Jason "Yo, Delicious" H.'s Profile

Quick run down.

It's not as good as Animal overall, but it's still very good.  I've been 4 or 5 times since it's opened (and it opened pretty recently).

Highlights
Fried chicken sandwich is the best friend chicken sandwich ever made, and huge, and inexpensive
Pho is some of the best pho I've ever had, and I've had a lot, amazing, and fresh
Shrimp toast is great, and could be served at Animal
Had a few other good items, but I don't remember them well enough

Lowlights
Lobster roll doesn't taste of lobster - it tastes of mayonnaise and bread
Hanger steak is just, meh - flat iron at Animal is much better

The whole staff is amazing too.  Very nice people.  Good servers

The entrees aren't very good.  The pastry tray is pretty dope, and worth going for.  Just don't have dinner, unless you're looking for atmosphere and to spend too much money

A solid one star earned for the bland food, undercooked and fishy calamari, and obviously bulk canned tomato sauce

So now that I've had the food, I can add to my review and fill the gaps.  The waitresses and bartenders are beautiful.  When the place is empty they are very attentive.  Everyone seems very friendly.

The food itself is sub-par.  I really want to like food from chefs I see on the soul box (television), but unfortunately I am often let down.  This held true at Beechwood too.  There was a Top Chef contestant in kitchen the night I went and it was pretty slow so I can't find any excuses for her.

I tried the chicken nuggets because I saw the chef's tweet about them.  They just weren't very good.  I don't remember the two sauces, but they both tasted like they came straight off the shelf at Vons.  I had a few microwavable chicken nuggets in my college days, and honestly, the Costco dinosaurs are much better than the new Beechwood chicken nuggets.  I mean, my hat's off to her for trying to make a chicken nugget.  It does involve some technique - my issue was mostly with the flavor, though they were a bit dry too.

I also had the duck tacos.  These were just, well, not good.  Obviously these are slow cooked, and that's quite necessary, but they tasted old.  The meat I had must have been reheated a few times.  It could have been any stringy meat, as it didn't really maintain a "duck" flavor by any means.  The overall flavor was rather murky.  One of my friend's taco had a duck bone in it.  Still though, for all the flavor in the world, I'd deal with a duck bone.  Too bad the flavor just wasn't there.

It's always disheartening to taste food that looks so spectacular in moving pictures, and find it's not all that good.

pho-K this place!  Just found a fly in my beef pho.  Picture is the picture section of this profile.

Never again.

I had an amazing time competing at the Grilled Cheese Invitational.  Hope you all enjoyed my sandwich on challah bread with goat cheese, dates, and bacon, pan fried in butter.  Thanks for making me the winner of the Honey Pot in the Professionals division.

Next year I'll try the Kama Sutra division again, but I'll bring my own knife, and a cover so i can get my cheese melted.

WOW.  Okay, so where to begin.  The food can be really good at times.  I've had a few waffles here that were not crunchy/chewy/soft like they should but, but usually they get them right.

The fried chicken served with the jalepeno waffle is fantastic.  The service is great.  The atmosphere is really cool and full of energy.  The waitresses and hostesses are all cute.  And very importantly, the bacon is crispy!

This place is very much hit and miss.  You hit on your waitress, and miss out on a good breakfast, HAYO.

The can be good at time, but it's probably a 40:60 split, with the good times being 40.  Potatoes are often mass prepared and left on a tray heated by an orange light.  The hollandaise is probably the worst I've ever had.  It has no salt, no spices...actually I'm not sure what it really even taste like.  It could have been cream and cornstarch to give the impression it's a hollandaise, but it had none of the egg yolk and butter flavor we should enjoy.

Would I go here again?  Hell yeah, I like the atmosphere.  I will only do it about once every six months though.

I'm teetering on 4 and a half stars here...It's been so long since I've had a great Mexican style taco (qualifying this based on my great experiences with Korean style tacos from Kogi).

The puerco taco is absolutely amazing, and would get probably 4.5 stars, while the carne asada gets about 4 stars.  Their salsa is also very good.

I don't have much time to write about this place right now, or I'd write a short story!  Eat there.

This week has been bitter-sweet.

I hate to do this (give a  negative review) but my experience today left a bad taste in my mouth (literally).

Apparently I wasn't in the know and asking for spicy mayo ostensibly ostracized myself up the conclusion of the question.  "We don't have anything spicy here because it sullies the beautiful taste of the fish." (paraphrased)

That sparked my interest though.  This place must really be artisan.  

My follow up, "Do you have any kind of sauces, like an eel sauce, or soy sauce?"

No eel sauce, again for the same reason, but of course they have soy sauce.  So I made sure to get that, some pickled ginger, and some "wasabi."

Being my first visit, I asked a few questions about the fish...where they procure it...and whether or not the crab roll was composed of real crab.

The answers were at a fish market downtown, and yes, entirely of real crab.  I tried to continue the conversation with what I thought (by the acrimonious tone of the server) was a food-snob...an elitist of some sort.  Maybe this is fooderdy (food+nerdy), but I actually enjoy having conversations with food snobs.  I can learn something new sometimes, and I can teach someone something new sometimes, but overall they generally have the authoritative tone in their voice for good reason (and also unfortunately because they're not-so-secretly arrogant).  

All in all, these were good signs to me.  Not signs of a good friend in the making, but signs that this food was going to be amazing.

I ordered to go, but was so excited about the idea of fresh crab in my hands that I decided to sprint to my car to eat it.

I opened the plastic box to reveal what looked to be real crab...the texture seemed like it would be real crab, and not the gelatinous "krab" that you get in most California rolls.  

There was something else though that I noticed after a second or two: mayonnaise!  Weird...for a place that repels all things sauce, this seemed like an odd addition to say the least (very French addition sugarFISH ;-).

Well, I thought, this may not be just fodder to make the expensive crab go further, this may very well indeed be intended to accentuate the crustacean somehow.  NOPE!  This was entirely fodder, possibly to hide the fact that the crab was dry, and likely removed from a Trader Joe's can just hours before (don't buy that stuff, it's only good for stuffed mushrooms at parties of large groups in which you don't care about your product or the people you're feeding).

This was fodder if fodder has ever been used in sushi before.  The crab roll tasted like a Japanese version of school lunch version of the American tuna fish sandwich: bad.

Where was the sweet crab taste?  Where was the juiciness?  That was, ostensibly, what the fodder was intended for, sweetness, and juiciness.

I'm glad I wasn't very hungry and only had one roll.  I'm extremely happy that I didn't choose whatever gray/tan/brown two-piece sushi I saw one person eating while I waited to have my order taken.  I know!  That should have been my first clue, nobody server a fish that color unless they don't care.  It was just that damn authoritative tone that kept me captivated enough to try one roll.  Good move server; well-played.

If someone says different, I question their judgement of fish (actually, sorry Los Angeles, most of what I've eaten here fits into a similar theme to the above, so perhaps it's not your fault Angelenos, it's just that you don't have anything great to compare to...try fresh fish from piers in Monterey, San Diego, the west coast of Canada, or Pismo Beach; you'll never be the same).

If you want VERY good, fresh fish, in Los Angeles, try Irori.  It's the only instance of great sushi I've had in Los Angeles, and in fact, has the best sea urchin I've ever had.