Anger Burger

I told my friend Hatherly that I was trying to cut some fat out of my diet and addendum’d myself by saying “But I’m not counting calories or anything,” to which she slyly replied: “So you’re not totally L.A. yet.”  No, not totally.  And: I am still alarmingly pale, have two inches of grey root growout and don’t currently have a car, so if being an Angeleno were a swim lesson, I’d be in Tadpole Class.

This is all an awkward lead-in for having dined at Golden State, a restaurant of recent inception located on good ol’ Fairfax right across the street from the legendary Canter’s Deli.  I believe their claim to fame is locavorism, though not so much as an ecological movement as a taste one – go with what you know.  Unfortunately, motivation means jack squat to me, so I’d like to get down to the food.

When I saw a muffuletta on the menu, I knew I had to order it.  There are a few things generally off about this, the first of which is the obvious: muffulettas are not a Californian food. When I was in New Orleans I went to what I thought was the source, the Central Grocery but found the supposedly ground-zero sandwich to be uninspiring and dry, not to mention that when I was trying to eat it I was approached by no less than seven aggressive panhandlers, one of which who finally drove me off by shrieking “YOU BITCH!” in my face.  Ah, New Orleans.  Later a reliable source confirmed my suspicions: Central Grocery muffulettas are for tourists. Which is all to say that Golden State’s muffuletta was many times better than Central Grocery’s — an admittedly easy feat — but also just an excellent sandwich.  The portion was generous (only half is shown above), the bread soft and the olive chop was zesty without overwhelming the salami.

Our friend Jes went with a classic chicken Caesar salad, and we immediately commended the rarely found small dice of the romaine pieces.  Except.  The chicken slices were absurdly large and Jes was unable to cut them, resulting in her going feral trying to gnaw on the pieces without shoving an entire fillet of breast meat into her mouth.

Mike had what is listed on the menu as simply “Burger,” a bacon-cheeseburger with arugula.  Because it isn’t the kind of burger I like (the thin and unadorned kind) I don’t have much of an opinion on it.  Mike seemed to enjoy it.  The fries were too crispy to our taste, but we fall into the underdog soggy-fry constituency. The accompanying house-made curry ketchup was excellent.

The crazy part is that Golden State serves Scoops¹ gelato, a local super-favorite, and I was too full to eat any.  This is unacceptable.  I will be back.

¹ Scoops doesn’t have a website, but they are known for having a lot of dairy-free flavors as well as pulling off seemingly impossible flavors like popcorn, brown bread and fois gras (really!) as well as some of the more usual flavors. They deserve the fandom they’ve garnered, though the locals have gotten their American Apparel panties in a bunch over Scoops serving fois gras along side their vegan ice cream, to which I say: get a fucking haircut.