While I was out today not driving seven miles specifically to pile down 2400 calories of Crunchwrap Supremes, I stumbled upon an excellent NotFoolingAnybody.com candidate. Below on the left, 63-year-old California donut chain Winchell’s Donut House. On the right, Michelle’s Donut House on Santa Monica Blvd. and Heliotrope Dr. in Los Angeles.
My joy at this discovery was quickly tempered when I discovered that NotFoolingAnybody.com is tragically defunct.
School nachos and unidentified nuggets, courtesy of http://assfacemclegs0.blogspot.com
I just finished listening to today’s Morning Edition story “What’s Inside the 26-ingredient School Lunch Burger?” about the movement among parents to rid school cafeterias of processed food. The nonsense geysering forth from the people on both sides of the issue made me so indignant that I spoke the word “dipshit” aloud multiple times in my shower before 9am, then dropped everything else I had to do this morning (i.e. repeatedly clicking the Get Mail button until I’m employed) to immediately write a rebuttal.
I come from Pittsburgh, where our favorite style of food is A Thing With French Fries on It.
A sandwich with french fries on it has, outside of Pittsburgh, become known as a “Pittsburgh sandwich.”1 Within Pittsburgh, a “Pittsburgh salad” is a salad covered in french fries and most of a cow. Pittsburghers will gladly pay the $38 admission to Kennywood amusement park just to get inside so they can line up at the legendary Potato Patch and pay several additional dollars for three or four pounds of hand-cut fries afloat in liquified cheesefood.
I mention this because last week comedian Brandie Posey led me to what could become Pittsburgh’s next Thing With French Fries on It.
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Looking at Brodie Hubbard there, obviously the first thought that comes to mind is, “I’d like to know the history of that beard.” Luckily, at my urging, Brodie has told it. Now let’s move on to other things.
Brodie’s a vegan, so he suggested we meet at animal-byproductless hotspot Flore in Silver Lake. Flore specializes in meatless versions of popular non-vegetarian dishes: reubens, tacos, veggie burgers, etc. served by Fred Armisen rehearsing a character for Portlandia. My experience has been that that style of vegan cooking — with stuff like tempeh bacon and seitan pork — rarely works out well and results in a disappointing ersatz mess when the chef could’ve better spent his time making something distinctly vegetarian and enjoyable. But Flore pulls it off and has even created a tofu chicken for their club sandwich that so closely mimics the texture of a browned chicken breast that I picked it apart to examine it like something I’d dug out of my ear, while Brodie smiled politely.
My favorite fast-food burger joint, mid-Atlantic staple Five Guys Burgers and Fries, recently started a massive push into southern California, to the great joy of certain parts of my body and the great dismay of other parts. I try not to get in the middle of those internal disputes. I figure they’ll sort it out between themselves. But I’ve noticed two things since Five Guys came to LA: 1) they’re perfectly thrilled to have doubled their prices, and 2) In-N-Out Burger devotees, who are legion, find Five Guys perplexing and seem vaguely offended by the whole thing.
My fellow lunchee, comedian Barbara Gray, is just such a devotee, but she admirably suggested we give Five Guys’ new Miracle Mile location a shot. When we’d finished she diplomatically pronounced it “okay,” in the same sort of way one would describe a tax accountant who didn’t let you deduct your Xbox Live subscription fees.
The first #SethBuyMeLunch lunch in many weeks burst forth through a hail of prawns and mashed potatoes in Culver City yesterday, when Liezl Estipona and I had a much delayed meal after I canceled on her due to illness a couple of weeks ago. I expected to never hear from her again, but she got back in touch because, as she said, “[I simply couldn't wait any longer to meet you, and] I was hungry.”
We met in front of Honey’s Kettle Fried Chicken but eventually opted instead for the slightly less-kettle-fried selection at nearby Tender Greens, an interesting gourmet lunch counter. Tender Greens structures their entire menu around a few proteins of which they grill massive piles and slice fresh in front of you: lovely steaks, chicken, and hulking chunks of ahi tuna. They use the meats as building blocks for well prepared plates,1 sandwiches, and salads. Pretty much everything costs $11, which seemed like a good deal deal for Liezl’s steak plate, slightly less so for my enjoyable grilled prawns salad. Maybe if they called them “shrimp” they could knock a few bucks off the price.
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I met writer-producer-director-actor-comedian-queef-joke-enthusiast Ann Marie Lindbloom for lunch at Simple Things Restaurant, a sandwich and pie place on West 3rd, where she ate half a turkey-and-avocado sandwich and took the rest home. I promptly insisted she reimburse me for the uneaten portion, because page 53 #SethBuyMeLunch contract clearly states that the complimentary lunch includes only food eaten during the course of the meal. She kicked me in the eyes and ran off. Luckily I still had time to enjoy my reuben,1 which was of high quality, if a little overpriced, with thick, tender corned beef.
If you were to say the phrase “thick, tender corned beef” to Ann Marie, she’d make a joke about it of questionable taste. Which is, of course, the reason you should have lunch with her. She’s quick witted and walking around with a shoulder bag full of ideas for animated comedy series, all of which are of questionable taste, which is why you, being a development executive, should ask her to pitch them to you. She’s one of those types who can talk to a room full of people for four minutes and have them all convinced that they must work with her. For all of the above reasons I wish her nothing but ill.
Ann Marie (AKA @AnnMarieTV) is certainly the most under-followed person I know of on Twitter. Follow this link to rectify that, but know that here be potty mouth. Truth is though that Ann Marie admitted to being secretly mortified every time she types a joke about lower body parts or anything that one wouldn’t bring up in polite conversation with Charles Kuralt, and she hates mean jokes. Endearing qualities both, which is why I didn’t tell her that she kind of freaked me out because she looks like my old high school girlfriend.
You can win lunch with me simply by tweeting #SethBuyMeLunch any Monday, including today. Details here.
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Despite James Bond’s myriad horrible characteristics and the many equally horrible movies made about him, I’ve been something of a Bond enthusiast most of my life. I even think I still have, somewhere in a storage locker in Pittsburgh, a complete set of the Victory Games, Inc. 007 role playing games.
Alcohol is an integral part of the Bond mythos, so much so that Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale, contains a recipe for a now-classic cocktail called the Vesper:
When you’re still using a three-year-old iPhone 3G, the Maps app takes 35 minutes to start up. Which means that by the time you admit that you don’t know where you’re going, you’re going to be at least 35 minutes more lost. And so after several U-turns on Venice Blvd. and captivating tours of the side streets of Culver City, I parked near a lot full of beatdown Alfa Romeo Spiders1 at the Omega Motorsports garage and arrived at Villa Tacos quite a bit late to find Brian Morrison deep into free chips and salsa.
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