Lunching in West L.A.

I currently work near Olympic and Bundy in West Los Angeles and I'm often struggling to come up with places to eat for lunch. My criteria?

1) No fast food
2) Eat in about an hour
3) Not terribly expensive

The Apple Pan - Hamburgers
10801 W Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90064


Super simple menu of hamburgers and pie. My personal favorite is the Steakburger with a warm slice of apple pie. You sit on high chairs around a communal counter and are served by old men in old-fashioned outfits. Even the cash registers look like they belong in an antique store. But the food is anything but antiquated. It's the freshest, tastiest burger around.

www.applepan.com

Bossa Nova - Brazilian
10982 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90064


Cheap and delicious, I usually order the Picanha Appetizer. The menu says its sausage but every time I've had it it was steak so that's a little confusing. Their pizzas are also amazing especially the Goat Cheese Special.

www.bossanovafood.com

FOOD - American (Traditional)
10571 Pico Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90064


FOOD is a tiny little cafe on Pico that takes "standard" American food and puts an extra twist on it. Try the oven-roasted, free range turkey breast, the classic grilled cheese or the Farmer's Market Herb Salad. They are my personal favorites.

www.food-la.com

Chan Dara - Thai
11940 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90064


Having been to Thailand, Chan Dara does a great job with their menu. It's quick, yet tasty. My Thai staple, Chicken Curry, is good here as is the Basil and Chili Chicken Lunch Special with steamed rice and egg roll.

chandarawestla.com

Ramenya - Ramen
11555 W. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90064


I try a different type of Ramen every time I eat here and am always impressed. My go-to would have to be the Aho Noodle. One note on this place is careful where you park or you may get towed!

www.ramenya-usa.com

Sawtelle Kitchen - Japanese / Italian
2024 Sawtelle Blvd. Los Angeles CA 90025


This restaurant features one of the more unique lunch menus I've seen. It's a fusion of Japanese and Italian with favorites like fried chicken wings dipped in light teriyaki sauce, the Japanese-style meatloaf, and the artichoke appetizer.

www.sawtellekitchen.com

Today you get the West L.A. ones. Throughout the week I will be posting great lunch stops in other areas of L.A. that are still nearby.

Nile Guide.com

Not that I should be talking about other travel websites when I'm trying to get you all to look at mine but I figure hey might as well share my competitive research. The Internet is all about sharing right?

So check out www.nileguide.com where you can plan and book your trip all in one place.


It's all about building your guide by picking a destination, choosing your favorite places, organizing the list and booking any hotels, etc, that are needed and then printing it out as your itinerary.

1) Simply click around and add restaurants, things to do, and more to your list.
2) Go into your "guide" area and select the number of days you will be there.
3) Select a day and drag/drop each item into a slot.
4) Print your guide.

Or if you are lazy you can use someone else's guide! There's also hot deals and the ability to look for flights although it's not very integrated.

I decided to test it out using my Africa itinerary and here are the problems I found:

1) I can't search for a hotel specifically I can only filter the options they provide.
2) You can add things to your guide but once in your guide you can't click on them to learn more.
3) I couldn't figure out how to delete items once I put them in my "guide."
4) You have to sign up for an account to share your trip. Lame.

Nile Guide also just launched an iPhone App where you can access your itinerary from your phone and find things to do based on your location. You can read more about it here.

We Did It!

Thanks for all the help readers!

You can now directly access the Travel Addict Facebook page at:

www.facebook.com/TAddict

Travel-Addict on Facebook

At the top of my blog you'll see a little Facebook widget.

As of right now it says 85 fans.

If you aren't already a fan please become one so that you can get updates on what Travel-Addict is doing.

If we can get to 100 fans then Travel-Addict can have it's own vanity URL on Facebook.

Please help!

Drinking for Charity

This last weekend I rolled down to Hermosa Beach for the 7th Annual Hermosa Beach Pub Crawl. The theme, like last year, was Hawaiian. My costume was Dawn, the Head Shark Trainer for the Grand Wailea Resort in Hawaii. The costume featured a golden fanny pack, a tank top ripped to shreds and three laminated fish hanging from my waist.


As I mentioned the purpose of the pub crawl is to raise money for a select charity. This year the charity was Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America (www.ccfa.org). Every year the charity changes to fit what is going on with the organizers. The Crohn's Foundation was chosen because the grandfather of one of the wives of an organizer passed away from it last year. Previous charities have been Locks of Love, Mattel Children's Hospital, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Susan G. Koman Breast Cancer Foundation and The Lance Armstrong Foundation.

That meant at the first bar you provided $10 for the charity and received a raffle ticket for prizes at the last bar. The first bar was called Shark's Cove and the featured drinks were $4 Apple Kamikazes, $11 Domestic pitchers and $14 Premium pitchers. As you enter the bar you can order drink in the back right area and then the rest of the bar consists of a spread of tables and a couple of booths. We snagged a booth and proceeded to play drinking games for the hour we would be at that bar.


After a couple of pitchers I realized it was my turn to buy the next round so I headed over to the ATM to get cash out. I went through the whole process and then failed to get my $40! AHH! I hate bar ATMs. They are so worthless! I complained to the bar manager who mentioned that they'd been down all morning. I then suggested MAYBE YOU SHOULD PUT A SIGN ON IT and stormed back to our table to apologize for coming back empty-handed. One of the guys got up and went to purchase a pitcher. He came back with $40 in his hand and handed it to me. "I found this in the ATM," he said (apparently the ATMs had come back online). So nice of him! This kid didn't even know me and he was that honest??! Sweet! To reward him I gave him one of my fish.


The fish-giving would soon become a theme of the afternoon. Anytime someone did something nice or clever they would receive a fish. If they made a bonehead comment or did something stupid they had to give it back. The last rule was that anyone could try and steal your fish so you had to guard it with your life (yes we are lame).

After an hour we headed to the next bar, The Lighthouse. We were greeted by a small band. The singer was entertaining to be sure and was happy to take our song requests (some of which she sadly refused to play). Of the bars on the crawl, Lighthouse, was one of the few I'd already been to as my friend's band, Shaimus, plays there often. They have pretty good food too! Unfortunately, the pub crawl drinks here were $5 SoCo Lime Shots. Ick. I drank a few beers instead. This bar wasn't nearly exciting enough so we went to the next bar a little early. But, not before we grabbed the first card for our poker hand.


To keep crawlers entertained, the organizers had arranged a little game to play as you went from bar to bar. At each stop, starting with the second bar, each team would select a playing card from the deck. They would use this card, and the four cards from the last four bars to create a poker hand. The best poker hand won a prize.

Fat Face Fenner's Fishshack or FFFF was across the street and upstairs. This was by far my favorite bar on the crawl. It's a tiny little bar made up of two decks and an indoor area to order drinks. The decks were great because it was a hot day and you could stand outside and heckle people walking below. It also allowed for you to get some air. Plus, the bar just had a lot of personality and $3 Bud Light Drafts... mmm. It was here that I lost my second fish. One of the guys had walked by me and said, "Smells fishy," which got an involuntary chuckle out of me so I had to relinquish the second of my three prizes. I would have to guard the last one carefully. Before leaving we grabbed our second playing card.


The fourth bar was Sangria. I have to say at this point that all the bars in Hermosa look exactly the same. The pub crawl was being held on the Hermosa Pier Boardwalk which is just a giant line of bars. And as I said they all look the same - wooden-walled, spacious, sports bars. So there wasn't much to say about Sangria other than I was forced to take a $3 Mystery Shot. Thanks to the mystery shot I somehow also lost my third fish. I assume someone must have stolen it.


The fifth bar was Patrick Malloy's and it was standard too.


The last bar was the Poopdeck, which is the only other bar that I'd been to before. It's actually located on The Strand, which is the sidewalk along the beach. An ideal location. This bar was elevated above the others in my mind because it had fooze ball. I'm a sucker for fooze ball. Best of all it had $6 32. oz beers. I'm also a sucker for beer. It was the perfect end to the pub crawl. Unfortunately, it was also the perfect end to my memory.


The night ended at my friend's house watching "I Love You Man" as I contemplated what my hand of poker would've been had I remembered to grab cards from the last three bars. Oh well.

At least I helped a charity right?

World Weather

I've been searching for awhile for a site that shows when the best times to travel are. And I randomly came across it today.

World Reviewer Weather

http://www.worldreviewer.com/world-weather/

You can select by month and the globe changes to show what areas are too hot, too cold, and too wet. It also gives approximate temperatures and rainfall. Click a country to see top reasons to travel there too!

It's amazing. Try it out!

Awesome Austin - Part Deux

As promised, Part Two of my Austin trip!

Sunday, May 24th

Coming off a crazy party night on Sixth Street we weren't feeling too well this morning. We made the hungover decision that Mexican breakfast sounded amazing and found ourselves walking into El Sol y La Luna at Red River Street and 6th St. I had an omeletto while my boyfriend ordered the Huevos Rancheros. I wish my headache/stomache had allowed me to enjoy it more but it tasted like it would've been good if my tongue didn't feel like cardboard. The atmosphere was cheerful, the decor colorful, and the service homey.


From there we took a cab to the University of Texas to see my mom's alma mater. The campus is HUGE. I definitely wouldn't have commited to walking across it had I known. We desperately tried to find a way up to the top of the infamous Tower but apparently tours are only available during the school year. The Tower was the site of a snipping incident and a suicide and has only been open for the past couple years after being closed due to these tragedies.


We lost interest and wandered down to the football stadium and store. The store was filled with pictures of the Longhorns brutalizing the Trojans during the National Championship. It made me want to throw something heavy through the front window so I had to be removed.

Next up was Guadalupe Street which is the home base to buy all things college. There was a yummy frozen yogurt shop where you could create your own dish! There were also some cute boutiques but nothing really caught my interest.


Originally, we had chosen Austin as our Memorial Weekend destination because it coincided with the annual Austin Wine Festival. Once we got to Austin we found so many things to do that we weren't sure we wanted to drive all the way out to where the festival was being held (it's not near downtown). But at this point we had sort of run out of things to do and our hangovers were finally subsiding so it was time to start drinking again. We hailed a cab and headed to the festival.

In retrospect I am SO glad we did. I think the cab was about $40 which is definitely steep but not as expensive as we were expecting. Keep in mind, if you ever go, you can take the metro there but it takes awhile and we are very impatient. The wine festival was awesome and had a wide range of great wines. It has actually converted me to drinking white wine which I used to look upon with disdain. They also had this slushy made with peach flavored wine that was so refeshing and delicious. Eventually it started to rain so we packed back into the cab and went back to the hotel.


For dinner we tried to go the famous Stubb's BBQ restaurant but apparently they close early on Sundays. LAME. So we ended up on Sixth Street at Casino El Camino, famous for burgers. I'm learning that every restaurant in Austin seems to be famous for some type of food. The restaurant was really crowded and first come first serve for a table so we ended up in the outdoor patio, which we actually preferred. The place reminds me of the vampire bar in True Blood. It's dark and smokey with low red lighting and strange tribal drawings on the walls.


I was trying to be open to new foods so I ordered the Amarillo burger with roastes Serrano chiles, jalapeno jack cheese and cilantro mayonnaise. It took forever to get our order but when it came we were happy to see that the burgers were gigantic! Unfortunately, after one bite my eyes, noses, and mouth started watering from the searing hot peppers. You would think that four years of working at Albertsons in the produce department would have taught me the difference between Serrano and Anaheim peppers (although in my defense they look EXACTLY the same). It ended up being so hot I literally couldn't finish my burger. Luckily, the fries were amazing and not hot so I just filled up on those.

To see the full menu click here.

After dinner, we decided to go to Speakeasy, a bar meets concert venue meets club. The bottom floor contains a bar and a stage area, the second floor is more like a landing that looks out over the stage, and then the roof is an outdoor club. We were pretty exhausted and hungover AGAIN so we just sipped beers from the landing and watched some of the music acts that were playing.
I was literally falling asleep in my Heineken so we decided to call it a night.


Monday, May 25th

Today is our last day in Austin and boy have we taken full advantage of our time here. We decided to spend the remainder of our morning before heading to the airport at Cafe Crepe. Run by real life French staff the crepes are both authentic and legit. It took FOREVER to get them though which was kind of annoying. The taste was almost worth the wait - my strawberry, fudge and vanilla ice cream crepe was the perfect breakfast.


It was also the perfect end to the trip.