Tidbits from the West Coast

Just a few quick notes on things I've been eating out here lately:

* Yesterday my friends Jim & Gil and I all went to Wabi Sabi of Rancho Cucamonga. They were stunned to know that this place, which has been around for years, is completely new to me. As usual, we over-ordered. A few of things we got: an average but do-able spicy tuna roll, a lovely and hearty spate of veggie and seafood tempura, and - specifically for me - a combo plate of teriyaki salmon (not at all dry like so many I have had) and more veggie and shrimp tempura. The tempura soft shell crabs were also a nice reminder of home, crunchy and tender all at the same time.

* From there we ventured over to Palm Springs. It didn't hit us at the time, but Thursday nights are Village Fest nights in Palm Springs. Many blocks are closed to parking and traffic for a variety of kiosks: from various street performers (most good, though the guy tritely playing "Imagine" on the panpipes made me want to jab my ears with ice picks) to handbags and clothes to the "Ask a Rabbi" booth (I'm not making that up) to lots and lots of food. There was local produce, specifically dates and oranges (this is date and orange country after all), many fruits and vegetables. There were many booths of baked goods, including one where Jim bought a hearty "Crimson" bread filled with cranberries and currants. There was a lot of pre-prepared food, too: gyros and tacos, Mexican and Guatemalan, hot dogs and BBQ. If you ever find yourself in Palm Springs on a Thursday night, you will need to see this.

This topped off a visit to the Palm Springs Art Museum, which is free every Thursday night from 4 to 8, again to coincide with the Village Fest.

* Jim, by the way, has only once been to a Whole Foods, way back in 2002. There are none in the Inland Empire (note to Whole Foods: open a branch in Riverside or Ontario or something. Soon). Gil has just moved to Pasadena, which has two. We won't get to Gil's new pad while I am in town, but Gil promises to drag Jim's ass to Whole Foods in the near future.

Come fly with me, come fly come fly away...

I am back in California for the week, visiting friends from various facets of my 6 1/2 years in the Golden State. The plane ride was not terribly appetizing: just a breakfast burrito at California Kitchen (at BWI, no less), a Nathan's hot dog at Phoenix Sky Harbor between connections, and two soft tacos from Del Taco en route to my friends' house. Okay, those weren't horrible things to eat at all. I could have imagined worse (like those vanilla Oreos I got on the Southwest flight to Phoenix).

A few more food-related things to do whilst I am in the Southland:

* Tomorrow I hit LA (another taping of G4TV's Web Soup with the awesomely funny Nerdian-American comic Chris Hardwick). While here I want to try to make as much of my meals out of food truck eating as I can (I recently did this in DC. I will write about that when I get home). If not, well LA is definitely a food city.
* Vietnamese, Thai and Mexican abound in the Inland Empire. Imma eat it all.
* Not sure what to indulge in, food wise, in Palm Springs yet. We shall see.
* Some of my closest friends are doing an all-Southern meal for me (living with his wife and daughter in Redlands now, my buddy Kurt is originally from the other end of the Chesapeake Bay - Richmond - so we both have a crab-related culinary reference point)
* Two friends of mine, Gil and Jim, have fallen in love with this new sushi place. They will take me there or I will hurt them.
* And more shopping at Fresh and Easy, Tesco's US-tailored supermarket chain.

Ah, California here I've come!

NOTE: The state-spotlight posts about Illinois will still be going up this week. I actually wrote those a few weeks ago in anticipation of the trip. Pre-scheduled auto-publishing is a beautiful thing.

Hamburger Mary's

One quick note about dinner last night: I headed out to Palm Springs, as I always do when I visit SoCal. I love that whole desert-meets-mid-century aesthetic. Really, it's almost as you'll turn a corner and Elizabeth Taylor or Bob Hope will be putzing around on vacation.

Out of all the establishments I could've chosen, this time I went to that relatively small, gay-friendly chain known as Hamburger Mary's. The restaurant has a large plaster statue of a smiling Mary, winking as she holds up a massive hamburger - think Bob's Big Boy in drag. Inside, tables of mostly gay male patrons of various ages will sit amongst movie posters of various movies with "Mary" in the title, all while dance mixes of contemporary music videos play on TV's in the background (the bar has a fairly large one).

Mary's has various offerings, but why the hell would you order anything but a hamburger? Besides, they have a massive list of hamburgers from which to choose (price range; around $12 - $17), including the Surf & Turf Burger (topped with popcorn shrimp), the Blue Boy Burger (bacon and lots and lots of bleu cheese), and the one eye-popping Mac and Cheese Burger topped with exactly what you'd think (because Americans just aren't fat enough).

There were also several "exotic meat" burgers (each set at $17), including kobe beef, ostrich, wild boar, Texas antelope, buffalo (which isn't all that exotic anymore) and - get this - kangaroo. I was going to order that the second I saw it but the waitress said they just didn't have any kangaroo meat. The way she put it, it sounded as if they hadn't had kangaroo for a very long time. Oh well. The one time I ate it - in 1998 at a nondescript, probably defunct All-American BBQ in Yucca Valley or Joshua Tree - I loved it. My waitress compared the flavor to ostrich, but I find them to be somewhat different. I'm not a big fan of ostrich meat.

So instead of kangaroo, I opted for the "Buffy the Hamburger Slayer" burger ($12): a half-pound of beef covered in red wine, Swiss cheese and Caesar dressing, and speared throughout with garlic cloves (pickles are complementary but you have to ask for them). I opted for the fries, instead of the cole slaw or potato salad, and I don't think I made a wise choice. I hardly touched the fries, which were a little shriveled and pretty much a throwaway item, but the slaw would've been very refreshing.

but I didn't come to eat fries - I came for a hamburger. And I really liked this burger. The first bite was so mellow. Even though I've eaten a lot of roasted garlic, I couldn't put my finger on the taste at first. The combination of the garlic and various toppings made this hamburger a flavorful pleasure. Yes, it kept falling apart, and yes, I eventually had to resort to eating it with a fork, but it was truly a deliciously moist and flavorful hamburger! I will likely have to seek out other burgers, if not specifically this one, the next time I am in PS or for that matter any other city that sports a Hamburger Mary's (NB: the closest one to Baltimore is in Cincinatti. I figured they would've opened one in Rehoboth by now, but I guess not)

Day in the Desert: Yucaipa to Palm Springs

Tokyo Restaurant in Yucaipa

Yesterday Jim and I went for some great sashimi and sushi in Yucaipa, a smallish city known more for its dustiness than its sushi. Sitting down at the Tokyo Restaurant, we ordered lots of tasty nibbles, including a plate of Japanese mackerel sashimi, each piece separated by a paper-thin lemon wedge. There was more than the waitress said there'd be. But my favorite thing had to be their "Screaming Orgasm" (a name like that in conservative little Yucaipa could be scandalous enough). Simply put, it's albacore tuna sashimi piled on top of the radish "noodles" and greens that usually come with sashimi, and smothered in their "screaming orgasm" sauce - mayo and small fish eggs, with a little spiciness and some salmon-y color. I almost screamed, yes it was that tasty. And it made the usually bland and flavorless "noodles" taste almost spaghetti-like. I finished half of them. Note, however, that their miso soup is pretty forgettable.

Russell Wright: Living with Good Design

I made my way to Palm Springs and found, to my dismay, pretty much half the town was shut down! It soon dawned on me why: this is the summer, stupid! There are no tourists here, because it regularly gets up to 115 degrees in the day (August is PS's hottest month by far). One thing that was open was the Palm Springs Art Museum, formerly the Palm Springs Desert Museum. It's removed all of its natural history and anthropology exhibits (sending them elsewhere) and replaced them with more art.

One traveling exhibition hosted by the museum right now is the fascinating exhibition of mid-20th century designer Russell Wright's furniture, dishes and eating utensils. Russell Wright: Living with Good Design put on display objects that I didn't think I'd see in an art museum for a few decades yet: utensils that our parents, maybe even some of us have used throughout our lives. But instead of putting them on display purely as recontextualized art, they were displayed as both art and history: we saw these things as they were meant to be used or displayed. Very cool. And that Iroquois translucent china? Wow.

See's Candies

After a little thrift store shopping at the local Revivals (proceeds go to benefit the Desert AIDS Project, and they have some really neat stuff, too), I finally stopped for a snack at that California institution known as See's Candies. Because most of my family is dieting and forbidding themselves from having fattening, delicious, sugary chocolates - and because I already got them some gifts they probably shouldn't be eating - I got half a pound of candies for myself and friends here (yeah, that's it, my friends). Some of the tasty buttercreams that I bought (I am a buttercreamaholic) were vanilla, brown sugar, toffee and apricot. Too bad they melted together in the car, so I had to freeze them and then thaw them out in the fridge. Should make for some interesting eating.

Hunters Video Bar of Palm Springs

Like San Francisco, Palm Springs has a very vocal and vibrant gay community and nightlife. I explored it, as I have before, with a Guinness at Hunters, a local institution with massive screens showing (last night anyway) Beyoncé, Shakira and Norah Jones (funny, I always think of them at the same time, don't you?). In the gay-specific strip on Arenas Road, it's one of the brighter bars, and one of the ones I like more in that area. Of course, there are many other gay and straight bars all over Palm Springs and nearby Cathedral City (their leather-lovin' Barracks Bar has a popular happy hour).

Las Casuelas - ¿Otra Vez?

I went to Las Casuelas again. Yes, I went there the last time I visited PS. But this time, with so fewer people in town and such smaller crowds - and with so fewer options because, y'know, everything was closed - I went back. Only this time, for a change of pace, I stopped in their much bigger Terraza location up the street from the smaller one that's a favorite with the locals. Here I got a cool, crisp Dos Equis beer in a very tall glass to wash down my tortilla chips and salsa. Then came the two-item combo that I ordered: a mild chili relleno filled with, it seemed, mozzarella (or at least its Mexican equivalent) and covered in delicious breading and melted cheese, and a large pork tamale. All that with rice and Oaxaca-style beans (just whole black beans cooked with onion and cumin; I couldn't really taste the onion). Total price for this delicious food: $18. I left a $4 tip.

Other photos -

Even Lucy thought it was hot - must be why she's sitting near the sprinklers.


Just resting? Or are Duane Hanson's Old Couple even real?

Maybe they'd be more comfortable in these swell furnishings by Russell Wright!

FOOL, please!

Update on SoCal visit

I've eaten at a few good places over the last few days, and, like my London visit a few months ago, I am now totally backlogged. Just a wee recap:

Del Taco - This is my favorite fast food restaurant, more for their soft tacos del carbón than anything else. Their breakfast is doable, though the egg and cheese breakfast burrito is a little boring. Light years ahead of Taco Bell, the closest one to Baltimore is 11 hours away - in Chicago.

Delhi Palace - And next comes my all-time favorite Indian restaurant in the Inland Empire, a place where I have eaten many lunch buffets and taken many dates to see if they really passed muster (now that I'm in Charm City, who the hell has time to date anymore?).

The other night at Delhi Palace Jim and I went for some dinner. To follow up our basket of papadums, we each got the prix fixe dinner (most items are, however, a la carte). Jim got the non-vegetarian dinner, and I got the hearty tandoori dinner (each at $14.95). My dinner included some more-succulent-than-usual tandoori chicken, drier-than-usual sheesh kabob, juicy chicken tikka and a vegetable curry that tasted really good.

Oh, and I also found out what happened to my other favorite Indian place that is now Phở Vinam. Our maitre-d' used to work there before the owners sold it to a Vietnamese gentleman and moved back to India on a year lease. He told me "They're not coming back."

DAY IN PALM SPRINGS

I spent yesterday in Palm Springs, which is easily 20 degrees warmer than anywhere in the Inland Empire. While we've been having warm-ish but somewhat clammy weather, Palm Springs has had beautiful weather all weekend. This past weekend was their famous White Party, a sort of Spring Break "circuit party" (a party that travels from one area to the next) where gay men - lots and lots of gay men - dress in white and dance and, well, do other things. One shopkeeper (there are lots of gay shopkeepers in very gay-friendly Palm Springs), who like most is not into this whole White Party thing, told me that this year there were no arrests and very few drug-related incidents (this is encouraging). I myself am not one for trying to drive through ridiculous crowds at 1 mile an hour, for several miles, so I went out of my way to stay away from the White Party.

So the Palm Springs I went to yesterday was much more settled down than it had been. But it was still hot and I, who dressed for clammier weather, scrounged around to buy a pair of shorts and a pair of sandals, each at an embarrassing $40. I should learn to be better prepared, d'oh!

Phillipe's Café and Bistro - This little French bistro has a beautiful view of the main Palm Springs drag of California Rte. 111 (Pam Canyon Drive). But then again, so do most of the restaurants in this part of town. Their fare is mostly crèpes, with some manicotti and a few other items. I ordered the Parisian crèpe, a square, buckwheat crèpe with ham, egg and Gruyère cheese, for $12 (the dinner menu is more expensive). To that I added a Bitburger beer (from Belgium) for $3.50 and the widest crème brulée I have ever seen, for $6. The food and the service were both quite good, and they have one of the most charming bathrooms I have ever seen in a restaurant.

Las Casuelas - For dinner I went with Mexican. And I would've stuck to the main drag, but Las Casuelas - which has five restaurants, including two on Palm Canyon Drive - was way crowded at its Terraza location in the heart of the strip. at least twenty people waiting to be seated, on a Tuesday!? Oy. So I walked quite a few blocks in the other direction (I like the exercise, okay?) and found the original Las Casuelas, which had seats left to fill.

The waitress told me that the locals like the original Las Casuelas, which is further removed from the hustle and bustle of the tourists. It has a more family feel to it. I liked it too. They gave me two delicious chicken enchiladas for about $10, with beans and Mexican rice. I also got a very large - I think too busy - tortilla soup for about $5. Don't get me wrong, it was a good soup, but there was just so much in the soup, more than I usually expect in a tortilla soup. And now that I think about it, I ordered a cup and they brought me a whole bowl! So I paid more than I wanted to, but they didn't overcharge me for anything.