Yes I am REALLY surprised

Ok, so I am really surprised that there are things that I like, even love, in the food world that I thought I would never like, accept, or do. And some things I’m surprised about in general, that’s here too. So let's roll it.

1. I do not like home fries at breakfast, or ever. The only potato I tend to eat at breakfast is the McDonald’s hash brown. Flavorless, oily home fries on my breakfast egg plate are always ignored. Not the same at The Red Lion in Silver Lake. Their home fries, listed on the menu as German potatoes, are a steaming, glistening pile of flavor: sliced potatoes sautéed in some magic fat with onions and bacon. What you say? Most home fries are sautéed in fat with onions? Pah! You have no idea what you're talking about. The flavor on these is stupendous. I highly recommend, along with a low cholesterol exercise and diet plan after.

"I'd like my burger rarebit, please."

I may never have mentioned this to you but I have been on an unofficial food Quest for a long time. So long that it was forgotten! To bring you up to speed on the specifics, here's an inquiry I wrote to Gourmet Magazine four years ago.

My note to them

To: Gourmet, Feedback
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 3:53 PM
Subject: in search of a great cheddar sauce

Bagels & Some Lox

Writing about bagels & lox was not an immediate idea. I was thinking about salmon really, and have lots to talk about there. Then I remembered how the arrival at the perfect bagel & lox experience is not automatic, nor obvious. I arrived at it only through the guidance of others, though living near great bagel shops and markets helped too.

Even though I come from a secular Jewish household, family gatherings – from my memory at least – did not include the ubiquitous bagel & lox platter. Oh I’m sure there was lots of lox, and white fish, but I suppose as a young person with typical palate limitations I was attracted only to the lox-hidden-in-the-cream-cheese spread. And no complaints there. This bagel preparation was delightful and the end of the road for me at the time. Real lox was just too icky.


It's Poutine Time

Greetings, oh fans of the potato and all things starchy. It's time to open your mind to new delights of the spud. As a girl from Jersey, you may say I've been inclined to diner out at midnight with some disco fries (french fries with gravy and melted cheese), and maybe that's true! (It is true.) However our neighbors to the north have another way of saying it, and making it, that is near and dear to those who know it, and also appears in a Google search when you type in disco fries (as in, "not to be confused with..."). The name of the dish, seen above, is poutine.

Proposal: Abolish Continental Breakfast

Hello. So something about me you may not know... I love breakfast. What you may know is I also love travel. Even tiny travel like visiting a nearby town for a conference gets me excited, like a few weeks ago when I had the chance to visit Stanford.

When you're traveling and want a bright start to an adventurous day in a new place, what do you do? You get yourself a nice breakfast. If you're in a hotel or at a conference, usually the free breakfast is the ubiquitous Continental. And you always begrudgingly eat it because who wants to pay for breakfast when someone is giving it away for free. Perhaps that is why Continental Breakfasts suck so bad! Because what company wants to pay for quality when they're giving it away for free. And since giving it away for free is the norm I guess they can't stop now. Yes, we're in a vicious cycle here. And we have to do something about it!

Musings on Bacon

As I pondered posting again on the subject of pork, I considered how much I really, really like bacon. One reason for this relates to something that happened once, so welcome to my flashback...



My Flashback


At the age of 14 I was hospitalized for asthma for the second time. I was sort of sickly then too, on lots of asthma medication, some of which produced a low appetite and subsequent thinness. At the same time it should be noted that my mother kept a healthy house where fattening foods were not the norm.



LA Burgers & Me, A New Love Story

That’s right, it’s taken me almost 2 YEARS to get on board with the famed LA burger wars. I cannot plead ignorance either, since many years ago Gourmet magazine (to my mouth-watering amazement and east coast envy) had an article about it.

There may have been two articles, because I remember one about the coolest LA burger joints and another about LA burger joints with secret vegetarian ordering methods (yes there are those who order an In-N-Out with just a bun and double cheese!). What an exciting city, I thought. Really this could be one of the 25 reasons I moved here, even if this knowledge did escape once I started eating LA fish tacos. Forgive me, LA burgers.

The Starbucks What’s What

Greetings!

If you are reading this post today expecting that doing so will result in some savvy new information about the corporate policy changes or stock prices at Starbucks, you are barking up the wrong blog :) What I'm writing about are opinions, based on new experiences, and old! that I would like to share with you as a sometimes consumer of this maniacal coffee chain.

So, here's what's what. After what seemed to be a recent complication of practices--folks in line asked to pre-order, baristas filling out tiny cheat sheets with the pre-orders, baristas wearing head mics, new honey lattés (?)--it's as if the great flood arrived and wiped the slate clean. Starbucks is turning back to its roots!

Two Fab Asian Dining Experiences in LA

여보세요, 안녕하세요

According to Babelfish, the above characters mean “Hello, how are you?” in Korean. I say this half kidding but I think we should all start learning some basic Korean if we want to continue going out for a meal in Koreatown. Especially deep in the soul of Koreatown...

Asian Place #1

…like when visiting a place called B.C.D. Tofu House.

Why Long Weekends In California Rock

Hello, nice to see you again :)

So let's see, at this point I've lived in California for over a year and a half. And in this native east-coaster’s humble opinion, the beauty of long weekends in California (besides...all that sun) is there are always fun and myriad options of where to go and what to do just a short road trip away. Here are some basic examples of what I'm talking about:

1) If you’re in the north, go south to LA or north to Oregon
2) If you’re in the south, a) go south to San Diego & Mexico or b) go north to San Fran & wine country

Food Markets in LA: Ethnic and...Trader Joe's?

Happy Valentine's Day!
So, what do ethnic markets and Trader Joe's have in common you may ask? A lot! Both offer unique food items that taste great and are also affordable. It's that simple.

You should know that before coming to LA, an excursion to Trader Joe's was like a trip to Disneyland for me. I had to travel far to find one, and when I finally got there the lines were very long! It only got worse when Manhattan's 1st Trader Joe's opened in Union Square a few years ago. The line ran down 1.5 city blocks, you know, those long vertical blocks, outside, in the cold and snow?! Damn city living. And the line inside was so long it snaked around the entire circumference of the store. I bought my food in 10 minutes and waited 45 minutes to pay -- add another 45 minutes on 2 subways home and my frozen items were no longer frozen. I stopped shopping at TJ's at that time, and then I moved here (ok so the impetus to move is not entirely related).

Fobloog Gripe List (2008 so far)

Hello!

So at this exact moment you're probably saying to yourself, it's just barely 2008 Marly, how can you present a Gripe list so soon into 2008?

I admit, these items are not really "of" 2008. They are definitely from before that, and so their time has come. You'll notice the list below has only 4 items on it, 6 fewer than the 2007 list, yet these items have more explanation. The list is in order from least important to most important in my foodie-opinioned head. Here goes...

4. Sparkling, still or tap?
Everyone knows about this one, so why list it at all? Because it annoys restaurant patrons, though admittedly the smarter restaurants have learned not to be as obnoxious about it these days.

Evolving Beyond Bacon: The Glories of Pork

Hello long lost readers,

Yes it's been awhile, please forgive! There've been travels galore and many excuses as to why I haven't updated in 2 months. Let's look forward, though. It's time to talk about pork.

When Neil and I traveled to Germany in November, the trip reminded me -- beyond the glorious Christmas markets, fun and adventure -- how one-dimensional our experiences with pork are in the U.S.