Only 3 months left of sampling LA

I have been cheating. I have been cheating on you, blog. With Yelp. It's been 104 dates with Yelp. Yelp was there for me with friends and people who think I'm useful, funny and cool. And they send me compliments. And with enough reviews, I mean dates, they even slapped a red badge on my page and called me "elite". It was like receiving a gold star next to my name. Yelp made me feel special.

I decided that we (me, you and Yelp) can make this work together. I'll be moving to New York City in July for another year of residency. So that only gives me 3 more months. Three more months to sample LA...one bite at time. And I'm going to make this work.

In 3 months, I'll be sampling the best of Yelp and LA and share my adventures with you, blog. We will make this work.

The Sandwich Story

The Sandwich Story. 12 Harness Ave. Pasadena, CA

Sandwiches are one of my favorite foods...vietnamese sandwiches, meatball sandwiches, tea sandwiches, PBJ sandwiches...if it has something meaty, cheesy or nutty in between two slices of delicious bread, I will love it.

So for this reason, I had to come to The Sandwich Story.

The Sandwich Story is a small (obviously) sandwich shop that is set up to cater the young, backpack-bearing students at Pasadena City College. I forget too, that these PCC folks have a life, since I was the sole person at this joint on a Friday afternoon. Cool with me, I had the whole place to myself. On a Friday. Just me and my sandwich.

The menu included smoothies, shaved ice, the traditional cold and hot sandwiches (turkey, ham, tuna, BLT, club, pastrami, etc), and their "Story Special" which cleverly listed 4 sandwiches in chapters. I had to start with Chapter 1: Toasted pastrami sandwich with coleslaw.

Chapter 1 had page-turning bites of lean cuts of pastrami, juicy coleslaw and toasted bread. The sweet and saltiness of pastrami and coleslaw made for a pleasant mixture of ingredients to taste. They classified this sandwich as "hot" but I could use a bit more heat to the meat.

One regular sandwich was about $5 and was more generous than the average Subway sandwich....even though it's a bit short of a foot long.

I ended Chapter 1 quite happily and can't wait to flip to Chapter 2.

Pie 'n Burger

The boyfriend and I decided to go here after a blog by one of my foodie friends (www.gastronomyblog.com). Pie'n burger (www.pienburger) is one of her two favorite restaurants in Pasadena, so the boyfriend and I wanted to give it a try.

From her recommendation, we just ordered the burger and skipped the fries. I ordered the turkey burger and the boyfriend ordered the traditional hamburger. They grill their buns and serve their burgers with a wad of lettuce and thousand island sauce. The combination of crunch, juicy patty, and savory sauce reminded me of a high-quality In-n-out burger--and In-n-out is already high quality in my standards! So these burgers below are spankin' good burgers.

The only recommendation I would have with this burger...is to make it bigger...because we both were still pretty hungry.

Since this place was called "Pie'n burger", and because we were still starving, we ordered the dutch apple pie with ice cream as our dessert:

I am a big pie crust person...I absolutely LOVE pie crust. This pie crust had a flaky, buttery taste, and probably a little too salty for my taste. However, the dutch apple was delicious, and probably can do okay with less ice cream (note the big wad of ice cream wrestling my pie).

I'd go back here again, but probably after spending some time trying other restaurants. It's not one of my favorite places to go to, but still makes the "good restaurant" list.

Luna Park

I had bought a $40 "groupon" for $20 (http://www.groupon.com/) for this place called Luna Park (http://www.lunaparkla.com/), so I decided to invite my cousins out for our monthly reunion.

This place is located right at the corner of Wilshire and La Brea in an area that I wouldn't expect to be "hip". It was across from blockbusters and away from other popular restaurants. To my surprise, my cousin who arrived first was asked if she had reservations. We didn't and had to wait 15 minutes for a table...not bad.

As usual, I was the late comer. As I stepped in, every seat at the bar was taken, and the wooden dining tables were filled with age groups ranging from mid 20's to early 40's. It was a happening place.

We started off with a large bowl of sangria:

I have bits of fruit in my sangria and be able to taste the wine in it. As you can tell from the bright cherry color, this was more like a fruit punch to me, and only had a lone piece of lemon to represent the fruit family. My cousin started to feel a buzz from 2 glasses, so it did it's job. :)

We ordered poke and a side dish of macaroni and cheese as our appetizers. The mac 'n cheese to me was my favorite out of all the dishes. I had a nice crusty topping and a cheese taste that isn't too overwhelming. One of my cousin's said she can make better mac'n cheese.

The poke, or marinated raw tuna, had tomatoes, ginger, poke, garlic, lime, and every ingredient necessary to make a salsa. It tasted good as a general dish, but if you order it, don't expect to get a traditional poke plate. I like to be able to taste more of the poke than it's supporting ingredients, and this one didn't really do it for me. "It's like a ceviche" said one of my cousins.

My cousin Lan got the pan seared Mahi Mahi with Morroccon couscous and baby bok choi. I thought the Mahi Mahi was good but lacked some flavor, and didn't realize that it was supposed to be "pan-seared" until I looked at their website. I always thought pan-seared meant "lightly cooked on the outside and raw in the inside"...but this one was cooked all the way. It didn't fit the bill.

My other cousin Thanh ordered the breaded pork cutlet, and I ordered the parmesan gnocchi bolognese.

The pork cutlet was very good...it reminded me exactly of the Japanese pork katsu...except this one had a dab of cranberries on it, making it more American.

My gnocchi were as big as big marshmellows and the texture of the gnocchi was almost as soft as marshmellows. It's with "ground Ninan ranch flat iron"...which basically means ground beef (I couldn't taste the difference if ground flat iron is supposed to be better quality). Overall, I think flavor-wise my dish was good, but again, it's not quite the traditional gnocchi I was expecting.

Overall, if you're looking for a happening place to hang out with your friends or a place to go out for a casual date, this is it. If you're looking for "the place" to go to for food, I'm sure there's better places out there. I had fun.

JJ's Bakery (Arcadia)

This is probably THE most popular JJ's bakery in Los Angeles. When my college friends found out I was moving to the "valley", they told me that I HAD to try this Chinese bakery. And of course by the time I moved up here, JJ's was no mystery...my co-residents already knew about it.

It's located in the chinatown of san gabriel valley--Arcadia...right off Duarte and Baldwin Ave.

Weekends are busy days for JJ's. Crowds are lined up trying to get their freshest baked goods--straight from the oven.

They use the same type of bread for almost all their baked goods--it's this slightly chewy and slightly sweet soft bread--probably very similar to the texture of hawaiian rolls. The main difference is what's inside (or outside), and it varies from dried pork, barbeque pork, coconut, taro, red bean, mochi, hot dog, corn, and more.

They also have more "baked goods" which includes moon cake, birthday cakes, mochi, and little fruit tarts. The other side of JJ's has a small "cafe" that serves coffee from Illy-the famous rich Italian coffee.

(from left: hot dog bun, red bean mochi, dried pork)


I've been here probably half a dozen times so far, and can say that I've tried half of their baked bready items. So I thought I can give my "tips" of going to JJ's:

1) Arrive early if you want the freshest and largest variety of baked goods.
2) If you do arrive early and they don't have what you want, ask them. Most likely it's in the back.
3) All of the baked buns have a unique look on the outside--if you know exactly what you want, you can tell by how it looks without reading their small signs.
4) Buns run out fast, especially the popular ones.
5) If you don't know what to get, look at what others are getting.


My favorites:
Sweet buns: Red bean bun with mochi (outside: half of the bun has sesame seeds)
Savory buns: Barbeque pork bun (outside: plain), or the 3 miniature dried pork buns (comes in 3, has dried pork all around it)

Pop Champagne Bar

33 E. Union St. Pasadena, CA http://www.popchampagnebar.com/

I met up with an old junior high school friend at this cute little hidden champagne bar just a block away from the hustling Old Town Pas.

Every Thursday they have 33% off bottles and and a tasting menu that allows you to try 3 different flavors of champagne for $14-19. The extensive champagne (and wine) list included bottles ranging $30-60. They do have a list of more affordable half bottles (my kind of list). We went for a half bottle.

Our server helped us choose a nice dry champagne called Philipponnat. It was light, crisp, and just lovely. It went well with the truffled mac n'cheese and sliders:

The quick and dirty:

Carrot soup-came out luke-warm, was just okay;

Sliders--came w/3 different ones...one with goat cheese, another with bbq sauce and the last was a classic mini-hamburger. My favorite was the goat cheese and classic one, although all were good. I'd eat more.

Truffled Mac n'cheese: One day I will taste what truffles really taste like. This was another dish where it was "lightly truffled". Really? I didn't taste it. Mac n'cheese was good, but not the best.

Service: awesome, server was knowledgable of the champagne and wine list and can suggest them according to our dish and our preference in taste.

I'd come back here again, not necessarily for their food, but as a nice social get-together or a girls' night out. Who's down?! =)

Julienne

http://www.juliennetogo.com/

This little restaurant is located in wealthy neighborhood of San Marino at 2649 Mission St. I didn't follow the "note to self" (check out hotdog blog) and came here on a Sunday when it was closed. The boyfriend and I returned here on a Friday happy to find that the crowd of middle-aged summer-dress-wearing women and polo-shirted men spelled out "yes we're open".

This place seems to be known for their breakfast. They serve breakfast M-F 7-10:45am and Sat 7:30-11:30am (again, no hours listed on Sunday means, closed on Sunday...learned that the hard way). People were scrambling in at 10:40am making sure they made it in on time for their most important meal of the day.

The boyfriend chose the health-conscious route and ordered the egg white omelete with sauteed mushrooms, tomatoes and basil. Sadly, the side of fruit was the best part of his meal. The omelette came with no sauce, no cheese, no spices. It was tasteless. He wasn't too happy with his meal. But hey, I gotta give the restaurant credit for offering a healthy option though.

I ordered the Parmesan Crusted Potato Cake with Poached Egg, Guacamole and Salsa. Let me start off with the egg--look how perfectly poached it was--one poke and the yolk comes oozing out, just the way I like it. The potato cake was tasty and reminded me parmesan mashed potatos with a crisp hash brown crust. Guacamole? Delicious. My meal? Fantastic.

One thing about this restaurant though is that with a name of "Julienne" I had expected a French restaurant with dishes such as Croque Monsieur, Crepe and French toast (just kidding about the last one being French). Instead their menu is pretty "American" with gourmet ingredients. They do in fact have French toast...gourmet American French toast.