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It’s early Sunday afternoon in 1967–I mean Silver Lake–I mean Echo Park–I mean…Silver Lake?
Picture, if you will, an awkward attempt to graft 50 square feet of downtown Portland into the dark heart of Los Angeles. Perched on the corner there is a quaint little version of the Stumptown Coffee Co. filtered through some essence of New Mexico and constructed with the fragrant remains of a Tacoma paper mill:
We here at Indie Schmarm feel it is our duty to not only report the news, but now to also give a weekly recommendation of things that we feel are deemed worthy of our attention. We’ve decided to bring out the big guns and encompass multiple categories such as books, film, T.V., food, and of course music.
This last week’s Indie Schmarm recommendations:
Restaurant: Bossi Nova
Order: Churrasquinho no Pão (Steak Sandwhich)
Location: 7181 W Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90046
Rating: 0 (on a scale of -5 to +5)
Restaurant: Cat & Fiddle
Order: Steak Sandwhich
Location: Sunset Blvd.
Rating: -4 (on a scale of -5 to +5)
The Cat & Fiddle Restaurant is an establishment not to be reckoned with. My office ordered lunch from them today. The menu seemed to be decent, however over-priced by far. Still, we were intrigued by this English Pub/Restaurant, and being in Hollywood, have to try different things. On to ordering!
Two associates and myself ordered the Steak Sandwhich, Medium. When it arrived (nearly an hour after we ordered), I was first shocked by the shear lack of weight to the dish, “so light” I thought, even before looking at it. When I opened cheap styrofoam container, I found an old, gizzly bear of a steak. Over-cooked and set upon the absolute smallest piece of soggy bread they could have scraped off the kitchen floor. My office associate discovered his steak to be criss-crossed with thick veins of fat (that like gold in an 1849 San Francisco mine). “Maybe it will taste better than it looks” I thought. Wow. Wrong. Ye old ruling that food must look good tobe appetizing still holds true. It was as tough as leather and had about as much flavor as some truck stop beef jerky. The meal was attrotious to say the least.
In most major US cities, downtown is the creamy, throbbing center of nightlife. Downtown Los Angeles? Not so much. Half of it is a sea of lofts and art galleries where the D-list celebrities of the world congregate to drink Rite Aid champagne and talk about how “misunderstood” socialism is. The other half is a lego-land metropolis of office buildings, home to the alpha baby boomers of southern California. (They moved here in the Summer of Love to do that whole “tune in, drop out, freak out, lube up…whatever” thing, now they tell themselves they’re gonna “corrupt the Man from the inside.” They still keep that Zappa concert ticket stub in their wallets, between the Vons Club card and the card for Guru Sajj, the herbalist, who they swear they’ll be calling any day now.)
Somehow, in the latter half of downtown, Dan and I found something we didn’t even know was missing in our lives.
The Original Pantry (9th & Figueroa) has been kicking around since 1924 and they’re still lightyears ahead of us. Dining there for the first time is like telling your WWII vet grandfather that you just spent 2 hours at the mechanic’s waiting for an oil change. He doesn’t tell you you’re a lazy pantywaist and that he knew how to do an oil change himself by the time he was 3. He just half-smiles and looks kind of confused and you get the feeling he’s thinking it. It’s an educational experience that makes you want to be a better person. Most of these waiters have been working there for over 40 years and they are more man than you or I will ever be. There’s so much to learn.