Profile: AOC b/w Louisiana Fried Chicken
By Ryan - Thursday February 02nd 2006 |
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La la. Blah-blah blah.
A|O|C is great.
A|O|C is wonderful!
Everybody thinks so. Everybody eats here. I mean everybody. I don’t call it AOC myself. I don’t call it A-line-O-line-C, either. I call it Appellation d’Origine Contrôllée with no accent. Every time. That’s how I roll.
Who the hell am I to tell you where to go? Take the advice of 58 raving citysearchers. Take the advice of calendarlive. Take the advice…ladies and gentlemen, take the advice of Mike and Maria. When have they steered you wrong, ever. Take all of these advices and ponder them in your heart, but most importantly take a date because you are getting laid tonight, my friend. Take a vegetarian. He/she will love it. Take a carnivore. He/she will love it.
Veg
I never thought I’d say this. The cauliflower was my favorite dish. I shit you not. Curried cauliflower? My eyes automatically skim over the listing, frantically searching for something made out of pork. Suddenly, Plunk. Curried cauliflower lands on our table. Plunk. Jesus. What is this? Mine, that’s what it is. Scooch-sie. Get another plate. Fuck that. Get two. The Italian broccoli. Hello garlic. Delectable. The sautéed sweet potatoes. What the hell that brown crunchy stuff is I’ll never know, but it haunts me to this day. Go ahead, vege-date. Order up the sweet potatoes sans bacon. Why would you do that.
Wine
Here we go. 25 reds and 25 whites on tap. You will stare at the device. You will try to remember it is called a cruvinet. I have a lot of experience with cruvinets at 7-11. Through science they mix just the right amount of coca-cola formula syrup with carbonated water. The cruvinet robot at 7-11 go ptssssh!, ptsssssh. It is expected. Sometimes the cruvinet at 7-11 fucks up the recipe. Robots. What can you do. The cruvinet at Appellation d’Origine Contrôllée will not fuck up your wine. Only your server can do that.
Meat
Order the speck (pronounced “shpeck”) with arugula. You will probably want to pass on the arugula. Should you order it without the arugula, you’ll end up with something approximating giant slabs of raw bacon on a white cutting board. Horrify your veggie perimeter. Greedily eat it up. It is delicious. Here is a photo. Tip of the iceberg. You have just begun to partake of the flesh, my friend. It’s going to be a long night. Order the skirt steak. Order the veal! The braised duck. You’ve earned it, man. Go for one of every single pork dish on the menu. Order up the pâte. Do not skimp on the cheeses. Tonight is your night. Go big, or go home.
A|O|C
8022 W. 3rd St.
(323) 653-6359
(Note: I was able to reserve Sunday two days in advance.)
The B-side
Right. B-side. The oddball throwaway nonetheless compelling in its own weird way. Like hit singles, every great review has a B-side. The B-side to my Appellation d’Origine Contrôllée review is Louisiana Fried Chicken.
Let me tell you about this place. If you’re looking for the Hollywood industry types. The service industry. The security guard service industry. The Hollywood parking enforcement service industry. You’ll find them here, eating everything in sight. I counted upwards of a shitload of security guards and parking enforcers all partaking of the comfort foods found inside these grease-splotched walls. That, and a few scraggly transients. At first glance I wanted to give them all parking tickets, reproaching humiliations and miles of heartburn. In the end, I wanted to give us all rolaids and be done with it. A few things disturbed me at LFC, as follow:
The wait for food
Lotta guards and officers. Not a lotta fries. What gives.
Greasy Chinese food in jumbo steam trays
I came inside Louisiana Fried Chicken looking for deep-fried, artery-clogging goodness. Not a full buffet of slimy-looking, artery-clogging noodles, broccoli beef and the like. Why can you order Chinese food here? Dubious, friends. Dubious. You would not find Chinese food in a Louisiana Fried Chicken establishment in Louisiana. No sir. No how.
Dryroll
‘Nuff said.
Louisiana Fried Chicken and Chinese Food
(Chain)
1106 N La Brea Ave at Santa Monica
one of the best restaurant reviews i’ve read in a long time.
The cauliflower could only have been your favorite dish if you didn’t have the roasted dates with parmesan and bacon. The. Best. Thing. Ever.
omg hell yeah the bacon-wrapped dates were unbelievable. it was a transcendental eating experience. i don’t even really like wine, and whenever i try to eat fish it makes me almost vomit because it always tastes like slime and guts off the bottom of the ocean. but at AOC i had wine and fish that were both delicious. we dropped an assload of money though.
oh and i overheard the people at the next table talking about the Mars rovers, AND MC Hammer. I love LA.