Javier "This is what a Feminist looks like" J.'s Profile

It was only fitting that this Tarantino inspired Elite event started off with a lengthy conversation about the dead body parts found over in Griffith Park recently, which was no more than a mile or two from the location of the event.

The venue itself was amazing looking. I was waiting for the crazy 88 to jump on out. Though since I didn't bring my Hanzo steel, it's probably a good thing that it didn't get all kill bill up in this bitch.

It's hard to deny that with a tree right smack dab in the middle of the venue reaching up to the second floor, that the whole scene could be straight ripped out of a Quentin Tarantino flick. If anything, it just goes to show that the 1714 Vermont crew has got this location set perfectly.

Thanks to Katie, Christina, Hazel and Brittney for locking this mofo down and making it the cm's gimp. Cause even though some lines were long, the atmosphere of the event and conversing with people was off da chain, yo.

I'd also like to connect the free yelp watches to Pulp Fiction. But doing so would imply that the case of watches were kept up Christopher Walken's ass... for 2 years. You elite folks enjoy that gift for checking in now. Remember, mode 1 is set to scroll "TIME TO YELP". You keep that in mind.

In any case.....

The bar lines were a bit longer on the upstairs level. So the smart move was just to go downstairs and brave the crowd that was swarming the food. One is left wondering if they have hungry hungry hippos in Europe. What with the metric system I'm sure they call them Royale Hippos... with cheese.

Well, with lamb lollypops, chicken wings, flatbread pizza and whatever else was being served that I never saw. Normally all you new badge folks would be dead as fried chicken when it comes to getting the food coming out, but you all happen to pull this shit while I'm in a transitional period. So I didn't want to elbow anyone of you guys for some appetizers.

So I stuck to the bare minimum here and stayed with the cheese and drinks. And how about them drinks. There was four to choose from. One of which was the winner of the absolut creation. Being Absolute with coke and some other nuttiness.

Now the Rockwell Grapevine was certainly no $5 Milk Shake, I did really like the Absolut Wildflower. Enough that I went for a second. Didn't get to try the Absolut Gemini as the lines during the beginning were slammed.

The folks at the Photobooth this event seem a little slow on the upkeep. I love them and have abused the hell out of the pictures in the past, but this time it seemed like... maybe i went there when they were just not feeling it.

It was great to see old faces, new faces.. though I'm not sure how many new faces I was stuck there in the middle with... But regardless of how I want to work in a prolific song from a QT movie soundtrack, I had a blast conversing and laughing uncontrollably.

I guess the only thing missing from this to make it a truly Pulp Fiction/Tarantino event was working in some aspect of his foot fetish. Or maybe that was covered in the first conversation of the event in the body parts found at Griffith Park... That's a foot massage you just don't want to fuck with.

Great 1st event of 2012.

If there's one thing I can say about this place, it's that it's the cat's meow. And unlike investing in Trans-Atlantic Zeppelin transport, coming here is a smart choice for the long haul.

I want to say that walking in here is sort of like walking into the Ice cream parlor at Disney. Only instead of overpriced mickey mouse ice cream, you get some really stiff drinks and good beer selection with an amazing gastropub food menu to eat off of.

I do have one complaint though and this one never really bothered me much - The hipster appeal. Maybe it's just that steam punk is now dead and the latest trend is to get into a Boardwalk Empire prohibition era attachment, but sitting in this gastropub was the first time that a Hipster annoyed me with the just existing in the same room.

So you have to watch out for that, this place will attract a crowd. Get in there slightly earlier than the standard 8-9pm social drinking and eating time frame and you should have no problem finding a seat. Go after that and you're on your own.

This place does have a nice look going for it though. White tiles running up the wall and the old style lamps really give it a distinct and interesting look to the joint.

The beers on tap are also really great and if you aren't much of a beer drinker, they have a slew of options from wines to mixed drinks that are true to the era and made perfectly.

I tried the lamb shank and it was amazing. I mean, this was fall off the bone deliciously cooked and I sort of wanted to munch on the bone for a while just to make sure that every ounce of taste was removed from it.

The only let down I have to this gin joint is that a nickle won't buy you a steak and kidney pie, a cup of coffee, a slice of cheesecake and a newsreel. With enough change left over to ride the trolley from Battery Park to the Polo Grounds.

Oh yeah, and the hipsters. But oh well, you live by the sword, you die by it. A great drinking spot that is tucked away and hard to see from the road, but the moment you're in there and looking out of the open windows, you'll never want to drink anywhere else (in the Valley) again.

Because while this place is really cool, I may like Oldfields a slightly bit more for their pre-prohibition theme setting....

I would go into a Norse mythology themed review here but considering it's a pretty bad pub that just happens to use Norse mythology in the names of their beer, i'm not going to bother bringing up Great Odin's beard.

Having said that, I guess I will just toss it out there that maybe I felt that Loki was playing a bit of a trick on me as it was an interesting concept, but man did those beers feel like a prank.

Now don't get me wrong, the beer is pretty bland. But look where you are. You're in Wine country and Danish pastry-ville. If you're focus is beer, the central coast is just all around bad for you and you're better off just making your way north a little and going to Firestone Walker.

Solvang Brewing company is there to cleanse your palate of the wine tastings that you'll be doing in these parts. It's a nice change of pace after you've done bottle shops and tasting rooms after tasting rooms.

With that said, it seemed that all their beer was just lacking something in each taste. The Valhalla IPA was just alright. It got the job done for being a bitter enough IPA, but the flavors were unbalanced. If this was a sign of what Valhalla was like, I don't think dying in battle would be all that it was cracked up to be.

Their Pumpkin beer was probably the better side of the spectrum in taste profiles and my favorite of the half dozen or so tasters I got was Odin Stout. Which had the most redeeming flavor of the whole experience.

Though I have to say, their service was pretty lacking. It took a good 15 minutes to get our tasters out. Which seemed like a bit much and besides that, I was in a sort of rush to get to the ostrich farm before it closed.

So with generally lacking great beers and bad service why the three stars? Because the taster are $1.50. I mean, a dollar freakin' fifty. How can you really go wrong with that? You can't. Not if you're at all into craft beer. $1.50 is within reason to at least trying it and seeing if you care for it or not. Who knows, maybe they'll improve on their craft and be a much better brewery.

And the bad service can be easy to gloss over if you're just looking for a divey type of gastropub. Their nachos did look pretty tasty and I'll probably be back here again when in the area just to try them and to see if they've improved their craft on the craft beer.

Maybe they'll get good enough that they'll use Thor's Hammer in the name of their first respectable beer that is worth getting a growler of.

The best thing I can say about this place is that if you are completely blind, you probably won't need your glasses to see the game as the walls are covered with them. It's also set up in a way that the tables and seats all point to the front of the bar. It kind of reminds me of a classroom.

The second best thing about this place is their happy hour. Every day it's two for one drinks from 3-7. Which makes double fisting a socially accepted practice. But if you're going to sit anywhere that isn't directly at the bar, then you should just go for a large glass to have both drinks be put into.

As for those sitting at the bar, you'll get a shot glass as the "bar owes you a drink" tally. Which is really a throw back to the old days of bars in that it has Buyback written all over it. I miss that in bars. The whole notion that you get a marker to indicate that the bar owes you a drink in the future.

The service for the food was pretty bad, in that when I moved from the bar to a table the waiter wanted nothing to do with me and my open tab left at the bar. As if it was way too much trouble. Fine then, I'll tip my bartender and ignore this fool. Not like bringing out an order of fries was that difficult.

Difficult as they weren't, they were actually pretty decent with slices of basil on them and paired with the garlic aioli, they really soaked up the 2-for-1 drinks pretty well.

Over all, the happy hour special is worth coming out here for but the food was just alright and the service was not there. Even the bartenders were sort of just going through the motions. Which I guess is fine for them as I'm used to that sort of treatment from someone who hands alcohol to losers like me all day. But the waiter.. he probably should have been a bit more on that game.

I wanted to like this place. I try to tell myself I won't go in for that whole  "last ___ of the year" bullshit, but here I was on New Years eve craving, and I mean craving like a crack addict some sushi before the clock struck midnight and passing through the black hole of sushi considered Orange on my way to a party just had me facing an uphill battle.

Then I saw that this place was not only open, but it looked halfway decent in being able to fulfill the last request of a meal for the dying 2011.

Walking in here at around 8 seemed like it wasn't going to be much of an issue. Get a couple of pieces of sushi from the sushi bar and I'll be out the door in a matter of 15 minutes or so, right? Especially if I'm sitting right in front of the sushi chef who could sling them out quickly enough,.

How wrong I was.

They seemed to be swamped with take out orders. I guess no one wanted to cook as midnight slowly approached. But it was pretty clear that I was not getting my sushi fix in any quick fashion.. Especially when it took 10 minutes in itself for the wait staff to come bring me an ordering sheet as one chef had to point out to them.

Yeah, that's a strange thing about this place, you couldn't just look at your chef and say "I want this, this and this", you actually had to write it down on the order sheet and hand it to them on the glass.

Which I guess wouldn't be a big deal, but it was so awkward to even look at the chef standing in front of me as he hammered away at take-out orders after take out order.

Eventually after another 10 minutes of having my order placed and him just being swamped, he gave the sheet to the sushi chef next to him to take care of it. Which was another 10 minutes before they got the first piece of sushi to us...

And now we had to wait for damn soy sauce saucers to be given to us because the wait staff didn't bring us any of that. My god, it was just utter mess. Worse of all, the sushi was not very good. The Salmon sushi pieces were really overpowered by the amount of wasabi that they caked on under the fish.

Then the spicy tuna came out and it wasn't any better. It wasn't even the good kind of kick that you would expect spicy tuna to be. It was just all wasabi lazy spicy tuna. At this point the wait was too much and the lack of service and taste was not happening and I just asked for the check.

At this point I didn't get the Unagi that I was craving, but I was fine with blowing this sushi stand as it was just a reminder of 2011 - a constant let down that needed to be over as soon as possible... Which by the time they took to bring the check, was certainly fitting that it was never ending.

But hey, what's this, a surprise piece of Unagi popping out from the sushi chef's hand? Maybe the experience can be salvaged.....

Nope!

The Unagi had completely burned tips and underside. I've eaten my fair share of eel and this was not good. Reading other reviews, this seems to be a common thing for them. I'm not sure how CHARRED is considered a flavor, but it was not one I wished to repeat.

And oh hey, they charged me for the eel as well. Lovely. The bill was paid and I have to say I didn't leave much of any bit of a tip. That should be an indication on how bad the whole experience was as I'm generally opposed to not leaving something for the effort. This place put in little to no effort and hey, maybe it was just because they were slammed on new years, but sitting right there in the sushi bar should come with some benefit of getting squeezed in between the orders going out.

Even when I'm on vacation I'm never too far away from street food. In fact, I'd say that when you're on the road, there's nothing better than road food. It just goes well together no matter what and besides that, it's in the name itself.  

While in Portland, it would be foolish not to see the street food carts. When in New York you should stop by a dirty water hot dog cart or you'll be a fool not to go to the big gay ice cream truck. And when you're in Santa Barbara, you need to look for the Burger Bus.

The burger bus offers some really delicious burgers at a pretty good price for what you're getting. It's on the higher side of around $10 per burger, though you'll be getting a double patty burger for at most $9.50. Which if it doesn't fill you up, you probably shouldn't eat so much.

In terms of food truck food, it's not like they do all that crazy in terms of styles. You won't see the stuff you're finding at places like Grill Em All or some sort of Kogi style korean burger. No, they do a Pesto burger and a falaffal burger, but you're here for the toppings more than anything else.

On a side note, you should not turn down a chance at their Telegraph Beer Battered deep fried pickles. They are amazing. I mean, really really amazing. They sort of look like chicken nuggets in their color and size, and I'm willing to bet that there's actually more chicken in these deep fried pickles than there is in a mc donalds chicken nugget, but regardless of that, these things are amazingly delicious and well worth the $3.50 that they run you.

The burger itself.. I got a double blue cheese burger and it was rich in flavors and the meat was perfect all around. The sauce on it had dripping bites left and right. The burger is a jaw unhinge worthy burger all around. You will have to smash it down just a little in order to get it in your mouth. But when it does get in there, it's well worth taking up residency.

On a side note, you can get a patty for your dog for a buck. What I find odd is that if you want to add a patty to your burger it'll cost you $2. I wonder if you can just lie and say that extra patty is for your imaginary dog..

Santa Barbara may not have many food trucks and this one was probably the first, but it's well worth checking out - especially since they have pretty regular spots they go to and are fairly easy to find.

This is one of those tucked away spots that have letters as an address instead of numbers. Is that a bad thing? By no means, I sort of love those places that are just off to the side as they provide some of the better food and have to try just that extra bit harder to keep you coming back.

The only downside is that you have to keep your eyes a little more pealed when driving by this spot as you'll not only miss the address if you're going too fast, but you'll also get confused by the Hawaiian BBQ sign on the outside of what is an amazingly delicious Thai spot.

I heard that it's due to the sign being so expensive to replace. So hey, there's that. But if you're feeling like some good Thai and don't mind stopping by a Hawaiian BBQ former spot to get some, this is it.

Prices are pretty comparable to average Thai lunch spots and the service is spot on for the small space that you are in. Their fried wontons are great. And you have to give it up for their Aura Curry. In fact, I did not try one thing that I didn't like here. It's pretty good all around and cheap to boot.

For the beer selection alone, I would give this place a solid five stars. If you're into beer and perhaps partaking in a bottle of really good delicious craft beer with your Italian food, this place is perfect for you.

All in all, this place is just flat out delicious and with an insane amount of beer bottles, I don't know how I could eat at any other Italian joint and still feel like the choice of alcohol is even remotely close. It's something like 280+ different bottles of beer on the wall.. you take one down, you drink it around and well, you still have a metric fuck ton of beers on the wall.

So what about the food? Well, the portion sizes are huge and even though you may not often see it with your eyes,  once you start eating it you'll start to feel the effect of this food just expanding in your stomach causing a food coma if you finish the whole thing.

Service is pretty spot on, but that's more due to the fact that half of this place is taken up by kitchen equipment and fridges for all their list of beers possible. Maybe I can't stress that enough. This place has really good beer options in the bottle form.  So it's well worth stopping in for that alone.

I picked up my staple item from Italian joints - The lasagna. Even though I went with the stand alone Lasagna, they did push on a trio of lasagna's. I do not regret my choice as I was pretty damn stuffed after plowing through just half of the plate.

So yeah. Good enough food and great beer. So it's just my kind of place. Show owner comment »

This hot dog shop is like the TARDIS of hot dogs. If you're not a nerd, perhaps that doesn't tell you anything about this establishment. But just follow me for a moment.

From the outside it looks like a small hole in the wall with not even enough room to stand. Then you look in the back in their biergarten and it's an Oktoberfest tucked away in the mean streets of Old Town Pasadena with a pretty bitching beer selection that includes a lot of locals like Golden Road Brewery.

So yes, this place is indeed much bigger on the inside, but then again we live in Southern California and even on Christmas day, the weather is perfect for outdoor eating - which this joint has plenty of. So making it a meal outdoors is always a great way to bump up that experience.

As for the quality of the hot dogs here.. Well, let's just put it this way, even with my high standards in being a bacon wrapped hot dog dude, I find their hot dogs to be among the best of the best out there.

They offer a lot of options in how you can have it. There's really no way you can get a bad dog here. In the true sense of the word where Burger King claims to make it your way, these guys deliver on it - and give you great deals on craft beer in the process.

When you want to feel like you're in the middle of nowhere... mainly because you are. This is the perfect little watering hole spot on your way through (not sure where the hell you would be going anyway) or if you're in the area for some fishing/camping. This brewery grows on you.

Well, the beer they crank out is an automatic reason why that may be. But when I came here for a beer release and to get some fresh air away from L.A., it went from me suggesting that I would probably kill myself if I had to stay in the area for more than a week to me deciding that I could come up here and write a book and/or pull a Secret Window sort of situation..

Which in retrospect is just turning that suicide to a murder. Not getting much points there, Kernvile.

In any case, why not talk about this place instead of my decent into madness? I would say that the beer here is just hands down a five star experience alone. Whenever I see their brews in the beer fridge at a store I always have to get one. They are delicious.

So why the lack of the five stars? Well, the food was just there. It's a tool to soak up some of the high gravity alcohol you're consuming before you go fishing, hunting or just randomly stumbling around town. Because let's face it - their Citra DIPA has such a mango fresh flavoring to those hops that you really can't tell that it's a high ABV%.

The over all enjoyment of this very small and completely out of the way brewery comes from the experience of going there. I have to give it amazing high marks for just picking the location and the environment around it just makes coming here well worth it.

The service was alright. Nothing special, though the server was also pretty slammed. The house burger was solid and it filled me up, but it wasn't anything I would just crave out of nowhere. Again, it's great food to soak up the amazing beers this place cranks out.

Many of which you can't get bottled, so coming directly to the source is a big plus. They also have a lot of special events and different nights. A really cool bottle sharing experience.

If I did live closer I would be here all the time.. But again, I would also probably have killed some one close to me and tricked myself into thinking that it was someone else when it was really just a split personality.

So maybe it's for the best that I can enjoy this beer from a far without the murderous rages and paranoia