Anger Burger

I swear I’m not going to be the blogger that tells you that she’s got some secret shenanigans going on in her life and how she can’t tell you about it but she can tell you that it is very stressful and important.  If I were that kind of blogger I’d assure you that I’d tell you all about it just as soon as I could (like the time a ventriloquism museum tried to sue me and I had to hire a lawyer¹) and afterwards you’d be all, pfft, was that all she was freaking out about? But, like I said: not that blogger.  I’m the kind of blogger that stuffs her face with $15 worth of waffles and yells at her boyfriend “YOU’RE THE SHITTIEST PHOTOGRAPHER!” on a street corner while spraying powdered sugar out of her mouth.  I wish I were kidding.

It’s like this: what would make a waffle better?  They’re already at the upper end of the awesomeness scale, but there’s room for improvement.  Perhaps if they were made from a denser yeasted dough rather than a batter, and were then just rolled in balls of pearl sugar so that when they were in the iron they turned chewy and caramelized.  At this point I’d say yes sir, you have achieved over-awesomenating.  Huzzah.

A restaurant in my neighborhood recently opened that serves Liege waffles, called Shaky Alibi.  I have to get this out of the way now so I can focus on the waffles but: for such a cheeky name, the place was naptime serious.   I wasn’t feeling it.  But also: who cares?  Waffles.  In the above photo you can see where the unmelted chunks of sugar remain, and I assure you this is a lovely thing: they are crunchy and sweet, and most of them have caramelized.  The texture of the waffle itself is fascinating, somewhere between a good, soft British scone and an American sticky bun.  The exterior is crispy and breadlike, but the interior has heft and grain.  In fact, the whole thing has heft.  It’s like a good-sized puppy.

Mike the Viking did actually take some good photos of me, but this is the one I identify with.

Now, the interesting thing is that they’ll make you a savory sandwich from these waffles.  So, the same sugared waffle, but sliced open and filled with turkey or ham (we chose ham) and a variety of cheeses (we chose swiss).  The Viking was reluctant to declare like-at-first-bite, but as a card carrying Monte Cristo addict, I was preemptively on board.  If I’d had some blackberry jam on the side I’d be dipping that fucker.  <– I can say that about a lot of things, now that I think about it.

Eventually he said he’d like it if it were saltier, to balance the sugar, which I can’t argue against.  I mean, saltier, sure.

But still we are not to where the problem lies.  FIFTEEN DOLLARS FOR THAT.  Well, $9 for the sandwich, and $6 for the plain waffle.  It’s a shame, too, because they are delicious.  But … I don’t know.  We kept discussing it like I imagine kind-hearted people discuss whether or not to stop eating meat.  Which is to say, with feeling.   On one hand, we kept rationalizing that we were eating an artisan product made fresh.  It’s no supermarket croissant we’re talking about here, we’re talking about a hot-from-the-iron yeasted pastry.  On the other hand, FIFTEEN DOLLARS.  No.  It’s like, I just paid $6 for what amounts to a really, really awesome donut.  Well, okay.  Wait, is that okay?  I don’t know!  If it were $4 I’ d be all over that shit.  I’d be back there right this second.

But $6?  I don’t know!  I still can’t decide.  Rather, I can say for certain: the sandwich is out.  The waffle itself is the star, and the ham and cheese present themselves as merely a $3 distraction.

Now, if it had a big piece of breakfast sausage and an egg in the middle…

¹ 100% true story. Ask me about it in person; for all I know they’re still standing by with their coterie of lawyers, seething.

Friend and semi-erstwhile Anger Burger contributor Aaron specifically requested that I eat a piece of cheeseburger sushi from the Yatta-! Truck here in Los Angeles.  He would have done it himself, but the truck doesn’t often make an appearance in Houston, Texas.

I should tell you: this was the day after my birthday dinner, which meant that I was still grossly full on meat fat.  But the truck hasn’t been near my house in a long time, and I feared I’d miss out on this quest entirely if I didn’t act.

I got a half-order each of the “All-American” (aka, the cheeseburger sushi) and a vegetable roll, partly because my arteries were begging me to stop, and partly to see if the Yatta-! boys could actually make sushi.

Short version: they can!  And the cheeseburger sushi was pretty delicious, all things considered.  The thing is, it doesn’t taste like sushi at all, but like a cheeseburger-flavored tater tot.  I’m not sure what made it such a strong tater tot flavor (maybe even just the ketchup), but there was nothing offensive about it. Crispy, fried, with a snap of pickle in the middle and the faintest whiff of cheese, I fear the presence of something like this next time I’m drunk.

The vegetable sushi was lovely, the rice was slightly warm and sticky but with good individual rice grain definition, not too tightly packed and small enough to pop the whole thing in your mouth.  I was sad I hadn’t gotten a full order.  Which, you know, is a very sad sentence to type.

I couldn’t decide where to go for my birthday because there’s bazillion places I wanted to eat, including a $1.50-a-slice pizza joint.  But if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s prioritize my eating.  It’s actually only one of seven things I technically know how to do.

Enter: Animal!

My dining companion was Mike, also known as The Reluctantly Domesticated Viking.  I took this photo of him.  Isn’t he charming?  You’d think twice before swearing eternal vengeance against him for razing your village and spoiling your women.

I suggested he take a photograph of me for Anger Burger, and I got this:

True story.

Animal’s menu changes daily, but there are a few regular items.  One of these – chicken liver toast – was the only item I was 100% sure I knew I wanted to order, and I let loose the dreaded Julia Roberts guffaw when we arrived and I discovered that it wasn’t on the menu today.  Of course it wasn’t.

That’s okay, because there’s like eight things I wanted to order anyway.  First¹ on the list: poutine.  But, clearly not poutine.  I have to admit some disappointment here, though it’s my fault for not doing some research.  I knew it would be highly fancified poutine, and I was ready for it.  Except, I wasn’t ready for it to have shredded sharp cheddar in place of the mild cheese curds, nor a pile of oxtail meat (called “gravy” on the menu) instead of actual gravy,and despite this being fucking delicious, it just wasn’t poutine.  It was, however, a plate of french fries covered in braised oxtail and beautiful cheese, so there’s that.

Bone marrow.  Mike was actually sort of confused about this, despite being a Viking.  To be fair, I’m not certain they cook their meat at all, so I can understand his befuddlement. The bone is slow-roasted to render the marrow tender – the texture of creme brulee – and topped with chimichurri and caramelized onions.  You scoop this all out as a condiment for toast.  And I use the word “condiment” as one might refer to dynamite as a “firecracker”.

The problem was that after the “poutine” and the marrow, I was already full.  I hope you understand how mortified I was.  That was it.  My body was basically all, “Alright, that’s 2,000 calories right there, we can all pack up and head home.”  But then I was all, “Fuck you, body, it’s my birthday and I’ll cause you discomfort if I want to.”

Speaking of discomfort, how about some fois gras loco moco?

I’m afraid you read that correctly.  Animal is pretty well known for this dish, and at $35 a plate I am certain we’ll never order it again.  However!  Hemorrhaging money is the spice of life, so we had to do it.

And it was pretty fantastic, I must admit, though at the end of a already unintentionally meatfantastical meal (I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t know what I’d ordered, but I definitely wished somewhere midway through the bone marrow that I’d ordered a salad or a purge bucket or something) it was a bit of a wrecking ball to the guts.  My cholesterol level was making my vision blur.  Mike had no trouble plowing through it, and much to my amazement I was way more interested in the rice than the meat.  The rice!  I can’t explain it.  It was so perfectly cooked that it was almost like a palate cleanser.  I’m kidding, was actually struggling to remain conscious at this point.  All the blood in my body pooled around my stomach and liver in an effort to keep the ship from sinking.

Tomorrow I’m eating only celery.  And cake.

¹ Not actually first; I first ordered the pig ears with chili, lime and fried egg, and then had a last-second panic attack and changed the order to poutine.

Turns out gyoza skins are pretty easy to make, which makes it hard to trust me after I said “One thing I will likely never do is make homemade wrappers.  Fuck that.“  I guess that teaches you.

Staying at my friends Sean and Junko’s house makes for a lot of that kind of epiphany.  Like salad with breakfast:

Makes more sense than I would have admitted to ten minutes earlier.

Miso is always good.  Don’t screw with me on this, I’m correct.

Same with fish for breakfast.  Even sanma, which has a million tiny bones in it and large patches of nearly black tissue that taste like old stomach bile when you accidentally carelessly eat them.

Tabo wants you to shut the fuck up and give him the sanma.  But you won’t, because he’s the cat that tries to break into the room you’re sleeping in by pounding on the door and screaming at the top of his lungs at 3am like a drunk ex-boyfriend.

Today my dad took me to udon.  We had low blood sugar and snapped at each other about whether or not it was prudent to buy new video games before you’re finished with the ones you are already playing.  For the record, I do think it is prudent.  Also: my dad is handsome.

Here’s my udon.  And my boobs, though I doubt very much my dad cares about that part.  Though!  An hour previously at the farmer’s market when I was paying for fruit, a man at the stand asked him “Can I help you sir?” and my dad gestured at me and said “I’m with her.”  The seller said “Then you’re a lucky man!” and my dad called back “Uh, that’s my daughter.”  I think it’s because we wore coordinating outfits:

That, or my dad regularly takes his hookers to the farmer’s market.

In the event that you are driving along Interstate 5 on the western coast of the United States of America between the cities of Portland, Oregon and Olympia, Washington, you are in for a treat.¹

While the city of Centralia might lay claim to such delights as the Gymboree Outlet Store, I assure you that there is only one reason to visit this fair burg: La Tarasca.  Home to, frankly, some of the best Mexican food I’ve eaten in my entire life, and I’ve spent prodigious eating time in both Los Angeles and Houston.

There’s not even a lot to say about it.  Everything is homemade, even the pickled carrot appetizers.

They are famous for their carnitas, pork slow roasted with such finesse that it can be mashed to a moist pulp if you touch it too firmly with your fingertips.

I personally think the chile rellenos are the most transcendent item on the menu, a simple affair (like everything they serve, really) of fresh pasilla pepper, some cheese, a thin egg batter and a meeting with a hot griddle rather than a deep fryer.  It appears so plain, but like any good fairy tale there are layers upon layers of hidden meaning.  The lardy refried beans alone are worth the drive from wherever you are.

I snorted when I read Yelp reviews of La Tarasca that complained a lack of flour tortillas.  Let me tell you something: when there is an old Mexican woman with her hair in a bun in the kitchen hand patting out rounds of white corn masa and then slapping them on a smoking griddle to be then whisked to your table in hallow stacks of three?  Shut the fuck up about flour tortillas.

¹ Unless it’s a Tuesday, in which case you’re screwed.

Turns out I only had one year’s worth of material for you.  I’m kidding!   But I am revisiting the Santa Monica Blvd. Astro Burger because, well, it’s a great burger and I feel more than one ode is due.  But before that, an anecdote.  More like half an anecdote.

So, Mike was telling a co-worker of his about Anger Burger (hi Jason!) who then asked in all seriousness and with piqued interest: “Are there recipes for burgers?”  And I realized:  nope.  Ha!  There are recipes for anger, though, so there’s that.

Anyway, I don’t want to get into the “best burger” thing.  Again.  I know I said Astro was the best in L.A., and at the time that was true.  My burger haunts are like my ex-boyfriends — I did love you.  At the time.  Anyway,  Astro Burger burgers are flame-grilled, classic thin patties that gain a bit of crispiness during their cooking.  However, each time I go I notice many of the burgers going out the door are Gardenburgers.  You read that right.  As in, Gardenburger-brand Gardenburgers.  On whole-grain buns.   Uh.

I lost my mind and ordered one. To be on the safe side I ordered it with avocado and cheese.

And behold!  And excellent motherfucking vegetarian burger!  I had to take a deep breath halfway through and tell myself to slow down.  The cheese and Thousand Island burger sauce had literally melded with the top of the Garden patty itself, which alone was driving me into a eating-berserker-rage.  Combined that with Astro Burger’s reliably giant portion of perfectly ripe avocado and Holy Batman, Mother of Ramen that was a fine, fine item.

I have no idea why we’ve never thought of posing like this before.  And by “we” I mean me, because I still didn’t think of it,  Mike did.

Perhaps the best part?  That I left the house to get a burger without realizing that Mike and I both were wearing our Anger Burger shirts.   The evidence  is in Mike’s glasses.

This is a little convoluted, so bear with me:  a few weeks back I was reading the NY Times when I was startled to read a review of a friend of a friend’s ice cream shop in Seattle that I’ve visited countless times.  I ignored the rest of the businesses in the article and then forgot about it.  Then!  Last week my friend Junko asked, have you ever been to Bakery Nouveau in West Seattle?  I said nope.  They were featured in the NY Times, she says, and the little buzzing, dying light bulb that is my memory was flipped on, if briefly.  It didn’t matter.  All I heard were the words “bakery” and “go” and I had my shoes on.

The interior of the shop is mostly functional and curiously dark, a combination that appeals to me.  Though a bright morning, taking photos of the pastry case was a little like coming across fairy lights in the dead of a winter night.  Oooh, pretty.

I adore the purely functional serving trays lined with natural parchment.  It’s not fussy, but it feels right.  It’s a thing I have, probably from working at too many cafes: I hate paper doilies and I really hate those shiny, cheaply stamped out serving trays from Cash & Carry.

Can you believe I didn’t buy a single fancy pastry?  What the fuck is wrong with me?  Somehow I rationalized that it was breakfast and that the items wouldn’t survive transport back to Olympia.  I’m retarded.

I was also immaturely saddened that they didn’t have piles of pastries in their front window.  I had a memory of Florence, Italy, where stacks of premade sandwiches sat on tables outside small bakeries, and if you wanted one you just picked it up and went inside to pay.  By midday the cheese and meats were sweating, but people still bought them.  Why?  Because there’s nothing wrong with them.  Cheese and salami can sit out for hours and be okay.  Americans are prudes.  There was something so provincial and compelling about those sandwiches, and despite being universally disappointing (dry!) I kept buying them.  Likewise, I wanted pastries from the front windows of Nouveau, despite my rational mind telling me: Sunday, those pastries would have been stale.  Shut up, me!

Back and Junko’s apartment, we split everything.  The star of the show was the ham and cheese croissant, that large dark square thing on the right.  I had not realized how accustomed to the same ham and Gruyere croissant I’d become until I bit into Nouveau’s; several cheeses (two? more?) neither of them distinctly identifiable and yet delicious all the same.  It tasted very nearly like a fancified version of my grandmother’s cheddar pimento cheese spread, which I mean in the most complimentary way possible.

Bakery Nouveau is apparently well-known for their “twice baked almond croissant,” which I learned only after I sampled it.  I found it to be a merely pleasant variation of the almond croissant spectrum, but not mind-blowing.  The almond filling was not evenly applied, so the ends were plain croissant.  I can’t really complain: that plain croissant was delicious.  I just don’t think it beats my favorite almond croissant from the Bread Peddler in Olympia¹.

And then we have the jewel of the show, America’s new cupcake: the macaron.  Now, I’ve never been to France, so take whatever I say with an entire salt lick, but my understanding of the macaron is that it should be delicate, soft, and a little chewy.  The flavors should be identifiable but light.  The macarons I’ve developed a taste for inhabit the chewier end of the spectrum, and are sweet but not deadly.  Nouveau’s were all over the place on this scale: neither flavor I tried were chewy, and were in fact so soft that they dissolved in the mouth rather than enduring mastication.  So, not terribly appealing to me.  Though c’mon: almond-based sugar confection?  Still pretty rad.  The passionfruit (above) was definitely passionfruit flavored, though one of my greatest expectations for passionfruit is tartness.  Surely the filling would be tart?  Nope.   The other flavor I ordered was salted caramel, which in the flavor department failed entirely.  If you didn’t know what flavor it was supposed to be, you’d never guess.  Neither salty  nor particularly burnt-sugary, the macaron lacked any notable flavor but sweetness, which was cloying. Still, again: ALMOND SUGAR. Stop complaining.

And if that wasn’t a good breakfast, I don’t know what is.

¹ Which my dad totally dislikes, by the way. And to be fair: they are inconsistent. And their staff is hilariously detached and rude. But when their almond croissants are good, they are good.

It’s a story for another time, but I’d been postponing trying one of the most talked-about hamburgers in Los Angeles for over a year, mostly because I abhor a fancified burger.  I believe they should be sloppy, fast and evil and there’s no way a $10 burger can achieve that.  So the short version is: I was totally wrong.  Our meal was spectacular and worth every penny, but on the way out the door I spied something that jogged a long-submerged memory: Cake Monkey.

Two years ago my mom read an article about an L.A. bakery with an exceptional product, and after some searching I discovered the disappointment I imagine everyone does: they don’t have a storefront.  You are at the mercy of a few local restaurants to get what limited treats you can, a development I didn’t like at all.  And so I forgot about it.

Until just this moment.  I know I’ve read about these since then, Cake Monkey’s cheeky riff on the Ding Dong, their cakewich.  I was mesmerized and despite a distended abdomen heavy with beef and fryer grease (I thought you’d like that visual) I lurched for the wrapped foil like a zombie for a brain.  I handed over the $3.50 with panicked hands.

My specimen was a little worse for the wear, but it was a warm day and this is what we should expect from a product not sold from it’s place-of-origin.  Still, it was satisfyingly solid and fully enrobed in chocolate, which I guess surprised me a little.  I thought at least the bottom would be bare cake.

Wait, what’s this?  I hesitate.  First, the most obvious point: what a gorgeous thing.  The chocolate coating is pristine, perfectly even all the way around and not too thick.  I’m truly impressed.  But there’s a second issue here, and that is peanut butter.  This is not a Ding Dong.  Peanut butter?  I looked carefully at the top sticker for an explanation but could find nothing.  Peanut butter?  Ah yes, wait, on a small ingredient sticker on the bottom: peanuts.  And yellow cake?   I hopped over to their website and confirmed it: “Peanut Butter and Marshmallow Cakewich”, not the “Black and White Cakewich” of my expectations.  I admit I’m a little disappointed – despite all my nut butter ramblings the past few days here at Anger Burger, I’m not a huge fan of peanut butter baked goods.  I like just peanut butter, not peanut butter frosting.  Still, the cakewich is such a looker and it smells pretty good…

I should not be surprised, but the flavor and texture is amazing.  The cake is as I would hope for being totally sealed in chocolate: soft and moist with a pleasingly mild flavor.  The peanut butter buttercream is peanutty without being cloying and the marshmallow is lovely but sadly takes a backseat.  More would have been appreciated, though I’m not sure the physics of the cakes’ construction would have allowed for it.  And the chocolate!  Again, I marvel at what a perfectly applied perfect quantity it is.  All of a sudden I understand how to write like Stephanie Meyer.

While I’m still a little alarmed at the surprise peanut butter (What if I’d had an allergy and just bit into it?  Sure there was an ingredient list on the bottom, but the wait staff at the burger joint just called it a “Gourmet Ding Dong”)  (Okay, agreed: hopefully if I really had a peanut allergy I’d be smart enough to check the damn labels at first, but I think we can all agree I’m lucky to not have said allergy.)  I am more incensed over the issue that these ladies still don’t have a storefront.  Their online menu has me ripping my hair out.  What do we have to do to get our Passion Fruit Brown Butter Bars, Cake Monkey Moguls and Apple Crumble Cakes without minimum orders?  YOU’RE KILLING ME.

More food truckery, sorry, but rest easy knowing this will be the last for the next few weeks.

My friends Mary and Ben joined me for another trip to the finest shaved ice in town, though a combination of my own poor flavor choices (grape and POG) and the ice-wrangler being in a rush (not enough syrup) made for a slightly less-than-transcendent experience.

Afterward we perused the Miracle Mile strip to see what trucks were serving that day, and came across one we hadn’t seen before: The World Fare truck.  Of course, for cringe-filled guffaws, their website corrects that it is a “busTAURANT”.  I’m proud to tell you that we were actually too lazy to climb up and sit at their rooftop tables.

Now, I’d read about World Fare and was under the mistaken impression that it would have a rotating menu of street foods, but it would seem there is just one: the South African “bunny chow“, a very loose slang with questionable origins for a product neither containing bunnies nor intended for bunny consumption.  On the contrary, it’s traditionally curry served in a pretty large hollowed-out chunk of bread, which World Fare interprets loosely as tiny little rolls with a variety of fillings.

Ben’s hands making their Anger Burger debut!

The prices were a little disappointing too: a combination lunch with two chows, a side of fries and a cookie ran $10.  This is one of those instances where I feel like staying true to the history of the food (or larger portions at the very least) would go a long way toward keeping this out of the novelty meal spectrum.  Good once, but given the vast range of alternative options, I doubt I’ll be back.

Still, curiosity couldn’t keep us from the deep-fried truffled mac-n-cheese balls.  And then surprise!  At $3 seemed like a good deal until we realized they were charging like $60 a pound for it — they are tiny, about the size of gumballs.  They were hot from the fryer and had a nice crust, but the mac-n-cheese itself was surprisingly bland, being made from a mild white cheese and mysteriously short on salt.  It felt awfully patriotic sitting there eating deep-fried macaroni and cheese and thinking, damn, this is totally not salty enough, but it’s true.

But, wouldn’t you know it, it’s springtime in Los Angeles, the weather is fine and in a few days I’m flying back to my hometown for a short bit.  Things could be worse.  THIS IS NOT A CHALLENGE, UNIVERSE.  Back off.

It’s been a weird week.  So weird I can’t even discuss it here, but rest assured that it was nothing a lot of pork fat couldn’t fix¹.

Dear, dear Hakata Ramen Shin-sen-gumi.  There is truly nothing that your bowl of pork broth and a pound of your soft, perfect noodles cannot fix.  With egg.

And cod roe, don’t forget the cod roe.  This ramen joint in Gardena is maybe a 20 minute drive from LAX, and provided you are ever in the area, I strongly suggest you pork it up.  We insisted that out-of-town friend Anne (hi Anne!  hope your presentation not-literally knocked their pants off!) eat a bowl before heading out in her rental car and hopefully she didn’t end up asleep on the side of the 405 like Mike and I nearly did afterwards.  Hey, is that Compton? Zzzzz…

Earlier in the week there was a doner kebab incident:

One that we intend to repeat.  We’ve eaten kebabs everywhere from Cincinnati to New Zealand, and TastyMeat’s Bamwich ranked up at the top.  I kinda wish they had the wider range of toppings as traditional in New Zealand in the UK (beet slaw! hummus!), but that is a serious nitpick for something that is already 99% perfect.

That reminds me of a ‘joke’ a friend once told me about the UK: how can you tell it’s Saturday morning?  Because the gutters are full of kebab puke!  Ha – ugh.

Excuse me, I gotta get back to this bizarre week.

¹While typing that sentence I knocked a beverage over on my desk.  It didn’t hurt anything.  This is a metaphor for my week, slowpoke.