The Great Burrito Hunt

 

Since moving to California, I have set about looking for my new top restaurants. I like to find places that I can go to again and again. I need craving satisfying restaurants, if you know what I'm saying. I recently found a cool Mediterranean cafe in Van Nuys called Lusy's. Excellent pita bread. Great chicken shawarma. Check it out.

***SIDE BAR: I need to take a moment to extol the virtues of the Yelp app. My cousin recently introduced me to its wonders and I've used it every day since. It was just what I was looking for in other food/restaurant/laundromat/gas station recommendation apps. I've found so many great places through it.

But since moving here, I have not been able to find a Mexican food place that compared to the ones in Arizona. (If you didn't know, AZ has truly great Mexican food. For cheap. Look it up.) So I've tried various places around town, but none had comparable homemade tortillas or the right bean consistency or the correct cheese usage. I should mention here that I judge a good Mexican food place by its bean and cheese burrito. I figure, if you can't get the easy stuff right, you're not gonna get the hard stuff right. 

Same goes for kissing and sex.

So yesterday I decided to solve this problem--HOW TO FIND A GOOD BURRITO IN THE BIG CITY. I decided to go to all the hole-in-the-wall Mexican food places I'd been curious about, pick up a burrito, and let my taste buds do the judging. I had intended to go to 3 or 4 places, but quit out after 2 places. It was all smelling so good and the burritos were getting cold, after all. 

First up was Tony's Mexican Grill. Got great reviews on Yelp (4 out of 5 stars from 160 reviewers--not too shabby). Had its own parking lot, which is a game changer in Los Angeles. Got the bean and cheese burrito to go. Normally their burritos come with avocado and pico de gallo inside, but I like my burritos plain so I got those on the side. It was looking good so far for Tony's. Also, it had a salsa bar that you could take salsa from to your hearts content. I've been to places where they allot you a certain amount of salsa cups. Not cool. Not so at Tony's. They had three bean choices: black, pinto, and refried. I got a half and half mix of pinto and refried. The burrito was ready in a few minutes and came with a bag of chips. Excellent touch, Tony.

On to the next.

Second up was Burritos El Chavo. It also had its own parking lot, but this one was pretty cramped. Only a few spots. I had to move my car so people could get out. It was a whole thing. Here, same deal. Got the bean and cheese burrito. Was ready quickly. However, no chips on the side, like Tony's. Hmpf. Also, no salsa bar. They gave two little cups of a pico de gallo-style salsa which was fine, but I like a little variety in my salsas. 

Now for the taste test. 

Tony's was first. Great first bite. Smooth bean consistency. Very buttery (probably lardy, but buttery sounds better). Nice flavor. Topped with their red salsa, Momma Like. It's a little smaller than I would like a burrito to be, but I've noticed that's typical of Los Angeles burritos. Arizonans like their burritos big, I tell ya. The tortilla was nice, clearly not store-bought or other such nonsense. It came with a mixture of yellow and white cheese. But the yellow cheese gave a nice strong cheddar taste to the burrito. I enjoyed it heartily. The chips--excellent. I can only imagine how much I would enjoy having a batch of Tony's nachos. 

Now for El Chavo. Immediately I'm getting a smoky flavor that was not present in the previous burrito. This is a little heavier of a burrito. The beans were thicker, definitely more chunky. They used a white cheese and it left a nice amount of grease in and around the burrito. This was nice. This tortilla was perhaps a touch thinner. And not in a bad way. It was light like a feather. However, the salsa was not impressive. Almost flavorless. No kick at all. You could've given it to children without worry. That's not a compliment. I found myself using Tony's salsa on my El Chavo burrito. What a mess. But the burrito in and of itself was tasty.

Now for the decision. I'll leave suspense out of it for today. Tony's is the clear winner here. Not only was it better than El Chavo, it was up to the task of being my new Cali burrito spot. 

It could stand next to my favorite Arizona burritos and hold its head high. 

Congratulations Tony's Mexican Grill! You've gotten yourself a new repeat customer. I know I just had it yesterday, but I've already been craving it for dinner. I might be having Tony's again today, folks. That's when you know you've found a winner.

Questions and Answers

Momma Like

Ladies---Ladies. If I have the power to steer you anywhere, let me steer you towards beautiful men. For those of you who don't know, Magic Mike came out last weekend. Let me say--I highly recommend it. It's just so...satisfying. It's everything I hoped it would be. Nakedness, sex appeal, some laughs, man candy.

One of these things is not like the other.

I highly, highly recommend you wrangle up a group of your girlfriends or gay man friends and have yourself a night of pretty men.

And then go over to your boyfriend/boy toy/friend with benefits/stranger you meet after the movie's house, because you are not gonna want to end the night alone in bed. If only I'd known.... learn from my mistakes, friend.
 

Lauren's Movie Rating: 9.7 cat calls out of 10 washboard abs.


Thanks to EW.com for the pic.

Queen of California

I know this blog has been John Mayer heavy recently, but this blog's supposed to be a reflection of my life and experiences, right? And my life and experiences has been heavily tinted with shades of John recently. His new album, Born and Raised, is on regular rotation around the house. If you haven't heard/bought/known about the album, I highly recommend it. It will be your summer music, I promise. 

Here's a new version of his song Queen of California. Enjoy!

This picture is from Deutsch Magazine. She looks like a California girl, see?

Tomatoes Round the World

I'd like to extol the virtues of tomatoes for a second. Think about it--tomatoes are used in so many different food cultures--European, South American, African, I can name more continents if you'd like. And each of these cultures uses tomatoes in its own unique way. For today, I'll be showing you a European, specifically Italian, way to use tomatoes. 

Tomato Bruschetta with Mozarella and Baguette:

Serves 2-3 as an appetizer or 1-2 as a meal

 

Ingredients:

2 whole ripe tomatoes

1/4 cup onion (I only had red onion when I made this recipe, but you'd typically use yellow onion. Actually, though, the red onion had a nice flavor and added some fun color.)

2 garlic cloves

1/4 cup basil

1-2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp balsamic vinegar

Salt 

Pepper

That's all folks. It's the simplest thing to make. Basically all you do is cut up the tomatoes into small-ish pieces, chop up the onion, dice the garlic, chop the basil, throw it in a bowl with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Let it percolate for 10-15 minutes just to get the juices all nice and melded, and you're good to go!

This is a really basic, good-for-everything recipe. You can use this mixture over pasta with sausage added (stay tuned for that post), you can put this over bread like I'll show you below, or you can use it as a base for more complicated Italian sauces, pasta salad, etc etc, the list goes on.

Continuing on!

Next for this recipe (read: experience), you add mozzarella into the program. I like this kind from Trader Joe's:

It comes in full mozzarella ball form, and you cut it into slices about a 1/4 in thick (or however thick your heart fancies. We are not nit-picky here.) 

Now, slice the baguette. 

I'd do it the same size or so as the mozzarella, just to keep things comfortable. Brush a little bit of olive oil on both sides of each piece and toast slightly til golden brown or less. You really just want to warm it and give it a little crunch. No more than a few minutes in the toaster is necessary. 

Finally, add the mozzarella on top of the bread, sprinkle the bruschetta on top of that, and you've got yourself a party, my friend! Enjoy with some nice wine!

We're all winners here

A few weeks ago (oh gosh, how time flies!), I was lucky enough to get an invite to the Music Video Production Association Awards. It's basically the Grammy's for the music videos themselves, instead of just the songs. If you want to learn more about the Music Video Production Association, click here.

 It was a pretty spectacular turnout. It was held at the Taglyan Grand Ballroom on Vine in Hollywood

 

-- side note: This place is BEAUTIFUL!! If any of you are looking to get married in the Los Angeles area any time soon, check this place out. It has a striking ballroom and a beautiful garden area.--

and had an amazing dinner before the awards began. I think this was the first time I've had steak, chicken, and fish on one plate at the same time. I took a picture of my plate, but I remembered to do that only after I'd half-eaten everything, so I don't think you guys would want to see it. You'll have to take my word for it; it was quite a spread. 

Then came the awards, where they honored the production side of the videos from artists like Rihanna to The Black Keys to Skrillex to Sara Bareilles. 

Here's some pictures from the night and a few of the winning videos that I particularly liked:

 

 some of the winners were voyeuristic:

 

some of the winners were retro:

 

 some of the winners were patriotic:

 

some of the winners were simple:

 

 some of the winners were cult-y:

 

some of the winners were futile:

maroon 5 - Never Gonna Leave This Bed, sara bareilles - Gonna Get Over You, kanye west and jay z - Otis, the black keys - Lonely Boy, cults - Go Outside, lana del rey - Blue Jeans

I See You

Summer is here! (At least for us L.A.ers). And as such, it is walking season! I was feeling a little ill the other day--I don't know if it was allergies or what--but a little fresh air sounded like it would be the perfect pick-me-up. And it was. I wasn't even planning on taking pictures, but I had my iPhone and the greenery was just to pretty to leave undocumented. 

Hopefully your town is getting on the right side of this summer weather and you can take a spontaneous walk as well!

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