The Stinking Rose, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles

Faced with the prospect of seeking alternative dinner plans, The Stinking Rose (55 North La Cienega Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90211, tel : +310 652 7673), a garlic themed restaurant came up as a suggestion. As it turned out, all of us liked garlic. What coincidence! 

While waiting, we filled up on bread and beer with their garlic rose relish - the latter a pretty darned good concoction of chopped garlic and parsley with salt and vinegar in olive oil.

Since we were prepared to be garlick-ed up for the night, we got ourselves a portion of their bagna cauda - roasted garlic in extra virgin olive oil and anchovies. Those garlic were sweet and just slightly pungent. Made an excellent spread since they were also pretty soft after all that roasting.

Made also good eating with even more bread along with the garlic rose relish.

Almost everything on menu was supposed to be flavoured with garlic. I couldn't taste any of it from their chilled asparagus with blue cheese bits. But I liked them because they were tender without being fibrous and of course, those blue cheese. 

More munching came in the form of fried calamari. These were crispy and had a good squid-y chew.

Here's a garlic prime rib which featured some of the roasted garlic cloves on top of the meat. That prime rib wasn't too bad. Probably not as tender as Lawry's across the road but I couldn't complain.

We couldn't leave the restaurant without giving their garlic ice cream a go even though we were stuffed. The topping if you were wondering wasn't some roasted/burnt garlic sauce of some sort. It's salted caramel. The garlic came from the ice cream and the flavour came through without being excessive or weird. It's actually kinda nice.

Philippe the Original, Los Angeles

I normally keep faces out of the pictures but we had such a friendly and chirpy counter lady today at Philippe the Original (1001 North Alameda, Los Angeles, CA 9001, tel : +213 628 3781) that I thought she deserved to be featured in recognition for it. Here's her getting us some pickled eggs.

Anyways, Philippe's is an institution in these parts and has been opened since 1908. That would make them a century and a decade old. They've been said to be the inventor of the French dip sandwich and those were what we were here for.

I got the double dipped lamb and bleu cheese - with meat that was sliced off the leg of the lamb on order and assembled right in front of us. Unpretentiously hearty and delicious it was that the sandwich went down easy peasy lemon squeezy. I liked this.

Some potato salad on the side and pickled yellow hot chilli peppers that had a bit of bite. Awesome with those French dips.

These pink eggs have been pickled in beet juice, red wine and vinegar. Hence the colour. They were just sour hard boiled eggs if you were still wondering what they tasted like.

We had an order of their chocolate cream pie which was chocolate cream piled with even more cream. It's kinda nice though.

The counter lady told us that their baked apples used to be bigger. Not that we could tell since we've never been here. This was like an apple pie without the pie. Apple, sugar and cinnamon. It's not bad.

Preux & Proper, Los Angeles

Unplanned and quite random, we ended up at Preux and Proper (840 S Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90014, tel : +213 896 0090). Contemporary southern/New Orleans inspired food they claimed.

These were Dungeness crab hush puppies. The menu mentioned "house bourbon barrel aged green hot sauce, boil spice" but none of those really came through. It was the charred poblano butter that got these through for me. The fried balls were doughy and honestly, not memorable. 

There was an ogo Caesar salad. I was initially excited that there was so much anchovies but oddly I couldn't quite taste them. Ogo if you didn't know is a type of seaweed. It was okay I guess.

Thing started picking up with their smoked beef heart pastrami. These made very good munching, perked by the lemon in them and some smokiness from the thinly sliced hearts. And then, the holy trinity of onions, celery and bell peppers for a fresh breath of crunchy textures. This was delicious.

We were pretty impressed by their chicken fried pork belly. The pan was topped with a whole lot of ingredients which resulted in a confusion riot of flavours but that pork belly came through it all. The meat and fat was tender and pretty much dissolved in the mouth.

What was even more kickass was their cast iron gumbo that was loaded with Louisiana crawfish, tiger prawns, Willapa Bay oysters and Prince Edward Island mussels. I know - with all those names, one would probably wonder what they were about. Did it all matter? I honestly don't know but the seafood was of good quality and were not overcooked. The spices that flavoured the gumbo were just delicious. If there was one item out of what we had tried I would come back for, it'll be this.

Dessert was beignets with what was described as "banana foster" dulce de leche. I think that was the sauce at the bottom. These were okay, not spectacular.

In-N-Out Burger, West Hollywood, Los Angeles

Finally got a chance at In-N-Out (7009 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90028) after hearing so much about them over the years. I liked the burger and I suppose the appeal of these were the fresh flavours. After having tried the who's who of the fast food burgers in the East and West Coast, it's kinda difficult to determine which is better so you're not gonna get that from me here.

But if I had to choose from an overall experience from the food, I'm probably more of the East Coast kind of person.

I didn't think much of the fries though. They were okay and perhaps didn't have the right combination of clicks that worked for me.

Original Pantry Cafe, Los Angeles

We made the drive from Vegas to L.A. in time for dinner. It was a coincidence that Original Pantry Cafe (877 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90017, tel : +213 972 9279) which I had heard about and intended to visit was just a couple of minutes walk away from where we were staying. 

This 24 hour cash only diner had been around since 1924. It was rumoured to never have been closed  since they opened and is one of the sites of Los Angeles' Historic-Cultural Monument. The space hung about a retro charm that cannot quite be replicated and that charm came with the greasy smell of food that clung to your clothes. Haha. 

Whatever we ordered came with coleslaw. It wasn't the healthiest option for vegetables but we didn't come here to eat healthy and we certainly did need some fibre in our diet after the meat heavy meals we've been having.

Toasted bread also came with whatever we had ordered. Much appreciated the chilled salted butter and jam that came with them.

Soup of the day was some chilli bean soup. Tasted like the stuff they ladled over A&W's Coney Dogs. Nice for a cold night.

I had a ham steak with sunny side up. Big assed boned in ham that challenged you to finish them after all the other food that came prior. I recommend it with some maple syrup and if you're wondering if I finished it all, I did. 

That ham steak also came with some hash brown on the side. The crusty parts on the hash brown were disappointingly hard and chewy and not good for eating but the potatoes were pretty good after a few shakes of salt and pepper. We left this place almost bursting at the seams because these guys certainly made sure they fed you well.