Sunday Morning 1 (Oki Dog)
36″ x 24″
Oil on canvas
$6,000.00
David Anderle

Billy Shire Fine Arts
Exhibition: November 14, 2009 – December 5, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 14th, 7-10 pm

Did You Know?
As of Autumn ‘09, the Oki-Dog (Fairfax@Willoughby) LA County Public Health Score is back down to a bright red 73 “C” rating, thanks to:

»continue reading Please Help Us Purchase This Fine Painting

Dear Father’s Officers,

There is only one thing worse than spotting your parents downing a pint in your favorite burger and beer joint: finding your aunt and uncle instead.

And, I’m reluctant to report, this recently occurred at Father’s Office in Culver City. At first I thought I was seeing shit. But, nope, they were there. Eating and drinking and being merry. And when I approached I quickly found out this was not their first visit. In fact, they consider themselves “semi-regulars.”

It is with this pronouncement I make another: Father’s Office has officially jumped the culinary shark.

Look, I love my aunt and uncle. I even crashed at their house for two summers back in college. And I know my freaking mom is going to email them a link to this post so I’m going to be in trouble. But, let’s be honest, no one wants to see their middle-aged aunt and uncle at the bar you frequent. It simply makes the place so un-cool I can no longer go there.

»continue reading Beacon: The Culver City Father’s Office Solution

Wednesday night is “$5 Burger Night” at Echo Park restaurant ‘the Park’. The $5 price includes one burger and a side. I know what you’re thinking, “For $5 bucks I can get five burgers at McDowell’s”, but we all know that fast food burgers generally lack the texture and distinct flavor of those found in the backyard; plus, once you throw in a 32oz of your favorite malt liquor and the company of your two favorite foodies, this works out to be a pretty good deal.

One of my dining companions had eaten at ‘the Park’ once before and remembered the place being BYOB. I checked the website and although I found the letters BYOB on certain nights, it was unclear if this was their general policy. Being the classy, respectful, upstanding citizen that I am, and given the lack of clarity on the matter, I smuggled in my own hooch — and it’s a good thing I did. Apparently, the news of the “$5 Burger Night” has spread to all corners of Hipsterville and characters straight out of the latest Urban Outfitters catalog swarmed the narrow entrance to be seated. We had to wait about 35 minutes for a table. There was no list to put my name down on, and the hostess seemed aggravated and bothered. I mentioned to her that we would be outside waiting and she apathetically responded, “oh”. Come to think of it, she did not even come out to fetch us when the table was ready, we just happened to be hovering around the patio and saw that one of the tables had opened up.

»continue reading Barely Under $10 and BYOB: The Park (Echo Park)

We can’t actually tell if Mike (a) is tired of shelling out $3.50 for his Coolhaus ice cream sandos, (b) has a crush on the owners, (c) is jealous of the truck’s tar-architecture- asphalt-and- cream-laden business model, or (d) is completely and wholly spot-on, in the right, in his op-ed below regarding the Coolhaus Ice Cream Sandwich Truck duo’s failure to openly confess to a presumed Diddy Riese/UCLA collegiate inspiration at some level, having in the last few months shoved their version of the venerable Westwood institution’s non-architecturally-themed-yet-peculiarly-overly-familiar $1.50 sandos into a trendy li’l chrome truck, slapped punny architectural names onto them and tweeted them away all o’er town for $3.50 a throw, an astonishing markup in our frugal books. Who’s to say? That’s why they call it op-ed! Feel free to share your own opinions following the below tirade. The more vocal of you, g’head, send us a fully-fleshed submission for op-ed consideration on these pages (yes, Coolhaus, we’re looking directly at you for rebuttal). -ed

Above close-up of one member of Coolhaus’ $3.50 summer product line replete with edible “500 Days of Summer” wrapper courtesy intellichick (some rights reserved)

Coolhaus not so cool
By Mike

I live in Los Angeles and I eat a lot. I drink a little, too. With this highly dignified and prestigious culinary resume I’ve accumulated some opinions over the years. From time to time I will share them here. Bottoms up.

Dear Coolhaus Ice Cream Sandwich Truck Ladies,

Look, I like you ladies. Natasha and Freya – those sound like hot names. Your truck, it’s silver – that’s fucking adorable. It’s even got rims. Totally bad ass. Your sandwiches are named after one of the most overlooked professions of the modern day … architects.

That’s all well and good.

It truly is. But, I think your shenanigans have gone on long enough. It’s time we discuss the frozen white elephant in the truck.

»continue reading “Truck Talk” Op-Ed: Coolhaus Not So Cool

Mayhap you have been following the saga of The Green Truck And The Plight of Trendy Gourmet Mobile Food Providers Along Miracle Mile, The Grouchy Local Purveyors, The Incensed Office Workers and The Man in the last couple of weeks. Mayhap not. Still, mayhap you have. At this time, we can now finally and truly report that there be Nothing Of Interest Whatsoever To Be Gleaned From This Post Regarding The Green Truck, The LAPD, Museum Square’s Grouchy Restaurant Row And Its Nearby Office Tenants. Ready? Begin.

FROM: Ryan’s Wireless Device
TO: Bob N/A
TIME: 11:59am 28 Aug 2009 Fri
What’s going on down on The Mile?

FROM: Bob N/A
TO: Ryan’s Wireless Device
TIME: 12:01pm
Barbie’s Q, Marked 5 are here. No sign of the police just yet. Eating some lunch. Will it be a peaceful day?

»continue reading PROBABLY NOT DEVELOPING: Nothing Of Interest Whatsoever To Be Gleaned From This Post Regarding The Green Truck, The LAPD, Museum Square’s Grouchy Restaurant Row And Its Nearby Office Tenants

Following our recent, topical, txtmsg-suffused posting about the LAPD’s targeted harassment of the gourmet food trucks near 5750 Wilshire Blvd, the inbox has been flooded: carbon-copies of outraged letters to Tom LaBonge, gratuitous linking from angry yelpers, 5750 Wilshire office resident petition signers (120 sigs at press time!) requesting mentions, at least one LA Times piece (wherein The Man pooh-poohs last week’s fiasco as a simple, one-day, non-permit-having-truck-targeted sting) and more than a few recently-submitted food truck reviews and op-ed pieces that I still have yet to parse, process and post live to the site. Meantime, Bobby’s back on the scene down Wilshire way, right now:

FROM: Bob N/A
TO: Ryan’s Wireless Device
TIME: 11:49am
I am at museum square stop now to scope things out. Here come the cops

More as it develops; stay tuned.

Green truck photo by jojomelons

» LAPD Throwing All Manner of Fines Under the Sun At Your Favorite Truck
» India Jones: Open For Business, Impounded By Po-Po, Back On Streets Today
» Green Truck on twitter

Featuring Arrested Development, Built To Spill, Cody ChesnuTT & Martin Luther, Fool’s Gold, Mika Miko, Morris Day & The Time, The Sonics, Tiny Masters of Today and you (?) [< - Click a name to jump to that artist's photos]

Featuring Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band, Dengue Fever, The Delta Spirit, Islands, Les Nubians, Mary Wilson, Miss Derringer, Nico Vega, Rumspringa, Sly & Robbie, The Submarines, Warpaint & you (?) [< - Click a name to jump to that artist's photos]

It’s officially Food Friday here at the Losanjealous.

…The featured event is the 3rd Annual Nisei Week Gyoza Eating Championship – presented by Day-Lee Foods – which starts at 3 p.m. at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center (JACCC) in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo district. Two-time defending champion Joey Chestnut (Nathan’s Hot Dog Champion and the top competitive eater in the world) returns to defend his title and break his world record of 231 gyoza consumed in 10 minutes.

Attempting to unseat Chestnut will be top-ranked eaters Tim Brown (#10 World Rank), rapper Eric “Badlands” Booker (#13), Nate Biller (#19), Kevin Ross (#23), and Sean Kirby (#42) as well as a field of local amateurs. Competing on behalf of charity will be the 2008 Nisei Week Queen and Court.

Anyone wanting to enter the contest may participate in an auction for the 20th and final spot, which will take place at the beginning of the event [...] Admission is free with seating limited to a first- come- first- serve basis.

» Third Annual Annual Nisei Week Gyoza Eating Championship (via LA Metblogs)
» Joey Chestnut 2009 Threepeat: 68 Hot Dogs in 10 Minutes

Top photo of losanjealous ryan’s gyoza-dinner-atop-coffee-table by losanjealous ryan (used by permission)

Mere days into its new tar-curry-and-asphalt business model, the explosive chutney-laden and aptly-named India Jones Chow Truck suffered a fate no lonchera would wish on another Wednesday prior at 5750 Wilshire Food Truck Takedown ‘09: Impound! Unsatisfied with simply slapping all manner of tickets and fines onto and into the truck and its wares, The Man opted to drag the glittering chrome-goat-milk-and-wheels box back to central for additional consumption, belches and post-tow betel nut chew. Take heart, for the story has a coconutty-sweet ending: Said truck is back on those mean Los Angeles streets as of today and Chef Sumant Pardel, having survived the ordeal in one piece, will be slinging Bombay Frankies, spicy food and various mango sundries again; very soon, in fact, with a possible appearance at this weekend’s Sunset Junction festival, according to that one website where everybody text-messages each other:

@losanjealous we r getting our truck back 2day they almost took it for 30 days… Thanx 4 awsome coverage we got in touch w/ Bobby of green

» LAPD Throwing All Manner of Fines Under the Sun At Your Fave Food Truck
» India Jones Chow Truck (official site / blog)
» http://twitter.com/indiajonesct
» Meals on Wheels: IJCT (Eater LA)

File under hearsay text messages: The following phone-to-phone transcript comes direct from our good buddy Bobby over at Green Truck On The Go (screw twitter, too much noise; tweet away but old-fashioned txtmsgs still own me end of day and he knows it). Verbatim txtscript:

FROM: Bob N/A
TO: Losanjealous Ryan’s Wireless Device
Anti-lunch truck task force action here. The cops formed one due to complaints at our museum square route, and cracked down today, throwing down fines and citing for trucks parking too close to the curb, trucks parking too far from the curb, trucks beeping whey they back up, trucks not being equipped with beepers when they back up, trucks protruding into red zones, trucks serving up sub-par food (joke) and god only knows what else. Word is that they also dished out $5000 fines – we hadn’t opened yet and avoided that bit, at least. (no citation for “failing to open in a timely fashion”?? -ed) Their stated purpose is to clear wilshire of lunch trucks.

FROM:Ryan’s Wireless Device
TO: Bob N/A
Wilsh and where??

FROM: Bob N/A
TO: Ryan’s Wireless Device
5750 Wilshire – between Curson and Masselin. Toshi’s Asian Food keeps calling the cops. 10-15 squad cars per day for the next week or two, task force to ticket trucks for anything and everything until they leave.

»continue reading DEVELOPING: LAPD Officially Tasked With Throwing All Manner of Fines Under the Sun At Your Favorite Food Truck

My Taco: 6300 York Blvd #4, Highland Park, Ca 90042

Here at Losanjealous,  we tackle the hardest of hard-hitting issues. Serious earth shattering, globally conscious shit like, does Diet Dr. Pepper REALLY taste like regular Dr. Pepper? And whether or not ‘My Taco’ is “authentic” or “white people” Mexican food (see comments here – ed).

To truly put the matter to rest we first have to dissect what “authentic” and what “white people” encompasses. Naturally, I take authentic to mean a representation of something that is in close proximity to the original inception. Whereas what “white people” means is a matter worthy of some graduate school dissertation. That being said, I will naively conclude, for the purpose of this analysis that “white people” refers to the watering down, or commercialization of whathaveyou: in this case Mexican food. (Not that there is anything necessarily and automatically wrong with that as  I will explore later.)

»continue reading Under $10: OUR Taco (My Taco; Highland Park)

About a month ago, I wrote up this useless post about a bowl of pho ga which has been around since May. I chose to not divulge this info for “Under $10″ due to the restaurant rescinding the offer in early July. Since then, I’ve been asked numerous times when this special will return.

As of last week, $3.50 got you a large bowl of pho ga (chicken) again. We all already think $6 bowls of beef pho all around LA, SGV & Little Saigon are tremendous values, but then, there also exists a gushing review of a vegan $6.50 banh mi sammy in Reseda. This particular bowl of lighter pho, relatively to that banh mi, is the king of Vietnamese cheap.

»continue reading $3.50 Bowl of Chicken Pho! Pho Ha, Rosemead

Worth $10?

Cheapskate foodies, garlic paste addicts, festival fans and carnivores alike: Saturday has come and gone. Did you make it out to the Summit this weekend for the inaugural Korean BBQ Festival & Cookoff? Did you suffer 90-minute lines for such booths as “Flip’s Beach BBQ” (one of the only vendors with a clear, discernable sign posted) or, as did my party, did you stumble upon one of the unmarked vendors in the corner catering primarily to staff, and purchase a (mostly passable) plate for $10 or $15? Did you wait patiently for Sprinkles to set up shop, just for the chance to wait in a line that appeared at surface to be less than than a 75-minute commitment? Did you get sunburned? Stuffed? Bored? Cooled by a paper-and-wood fan that inexplicably reminded of you “Yelp”? Did you partake of the Coors Light and Blue Moon suds? What were the highs and lows? The ins and outs? The Bar-B’s, and the Q’s? The Kims? The Chis? Please grade the festival. Lay it on us, won’t you now, please. My festival grade after the jump.
»continue reading 2009 Inaugural Los Angeles Korean BBQ Festival & Cookoff: What’d You Think?

Weathered Sandal

With rave reviews in notable publications like the LA TIMES, the LA WEEKLY, and Los Angeles Magazine, just to name a few, it’s no wonder I eagerly looked forward to trying the “Huaraches” at my neighbourhood “gem” of the same moniker, ‘Huarache Azteca Restaurants’ in Highland Park. At the risk of disagreeing with the pseudo culinary expertise of YELPers far and wide, this brick pile is a 2.5 star joint, AT BEST.

Maybe I am being too hard on this place because I grew up eating Mexican food, or maybe all the praise and hype I heard about it falsely raised my expectations. Whatever it was, I can honestly say that I gave it the ol’ college try. I once read an article about the rules to writing food reviews which included a list of do’s and dont’s. I found the list redundant and obvious, but one rule that seemed logical was that in order to review a restaurant fairly, one had to try it more than once, and that is just what I did.

»continue reading Under $10: Huarache Azteca (Highland Park)

Nestled in a strip mall; in picturesque Highland Park, sandwiched between what I suspect to be a rub and tug massage parlour, a laundry mat overrun by savage rogue children and an El Pollo Loco, is Carolina’s Mar Y Sol Restaurante. I don’t know a whole lot about Salvadorean dishes, but a sign outside promises $1.60 pupusas everyday, and I like pupusas. Also, I like a bargain even though I am always hesitant to try things that have not been previously recommended.

»continue reading Under $10: Carolina’s Mar Y Sol, Highland Park

We started Drive & Find a few years back because, frankly, we were damn intimidated by the vast Los Angeles culinary scene. It’s a simple concept: two Westside dudes are hungry… they pick an area of town… they take a drive … they find an alluring restaurant … they dine there. This concept has brought us all around LA – from seafood to Thai to total crap – nonetheless our affinity for the unknown remains.

DATE: Thursday, June 18, 2009

RESTAURANT: La Fiesta Brava
423 Rose Avenue
Venice, 90291
310.399.8005

THEIR SLOGAN: not the sort of restaurant with a slogan

OUR SLOGAN: Awesome – because not the sort of restaurant with a “slogan”

DRIVE TIME: 25 minutes

LIKES: The piping hot chips. Fresh salsa. BYOB and the convenient convenience market next door. Odd arrangement of bullfighting paraphernalia. The owner, Samuel (we think that was his name). The eclectic set of patrons. The south of the border feel. The flimsy screen door entrance. The price.

»continue reading Drive & Find: Ep 3: La Fiesta Brava (Venice)

Photo: Major League Eating / IFOCE

CONGRATULATIONS to Joey Chestnut, who downed an unprecedented 68 Nathan’s Famous hot dogs in 10 minutes at noon EST today, the fourth of July, at the corner of Surf and Stillwell on Coney Island, setting a new world record and keeping the Mustard Belt right here at home WHERE IT BELONGS. Fellow USA gurgitator and wig-and-vintage-ruffle-shirt-clad daytime chef Pat Bertoletti also showed remarkable prowess, downing some 55 hot dogs in 10 minutes.

Dog Count: The Top Three
Joey Chestnut…………………68
Takeru Kobayashi…………..64.5
Pat Bertoletti………………….55

Chestnut told ESPN that he plans to eat a Cobb salad with ranch dressing for dinner this evening, offering further proof that the USA can and will eat more than any other country. Never forget that. Happy 4th!

DID YOU KNOW?
Ryan is no stranger to the IFOCE judging process, having witnessed and judged a popcorn-eating contest and a chili-cheese-fry eating contest for George Shea and the IFOCE at various points in his shady past.

Way over in Reseda, miles away from the joints I usually frequent and deep in the heart of the San Fernando Valley, Vinh Loi Tofu is serving up some of the best sandwiches in town for well under 10 bucks. The modest vegan Vietnamese eatery is definitely off the beaten path, but redeems itself by offering several different banh mi subs stuffed with animal-free versions of chicken, beef, tuna, ham and curry meatballs…all of which are reasonably priced and insanely delicious.

Curry Meatball Chicken Sub. $6.50

»continue reading Under $10: Huge Banh Mi Subs at Vinh Loi Tofu

That’s right. We’ve gone off the deep end dining wagon. This is straight up ghetto. LAist recently did a study of the “fish dogs” at Wienerschnitzels hence it’s only right Losanjealous will now present the $2.99 Big Bite 1/4 pound hot dog from 7-11.

»continue reading Under $5: A $2.99 date with 7-11