliz branch, but I have to kvetch a bit about the fact that I'm pretty much over the massive wave of burger bars that Father's Office has begotten. There is a certain sameness to these places: burgers topped with various pork products and blue cheese, a large selection of beer, the obligatory sweet potato fries being consumed by a hipster clientele and attended to by a too-cool-for-school waitstaff. It's not that this is necessarily a bad formula, it's just not very original.

At Umami Burger, I tried the original Umami which includes their homemade ketchup, a shitake mushroom and a roasted tomato slice. We also tried the Manly Burger which has cheddar cheese and lardons. For sides, we ordered their thick cut fries and sweet potatoes with homemade ketchup and garlic aioli.

I have to say that I wasn't really thrilled with any of this. The burgers were fine, though not as good as a number of the others available in this same genre (Father's Office, Hungry Cat's pug burger, the Lucky Devil burger back when it was good, etc.). Lardons are always tasty, but they are small chewy nubbins that don't work very well on a burger, where they tend to fall out or require excessive chewing.

The fries were highly disappointing; they were only lightly crisped on the outside and their innards were starchy and stiff. If you're going to serve thick fries, they need to be soft on the inside; these needed a bit longer in the firer. The onion rings with a tempura style batter were probably the best thing we got.

Alas, another day, another burger bar.

Umami Burger - Hollywood
4655 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 669-3922

Unlucky Devils

It's always sad to see the decline of a good restaurant. More than once, I have witnessed a much loved eatery decline into mediocrity, and it's never fun.

I was a big fan of Lucky Devils when it first opened, with their juicy burgers, perfectly cooked fries and luscious, toasted pecan shake. I stopped going for multiple reasons, including the shrinking shake but also the inconvenient lack of high chairs once I had a high chair bound child. I recently went back a few weeks ago and was sorely disappointed.

The once great fries were now salted to death. The shake remains small but now also had a somewhat sour taste that was unpleasant and seemed to have less of a toasted pecan taste as well. The burgers were fine and the cobbler with frozen custard was still very good. Gone from the menu was one of my favorite desserts, the Kentucky Cream Cake.

In addition, the place itself doesn't look great. I'm not sure if they are in the process of remodeling or have just let it fall apart. There are parts of the walls which appear to be stripped of paint. The old TVs which ran a montage of extreme sport and nature shots have been replaced by regular TVs playing basketball games. In other words, the aesthetic, along with the food, has suffered.

The patronage has, as you might expect, dropped off. I went on a Thursday night and the place was empty. There was one other person there, a solo diner, during any part of our meal. The economy you say? Perhaps, but Loteria Grill, only two doors down, was packed on that same night.

I guess nothing goes on forever, but I will always remember the toasted pecan shake the way it was meant to be.

Skip the Burger and Go Straight to the Cupcakes: Bouchees Bistro in Long Beach

Bouchees Bistro is a Father's Office style burger pub right next to the Blue Line stop on Long Beach Boulevard and Sixth Street in Long Beach.

I wasn't excited by the burger, which comes with your choice of upscale toppings and condiments. I did love their version of the now mandatory sweet potato fries which were nice and crispy and had the perfect sweet and salty contrast.

The secret of Bouchee's is that they have what may be, with the demise of Leda's, the best cupcakes in Los Angeles County. Far from the giant sugar bombs available at places like Crumbs and Sprinkles, Bouchees cupcakes are simple; moist flavorful cakes are topped with a lighter-than-air buttercream frosting that I just can't get enough of.

They make only one kind of cupcake per day, but each one I've had has been a gem. Strawberry had chunks of strawberry in the cake and a lovely, strawberry tinged buttercream. Mocha was probably my favorite with a great coffee flavor, but I also loved the Butterfinger which a sprinkling of the candy mixed in.

I'll eat the burgers, I like the fries and they also make a good homemade gelato (again, only one flavor per day), but these days, I just go to pick up cupcakes.


Bouchees Bistro
515 long beach blvd
long beach, CA 90802
(562) 951-8222

Favorites: Luckiest of Devils

Lucky Devils, on Hollywood Boulevard east of Highland, is a regular spot for me. I love the kobe bacon blue burger, the nicely browned fries laced with big salt crystals that I eat without condiments, the homemade breakfast sausage and creme brulee french toast on the brunch menu, the great selection of microbrews on tap and the flavorful veggie burger.

The Luckiest thing, though, is the marvel that is the Lucky Devil's toasted pecan milkshake. Now, let's start by clearing things up. This is not a milkshake. Yes, it comes in a big metal milkshake cup with a straw, but the straw is useless. It's a giant cup of LD's homemade vanilla frozen custard mixed with toasted pecans, topped with a generous squirt of whipped cream.

It reminds be of the "concretes" I used to get at the great Ted Drewe's Frozen Custard on Route 66 in St. Louis. A cup of custard mixed with toppings so thick (thick as concrete) that the server turns the cup upside down before giving it to you...it's that thick.

The LD shake has an amazing flavor. The vanilla is subtle and you can really taste the toastedness of the pecans, and the shake is so large it should qualify as an entree.

There are other great desserts at LD's. You can get the plain custard, also excellent, on a delicious fruit cobbler. Kentucky cream cake is a giant slab of spice cake with a wonderfully creamy frosting and nuts, but I seldom get past the shake.