California Grubbin'

food: 4/5 experience: 3.5/5 overall: 4/5 In 8th grade my friend Brent told me this place was a front for the mafia. Now if there's one thing the mafia is good at it's making pizzas. We all know that. Bonus points for making them on the sidewalk. Now that's innovation. A mini pizza here costs just over eight bucks. Good news! Bad news it's in a bad area. And it takes forever. I found myself eating cayenne pepper after waiting a half hour. Get delivery instead. Or don't. It wasn't that great to be honest. Their crust was on the thinner side which is not my favorite. Not sure if it was a fluke because their garlic bread sticks were damn tasty. It's just their pizza crust with garlic sauce and cheese but these were thick, gooey and scrumptious. Awesome. Also tried their chicken strips. They're spicy as advertised. The breading is thin. Not that good to be honest. And finally we tried their regular garlic bread. Again nothing fanc...

We're back in Paris! This edition of Calfornia Livin' will give you a tour of the world-famous Louvre Museum. Click here for my previous posts in the series. A day at the Louvre. Arrive from metro, get in long-ass line with a guy at the end holding up a sign saying "1 hour wait from here." Get book out. Fifteen minutes later, at the front of the line. (Guess they want to weed out the uninterested.) While waiting, we witness an impromptu air show, in preparation for Bastille Day (July 14th - French Independence Day). Slightly exciting but a little terrifying in a terrorist-y way. We put our bags through a scanner and arrive inside. Hugeness. We get a map, proceed to the ticket stand and print out one ticket, me being young enough to pass for a sixteen-year-old. No one questions. We go up the stairs to the paintings section, having only a couple hours on our hands. Ten Euro total admission, two people, Louvre Museum. Can't complain. First: sculptur...

food: 5/5 experience: 2/5 overall: 3/5 The food is cheap and the fish is fresh down at Kyoto. Unfortunately for me the first time I came here I forgot to mention my food allergies. I thought lamb would be safe. I was wrong. It's marinated in soy sauce. Ugh. Didn't find out till I faced the repercussions. Damned if it was not delicious going down though. The next time there I went with a safer choice: the sashimi plate. For eighteen bucks, ten pieces weren't that filling but the next price up was $38 for a twenty-piece set. I just don't have that kind of money to throw down. It was fresh enough though. The selection is typical: hamachi, salmon, tuna. Nice presentation at least. All rolls are fifty percent off! All of the time! Why not just put the lower prices on the menu? If you're fooling anyone then they deserve to pay the full price for stupidity. Okay that might be a little harsh. Anyway, these rolls are delicious for the price you pay. I've...

food: 4.5/5 experience: 3.5/5 overall: 4/5 I was torn between four and five stars for the food here. I got the standard taco-burrito combo that provides a decent representation of a Mexican restaurant's offerings, in my opinion. The fish burrito, in spite of its name (fish + burrito = win)... is not the best I've had. A regular burrito with fish, it just felt like it was missing something. It has rice, beans, fish, and that's it. They use whole pinto beans instead of refried which aren't as flavorful. And there's no cheese in it. The tortilla I believe is wheat. All in all not fantastic but still good. This burrito, by the way, is as big as my forearm, so it will do the job. As opposed to the burrito, the fish taco plate however was excellent. The refried beans and cheese on the side good as always, rice bland, but the taco is everything you'd want in a taco. The corn tortilla is flavorful, as is the fish, and the sauce literally was the i...

food: 3/5 experience: 2/5 overall: 3/5 Dude this is ridiculous. I don't care how damn good your coffee is, five ounces of espresso for over three bucks plus two dollar refills is not.  Worth. It. Here is where Sacramento's "urban professionals" meet the hipster employees who work for them. They have locations littered all throughout Sac and one in Davis. Good news, you don't have to have a password to connect to Wi-Fi. Other good stuff about this place: sorry, that was it. What? I did say their coffee was good. Implied, rather. I'm tempted to drink that coffee someone left on the table just to get my/their money's worth. Griping aside. I did come back to try their pastries because they looked so good the first time. They get sold out quickly apparently because I had to go to a couple locations before I found some. Most of their stuff is gluten-free unfortunately which actually ain't that good for you. For me anyway, I can't digest brow...

California Livin' goes to the movies! This week I'm going to show you around the Vista Theatre in Los Angeles. I don't care how ridonkulous parking is, nor how wtf movie tickets cost these days. I will even bypass the oddity that this is located on Sunset Drive  (not Boulevard ). Because this movie house is bomb-effin'-diggity. Swoon... The Vista is a landmark theatre and it's got that old-timey feel to it. If there's one thing the hipsters of Silverlake have right it's this here cinema. I would go so far as to say it's one of the few places left in LA that still has a real sense of character. The red curtain draws as your movie is presented... My first time here was for a very special showing of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's HitRecord shorts. HitRecord is an online company that is open-collaboration and artists of all kinds can work together and use each others' materials to produce something great. We got to sample the cream of the crop a...

food: 2.5/5 experience: 1/5 overall: 2/5 You can smell this restaurant hundreds of feet away. And clearly the Indian people all come here judging by the interior so you know it should be good. Should  be. Beware the noise upon entering. No booths unfortunately, just basic chairs and tables. Lots of them with only three chairs. Weird. There was some miscommunication about the naan being unable to eat without curry, dunno what that was about. Eventually I just pointed to it on someone else's table and it got cleared up. Maybe there's some kind of naan they have that's for dipping only? Anyway. We tried the chicken and beef seekh kabob, tandoori fish, and naan. Unluckily we came during Ramadan right around the time they can break their fast so all the cooks were eating. It took over twenty minutes. Starving by then. This kabab came out and yes it looks like a shit. It wasn't bad tasting but it was nonetheless a shit kabab and therefore inedible. We tried the...

food: 4/5 experience: 2/5 overall: 3/5 One of the most well-known Chinese bakeries in Sacramento is tucked in a little corner behind Bel Air supermarket, off a busy street at the edge of South Land Park. That bakery is ABC bakery. Get here early because they sell out quick. Yes, there is a large Asian population in the South Land Park/Greenhaven neighborhood. Their most popular products, of course, are the baked buns - specifically the BBQ pork. A thick, doughy roll with delicious filling. The rolls are nice and fluffy, slightly sweet, just as a bao should be; and they put a decent amount of filling in them. The BBQ pork is surprisingly sweet. Other rolls are chicken (see below), curry chicken/curry beef, hot dog, pineapple, taro, and a cocktail bun. The one-dollar (!) steamed options are the BBQ pork (above), plus chicken and egg custard. Chicken tastes like a typical dumpling/wonton type filling but this egg custard tastes like straight pudding. Delicious. I'd n...

Welcome back to my California Livin' Series! For reference,  here  is a list of all my previous posts in this series. Today we'll be browsing the Melrose Trading Post in Los Angeles! Just in time for Halloween, because everyone here is in costume. Say it with me... Hiiiipsterrrr!!!! Oh my goshness. Talk about a study in sociology. I have never seen so many hipsters in one condensed area. Then again I haven't spent much time in Portland. If you are a hipster in LA, you shop here. If you shop here, you are a hipster. Or a tourist. Or both. Entry fee is a whole five bucks, though there are most definitely ways around that. Meaning, around... the parking lot... through the back. Or by buying your own smiley face stamp. :) However, this flea market is worth the five bucks even if you don't buy anything. In itself it is an afternoon's worth of entertainment. Look through the stalls and stalls of used jewelry, marked no lower than ten dollar a p...