The Apple Pan

Quality Forever. Not a bad motto to live by. Not a bad business model either, agree? The Apple Pan is a no non-sense burger joint. It’s simple and it’s consistently good. There isn’t much on the menu but you’re probably here for the burgers anyway so it doesn’t matter. If burgers aren’t your thing, then the sandwiches here are also great.

I always order the Steakburger with Double Cheese, one slice of Tillamook cheese just won’t do when I can get two slices. You got a good patty, with a bun toasted just right, lettuce, pickles, and a sauce that’s relish-y. The burger ain’t tangy, but it’s on the tang-ier side. The fries here are freaking awesome. It’s fried so well that every fry is so crisp. The day I brought my camera, wasn’t a good day for the fries but that’s very unusual.

Imagine an ol’ school Johnny Rockets but with none of the gimmicks, that’s Apple Pan for you in short. But to compare The Apple Pan to something that’s more contemporary is a bit unfair because it’s been around since 1927 and besides that, it has it’s pretty distinct. Perhaps it would be more proper to say Johnny Rockets took some notes at The Apple Pan. Whatever, that doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that The Apple Pan’s slogan has lasted them for more than 80 years and it’s still going strong.

The Apple Pan
10801 W Pico Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90064
Phone: 310.475.3585

Park Daegam-nae (Park’s BBQ)

I love the name… Daegam.  The dictionary says it means “his excellency.”  All I know is that the title was used to address the elder statesmen of the Chosun Dynasty.  Chosun had many problems of its own but for some reason, I always find myself romanticizing that time period.  Just imagining myself in the silk garb with the traditional hat to match, walking with my hands locked behind my back.  Hey, a guy can dream can’t he?

Anyways, Park Daegam-nae is a great name literally meaning “Mr. Park’s place.”  Such a simple and great name.  The quality of the food there matches the high standard that the name might bring.  The food is excellent and so is the service.  When people ask where the best place for Galbi is in Koreatown, I direct them here.  I’ll be honest with you, I was not too crazy over galbi until I came here my junior year in high school.  I fell for it.  Mr. Park made me fall for galbi.  The unmarinated and marinated galbi are great, though for those with a more American palate, I recommend the marinated galbi.  In addition to great meats, Park’s has a great assortment of banchan and some great jjigae.

Lately, they have been skimping a bit on the quantity, but it’s still good here.  And like most Korean barbecue establishments with the exception of the all-you-can-eat places, the price for gogi is high.  But if you were to choose from all the other places in Koreatown for some good galbi, Park’s is where I think you should go.  Yes, this is taking into consideration “Chosun Galbee.”  Yes, this is taking into consideration “Soot Bull Jeep,” though I have to say, Soot Bull Jeep is pretty darn good too.  But the elder statesman when it comes to galbi in Koreatown is Mr. Park.

Park Daegam-nae (Park’s BBQ)
955 S. Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90006
Phone: 213.380.1717

El Huarache Azteca

It is said that El Huarache Azteca is THE place to go in Los Angeles if you want a “huarache.”  The sad thing is that the times that I’ve been here, it wasn’t for a huarache.  Heck, I’ve never even had one, ever.  A shame, I know, but what can you do.  Just from trying to describe what it looks like, all I can say that it looks like a humongous sope.

But I can tell you this.  El Huarache Azteca serves a mean plate of Huevos Rancheros.  After browsing through blogs that dealt with the neighborhoods east of the LA River, I came across Chanfles.  It’s a great blog based in Lincoln Heights and gives you a perspective of Los Angeles that isn’t the Westside’s.  In addition to being a blog for the community, El Chavo seems quite dedicated in finding the perfect plate of Huevos Rancheros.  El Huarache Azteca is up there for him and after reading that the tortillas were deep fried, I just couldn’t resist.

The plate of Huevos Rancheros were just perfect for me.  Before this, I was only used to the tortillas that weren’t deep fried.  Little did I know how much of a difference deep-frying the tortilla could make.  Not only that, the eggs were cooked perfectly; the yolk was cooked just right where it didn’t run all over the place but just enough.  And then the ranchero sauce.  The tomato and chili are blended so well.  It fit my Korean palate just perfectly.  The same goes with the rice that comes on the side.

El Huarache Azteca is a nice spot in Highland Park.  The restaurant itself is very tiny but the food gets made pretty quickly.  If you’re here, you should probably try the huaraches as I’m probably not wrong in saying that it’s their specialty.  But if you’re here during breakfast, the huevos rancheros aren’t a bad choice.

El Huarache Azteca
5225 York Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90042
Phone: 323.478.9572

Still here

I’m still here. I’m still here. I have not left, so to my few readers out there, don’t worry, The Hungry Trojan is here to stay. Whether my sanity is here to stay, I can’t quite say. I’m hoping two words will suffice as to explain why I have not updated: Law School. I’m hoping to get caught up with my entries as I have a handful of places to write up about. But give me some time as the workload of law school seems to be somewhat demanding. Trust me, I’d rather blog about food than read about Contracts.

But here’s a picture of a view from my school while we’re at it.

Shakey’s

$6.99 lunch buffet. All the pizza, fried chicken, and Mojos you can eat for only $6.99. I’m not too crazy over the fried chicken at Shakey’s but their pizza and Mojos? Man oh man. Lunch buffet aside, I really like the pizza at Shakey’s. It’s nothing special really, pretty simple. I really like the crust on it as it’s nice and crisp. And do I have to go on with the mojos? Potatoes are cut along the width, not the length, and there’s this batter on there and it’s deep fried.

So I enjoy the food here to begin with. Imagine having as much as you want of it for only $6.99. What makes the buffet even better is that you can sample all the different kinds of pizzas they have, not just stick to a certain kind if you were to have ordered a whole pizza. And then all the Mojos you can handle. So they have several pies of assorted pizza, other food, fried chicken, Mojos, and a salad bar. I can’t stop mentioning how great a deal this is.

A little warning though.  I realized the importance of moderation after my lunch.  It took skipping dinner, a couple of hours of basketball at 7PM, and a can of coke afterwards at 10PM for me to feel normal.  So too much good may not be so good after all.  Whatever, for $6.99, you can eat in moderation and still walk away with a deal.  Pizza and Mojos, mmm mmm mmm!

Go find a Shakey’s near you.  And here’s what some haters have to say.

Shakey’s Pizza Parlor
6052 W Olympic Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Phone: 323.937.4234

Choiganei

With most all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ places, I don’t go in with very high expectations and I go in expecting the goal is not so much to enjoy the meat but to find myself full. It’s rare to come across an all-you-can-eat place that I like. And not surprisingly, only one all-you-can-eat place tops my list of favorites for Korean BBQ, and that one place is up there not because of their meat. And for the most part, it’s the previously-not-so-popular-on-the-verge-of-closing-down places that are the most popular all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ restaurants.

Now that I set a negative tone, let me turn it to a positive one. Choiganei is an all-you-can-eat place that I would recommend. What turns me off most about all-you-can-eat places is not so much the food as it’s not usually not too bad, but it’s the service. These places are usually bombarded with requests for more “Ssam” made with “Dduk” (rice wraps) and you usually get unenthusiastic servers with pissed off looks on their faces with attitudes that follow. Choiganei doesn’t have that. If they have the patience to accommodate seven people for two hours without being pissed off, or at least not expressing it, they probably will do the same for other groups. Yes, TWO hours. It was kind of disgusting.

As far as the food goes, ordering the Chadol Bagi (brisket) is usually standard. Thinly sliced cuts of meat with a nice piece of fat on it. It cooks fast, it’s soft, and people say it goes well with the Dduk. On a side note, this whole wrapping the meat in Dduk business is a Los Angeles Koreatown thing, not an authentic Korean thing. It’s still good, but I prefer the true Korean way of Ssam…  get a nice big leaf of sangchu (cabbage), kkaetneep (perilla leaf), a spoon of rice, meat, and ssamjang… wrap it all and then stuff it in your mouth.  You can show your affection for your significant other by wrapping one for him or her and hand feeding him or her.  I digress, the meat at Choiganei is good.  They also give you complimentary gaeranjjim (steamed egg) and a never ending bowl of dwaenjang jjigae (bean paste jjigae).  At the end you can get a bowl of naengmyun too.  All for a grand total of $14.99+tax… I mean, can you really complain?

Enter through the back on a small side street called Ingraham which is parallel to Wilshire.  It’s on the same block as the Noraebang-turned-Wilshire BBQ with medieval decor-turned overpriced Tahoe Galbi turned-all-you-can-eat behemoth Tahoe Galbi.

Choiganei
3916 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90010
Phone: 213.382.8858

House of Pies

After my internship ended, I headed on over to Griffith Park to meet up with T so we could go for a hike.  This motivating myself to workout isn’t really working out too well so I thought maybe, just maybe, doing it with someone else would at least force me to try.  The plan was to meet at Fern Dell, hike up to the Observatory, and then go on further from the Observatory all the way to the top.  The things I’ve heard about Griffith Park hikes are that they’re easy…  It wasn’t that easy.  It definitely wasn’t hard, but I don’t think it’s a cakewalk.  Or maybe it was the weather or the shortcuts that we took that made it harder.  All in all, it was a good workout.  And I’m not as out of shape as I thought I was.  I guess that’s a good thing.

After the hike we stopped by the House of Pies to get something to eat.  The House of Pies is a diner with no gimmicks and convenient parking.  I ordered the Cheeseburger with Avocado.  It wasn’t the best burger I’ve had but it wasn’t bad either.  It was to my liking, a simple burger.  The fries were fried to my liking too, with a nice crisp.  Of course with a name like “House of Pies,” you cannot not try the pies here.  I got the Fresh Peach Pie to take home.  And may I say, that is a good pie.  Fresh peaches in a nice sweet syrup, a nice buttery crust, with some nice whipped cream with a heavier consistency than those found at the grocery store.  I got no complaints about this place.

House of Pies
1869 N Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Phone: 323.666.9961

The Curious Palate

Curiousity ended with the name, The Curious Palate.  I was curious about what was so curious about The Curious Palate.  I headed on over for lunch after I ended my internship in Downtown.  My weekday routine is boring at my internship.  Thank goodness I’m here for only three hours a day.  Any longer and I’d be sleeping here.  All the websites in which I can sit and pass time with amusement are blocked.  So I sit here and read the news for the whole three hours I’m here.  At least I’m being enlightened with Bloomberg and the Los Angeles Times.

So everyday I look forward to lunch.  Lunch fills my stomach.  And lunch means my day at my internship is over.  So how do I bring this back to The Curious Palate.  I don’t really know other than the fact that I went to The Curious Palate for lunch.  The Curious Palate is pretty much a sandwich and salad shop.  And some sides.  Or maybe it’s sort of like a little deli.  Whatever it is, it’s a pretty neat place.  Aside from sandwiches and salads and a few other things on the menu, they sell different cheeses, deli meats, unique sodas, homemade jams, artisan chocolates, and they serve Intelligentsia coffee for the Westsiders in between Silverlake and Venice.

I ordered the Prosciutto Panini, the Mac n’ Cheese, and some pineapple soda.  The prosciutto panini had obviously prosciutto, mozzarella cheese, roasted red peppers, and artichoke.  The panini was pressed to a perfect crisp yet soft on the inside, the melted cheese gave the sandwich a nice texture, the peppers and artichoke gave the panini a nice flavor, and the prosciutto good.  I especially liked the taste the vegetables added to the panini.  It came with a side of couscous.  The Mac n’ Cheese had four different cheeses which is too long for me to list but you can check out their menu.  The mac n’ cheese was good, but considering the amount they give and for five dollars I could get three yummy carne asada tacos in the Eastside…  I know you can’t compare apples and oranges, but hey, weigh in some opportunity cost and there ya go.

Overall, I like having The Curious Palate as an option to go to if I want a good sandwich.  10-15 minute drive from my place just ain’t that bad of a drive.  But I do think it’s a tad pricey for what it is and for what you can get elsewhere.  But then again, so are the burgers at the Apple Pan but I keep going back for more.  And once again I go on comparing things that aren’t equivalent.  With a logic flow like this, I have to wonder, “How did I get into law school?”

The Curious Palate
12034 Venice Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90066
Phone: 310.437.0144

Hamkyungdo Abaii Soondae (Ham Kyung Do Restaurant)

Alright alright, when the Boodae Jjigae crew strikes, it’s gon’ be big.  This time it wasn’t Boodae Jjigae.  We went out for some Kimchi Jjigae; and like last time, we went to a place for Korean middle-aged men.  That’s usually where good Korean food will be served.  To add on top of that, Kimchi Jjigae wasn’t even on the menu.  And more?  You need to order it at least an hour ahead of time.  It’s overshadowed by Park’s BBQ as it is in the same strip mall.

H, CK, Dae, and goshjosh from UCLA, Juboy from Valencia, and myself were the culprits of the day.  The Kimchi Jjigae experience started off with me being in the hot seat.  While we were waiting for everyone to show up, we were waiting outside and apparently we were too loud.  An old lady from the restaurant comes out and tells us that we’re loud and we should go to the PC Game Room upstairs.  I tell her that we’re going to eat at the restaurant.  Then she starts asking all these questions, “what could you possibly eat here? how do you know we have kimchi jjigae? etc. etc.”  It seemed more like an interrogation, but my Korean held up surprisingly without a flaw and I managed to do it while keeping a smile on my face.

Maybe the old lady felt bad along with the other old ladies in there because what came next was a great time and great hospitality.  It was the six of us and I phoned in three hours earlier to order 3 servings of Kimchi Jjigae.  We ordered Soondae and also an order of Bossam.  Soondae is Korean blood sausage and that wasn’t real popular within our group.  CK and I like soondae, but I don’t think the others shared the same opinion.  Maybe it has something to do with soondae being made out of blood, but whatever.  CK also cleaned out the tongue, liver, and some other thing that was there.  I think he really likes this stuff.

I thought maybe the ladies would like the Bossam.  I don’t think that worked out either.  With Bossam, you get usually boiled pork belly or raw oysters as the meat, some fermented radish that’s marinated to be somewhat spicy, and wrap it in a huge white cabbage leaf.  I don’t too crazy over it but if it’s within reach, I wouldn’t mind wrapping myself a few.

So it seemed like the soondae and bossam wasn’t cutting it.  Then came the timely appearance of what we came for, the Kimchi Jjigae.  That Kimchi Jjigae that’s not on the menu.  That Kimchi Jjigae that you have to order ahead of time.  That Kimchi Jjigae where you need to bring your Korean A game, or at least bring someone who can speak Korean.  That Kimchi Jjigae that the old ladies put their time in to make.  Aside from the Kimchi Jjigae your mother makes, this jjigae goes somewhere up there.  They give you so much kimchi.  The pork belly that’s in there is cooked ’til it’s so tender.  The soup part of the jjigae was so hearty.  I mean, with jjigaes in most places, it feels a bit watery, but here, the jjigae was just… this is how jjigaes ought to be.

One thing is for certain, we had an atypical experience here.  I don’t think people would be greeted with “there’s a PC game room upstairs.”  The friendly service is probably typical though, not that sometimes annoying friendly service you find at the fanciest of restaurants but more of that genuine kind coming from old Korean ladies.  Maybe it was that awkward encounter in the beginning but the service turned into something you would expect from a family friend.  We got free Gyeran-mari (Korean omelette), not one but two.  And though our final bill came out to $80, the old lady told us to pay $50 because we’re students and students don’t have any money.  Where else would you be able to find such sincerity like that?

How to order: You MUST order ahead of time if you want Kimchi Jjigae.  I think it was an hour ahead of time but to be safe, do it a couple hours ahead of time.  If you can’t speak Korean, find a friend that can when placing the order.  I doubt any English is spoken here.  It’s going to cost you $11-12 per serving of Kimchi Jjigae.

Hamkyungdo Abaii Soondae (Ham Kyung Do Restaurant)
955 S Vermont Ave, Ste A
Los Angeles, CA 90006
Phone: 213.388.2013

Mariscos 4 Vientos

After seeing pictures of the Shrimp Tacos on LA Taco, I knew Mariscos 4 Vientos would soon have to be crossed off my I-seriously-need-to-go-there list. I headed east on Olympic Blvd. and learned that the street suddenly ends in the Fashion District in Downtown and mysteriously starts elsewhere.  I started looking for the truck in unfamiliar territory.  Then I ended up on an intersection where I thought the truck was supposed to be at.  Great.  But I had to use the bathroom.  So I continued back on Olympic to find a supermarket or something.  Well, several blocks down, I found the brick and mortar location of Mariscos 4 Vientos with a bathroom.  Nice.  And then I had the Shrimp Taco experience at Mariscos 4 Vientos.  That was a few weeks ago.

I’ve gone a couple of times since.  I’ve never had anything quite like these tacos before and they’re great.  You have a generous amount of shrimp with some sort of mixture that’s in tortillas and then deep fried.  It’s covered in their salsa and a generous amount of avocado.  The salsa has a refreshing taste to it, kinda different from the salsas at other taquerias where they have more of an earthly taste.

But don’t stop with the Shrimp Tacos here.  Go on and try the other things that they offer.  The Tostada with Ceviche and Shrimp is pretty good too.  There’s a nice citrus flavor and may I add that they are very generous with the amount of shrimp they pile on.  And on every table there is a bag of tostadas which, I suppose, you can take as much as you please.  The Coctel de Camaron is also great.  Again, Mariscos 4 Vientos is generous with the shrimp.  The cocktail sauce has a nice sweetness to it.  The Coctel would be awesome on a hot summer day to cool you down.

This brings me to wonder… I wonder how some dining establishments are able to offer great food with generous portions at generous prices whereas other places offer great food but with not-so-generous portions at not-so generous prices.  Eh, I guess I do have some idea why: Cost of doing business, property value, supply and demand, the cost of living, etc. etc.  Well, can’t have everything your way, right?

Something that’s pretty neat is the roving bands that play here.  Live music!  With maybe a little price attached.

Mariscos 4 Vientos
3332 E. Olympic Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90023
Phone: 323.269.3605