Melody "Yo Mama" L.'s Profile

I just returned from my second shopping trip here, and I am VERY pleased. Fresh & Easy reminds me of Trader Joe's because they have their own store brand items which are inexpensive, have few ingredients and simple bare bones packaging. Their ketchup kicks ass! It's sweet and delicious. Their .99 cent rainbow puffs cereal is tasty and a big hit with my two year old. Their under-four-dollar brie cheese is pretty good, and their multi grain crackers are great (and also a big hit with my little boy). Their French roast coffee is pretty good, now I'm not going to lie and say it's AS GOOD as Starbucks, but at $5.88 per bag it's damned good. Is Starbuck's brand (at $10.00 + per bag) 4-5 dollars better? F*ck no! The store brand chicken is great too, and cheap!

What makes this store better than Trader Joe's for me is that it's more of a one stop shopping store. (Though I am a bargain QUEEN and I do have a short list of items that I purchase at Wal-Mart 'cause I'm cheap like that, WHEN I can handle the utter ghettoness, that is). Example: though my family has pretty healthy eating habits, and I have a very strict policy of not buying junk food my hubby and I MUST have that French vanilla flavored liquid fake creamer in our coffee in the morning. We just have to, we can't drink it black and milk and sugar sucks. You can get that at Fresh & Easy, very cheaply I might add. Our dog and cat HATE that effin' hippie-assed healthy pet food at T.J's, they must have Whiska's and Beneful, which you can't get at T.J's. Also Fresh & Easy has regular toiletries (sorry Tom's of Maine, your toothpaste tastes like the devil's jockstrap and your deodorant just doesn't cut the mustard for this sweaty lady) and diapers (sorry Earth, I'll be damned if I'm going to wash out poopy cloth diapers, I use disposable).

La piece de resistance is the 17 lb. Jennie O Thanksgiving turkey I purchased for less than SIX DOLLARS! Woooooo hooooooo!!!!!!!

Also the staff are friendly and helpful. Watch out Vizzz-ons and Trader Joe's!

# 1 punk dive bar in America. Chock full of tattooed freaks, I have never felt more at home so far from home. Amazing juke box, and la piece de resistance: A Jeffrey Lee Pierce/Gun Club mural on the wall, I'm a Gun Club FREAK. Being there reignited my fantasy of winning the Super Lotto just so I could buy a place in Vegas within stumbling distance from this place. Forget gambling, I wouldn't hesitate to make a special trip to Vegas just to party at the Double Down, it just kicks ass.

The food is so GOOD here. My husband is a bit-how you say...FRUGAL, and because we are living on a single income so I can stay home with our baby we have to keep dining out to a minimum these days. However, he never hesitates to spring for a nice lunch at this place. Their outdoor patio is large, and the staff has always been friendly. Sometimes the service is a bit slow, but this place is often very busy and the food is cooked fresh to order, so be patient!The portions are pretty large, we usually have leftovers to take home. I highly recommend two entrees: Their turkey burger, YUM! It's perfectly spiced and delicious. And the Middle Eastern salad, Praise be to Allah it's so effin' good! Not a salad in the traditional sense, mind you, but a huge platter of separate sections of lettuce, tomato, cucumbers (in a delicious white sauce), olives, hummus, pita bread and other spicy Arab treats that I don't know the names for. It could easily be a nice appetizer for a group of people. Now dining here comes with a bit of guilt for me, because it's situated directly next door to a clean and sober recovery house. Their patio faces the Figtree's, and I am usually enjoying a cold one with my lunch. So for Heaven's sake don't go there and get wasted and act like an ass! Good beer selection and child friendly. Oh yeah, the desserts kick ass, too.

I friggin' love this place to pieces. The eclectic, no scratch that, just WEIRD mix of people rules. You have your obligatory hessians, but also smoothies (normal people, wearing like Abercrombie and Fitch button down shirts with stripes), punks, grafitti dudes, cougars a la 1982 Sunset Strip, coke dealers (who may offer you bags of drugs if you would only come to their home and model the latest fashions poolside, "Aaah gots the best, Victorias Secrets, Baby Phat, you name it, and you can keep the clothes!"), Persian dudes wearing too much cologne, tattooed chicks, etc...the mix is interesting and the vibe is a good time party vibe, no tough guy shit, just fun. Fun music, the staff and host are cool, and the food is GOOOD!!! And you get to see Lemmy sitting at the bar playing the electronic gambling games. Maybe you'll party at Fig's house afterward and snort too much coke provided by some cute young guy with a shag hairdo and end up in a beautifully manicured Hollywood Hills front yard puking and slurring," Iiiiiii'mm toooo old ferrr this shit" (and that was five years ago). And if you're really lucky, you may party with the Bishop Don Magic Juan. Highly recommended. Beware, the drinks are LETHAL!

I regret to inform all Yelpers, this place is off of my list forever. My family ate here several times weekly when we first moved here one year ago. I EFFIN' LOVE home cookin', and this place used to have some good shit. Like cream of potato soup, pork chops, mashed potatoes, and don't even get me started on the surprisingly good beer selection, WITH $4.00 pitchers of PBR for f@ck's sake! The stained glass windows of Judy Garland, etc. were lovely to look at whilst imbibing copious amounts of cheap beer and artery clogging hydrogenated goodness. I went on quite a few Friday nights when the blues trio would play, it was a friendly and fun atmosphere where you could bring your child or your ancient grandma because the music wasn't overly loud. I went there for lunch today. No more stained glass. THE SERVICE WAS SHITE. I have worked as both waitress and manager in restaurants, I know WTF good service vs. bad service vs. maybe they're just having an off day is. My favorite lil' sassy gay waiter with the ponytail is no more. In his place are young people who don't get that this isn't fine dining, it's lowbrow cafe, and therefore they need to get the stick out of their ass when talking to customers. Also, there was maybe a total of five diners in the whole f@cking place, yet no one gave us menus/utensils or even acknowledged our presence for over 5 minutes. Not acceptable unless there's a rush!!! Really not acceptable because I spoke to the waitress on duty as soon as I arrived! Secondly, when I did finally place our order for 2 bottled beers and food, our food came first, no beer or even water! The host was apologetic and said he sent the busboy out with our drinks and he didn't know what happened. Jesus H. Christ, this is a tiny little place, not the Sidewalk Cafe in friggin' Venice! WTF kind of host are you if you cannot keep tabs on the goings on in a tiny little cafe?! At Last Cafe here I come, the Americana sucks bigtime now.

I love the this place. When I first came back to the LBC after a 13 year Hollywood hiatus I ducked into the V Room one week night on a whim and was pleasantly surprised to find a few people from my past (waaaay back, like when I was a teen) hanging there. Even more pleasant was the batender CJ, you know, the mature one who looks like a biker's ole' lady. She is the sweetest, nicest lady, the perfect hostess. Even when I'm just passing by and she's sitting outside she always strikes up a conversation. She also makes a mean Bloody Mary. The drinks are cheap at this place and they have AC in the summer! Sure the drinks are cheaper at my pad, but I don't have AC! Grade A dive bar, and it doesn't reek too badly like Fern's. The juke box kicks ass.

Yuck. I do not see the attraction at all.

I call this place the Oki Dog of taco joints. You know how Oki Dog's fries were basically sizzling sacs of stale grease and how the food had you doing the Tijuana two-step?(Two steps out the bathroom, then two steps back in). That's what Hole Mole's fish burritos are like.

I suppose If I had a MAJOR hangover and couldn't make it all the way to McDonald's for my sausage biscuit with double hash browns-STAT! for the necessary grease fix I'd go back there.

Probably not, though. I think I'd crawl to Micky-D's using my eyelids.

I just plain love this place. Period.

My perspective is that of a former LBC resident who for some inexplicable reason re-located to the OC then met and dated a rock star and then had dreams of fame and moved to LA and went all snobby and Hollywood for 13 years. Then came back down to earth and met a down to earth guy and had a baby and said, "WTF are we doing here? We don't want our child to grow up to be a spoiled asshole with a skewed perspective on life, people and money and what true happiness is" and I was all like, "Long Beach is pretty cool, let's give that a whirl and if it doesn't work out we'll just move to Canada or New Zealand or something" and my cheap-assed hubby was all "damn, real estate is mother-f**kin' CHIZZEAP in LBC!" so here we are.

The Pike was highly recommended to me by an old friend who A) loves to eat and drink beer and B) is the perfect combo of hip/down to earth.
Upon entering this place the first time I was surprised at the sheer number of tattooed freaks that were there, which I loved. The juke-box is pretty damn good. The decor is pretty snazzy (I love the run-down seedy seaman pirate punk thing) and the staff attentive. It is even child friendly (mind you I was once childless and still can't stand people who allow their spawn to run wild like maniacs, I keeps mine chillllll).

The only entree I can review is the fish tacos (breaded, I forget what they're called, maybe baja) and the fries. Yuuuuuuum. The sauce they give you, so god damned good (the thick,garlicky red sort of hot sauce). These tacos are so consistently good that I order them every time, and my profuse apologies to the Juggalo  Insane Clown Posse chef for the time my drunk 75 year old mother-in-law was practically yelling how "the tacos were so good the first time I had them and how they tasted like shit on that particular day", no really she's bat-shit crazy and they are always good.

The only problem I had was with the price for a PBR pitcher, hella expensive after being so spoiled by Cafe Americana's $4.00 PBR pitchers. But I read recent reviews of that place and hear it's gone down the shitter so c'est la vie...$14.00 pitchers it is.

I have dined here more than any other place in LB and repeat business speaks for itself!

I just moved here and was in DIRE need of a haircut and sort of resigned to going to Supercuts, I'm on a budget. I was walking by one day and saw Melissa through the window with all her tattoos and so I stopped in, just to check it out. She was cool and quoted me a good price, so I came back the following Saturday. Dude, this girl is TALENTED! She gave me what I wanted (and didn't argue with me at all about me not wanting to trim my ends since I'm growing my hair out) PLUS made it way more stylish than I could ever have imagined, I tend to think inside the box when it comes to my hair.

When my hair has grown sufficiently I will definitely be back for fine tuning.

OMG the motherlovin' BEST ever soft tacos, and chicken burritos, and eggs/bacon/ breakfast. I live a thirty second walk away and the only downfall is that the delicious smell is often wafting in my kitchen windows causing me to salivate and drool like Pavlov's dog. Really it's OK though, 'cause they're CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP! The people are nice, too. Be sure to ask for the pickled hot carrots and grilled jalapenos (free!).

Let me impress upon you how much I love the food here: I just bought a condo which has many windows facing 4th St. ...and I HATE other people's noise (it was a cheap foreclosure, OK?). Tito's is pretty gawd damned noisy, what with families w/ screeching children dining outside,
the cook constantly pounding on the grill with some metal implement or other the sound of which carries perfectly into my bedroom windows, the dude outside in the evenings with the outdoor cooker turning the meat on a spit (my hubby and I call him the meat-stick-guy) which draws QUITE the crowd, and the lady who pulls up every evening in a mini-van and sits there for 2 hours with windows open blaring the oom-pa-pa musica. Normally I'd be plotting the demise of such a business, and all it's customers and employees. But it has such positive associations for me that I can't get pissed off!!! Weird!

The baked goods are fresh, tasty, and did I mention CHEAP?

Tito's rules. Bring cash! No ATM/credit there.