Show Notes

Yes, we still do Gastrologica. Dan has a new boss that has kind of been monopolizing his time lately, so we will probably record sometime this week. Sorry for the delays, we have been publishing inconsistently the last month or so. Hopefully, when our schedules settle down, we'll be regular again.

Ye Old King's Head

I've been posting reviews on another community site, so I'll start posting them here, lest you think I'm dead. These have no pictures, hopefully that doesn't deter you from reading.

There is a small chunk of Santa Monica completely devoted to Our Mother of Surrogate Colonies, Britian. Naturally, I'm writng about this because I just spent the better part of my evening eating lamb pie, throwing darts, drinking English beer and hitting on chicks with cute or cockneyed accents. More on that in a minute.

British food has gotten a bad rap. In recent years it has gotten more refined and flavorful. Sure, I like many of you will pre-emptively reject steak and kidney pie, deviled kidneys, jellied eels, or any other delicacy dredged from the recesses of a Liverpool factory.

I'll save the oral hygiene and arthritic jokes for another time. Ye Old Kings Head may "Americanize" some of the food, but it is delicious. When I say that, I mean an Indian friend who was with me (no fan of the British) said the food in England tacitly sucked, but they refined the taste for an American palate. Fine. This isn't a review of the Knightsbridge Anglican Cafe and Royal Hellspawn Water Closet.

The British love their pies. Chicken and mushroom, Shepherd's, Lancashire Lamb, Steak and Kidney (blllllucccchhhh), Rancid Sock Stew. Ok, not everything is tittilating, if that is a description that can even be applied to a pie, but the majority of the food is rich, filling, and tasty.

Pies are hearty stews topped with a stiff puff pastry. By stiff, I mean a robust pastry, not a flitty French delicate piece of precious baked crap. It is flakey, crisp, and buttery, but not gay. No disparagement against humans, I'm using gay to mean a very delicate and stylish flake.

The underlying mix can only be described as a stew. It is thick and filling, with chunks of meat the size of Ayres Rock, vegetables and potatoes. True to British tradition, it is served with a side of gravy, mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. They are not necessarily restricted to peas, but that is standard in every place I've ever been where rotten teeth outnumber pint glasses. Ok, grant me that one joke.

They have two bar areas, one called the Tiny Bar, I think, and the other is the main bar. There must be a lot of Brits and Anglofiles, 'cause it is packed. Of course, darts are being catapulted, and some actually end up on the cork. No, actually Brits are accomplished dart players. Shit, it's the only British sport you can actually understand, excluding their language, the other cultural disparity.

British chicks are pretty hot, and yes, they had nice teeth. I was talking with a very cute one for about an hour over a few glasses of Guiness and a Belgian white, and a half and half (Black and Tan here, but don't ever call that in Ireland or they'll stuff a molotov cocktail in your ass.)

Where was I? Oh yes, the litany of beers, Harp, Boddingtons and a Bass. She was drinking Longbow Cider all night, and she turned out to be a private cook!

I don't know why this place has such an unfortunate name, I heard they loved their monarchy, and thought regicide by beheading was reserved for the French. Well, it's not as bad as a road I remember back in Virginia: Pope's Head Road. Try naming a pub THAT. Another molotov cocktail in your ass.

Mr. and Mrs. Gluttony's Gluttonous Gala

The other night we were invited to an exclusive, velvet red rope affair in a loft located in [an undisclosed location in the tri-state area]. Of course, since LA foodwriters like to protect their anonymity, so I will scour this account to make sure you will never know who these people really are. Like superheroes. The crowd was a cool mix of friends, co-workers and food writers. Of course, food writers are also friends, so the designation is indivisible.



[The Gluttonys] had an idyllic wedding in [a dazzling undisclosed location in the tri-state area], and now the celebration of their nuptuals had arrived.



What else would you expect from a food writer than...food! The evening naturally revolved around eating and drinking, congratulations and greetings. We were greeted first by a taco cart that was smoking with chicken, carnitas, beef and onions. I've been on a diet, but for this event, I would bend the rules a bit and gorge myself on the two-bite tacos. The tables were decorated with fresh roses, which I took some artistic license.



I don't have pictures of the tacos to preserve their identity, but they were spectacular (as a taco can get), ranking right up there with Tacos Mexico. No, I'm not reviewing the food, just making an observation. The only painful part of the evening was biting into the freshly grilled jalapenos. I warned my wife it was hot, but she didn't believe me and paid the price. We both like hot food, so she wasn't scarred for life, but I was the only one who acutally finished mine. You could light a cigarette with these firecrackers.



Here is Jonah from LA Foodblogging, La Digesty, NY Digesty, Vegetarian Digesty, Digesty Bangladesh, Aztec Digesty, and [undisclosed location in the tri-state area] Digesty. The blob next to him is his wife. Don't they make a cute couple?

The pinnacle of the evening was Dylan's phenomenal catering. You know Dylan from No Reservations and he also writes a site called Eat Drink And Be Merry.

I started with the Truffled Edamame Hummus on Parmesan Crisps. Wow. Fantastic.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:



Next: Dungeness Crabcakes with Remoulade



Next: Hawaiian Tune Poke with Yuzu and Green Apples



Next: Spiced Harissa Dip on Pita Triangles



Looks delicious, no?

So the rest of the night was continual gorging, drinking and picture taking.



It got to the point where we ran out of things to take pictures of, so we turned on each other.

...and shadows



...and graffiti



Then came the cupcakes. These weren't made by Dylan, but they could have been.



Cupcakes are all the rage right now.



These were single bite cupcakes of varying flavors.



These don't taste as good, but they're pipes.



Finally, before we left, someone took our picture, and my glasses are crooked. Thanks.



That lovely woman next to me is my wife.

Hamburger Hamlet

We call it Hamburger Burn-let, but that's probably overblown. I'm giving this a solid three stars, somewhat predicated on nostalgia, and somewhat based on experience.

My first contact with a Burnlet was back in Georgetown, Halloween night, sometime between midnight and 6am. I was young, impressionable and drunk. My head was swirling with a dangerous cocktail of drugs, and my entourage was a circus of hallucinations, wavering mutants, and friends cloaked in radiant costumes of prismatic light. It was therefore no surprise that I found the talking hamburgers and bubbling faces in Burnlet to be tasty and a bit too euphoric.

We call it Burnlet because HH has an unsurpassed capacity to attract exceptionally aloof miscreants as their waitrons, and even snottier hostesses that would make Paris Hilton look like a gracious and attentive candystriper by comparison. The immediate thought that springs through everyone's mind is "This is Hamburger Hamlet, the assimilated equivalent of Chili's and Red Robin. Why the attitude?"

Despite their abject lack of talent for hiring skilled restaurant workers, the food isn't half bad. Really. I know people diss their food or completely dismiss it because it is a chain restaurant, but its filling and not a bad combination of hamburgers.

First and foremost, their lobster bisque is actually some of the best I've had outside of a restaurant with the word "Chez" in it. It is thick, actually tastes like lobster, creamy and semi sweet. I can even detect a splash of cognac, but I'm sure this is a chemical that duplicates the flavor of cognac.

The burgers are a decent range of choices. Sauteed mushrooms and swiss, bleu cheese, cheddar and bacon. Ok, sure, they aren't exotic or terribly fucked up, but that's sometimes what I want in a burger. If I want to go crazy and flip out on toppings, I'll go to Fuddrucker's where I can exercise as little restraint as Mark Foley with boys, or Bob Packwood with girls

Five Things to Eat Before I Die (Or Killed Because I'm Such An Asshole)

I was tagged a while ago by Anthony Bourdain's new best friend, EatDrinkAndBeMerry (if that is his real name) to answer this meme. Because I can't read, it took me a while to realize I was supposed to post my own list, which is also difficult because I can't write.

Since I will never die, I'll have to project what it would be like to live with the looming foreknowlege of my inexorable doom, instead of existing eternally behind these weary eyes.

Blue crab in pill form



In the future, robots will be our masters and food will be dispensed in capsules. Because the Blue Crab will have been harvested to extinction (and because the Chesapeake will have been drained by the impact of the Sagan asteroid), crab capsules will be one of the rarest meals on Earth. When I say Earth, of course I'm referring to the remaining habitable atolls not overrun with flesh rending marsupials.

Anything not found in a twinkie

This is humankind's greatest challenge as every chemical, protein, fat and molecular compound is found in a twinkie. I will search to the end of the Earth to find that one thing and God willing, it isn't poisonous.

Myself

If I only had that ability.

Veal stuffed with foie gras and a deep fried burger

Since all those things will be outlawed in the near future, I want to gorge myself to the point of sickening distension such that I will never want any of those things again.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwich

I dunno, I was thinking about it just now.

Roy's: Downtown L-Lei

So, the moment had finally arrived that Cakegrrl and I were to enjoy a free meal at Roy's Downtown. That's free as in pro bono, gratis, zilch...you get the picture, because I took the pictures. We arrived with a shower of muted fanfare, our table was ready and being held despite the throngs of business people who just poured out of their skyscrapers itching for a couple of Mai-Tais and some Pacific Rim grub.

That was very thoughtful, we nodded, but decided to have a quick drink at the bar to build our appetites. One Kona Fire-Rock Pale Ale and a vanilla Stoley-Diet Coke with a cherry later, we were escorted to our expansive four top to start our banquet. It was thoughtful for them to give us a four-top since we, like most foodwriters in this city and others, would be whipping out our digital Elphs and snapping all angles of the food, closeups, with and without flash, fast ISO speeds and ten thousand shaky and underexposed pictures that would be deleted upon viewing.

If you've noticed lately, the quality of my pictures has declined. This is not because I've lost my skill -as if I ever had any- its that I've been eating at places that insist on using less and less candelas to light their restaurants. Maybe its the energy crisis, or maybe it casts a romantic mica glow, but it does have a depleting effect on the quality of snapshots.

So, what to get from our fair and generous benefactor? Well, first, to avoid wrecking the continuity of the food discussion, I'll take some elements out of chronological order...mostly to get them out of the way. We met with the managing partner Matt Dochin and Executive Chef Curtis Mar, at different times. Matt was young, laid back, and obviously had a passion for Roy's cuisine. He was from Hawaii, and had worked in a few Roy's establishments before coming out here to open the Downtown location. Curtis was also young and passionate, but didn't take himself too seriously, he obviously had fun coming up with his own mixes and interpretations of Hawaiian fusion. He also confirmed that about 1/3 of the seafood sold at this Roy's was purchased from Santa Monica Seafood. It all gets back to Santa Monica Seafood (re: the Water Grill and every other Seafood restaurant in LA visible to the naked eye).

The key thing to remember is that these are individual partnerships, so they are required to carry Roy's Signature dishes (designated by a stylish R next to the menu item), but they are free to introduce as many of their own creations free from the bonds of Mr. Yamaguchi's directives. Trust me, Mar's dishes were top notch, but Yamaguchi didn't get where he is today by making mediocre food. His signature dishes rock.

My first experience at Roy's, now that I'm on a self-indulgent caveat, was on the Big Island. Light and airy, the lunches we had were bold, different, heavy on tropical and local ingredients and unforgettable. The Roy's on the mainland tend to be different, more cosmopolitan.

You won't find an overwhelming tropical decor, you'll find small elements, but mostly you'll find modern and comfortable surroundings that fit very well in an urban environment.

But why belabor the point? You want to hear about the food. We got a few representative appetizers.

Oh, and I'm doing this from memory, so if her account differs from mine...hers is more accurate.

We started with some nigirizushi, Tai (Japanese Pacific Snapper) and my favorite dessert, Unagi.



Snapper I have always found to be rubbery, like a shoe insert, and chewy, like rubber. This met my expectations. The flavor was fresh but it suffered from the textural challenges of snapper.




Now this was a generous portion of buttery, sweet eeel. With three e's. This was the largest nigirizushi of eel I've ever had, topping some eel and rice bowls I've had at Mitsuwa. The unagi sauce was sweet, dense and complex, and the texture was perfect. What a great dessert (what? Don't you save your eel for dessert?).

Onto some more serious appetizers. I ordered the Oysters Rockefeller with Lup Cheong
and Uni Bearnaise.



They look inviting and colorful, and didn't have a half bad flavor, although I can't say it was my favorite combination. The brine of the oysters definitely played off the creamy sweetness and slight sour drizze of the condiments. Not bad, but I prefer traditional Rockefeller.




Cakegrrl got the most disappointing dish of the night, which should have been the most anticipated. Lobster potstickers which tasted neither like pot, stickers, nor lobster. The whole mess was obscured by a sickly sweet coating of, sickly sweet stuff. The coating was absorbed entirely through the potstickers rendering everything the same flavor. Simple Syrup. I couldn't discern one unique flavor in the whole cacophony, certainly not lobster.

Ok, so there was one misfired dish, can't win 'em all, I don't expect everything to be perfect. Hell, even Keller's lamb dish blew up in our face, so there ya go.

Next came the entrees, which I can say without fear of rebuttal were fantastic. I ordered the fish combo, a Yamaguchi Signature, comprised of macadamia encrusted mahimahi and a lemongrass coated shutomi (swordfish) with Thai peanut sauce.



Of the two, I liked the mahi, mostly for sentimental reasons. I had so much good macadamia coated, fillet, crusted, seasoned, stuffed fish on the Big Island, I developed an expensive and nasty addition that I have to feed or I'll collapse with seizures. Or perhaps its the extreme fat content of the macadamias that did it. The sauce was rich, but not overpowering, the mahi was flaky and had just enough macadamia to enhance it with sweet, buttery, nutty flavor.




Swordfish is swordfish, and no matter how you dress it up, it is a tough fish that has the texture of overcooked chicken breast. There's no way around that. I was willing to forgive this piece because it was so flavorful. Topped with a slaw and touched ever so slightly with the peanut sauce, it had a delicate flavor. It was reinforced by a katsu banana. Yeah, I didn't know what it was until I ate some, and it was good. Nothing beats fried banana except maybe a katsu Twinkee.



Her's was better, and I curse her because I was going to order the Lau Lau. 1st dish, seared sea scallop dynamite. 2nd dish, Misoyaki butterfish, and in bowl #3, Korobuta Pork. Oops, transpose the middle dish with the one on the right, now they're in the correct order, butterfish on the end...looking like tenderloin. See? I told you my pictures suck. First, if I may be crass, I wanted to take this pork home and have sex with it. Braised for hours, then intensely smoked for 45 mintues and bathed in a mild green Thai curry sauce, this was some of the best pork I ever wanted to have sex with. I was blabbering so much about the pork, just to shut me up they gave me my own bowl.



The scallop dynamite wasn't like traditional mayonaiss-ey dynamite. It was lightly coated with cream and a mild sauce, so the scallop flavor could shine through. They were also hearty and filling with a bright sweetness exhibited in finer scallops.

Wish I had a closeup of the butterfish, but take what you can get. Butterfish lives up to its name, melting like the Nazi's face at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I know I've used that joke before, but if you're looking for Nazi face melting softness, butterfish is your ticket. As a side note, if you get a chance, try butterfish sashimi. This was cooked rare, lending it a soft texture that absorbed the seasoning while keeping a respectful distance from overbearing flavor. The butterfish shined through, to our delight.

I could go on about the butterfish, but I was starting to get weary and a bit full. No, I was pretty damn full when the dual torment of chocolate souffle and bento box was paraded in front of us. I knew I would only be able to nibble though tiny portions of this, so I dove into the souffle first.



It was like a a thick brownie with melted running chocolate flooding out, perched on a tart raspberry reduction that punched a sour counterbalance to the sweetness of the chocolate.



The bento box had a myriad of fruity combinations. Glazed fresh fruit. Vanilla bean ice cream with an undercurrent of chocolate, palmtree cookie perched on top. Tarts, creampuffs, some kind of sour sauce in the middle...none of which I ate. I was too full. But it all looked good.



Here, see?

To sum up, the appetizers were a nice effort, even if the lobster potstickers were a little misguided. The entrees were hearty, surprising, and rushing with flavor. The desserts, from what I gather, looked delicious. I would definitely recommend trying some sashimi and take a shot at one or two of the appetizers, I'm sure the rest are good, but the oysters might not be for everyone. I'm very familiar with Roy's Signature dishes, and you can't go wrong, but the non-traditional entrees looked inviting and ecclectic.

Roy's is located downtown at 800 Figuroa, so parking is a mess, and valet is a ripoff, but what else are you going to do? Walk? I don't think so.

Again, this was a free meal, so you are entitled to say I'm full of crap, but I always present my honest opinions of the food and drink I consume, so you'll just have to trust me on this one. I would say the average cost for a meal with drinks would run about $150 for two people.