What makes a baseless fear? You know, all those fears that recur in nightmares and ride their tricycle down the hallways of your mind. Low odds? If something is, say, less than 4% likely to occur, does that render your fear baseless? And who decided the figure would be 4%? Is it the anxious anticipation of an event you’ve never experienced? Because, dude, if you’ve yet to experience something, what exactly are you afraid of? Or, is the blinding, gut-wrenching phobia of a harmless animate, or inanimate, object enough? Does the sheer force of ones fear give it cred? Who really knows? Not me. And I asked first, anyway. My baseless fears include, but are not limited to: Frogs, cruise ships, eating oysters in public, losing control of my bowels and being chased by snakes. A trip to Mexico presents me with four of these five fears, at least. Plus a special bonus fear: being abducted by banditos and held for ransom. Todos Santos is an hours drive from the Spring Break Capital of Central America, Cabo San Lucas. Picture Santo Poco from seminal Mexican film The Three Amigos, but with less guapas and more hawkers. It’s hot, dusty and quiet, with a plague of Mexican handicrafts, conveniently cat-sized sombreros and genuinely fake silver. It’s also home to what may or may not be The Hotel California. But we’re here for one thing: tacos. Armed with new, guidebook fears of cut fruit, green salad and ice cubes, plus an enthusiastic recommendation from the pearly-toothed and tanned Mexico-Ken from our resort, we’re looking for Tacos George’s. ‘Perdon, donde esta Tacos George’s?’ We ask a man in a white singlet, leaning against the doorframe of his colourful trinket cave. He looks at each of us quizzically and points up the hill. Cool, I’m pretty sure Ken said it was up the hill. At the end of the row of shops, a mother and her daughter stand side by side, squinting under the angry sun. ‘Pardo-nay, donday esta TACOS GEORGE’S?’ They return our Spanglish with flat looks. Slowly, and much louder now: ‘TACOS. GEORGE’S. POR. FAVOR?’ The little girl looks at her mother, then back at us, ‘Tacos Jorge?’ The peso drops. ‘Oh! HAHA! Si! HOR-HAY! Tacos HORHAY, haha, isn’t this funny?’ We giggle and nod. ‘See, grassy arse sin-youreetah’. With her flat, obliging stare, the girl raises her arm slowly, and points down the opposite road. Then grins. A hot block away we find it, a cart with a cobalt blue awning, under a flaming bougainvillea. After negotiating a common language (O-LAH), then our order (‘DOS SHRIMPY TACOS?’) and their price (30 Mexican Pesos/ US$2.35), we watch Jorge deftly batter shrimp, drop them in the broad pan of smoking oil, then pile the golden crescent moons on top of a freshly grilled tortilla. We’re each handed a plastic plate, sheathed in a plastic bag to save washing up and pointed toward the condiments with a sly smile. We peel lids off blue lunch boxes one by one, skip the cabbage slaw, shredded lettuce and murky swamp of browning guacamole, and load up on salsa. Of a possible six, I try four, making the gringo’s assumption that red will be hottest. Fresh and caustic, Tacos George’s is the best taco of my life. Smug with our Spanish, we bid ‘ADIOS’ to George and see a man eating fast-melting ice cream: ‘Donde esta helado?’ He delivers us to a smiling boy with a bicycle cart, who heaps Styrofoam cups with fruit sorbet. Wandering back down the baking street, savouring every mouthful and extolling each flavour, it’s not until we’ve dug half way down that the question occurs. ‘Hey, this is ice, right?’ The Eagles echo in my ears as a baseless fear converges with a guidebook one, and ripples through my tummy. ‘Last thing I remember I was running for the door…’ Yeah, it’s THE The Hotel California.
Tag Archives: TRAVEL
TORRISI ITALIAN SPECIALTIES
My best first date involved cold tofu satay, which I didn’t finish due to whirring flocks of butterflies. My worst first date was at Billy Kwong, where at the waiter’s practical suggestion of how best to enjoy the share menu, my dinner companion deadpanned, ‘why would we share? I’m not sharing.’ We ate our individual main courses in silence. Still, it was nice to be invited. It’s my last night in NYC and I’m going out to dinner alone, for the first time ever, having given my date the wrong date. On Mulberry Street, Nolita, Torrisi Italian Specialties occupies a small shopfront hidden behind white lace curtains, a little old-school gold leaf lettering your only clue as to what lies within. Or maybe, like me, you’ll be trying so hard to look like you know where you’re going that you’ll miss this gilt clue and walk right on by. (eds note: the trick here is to keep walking, for at least two blocks, before doubling back). After completing my detour I push, realise my mistake, and then pull the door open to… oh. Oh right, cool, yeah wow, it’s a really small restaurant. ‘You’ve never been here before, have you,’ says the waiter, after I’ve whispered my apologies. It’s not a question, more a statement of fact. I take in the tables for two, low lighting and economical square-footage… ‘Um, no?’ I hear the collective gasp of the New York ladies; the slow, grating drag of wooden chair across tile as diners with their backs to the door struggle to see; the tinkling of each jewel in the chandelier nudging shoulders with its neighbour, hissing Chinese whispers at my gaffe (eds note: there is no crystal chandelier at Torrisi) Suddenly it’s stifling. “Haha I ah, I told my friend the wrong night, because the days are all different, ah, because it’s tomorrow in Australia…’ At my romantic table for two, facing the room from the banquette, I fossick busily in my bag, for all of my important things that I don’t need and can’t find. I keep looking. My perceptive waiter, somehow sensing my ingeniously disguised discomfort, slides the first of seven prix fixe ($75) courses in front of me. I make light work of the warm mound of fleshy house made mozzarella, lolling in olive oil. Then wonder if I’m eating too fast. As he lays fresh cutlery, perceptive waiter starts with small questions: Did you enjoy that? Yes, thank you. More water? Yes, thank you. Please let me know if I can get you anything. Yes, thank you. The third of four anitpasti courses, the salmon tartare is soft and delicate, Rubenesque; like kissing. Accompanied by Everything blinis (a la Everything bagels) it’s like all the best kisses and my cheeks flush. We discuss the merits of Sydney restaurants, talk about Tetsuya. My cheeks flush. The Italian sausage pate is smooth, studded with pistachios and skimmed with piquant red pepper aspic. A handsome chef (eds note: his appearance coincided with an obvious spike on the awkward graph) is the bearer of sheep milk ricotta gnocchi with chamomile and fava beans. It is silky and soothing, a mid-meal salve and, according to my furtive notes, ‘subtle as fuck.’ A second attentive waiter wonders which other restaurants I’ve eaten at, and how long my flight was, as he pours more sparkling water. He is hip to my scene and asks only questions I know the answers to. Lemon and ginger ice cleanses the palate and cools my cheeks, before the meal finishes with delicate lemon cake, pierced with silly-good cheesy tuile. If a good restaurant complements time spent in fine company, satisfying food woven unobtrusively throughout, then surely it’s a great restaurant where the food stands up to the laser-focus of a lone diner, and whose staff offers company as gracious as their service. My perceptive waiter pulls the table out for me to squeeze past and kindly averts his gaze to avoid focusing on where my shorts have ridden up during the course of the meal. I thank him, for all of it, and head out into the steamy NYC summer alone, juggling a box of complimentary house made cookies and tugging green cotton shorts out of my crotch.
UMAMI BURGER
Umami: it’s the fabled fifth flavour, sounds like ‘tsunami’ and makes an ideal name for a kitten. It’s also the yumminess in Parmesan cheese, truffle, mushrooms, pork and breast milk. So what? No biggie, right? Thing is, that special Umami yumminess can be credited to the unfairly maligned evil genius of amino acids: glutamate. Otherwise known as the ‘G’ in MSG. Otherwise known for the headaches, dehydration, nausea and chest pains you claim to suffer after eating Chinese food. But before you saddle up your food intolerance high horse and ride poor Umami Burger out of town, think about it. Apart from both science and Dr Chef Dave Chang’s MAD Symposium lecture disproving ‘Chinese Restaurant Syndrome’, historically speaking if you tack the B-word on to the back-end of a commonly offensive adjective, you’re on to a winner. Cases in point: FatBurger, Douche Burger and Fat Ho Burgers (RIP). So, if fat, douches and fat hos can be tasty, how’s about a little Umami? Hmm? Just a teeny taste? At the outlet in Los Feliz, on Hollywood Boulevard near the Wacko store, I order The Original Umami Burger – beef patty, Parmesan crisp, shiitake mushroom, roasted tomato, caramelised onions and house ketchup ($11). It’s intravenous Umami. From the sweet, milk bun to the medium-rare ground steak patty, pleasingly pink in the middle and sprinkled with magical Umami Dust™, you’ll want to get Umami all up in your grill. It’s savoury and thrilling, like thinking about a packet of salt and vinegar chips. Along with the tsunami burger we share a plate of tangy treats – cauliflower, mushrooms, tomatoes et al on the House Pickle Plate ($5) and Sweet Potato Fries ($4). Smothered in the Signature Sweet Salt, these fries are like chomping on a hot cinnamon donut: comforting, indulgent and finger lickin’. Like the best things, the word Umami comes from Japan and means something like ‘delicious’. DUH. But if you’ve already named your new kitten, you can just call it ‘savoury’. Whatever name you give it, Umami is universal and hardly the root of digestive evil and sleepless nights. I mean, how can gravy be bad? Or Vegemite on toast? Or a bowl of salty edamame? Or working your way through an entire wheel of aged Parmesan by yourself? It’s true, Umami Burger is cool and beardy and thus repellent, but what tasteless monster among us can resist an extra flavour? Salty, sweet, sour and bitter sure are something, but they’ll never be sublime without Umami. Just like The Jackson 5, sans Michael.
BÄCO MERCAT
My best friend moved to the other side of the world. Not to get away from me (right, pal? TELL THEM) but to carve out a new life with her husband. She’s like that – adventurous, driven and devoted. She also matches me, pound-for-pound, when a plate of food is set in front of her. No mean feat. We share a romance with food; a love for cooking it, eating it, writing and obsessing about it. We both hate runny eggs and both love… well, most other foods. She’s not big on pork, but that’s ok, as it balances my passionate and excessive consumption. When I’m blue, she cooks for me. When I’m exultant, she cooks for me. On weekdays ending in ‘ay’, she cooks for me. When we worked in the same building, our productivity plummeted as a result of regular tea/yoghurt/vending machine/crudités breaks. I sat by her side as Maid of Honour on her wedding day and greedily enjoyed the spoils of a considered, and spectacular, matrimonial feast. She waited patiently when I was vegan, tolerated me as a vegetarian, encouraged me as a pescatarian and now, frets about me as a glutton. I miss her. I’ve been lucky to visit her twice since she fled my clutches and each time we easily picked up where we left off. And ate a lot of hot pastrami. I love her a lot. Like I love sandwiches a lot. Far from the madding crowds, she takes me to grand, tragic, on-the-up-again Downtown, Los Angeles. If she had blindfolded me in, say, Hollywood, spun me around and around in circles then whipped the blindfold off in Downtown, I would have sworn I was in NYC. Or, at least, on the set of Seinfeld or something. But there we were, on the eerily quiet streets, passing the run-down early 1900s movie theatres and playing a round or two of ‘Hipster or Hobo?’ Baco Mercat is a fancy sandwich shop and bar snuggled in the bosom of this exotic, Gotham City landscape. Our waiter is sassy, dropping an F-Bomb here and there and making me feel like an idiot in the most charming way. On his recommendation we each order a Vinegar_Based Sweet & Sour Soda ($3); the pear and meyer lemon varieties from a list of fifteen flavours. They are indeed vinegary and sweet and sour – an absurdly appealing mix of tart, fetid and irresistible. We share the “Cowgirl Creamery” cheese plate ($19), a top-shelf selection replete with candied pine nuts, honeycomb and pickled golden beets. But we’re here for the ‘baco’ flatbread sandwich. I’m pretty sure people have been wrapping bread around meat since people were monkeys, and the baco renovates this ancient art to modern masterpiece. I order The Original – pork, beef carnitas, salbitxada ($10) and my buddy, The Meatball – raisin, pine nut, tomato ($14). Both come served in a bowl, the famed flatbread piled high with the chosen fillings – so high I have to chip away with a fork before grabbing it and taking the whole lot on a messy journey to my mouth. The chunks of pork are satisfyingly fatty, the lard softening a potentially tough equal-measure of meat; the beef is yielding and prickly with heat. Heaped with tangy, sweet, nutty Salbitxada sauce and with minimal rocket/arugala, I want to order a second helping immediately upon finishing the first. It’s a sandwich to break my heart. Lucky then that the broad sitting opposite me is the woman to help mend it. As much as I miss sharing the same city as my best friend, exploring Los Angeles and it’s sprawling, glorious eating options with her is delicious consolation.
MON AMI GABI
Food makes a worthy weapon, if you think about it. ‘Oh, you’re allergic to peanuts? Whoops.’ Or, ‘Yeah, of course that chicken is fresh.’ Or, ‘if you stop crying I promise I’ll buy you an ice cream.’ Or, ‘I swear to you I am gonna beat that guy to death with this baguette.’ And, ice bullets. With so many meals come so many opportunities to maim, manipulate or murder. But we all know it’s not baguettes that kill people; people kill people. As dangerous as food clearly is, it’s the hungry people wielding wheaten-weapons that are lethal. Opposite the famous dancing fountains of The Bellagio (Casino), sits the splendid faux Eiffel Tower of Paris (Casino), in the glorious home-of-CSI, Las Vegas. Nestled beneath the 1:2 scale tower is full scale French café and bistro, Mon Ami Gabi, and wandering the footpath in front of Mon Ami Gabi is the World’s Worst Street Performer (WWSP). Wearing an ill fitting 90s black suit, grey tee and waistcoat, a dirty ponytail and a headset microphone, he paces back and forth, back and forth, spruiking his show. ‘Hey.’ He says to no one. ‘Show’s going to start in four minutes.’ Oh, no one is listening. ‘The greatest show you’ll ever see.’ Wow, what? ‘Hey, you’re drunk.’ He turns on the passers by. Starving, we order the French Toast ($12.95), French Frites ($4.50) and French Tuna Melt Tartine ($12.95). Our French waitress repeats for clarity: ‘The toast, the fries and the tuna melt?’ Toot sweet, silverplate. We order mint tea to wait and are – ‘hey’ – taking photos up our noses and up the – ‘four minutes’ – tower, compounding the novelty – ‘you won’t regret it.’ Ok, no. He’s wandered off, hands-free, but his little speaker box remains and from it his plaintive brag bellows. Looks are exchanged – with our fellow diners: desperate; with the servers weaving busily between tables: pleading; and with each other: twitching. Our frites arrive and are twirly, snappy, deep fried curls of ‘tater – a Frankenstein’s monster of fries and potato chips. ‘Hey’ – oh god – ‘are you ready for this?’ – I pick up the salt shaker – ‘she’s too hot for you buddy’ – draw my arm back – ‘I didn’t mean it’ – I relent and salt Frank instead. Our French Toast comes smothered in real whipped cream, blueberries and confectioners sugar, a bountiful mound of teeth-aching delight. With food, comes calm. ‘Four minutes to the greatest show on earth.’ With dude, leaves calm. Forty-five minutes later and still no closer to the greatest show on earth, a low fence and a pair of short shorts are all that save WWSP from a brisk and brutal beating with a baguette.
EL COYOTE
Two Psychobillies walk into a Mexican restaurant on Beverly Blvd in Los Angeles. One is Mexican-American, one Australian; both are musicians, both fans of Vampira, both hungry. Only, one of them has a secret: he doesn’t eat onion or coriander. This is their story. And my story as well, cause I was also there. Finding the best Mexican joints in LA is a bit like trying to pin down the best Thai food in Sydney: overwhelming. ThaiRiffic, ThaiTanic, ThaiFoon, BowThai, ThaiNoon, AppeThaising; it gets a little Thairesome. In LA there’s El Cholo, El Ranchero, El Pueblito, El Gitano, El Nopal… And, El Coyote. Bloody ‘ell! Now, if lucky enough to have stumbled out of the LA glare and into El Coyote, it’d be a rare gringo who would turn to leave. Fairy lights, vinyl booths and buxom senoritas wearing long, frilled skirts and peasant tops? THE END. Epilogue: You can also get ostrich meat tacos there. It’s our penultimate day in LA, and the Psychobillies decide to meet for one last lunch. In the courtyard, over a red vinyl clad table they talk about who’s playing in what band and – “your Sprite, mijo”, our senorita interjects – which bands are touring and which bands are the best but not touring anymore. It’s a secret, Psychobilly language I don’t understand, but have always enjoyed listening to; names like ‘Strangy’ and ‘Köefte’ now as familiar as they are alien. Those times they saw The Cramps play; that time they met Vampira; Jonny Koffin is the best; Halloweentown; who rests in Hollywood Forever cemetery… It’s the same enthusiastic, spooky conversation from our visit three years earlier, minus the band-practise-induced-tinnitus. The senorita waitress brings us our complementary corn chips, black and regular (yellow, Wiz Khalifa?) and a selection of salsas from mild to sweat-inducing hot. When this happens I do two things: wonder why there are no complimentary offerings at Australian restaurants and then proceed to eat all of the complimentary corn chips and wonder why I ordered food. Until the food arrives. On the advice of the local Psychobilly and for only $6.50, we each choose the especiales (special) chicken street tacos (tacos, from Chicken Street). Three small, perfectly formed corn tortillas, topped with grilled chicken, chopped onion, fresh coriander and a wedge of lime. That’s it, no messing about. As two of us enthusiastically tuck in, one gingerly scrapes away some onion and wonders if the coriander will give him a headache… before giving up and hoeing in. Psychobillies and holiday guts are tough.
COFFEE + FOOD
I’m a greedy traveller, as I am with most things. I’m rated triple-X with wanderlust and wincing from the nag of itchy feet. Yet as deep as the thrill of the unknown runs, my yearning for the known will always keep pace. I want to walk into a room and know where all the light switches are; want to know exactly how far to turn the hot water tap for a temperate shower. Want to boil two eggs, peel them and roll their warm flesh in the little pile of salt I’ve ground on my kitchen bench top. Want to savour each mouthful, and the ritual. No matter where I am, how far I’ve gone to get there, or what newfangled excitement is presented, some days I wake up and want exactly what I could have at home. See? Greedy. Now, some folks on the road find comfort in expatriate communities, others in bars; I like to find that familiar feeling in food. Plus Coffee. I’d already guzzled the perfect latte in LA (here) but what of the rare and fabled flat white? So far I’d not tasted one, good or bad, and after a week in Las Vegas I’d given up on coffee all together. Coffee + Food, on Melrose Ave in LA, delivered on the familiar front: A chalkboard heralding the Flat White, and an Australian soap actress ‘taking a meeting’ at a corner table, then proving all the world her stage by talking her way out of a parking ticket. Look, let’s be frank, I don’t actually know the difference between a latte, flat white or cappuccino. Are they not all hot, milky coffee beverages differentiated only by the amount of froth on top and the addition of powdered chocolate? I’m going to say yes. What I do know is that the flat white appears to be both uniquely Australian, thus tricky to pin down in LA, and the milky coffee beverage I prefer. The third salve to my homesickness came in the form of corn fritters, with damn good guacamole. There’s a café called Bills right near my house that fancies this their savoury specialty, yet in a Coffee + Food vs Bills battle, I’m backing the former; toast-textured on the outside, ideal corn-to-batter ratio and minimal irritating garnish. Plus, Sydney is a long, long way from Mexico. In summary: sitting on the side of a busy road in Los Angeles, gas-bagging with my best friend from home, about people at home, while enjoying a meal not dissimilar to one I would enjoy at home, I could basically be at home. Seeking out the food and coffee you’re accustomed to is no less embarrassingly insular and prosaic than an Aussie belting Khe Sanh in a Japanese karaoke bar, or slamming shots at a Kangaroo-themed nightclub in Phuket. But for me those are two of the best bits about travelling: readily embarrassing yourself, and being far from where you live, yet feeling at home. And just as Dorothy says, “Don’t be silly Toto, scarecrows don’t talk.”
CUMULUS INC
As a girl, whenever I visited my Nan she’d prepare my favourite crispy fried chicken on the countertop in her electric frying pan. And every time, as I washed it down with a plastic cup of milk, I’d beg her to tell me how she made it so yummy. In reply, and ruse, Nan confided that she knew The Colonel’s famous, top-secret Original Recipe. After my parents split up, my dad used to dish up white rice, butter and soy sauce for my brother and I, describing the intricacies of the meal in his pitch-perfect mimic of Grover from Sesame Street. It was love, not food, which made a simple meal, and a sad one, sentimental. At the age when everyone’s parents were separating, the thrill of tasting another mum’s weekly dinner rotation was dulled by that mum’s resentment at preparing those same meals week in, week out. Plates were dropped heavily in front of us; the normally raucous dinner table chatter muted. No one poured me a second glass of Fanta, and the apathetic mums and dads no longer made the generous offer of seconds when they saw what a ‘good eater’ I was. Cumulus Inc is one of those joints people call an institution; it’s been open more than three years, is still jammed Thursday – Sunday nights and regulars recommend it to interlopers with smug pride. It’s Saturday, and after forgetting Melbourne is the ‘foodie capital’ and being turned away from my first choice, we get lost in the laneways of the ‘laneway capital’, before arriving at our trusted fallback. We’re offered an hour-long wait and accept; the cold, the laneways and the over-population of restaurants in the vicinity have stymied our spirit. So we drink some. A dirty (filthy) martini for the gentleman, and a tiny-bit-too-sweet rhubarb-and-something-or-other mocktail for me. Within half an hour the maitre d’ has seated us at the bar in front of the open kitchen. We order Rangers Valley flank steak with wilted greens, panisse and Ortiz anchovy ($38), cracked wheat and freekah salad with preserved lemon and barberries ($12) and shaved cabbage salad with cumin yoghurt, dill and apple ($12), all to share. But just as resentment ruined another mum’s Bolognese, an open kitchen seething with the same sentiment spoiled Cumulus Inc. Where my Nan’s devoted preparation of flour, salt and pepper made her fried chicken killer, watching a chef repeatedly hurl food in a bin and bark orders to ‘start again’ made my flank steak chewy. Morale in the kitchen bottomed-out and was reflected both in the sombre mood of the diners at the bar and uncharacteristic neglect by the wait-staff. After waiting twenty-five minutes for a dessert menu that never came, and reluctant to wait the same again for our bill, we slipped unnoticed off our stools, slipped on our coats and paid at the door. Everyone has an off day, Cumulus Inc, but I wish you wouldn’t fight in front of the kids.
LITTLE DOM’S
This one time at a restaurant I thought I saw Chloe Sevigny and I was like, woah! But then I looked again and it was just an anaemic girl wearing socks with her sandals. Then this other time I thought I saw Jon Hamm but then I was like, nope, nu-uh, that’s just a dude with powerful thighs. The moral of this story is that you should eat dinner at Little Dom’s, ‘cause both Chloe and Jon have. On the corner of a couple more same-same streets in LA (in Los Feliz) Little Dom’s is that great Italian place you go to all the time, where you pretend to read the menu but always order the same thing, talk shit for hours, gesticulating wildly, drink wine ‘til your gums are stained plum, and numb, then stumble home. Basically, you started going to Little Dom’s cause it was near your house. We go on a Wednesday and it’s busy, jammed with Angelinos (Los Felicianos?) who look you up and down – not in a Mean Girls way, more a ‘nice selvedge jeans’ kind of way. The main dining room is both full and fully booked – obvs, I am told – and we are invited to take seven steps to the right for our forty-minute (approx) wait. Stuck now between the bar and booths, I feel like the uncool kid at a party, chemical-sweating in a corner, swaying to New Order. A party where everyone is especially cool and called Tad or Dree. And Tad or Dree are working on a screenplay that touches on domestic violence, but at its heart is a romantic comedy. One Blue Monday later, we’re at the bar and order a bracing Mint Julep (like ‘vicious heaven’, apparently) and a Virgin Margarita (tastes a tiny bit like egg white. Or maybe just a dirty glass?) As the ‘tails take the edge off, Tad and Dree’s earnest discussion of their ill-conceived screenplay becomes endearing; they’re just folks going about their business. And like the dining experience back home at Fratelli Paradiso, the people watching at Little Dom’s is half the fun. Especially when you look across the bar and see Orlando Bloom! Which didn’t actually happen that night. We are offered a table outside, under the plastic awning, and accept; it’s a mild LA evening and the subtle hint of egg white has teased my already aggravated appetite into tantrum. I choose the New York steak ($41), medium rare, and we start with a salad of raw baby kale ($11). As revolting as those three words, in that particular order sound, this salad is not. The kale tingles with the peppery heat of raw greens; sweet strips of roasted Red Kuri and Kabocha squash are tangled within, all soft and caramelised. A simple Balsamic vinaigrette later and… OMG. I’m pretty sure we’re sitting next to Jason Segal. Oh, huh? No? Shame.
THE DRESDEN
The Dresden Room in Los Feliz, Los Angeles, is a time warp. Not in a cool, ‘have you been watching Mad Men?’ or ‘I just ADORE mid-century furniture’ kind of way. It’s more like how your grandma used to always wear gloves while driving and set her hair in rollers every night and sometimes let you smoke with her because she never got the memo it would end up killing us all. A splendid piece of the past perched smack-bang in the middle of the nicotine-stained present. On a Wednesday night, 8pm, it’s museum-quiet in the restaurant. Fitting, as the room appears to be carefully preserved; pristine white leather banquettes and ceramic vases to prove Jonathan Adler a fraud, 60s wooden-slatted room dividers and burgundy walls – even the pot plants look exhausted by age, but nonetheless MIB. The menu holds everything I imagine my grandparents would eat on a night out: French Onion Soup, Chicken Cordon Bleu and Peach Melba. If that doesn’t make you smile you have no heart. Or, you have suffered a stroke and should seek urgent medical attention. I choose the New York Steak ($25), with fries, the ‘famous garlic bread’ and a salad to start, with Italian dressing. Nothing is excellent; my medium-rare steak is pretty well cooked-through and the salad is dressed not for eating but for preserving. Regardless, it’s a delight and I clean the plate before ordering a Peach Melba ($5). Every dessert in the world should contain jam and that’s all I have to say about that. If the restaurant itself was all The Dresden had on offer, it could lean toward the melancholy. Like your grandma trying to keep up as the times move too quickly around her, charming youth morphing into burdensome old age. But hold your horses there cowboy, wipe away the sympathy tears, take one last look around and head next door to The Lounge, ‘cause your mind is about to be blown. It’s a bar, yep, a bar with all the local cools hanging out, sure. Strange pictures cover the walls of another immaculate throwback; there’re the requisite chairs, tables, beards, etcetera – the same stuff you’ll find in bars across the world. But hold up, what’s that sound? Are you hearing right? Yeah you are. The Lounge at The Dresden is home to Marty and Elayne; Tuesday through Saturday, 9pm-1:15am. Get on the google now cause I promise, there are no words for the magic of Marty and Elayne. Tip well and tip often. It’s fair to say the food ain’t highfalutin’ – I paid much less for much better food, many times over in LA – yet I had no better meal than at The Dresden. And there’s gorgeous, priceless Marty, with a dead badger on his head.
icouldeatagain.com 