HEART ATTACK AND HIGHWAY 62

No doubt you’re dying to hear what I ate during my sojourn in California.  Truth is I ate pretty ‘low’ most of the time: I felt that was what the late Jonathan Gold might have wanted.  His presence still looms over the Los Angeles food scene, not least in this mural:

Here’s some beer and some seafood ramen that I ate at a restaurant in Little Tokyo, called Kagura.

You know, I’m increasingly not sure that I really like ramen and I certainly don’t see what all the fuss is about. The seafood was fine, and the broth was OK, though I could probably have done without the sweet corn. It was the noodles I had trouble with.  I mean they weren’t bad noodles and of course some noodles are better than others but in the end noodles are always just noodles.  The beer was fine.

At Cindy’s on Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock I had the shrimp and grits, largely because it contained tasso ham which I’d never had before, hadn’t even heard of it. 

Apparently Tasso ham it’s a Louisiana thing, made from the hog’s shoulder, so not actually a ham if we’re being picky.  I’m sure it added to the general flavour but it was well back in the mix.  Tasso ham looks like this:

In Yucca Valley I went to the 62 Diner and ordered the "Buddy Holly" for breakfast. 

It’s just corned beef hash and scrambled eggs, but the items on the menu are named after pop performers of the 50s and 60s.  After I’d ordered, I heard the waitress tell another customer that the Beach Boys Fish and Chips was the specialty of the house but it was too late by then.   
          The waitress also said she really liked my hair and asked if I dyed it.  I said I didn’t, which was true, and this impressed her even more, though the notion that waitresses go around thinking that I might have dyed my hair is somehow unsettling.

This is a Cali-Club in the Denny’s in 29 Palms:  

Denny’s is always ‘reliable’ without being good, and has been for decades.  What seemed to have changed, in this branch anyway, was the waiting staff.  My waiter was a 300 pound, tattooed, muscled man mountain.  Maybe they need guys like that in 29 Palms in case the marines from the nearby base get a bit fractious late at night, although this was in the morning and my waiter surely have finished his shift long before the night.

This is carne asada from Kokopelli’s in Yucca Valley.  

They used to have this very fine figure outside but it’s gone now:

The carne asada was fine though I’ve had better, tastier, moister versions, even at Kokopelli's, but I've been going there so long that it almost feels like home.

And here is a Reuben sandwich, with potato salad, which I ate on my last day in LA, at a restaurant called Teddy’s Café at the corner of Pico and Bundy.  

I went there because it was easy walking distance from the rental office where I’d just returned my car.  I wandered in, ordered, ate, and when the bill came I asked if I could pay with a card and was told it was cash only. The bill came to a very reasonable $11.75 so I dug through my wallet and pockets and came up with all the cash I had, a grand total of $12.20.  

On the one hand I’m not very worried about this because I won’t be going back there any time soon, but I did feel like a bit of a heel.  The service was worth considerably more than 45 cents, and I’d hate any waitress in Los Angeles to think the English were a stingy bunch when it comes to tipping.  I mean, in general many of them are, but I like to break the mould.

FOOD FROM THE ROAD

If you’re ever in Kramer Junction, California, may I recommended that you try the carne asada with cheese fries at the Astro Burger.  It’s a knockout even if it doesn’t resemble any carne asada you’ve ever had elsewhere. 

The menu offered pastrami and Reuben sandwiches too, but the waitress, referring to the unseen cook in the back who may well have been her husband, said (a little regretfully it seemed to me), “He’s not doing that today.”

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If you’re ever in Furnace Creek, in Death Valley, you might as well try the meatloaf at the Forty Niner Café.  It’s not great, but they’re working under difficult conditions there in the middle of the desert, where good ingredients, and (perhaps more importantly) good cooks, are evidently had to find.  I suspect they may eventually come up with an industrial use for that gravy.

The tables are pretty cool though:

I wouldn’t mind getting me one of them.

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Should you be in Pahrump, Nevada, may I recommend a taco or four at El Jefe’s #2 Mexican restaurant.  When you see birria on the menu you’re not going to pass it up are you?

I thought the birria taco was really surprisingly mild and under spiced, likewise these pork ones, but maybe the chefs know their customers to be a bunch of unadventurous gringos.  Sad!  I was tempted by the “bucket of beer” on offer but it being lunchtime I resisted.

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If you’re in Primm, Nevada you’re almost certainly going to be inside a casino, in which case, if you’re in search of breakfast, let me point you to the Original Pancake House at the Primm Valley Resort Casino.  
          There was some kind of loud argument going on in the kitchen that could be heard in the dining room,  a loud male voice could be heard saying, “I’m not taking this shit from HER.”  
           But it didn’t affect the German potato pancakes, served with apple sauce and sour cream – yep, that was breakfast.  Of champions.

As was this martini, drunk the night before at the bar of GPs Steakhouse.

THE ANGRY STOMACH

I was on the road, and had stopped in Baker, in the Mojave desert, to eat at the Mad Greek, a very decent diner (way better than any diner in Baker needs to be), good food served in a setting of over-the-top Hellenic decoration.  I had the lamb gyro.

A few tables away sat a family consisting of a very loud child, a mother, and two grandparents.  The grandfather, something of a patriarch by his looks and behavior, and also (I think) Greek, was not having a good time.  He said, more than once, loudly, in what I took to be a Greek accent, “This is very low class food.” 

Well of course I don’t know what he was having – maybe he’d got a bad kebab – but, as I say, in general the food is way better than you have any right to expect in a nothing little town in the desert.  And it did occur to me that there may have been things other than the food spoiling his meal, the pressures of being a Greek patriarch perhaps, but he was taking it out on the food, and eventually he stormed outside for a good smoke.

I thought he was an annoying dolt, but he did set me thinking about the different ways people react to bad food.  Anger is the obvious way – as the reviews on Yelp so clearly demonstrate - and yes, anger gives you a certain release and power in an unpleasant situation, and I’m not pretending that I’m immune to that.  But sometimes anger just doesn’t feel like the appropriate response.

On this same road trip, I ate at a Chinese restaurant in Delta, Utah called Top’s City Café.  That had obviously been the name of a previous incarnation, but the new owners hadn’t changed it, for whatever reason.  The interior still looked like  a very cool, classic diner, though as you can see business wasn’t especially brisk.

I ordered the Cashew Chicken which turned out to be strips of dry, flavorless chicken, overwhelmed by veggies in a bland, glutinous sauce.   It actually looks much better than it tasted, which is a problem we bloggers sometimes have:

It was pretty bad but it didn’t make me angry.  It made me very sad, because obviously the people running the place were good people – the Chinese waitress was cheerful and attentive, and the cook, an older Chinese man, appeared from the kitchen from time to time and looked around the restaurant in a concerned way.  Clearly they were not indifferent, clearly they were trying hard, but they were failing. 

        And we come to that old thing – not the Kitchen Nightmare thing – that if only some Gordon Ramsey type could breeze in and do a bit of swearing, then everything would be all right.  No, rather that maybe it would be better for all concerned if the chef found something else to do, something he was good at. Meanwhile they could get a good new chef for the kitchen. I had a distinct feeling this was not going to happen at Top’s City Cafe, and that was saddest of all.

But not everything in Delta was sad.  Up at the other end of town there was a place called Mi Rancherito, proclaiming itself to be a Mexican restaurant, although there was a huge Salvadorian flag displayed inside: maybe it was fusion.  The carne asade was wonderful: much better than it looks in this pic (see above).

But here’s the thing: were the people working in Mi Rancherito and less attentive or caring than the people in Top’s City Café?  Were the Mi Rancherito crowd trying harder: no, both lots were trying just as hard.  But the cook, was just very, very much better at what he or she did.  And this is the real thing, which may seem obvious, but doesn’t get said nearly as often as I think it should: being good at things really gives you an unfair advantage over people who are less good.