Jason "You Have to Try This!" H.'s Profile

I'm rating this on a scale of salad shops.  It's the best I've ever been too.  For those of you looking for an all you can eat Souplantation kind of a place, this is not it.  

This place is more like a cafeteria style serving, except the food is anything but cafeteria food.

Samples are encouraged, and even thrusted upon you at times, but that's okay because it means you get to delve into all sorts of new salads you may not of had before, one bite at a time.

There are probably over a dozen salads, and I'm not sure if they rotate them, but after I visit this place about a dozen times that would be great.  I enjoyed the "2 item plate" and I use quotes because they sell it as a two item plate, but allow you to split that into 4 "half" items (there goes those quotes again).  My plate was filled to the brim, and this wasn't one of those normal circular plates, this was an oblong plate that measured probably over 12 inches across -- I didn't finish my entire plate in the end, but I tried.

Some of the salads have proteins in them, such as chicken or fish, and some are pure vegetarian.  I enjoyed a bit of both, but still opted for a separate protein to top it all off; I got the pepper crusted tuna, cooked to a nice rare in the middle.  I think in general when I have rare tuna, I like it to have been cooked on the spot, so this can be a little off-putting to me, but the flavors were great.  One thing I can say about Lemonade, is that they use salt, and the right amount of it.

I couldn't tell you what kind of salads I got exactly, but one was a sort of a chicken and jicama salad with tarragon.  Another had grapes, chicken, and squash.  Another was tomato, pine nuts, avocado, and a citrus dressing.  And the fourth I'm not going to even begin to try and remember.

Now to the lemonade:  Everyone at the table ordered the same one, watermelon-rosemary-lemonade. It was enjoyable at first drink or two, but a bit too syrupy for my taste.  Also, though there was a very subtle bouquet of some kind of an herb, it was hard to taste the rosemary or discern it from another's aroma.  The watermelon was also not prominent.  It was reminiscent of a pink lemonade.

There are many more lemonades though, and I will not have any prejudice against them because of my first experience.  I will go back with an open mind and try their peach-ginger-lemonade next!  Perhaps I'll update here too.

This place is very cool.  I wish something like this was happening every night in Los Angeles; it makes the whole area come to life with art of all sorts:  paintings, mixed medium, photographs, live music, and anything else you can think of creating with your hands.

Honestly, I've heard people say that LA has no culture...obviously they're not looking deep enough.  Downtown LA Art Walk is Los Angeles culture in your face.  It's so obvious that they couldn't miss it.  It's a very neat mixture of people, from celebrities, to hipsters, and everything in between.

Meh...I've had better.  Tambien, que pasa de limon en polvo?  Cualquier es ellos lo utilizan prueba como esos cinco dulces del centavo del hombre de helado.

Si, yo hablo espanol porque soy de Salinas; la casa de comida Mexicana reales.  Pues entonces manejar al norte pasado Salinas por el camino a San Francisco, pare en Mi Tierra, o El Charito para algún alimento mexicano verdadero.

Meh, I suppose it's my own fault for having ants with shoestring potatoes, but they tasted like garbage for lack of a better word.  The shrimp/scorpion toast was garbage too.  The sad thing is that it wasn't the scorpions fault, it was the shrimp toast.  How bad of a cook do you have to be for the shrimp toast to fall below the preparation of the scorpion?

Anyways, I recommend you try it once ;)  It's not cheap though...insects these days cost a pretty penny.

Seriously, how the f can a franchise be a "B" rated restaurant?  Aren't you supposed to be cleaner because you have all that corporate bs to put up with?

How dare you sir...how dare you.

I've just found my favorite sandwich place in Los Angeles County and it's Green Peas of Culver City, CA.  

I had a delicious chicken curry sandwich with toasted almonds and raisins.  It was paired with a small bowl of sweet corn soup.  The pairing was excellent.  The atmosphere is great, and the owner is a very nice guy that really seems to care about keeping his customers happy and his restaurant clean.  All of the staff is also very friendly.

I'll be back shortly to review some more sandwiches!

Finally!  LA, you have redeemed yourself a bit.  They have solid carne asada tacos, and solid fish tacos.  The chips and salsa are pretty good too, more like a 3 star round of salsa.  The carne asada is some of the best in LA though (that doesn't say much unfortunately since LA generally doesn't have good carne asada).  Coming from a guy that comes form Salinas, I assure you, the carne asada here is good.  Let's hope the cooks keep up the good work!  I may have a place to fulfill my Mexican food needs.

I haven't tried the beans, the carnitas, the chile verda, or the rice, yet...but I plan to try all of it.

Wow.  Once again, Korean tacos are overtaking Mexican tacos in LA.  What's up LA?  It's a sad day for all Mexican restaurants when Korean flavors can swoop in and take the taco crown from you.

I think the pork is the best meat there, but the chicken and the beef are both very good too.  I can't give this place 5 stars because they use too much lettuce and cabbage on the tacos and burritos.  The pork is a bit spicy, not too spicy for me...not sure how it'd rate for you.

P.S. $2 tacos, but it might take 3 for a full meal.

Done.

Tonight was the last straw.  The tacos have gone completely down hill.  At one time they were some of the best in LA, but over the past 10 months they've gone down hill.

Note to owner:  Use salt again.

Someone emailed me about the R Bar tonight, and this is what I said:
Tonight the password was ULTIMATE RUSH, ULTIMATE PRICE.

It changes day to day though. Hit them up on their myspace for the password or call them early for it.

A bunch of hot artsy chicks ;)

Drinks are great. Order a special off of the wall. Try them Mondays in particular; there's a piano player with a great voice.