No, no, I haven’t been lazy about posting new material. Just playing a little hard to get. That’s all.

So Sunday evening I knew I wanted takeout for dinner but was sick of Z pizza, M Cafe, Mani’s Bakery and all the other usual suspects. I keep pulling into the parking lot on Melrose and Rossmore to get Mario’s Peruvian only to find they are closed, so I didn’t even try this time. Instead I went straight to Larchmont, where I ordered one of the specials from Le Pain Quotidien:

Chorizo and shrimp salad with some sort of delicious cajun dressing:

Looks pretty good considering it had thrashed around my car in a to go container:

I paid for my salad and waited for it to come my way. Then, as a testament to my lack of self-control, I spotted almond merengues and blurted out that I needed one of those, too. Add it to my tab.

Is it wrong that I almost forgot to eat my salad because I spent half the night taking glamour shots of the merengue?

This was the most goddamn crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside, almondy delightful merengue I could have imagined. The first thing I thought when I took a bite was, “Shit. It’s gonna be so embarrassing when I start buying these every day.”

The last shot is just so you can see what it looks like with a bite taken out. It’s not because I couldn’t control myself even though I knew I hadn’t gotten the perfect picture yet. Got it?

over the weekend my dad and I rolled over to falafel arax, the best shawarma spot in town. we’ve been coming here since they first opened, over 20 years ago. expect to see one of three people behind the counter when you come here: the father (so cute), the son (so nice), or the daughter (expressionless). This is a family business and it always will be. Their shawarma is the absolute best I’ve ever had, save for maybe one place in Montreal. They are cash only and closed after 8, except on Sundays when they close at 6. They are Lebanese Armenians, or Armenian Arabs, whatever, so if you are Armenian or Arabic they speak your language. If you’re American, don’t be alarmed by the brain or the tongue on the menu and you must order by pointing because while they understand English they refuse to admit it. Just kidding, they totally speak English.

Got the shawarma plate with beef shawarma:

The sauce on the lettuce and tomato is tahini sauce, not some gross yogurty shit, k? the shit!

My dad ordered falafel and then forcefed me three of them, making me want to die of fullness. Fullness that results from an Arabic meal is unparalleled in the world of gluttony.

on the side, pickled turnips and spicy peppers. my friend Yvonne and I used to eat as many of these peppers as we could in Lit class in 11th grade and try not to choke. fun game.

it’s not the most glamorous spot but it’s arabic fast food at it’s best. you can also buy pickled turnips and spices like zataar in bulk. for all you dairy eatin’ arabs and armos that know what’s up you can get Tahn, too. Holla!!!!!

Went to Ciudad today with all the Latin office peeps. This place tends to have great service, great margaritas, and great lunch.

They always bring a variety of crackers to start, including a sun dried tomato and a sesame zataar spice one, with a mixture of hummous and olive tapenade:

easy to run through those like a track meet before you even order your meal.

Mayra showed up for lunch looking like Poetic Justice at the family BBQ:

She ordered her usual pomegranite margarita. TART and delicious.

We all ordered the Piquillo Glazed Boneless Beef Short Ribs, which come with boniato yam puree, brussels sprouts, caramelized pearl onions, bacon, radish and spring garlic. There’s usually a word in every dish here that I’m unfamiliar with–boniato? why not.

The yam puree had dairy most likely so I substituted a salad. They are always easygoing about substitutions. Even their menu says to request it if you would like something made with less meat or dairy. That’s a free pass to be me, in my eyes.

Also their beef is from Niman Ranch=best shit ever. Their ingredients are local, organic, and seasonal whenever possible. In fact, the chef goes daily to local farmer’s markets to do some of the produce shopping. They only serve sustainable seafood, which I love.

Our plates all looked like this within 15 minutes:

For dessert we got one thing and politely shared it. And by one thing I mean four things and by politely shared I mean directed mild threats at each other in fear of losing our fair shares.

I had coconut and mango sorbet:

Mayra had Turkish coffee ice cream:

Tony had the drysack and the cockburn. AGAIN. what an embarrassment.

Knowing that about Tony, Isis still chose to split some sort of “rainforest” brownie with him. Oh well.

Then our homie at the bar sent over a goat cheese flan, which, rumor has it, was the best flan they’d ever had. I secretly tasted it and agreed, despite my aversion to dairy.

We get the good neighbor discount, 15% off, which makes it even more worthwhile. I don’t care what anyone says, I love this place. They even provide a free shuttle to Staples Center which means, if I get drunk enough, maybe someone will feel sorry for me and give me a playoff ticket. Maybe not. Either way I’m rioting.

Happy Friday!

In the summer I like to get lunch at Pacific Grille Express, a sandwich and salad cart that is a mere “express”ion of it’s fancy restaurant parent, Pacific Grille. Is the “e” necessary at the end of “grille”? Probably not.

They have great salads and burritos and shit and a really sweet staff. There’s an outdoor seating area where hundreds of Japanese  people a day come to smoke, usually while you eat . It’s really annoying.

It’s also unusually windy down there no matter how still the rest of the block is. This translates into a lot of napkin chasing.

Today I got the Szechuan chicken salad.

Here it is before the dressing is added:

Here it is after the dressing is added:

And here it is tossed:

Sidenote: I was recently helping my mom prepare dinner and then asked if I should toss her salad. I went into hysterics laughing and then of course had to explain to her what it meant to have your salad tossed. She was not amused. Geez. Grow up, Mom.

‘Member Gingergrass? Where my sister found a rusty nail in her food and hardly protested cause it’s just that good?

I ate there the other day. Gingergrass and Blossom are my two favorite Vietnamese joints in LA. If both their Shaking Beef dishes had a shake-off it would be a tie. Gingergrass has more specials, booze, desserts and healthy options, though, so in comparison to Blossom I guess it can go on brush it’s shoulders off.

Thai Iced Tea:

Calamari to start:

My only complaint is when you share this with someone you wish they would eat all the onions and leave you all the calamari. Rarely does it unfold this way.

Shaking beef:

p.s. my coworker’s on-again/off-again girlfriend once broke up with him for cancelling their lunch plans so he could come to Gingergrass with us. From that point forward we have referred to the restaurant as “Ditcherass” instead of “Gingergrass” since it was an easy way to get rid of her.

it’s been a while since I’ve eaten at Lemonade, and by a while, I mean two weeks, which is really only a long time because I’ve eaten there 4x/week since September. Not a long time by any means if you’re not a creature of habit like me. But you know what? It was time to play a little hard to get. Make all my chola friends wonder what happened to me. Maybe even worry a bit.

I’m pretty sure they missed me even though they didn’t show it. But that’s just what cholas do. It’s all part of the show, ya know?

I ordered two of my staples, quinoa and the fennel/sunchoke salad. I also ordered the chicken confit with pears, not remembering what confit was when I ordered it.

Then sudden flashback to Saturday night when my friend asked our waiter at Terra about duck confit and we learned it meant it was cooked in it’s own fat. If you know me well enough to have had just one meal with me, you know I don’t find this acceptable by any means and that I am NOT of the “fat is where the flavor is” school of thought. you know what animal fat tastes like? like animal fat. not cool.

I tasted the chicken and the pears and while I liked the curry flavor I couldn’t get past the animal fat flavor. Skipped that part of the meal and focused on the quinoa and the sunchoke/fennel salad. I took a closeup of the sunchokes and fennel so you could see these unusual veggies in all their glory. I often eat fennel raw at which point someone inevitably says, “are you eating an onion?!” No, I’m not eating an onion.

Ultimately the sunchoke salad interrupted my flirtatious glances directed at a nearby gentleman by making me choke to death for a good 10 minutes straight. Ugh. I hate pepper. you embarrassing, cock-blocking spice.

I take it back.

I shouldn’t have talked to you like that.

the truth is, I went to a bbq and forgot to photograph my burger before I ate it.

I went to Terra in Malibu but the lighting was poor so I couldn’t take a picture of my fish that came in a piece of paper whatthefuckisthepointofthat.
you can read my yelp review here.

Then I had Z pizza on Sunday night with my sister and her husband, who, strangely is also my husband since the three of us have no boundaries, live in the same building, and are deeply in love. Weirdos!

My sister is trying to convince me to start a petition to get Z pizza to man up and start delivering to us. At this point, we are two blocks out of their delivery range, which ends at Normandie, and I’m *this close* to pulling an Elaine Benes and waiting in someone else’s apartment building for my pizza.