A quiet Sunday, a pair of pink drinks, and thou
10928 W. Pico Blvd. (east of the 405)
Phone: 310-474-0007 | map | facebook

The decor, being so design-minded, sparked our fears of chainy ownership*, with its clean black booths, to-be-expected corrugated metal, and aquamarine ceiling fans that don't turn quite quickly enough. The red walls are spanned with prints of vintage crate labels with uneasy historical references. Your table will have a bucket with hot sauces (try especially the mossy-colored Louisiana Gem jalapeño sauce on everything).

Bourbon Street Shrimp obviously has an interest in bringing in the crowd that wants its sports and its happy hour specials, and attempting a dinner on a busy night will probably prompt an irritable Yelp review. On an empty Sunday, though, it's good times. The kitchen has more time to give some love to its pub-food-inflected Cajun menu.

The five-dollar Hurricanes are dressed up like pink lemonade with a switchblade hidden under the skirt. They're kicky, and you'll notice that they get empty real fast... wow! Gee whiz! I suppose the car will stay where it is for a bit, because I'm feeling like NOLA, tipsy before twelve-thirty.

The only problem with the half-dozen Blackened Shrimp appetizer is that you didn't order the full dozen. They're finger-dusting and habit-forming. The cocktail sauce is good, not gaggy, and there's a creamy pink aioli sauce which is great to keep around for french-fry dipping. Need moar of this.

Rather than a safe-as-houses jambalaya or gumbo, I always check out an étouffée to see if the kitchen knows its acute e's.

The roux is impressively thick, deep like a brown curry, and sticks to the rice. Onions, spices, peppers and tomato cavort around the shrimp like a bacchanalia. It's a big dish.

The Buffalo Fish sandwich is a fun departure. These fish used to be hunted on the plains for their hides, apparently, and this version is lightly fluffed, drippy and gorgeous despite the American cheese failing to melt on top.

Bianca: This is stoopid with two o's.

What is it about this species of food that we eat far too much? We're full. We don't need dessert. We won't order it. Let's just go and walk this off.

Homemade Bread Pudding. They took liberties with this performance; with a moat of caramel sauce, it's more like a flan than a crumbled, bready, raisiny mess one is used to, coupled with some friendly French vanilla ice cream.

Bianca: I'll be under the table. Then I want to go grab the chef, shake him, and yell, are you kidding me?!

Dave: I want to sleep on this like a number bed.

There are lots of daily drink specials, happy hour shenanigans, and colorfully chalked boards with discounts: $4 pints of Newcastle or Sapporo, 2-for-1 margaritas and well drinks, et cetera.

There's a side lot with valet, and metered street parking.

* However, there was only one other location, on the disinterested western end of Melrose, which has since been replaced by some annoyingly one-word-titled eatery.

Little Coffee (Power)House
1523 Griffith Park Blvd. (in Silver Lake)
Phone: 323-664-8811 | map | website

I've passed by here many dozens of times without taking a second glance, missing out for the last few years on what should have been my local-est coffee joint.

If people are waiting you'll have to shift around to find room. There's a comfy couch, a couple of small tables that you won't get because someone else's purse, smartphone and laptop are on them, several barstools along the window, and tables outside. At least three patrons will be parked in any of these spots when you arrive and when you leave. One of them will have a dog.

The owner, Julie, and one or two women with arm tats and spritely dresses bustling and hurrying in this space, somehow getting everything done. They do coffee, naturally, almost as a rebuttal to the eternally long line of Intelligentsia down on Sunset, and they do it superbly well. The Iced Hazelnut Mocha is a full-flavored wakeup call; the nice little powdery grit at the bottom feels almost intentional, like a childhood glass of cocoa. I prefer this iced version over the ice-blended mochas. They also do a Spanish Latte, which needs no sweetener.

Do this for your morning, and you'll thank Bianca and me. While you're still yawning, order a BBJ: Bagel, Butter, Jam. Simple, but devious. The bagel, its crust bubbled and brown, is heated and a bit crushed, and the butter (the amount of which depends on who makes it) is outside as well as in, resulting in finger-lickness and a lot of ohmygodding.

There's a Scramble on a Bagel, which is harder to eat but blended into warm simplicity: a folded quilt of scrambled egg, tomato, cream cheese, and a smidge of black pepper. It tends to squeeze out the sides, so don't eat this in the car.

There are other playful items, at least two of which are Elvis-themed (the Elvis Bagel has, as might be expected, peanut butter, banana and honey, and the Elvis Smoothie is mocha with PB & B).

I never thought I'd crave tuna salad. The Tuna Roll at Bossa Nova is something i have a hankering for here and again, but this superior sandwich might be my new favorite. The Tuna Melt (on a bagel or a croissant) is a spicy bully, beige with harissa sauce and little dried peppers. Even a caper or three is tucked away, adding bite. White cheese speckled with red blankets it, along with avocado, tomato, and slivers of red onion.

MorningsNights opens up at seven and closes at 8:30 in the evening, every day. Now that's a reliable independent coffee house.

I have a lot of catching-up to do.

Dipped with style
118 E. 6th St. (@ Main)
Phone: 213-622-4090 | map | website

The oldest public house in L.A. (since 1908), Cole's resides along the foot of the Pacific Electric Building (which is Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #104), and therefore the "P.E." (in "Cole's P.E. Buffet") stands for Pacific Electric, justsoyouknow. It had a brief span of remodeling and reopening in 2008, but would otherwise be the oldest continuously-operating eatery in this town.

This is the place most often brought up in context with Philippe the Original, since both claim to have originated the French-dipped sandwich. Cole's seems to want to make a point of this, while Phillipe ignores everything south of it.

Cole's has a different vibe. As opposed to the paper plates and aged trays of Philippe's workaday lunch counter, Cole's is more restaurant/saloon oriented; you can get a can of Schlitz or a dram of Auchentoshan 10-year single malt. It's draped in deep colors: scarlet ceiling tiles, velvet bordelloesque wallpaper, mahogany panels and burgundy booths.

Here's why you're here. The Big Dipper is not a large sandwich. The French loaf is nicely textural but nondescript. The Swiss cheese is low-key. This beast is practiced in subtlety, not power.

The meat--beef in this photo, but you can get lamb, turkey, pork or pastrami--is exactly what it needs to be, lean, puffy and thick, soothed into a mild temperament when dipped into the small dish of au jus (another difference from Philippe, where expert assemblers dip or double-dip it before serving). It is a plain darned good roast meat sandwich, a crisply attired noble of sandwichdom.

Cheddar, goat or blue cheese is available, and I'm told I need to get the lamb with goat cheese. I shan't say no to an expert.

That's pretty much your lot for the main course, except for a couple of alternates. The Grilled Cheese is on big, shiny sourdough, toasted enough to make your fingertips moist. Small stiffened spikes of yellow and white cheese protrude like armor. This also benefits from stolen dips into the au jus.

Bianca: It's like dipping magic, isn't it?

Dave: Yes, it is. Stay away from my juice.

Potato salad, I see. Whatever. But look. It's Bacon Potato Salad. And it's probably the finest potato salad on the planet. In Near-Earth Orbit, even. The obligatory potato salad at all those family gatherings would be a lot less miserable if bacon was added.

There is seasoning in every bite, it's not overdone with celery, and there is just enough mayonnaise to glue it together and give it a sheen. It tastes like they add a touch of pickle juice for that old-school zing. It is my favorite potato salad, ever.

There are other sides too, such as Spicy Garlic Fries, crunchy gold with a seasoned salt bite. They seem innocuous, but wait for the quick kick of spice before you cough.

A bottle of house mustard is near the wall, so grab it and use it sparingly. Like the devilish condiment at Philippe, it has that electric rampage-up-your-face jolt if you apply too much.

We're not done. Cole's has a real bar, and they're not afraid to use it. They make a good Cosmopolitan (their Cosmo is made with gin, rather like martinis are supposed to be*), and a fantastic Cable Car (spiced rum, Cointreau, and lemon juice).

I never would have thought gin with ginger together could be mild, but the Ginger Rogers is that. Ginger syrup and ginger ale combine with gin and lime and a sprig of mint atop, and somehow they all cancel each other out and put a velvet glove over the facepunch.

Desserts, too. I've been searching a long time for the chocolate cream pie of my childhood, only to encounter too many light tan, tasteless foam wedges from eateries that claim to specialize in pies. Cole's makes a good one. It's dark chocolate, and it's on an Oreo crust, and it's a dense whipped cream instead of something meringuish, and it's intoxicating, and no, you can't have any.

So who wins?

Historically, I don't really care who came first. In this duel of the dipped sandwich, for atmosphere and appeal and for a slight edge in sandwich caliber, I give it to Cole's.

This fine public house is open until 10 Sunday through Wednesday, ramps up to 11 on Thursday, and one in the morning Friday and Saturday. Attractive saloon specials appear in the afternoon.

* So sayeth I, the proprietor of DeadLounge.com.

Look for the little icons
8401 Santa Monica Blvd. (West Hollywood)
Phone: 323-654-3993 | map
12851 Riverside Dr. (Studio City)
Phone: 818-761-8985 | map
website

The interior of the Santa Monica Hugo's is typically modern, calmly lit by a field of dimpled white shades. The vibe is close but efficient and friendly; however, we like the side patio, amber glass candle holders glowing on each table.

I always peruse the beverages menu for something interesting, and I settle on the Yogi Smoothie: mango, apple, toasted almonds, soy milk, cooperating in an even-handed way until the aftertaste suddenly jumps out shouting in ginger. It's a little rude, but I'd order it again.

These are fantastic. Rice Paper Lentil Rolls. Organic lentils are mixed fine with caramelized onion, surprisingly subdued celery, green pepper shaking hands with green apple, scallions, and a vegenaise. They are good by themselves, a delicate experience, but brought to a sophisticated level by a dip in the avocado/pepita dressing. The entire affair has the confident balance of a monk.

It's a salad, Dave. That's, um, great. Please tell me how this is innovative.

Glad to. This is Hugo's Mexican Salad. What's Mexican about it? Not entirely sure, although there are black beans and avocado, and a pico de gallo involved. This is not important. What is important is that along with the above ingredients they've somehow taken romaine, black olives, parmesan and nicely grilled, skin-on chicken breast, piled it into a grand hillock, and made it into one of the best salads I've tasted all year.

The caesar dressing isn't even that strong, but creamy and polite. The salad is as strongly tasty as if there were bacon and bleu cheese to boss everyone around (there isn't). The chicken is chopped into inch-wide cubes and hidden everywhere your fork penetrates. The avocado is fresh and influential, the black olives seem freshly sliced.

Another dish that refused to take a good photo, this is Very Slowly Roasted Portabello [sic] Stew, and the fact that they painstakingly point this out in the title is prominent in its presentation. Portobello mushrooms are so often rubbery and elusive, and not worth their impressive-sounding name, but this is, apparently, very slowly roasted, and therefore soft and meaty in texture, and darned good, and other things that make me run my sentences on.

Also in this is carrots, squash, zucchini, all the things that make my inner grade schooler say "yuck", plus garlic and french green lentils, which don't. It's assembled with a tomato and red wine sauce that is hard to describe, but almost sweet. Bianca likes the vegan mashed potatoes with this, which are not as whip-creamy as they can be since there is only soy milk to deal with, but combining a bit of that with a bit of stew makes every bite ridiculous.

The Grilled Mushroom Enchiladas are a grand repast, strips of sautéed mushrooms and onions wrapped in thick corn tortillas. The three amigos are then coated with a roasted tomatillo-jalapeño sauce, which is chunky and green and fairly sparkling with spice and flavor. Occasional heat darts toward your throat to stick it with a rapier.

On the left is long grain Spanish rice. Such texture! Tiny bits of corn and carrot add to a pan-roasted feel, although the rice loses its heat quickly. To the right are white beans, stirred in a red Guajillo-chili sauce, gentle and rich. The entire dish is an illustration in contrast: gritty fluff of the rice, red blanket of beans, layered nobility of the enchilada trio.

All this is gluten-free, by the way, something with which I've been concerning myself, and the parts that aren't vegan can be made vegan when requested. Each menu item considerately details whether it's vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and whether it can be made so.

We did not take a photo of the desserts, but there is something you need to try, and that is Chef Nabor's Chocolate Mousse.

In my longtime, lantern-lit search for an honest mousse, mousse usually falls to either of two waysides: it is an airy, tasteless sponge, or it is a dense clay. This is neither. The chocolate is Cordillera, with a soft-spoken, rich finish that brings smiles and hits itself out of the park. And, oh yeah: gluten-free.

Bianca: I'm having one of those "I'm young and and I'm licking my spoon" moments.

The location on Coldwater is a distant country cousin that has its own lot. Santa Monica is next to a public parking structure with a nice four-dollar flat rate for the evening.

Oh, and related to Hugo's Tacos? Yes.

Wins
4449 Prospect Ave. (@ Hillhurst, in Los Feliz)
Phone: 323-666-0600 | map
1200 N. Pacific Ave. (in Glendale)
Phone: 818-500-1289 | map
website

This is the first review where my notes were taken at home, and the first review where we're busting out the larger photos. Because you need to see this pizza.

Because of its casual, kewl-dude-in-a-woodie logo, you do not suspect Cruzer of offering the first all-vegan pizza. Learning about it, and finally trying this "why hasn't anyone done this before?" fare, made us shriek and dance like we'd received a basket of puppies.

We start with having the Quarrygirl.com Pizza delivered. Olive oil, garlic and softly dense strips of portobello and button mushrooms make us forget that there's no red sauce on this pie. The sausage is that rare vegan entity that tastes closer to the real thing than it looks, instead of the other way around; it's zippy and spicy as real sausage, and I could totally go through a bag of it like a road trip jerky snack.

A thick paste of Daiya cheese is melted over everything, white and grainy with little yellowed oven marks. It feels more like ricotta or goat cheese in texture and tang, and once you make that mental transition, it's all good. Daiya will save us all. Beneath all of it is a just-plain-good dough, bready and bubbled and just this side of sweet.

The Vegan BBQ Chicken Pizza also has no red stuff, but the ruddy bbq sauce is like a sweet & sour glaze, rich with molasses and I daresay hickory; it complements the already-sweet tinge of the dough. You could serve this to friends and tell them it's BBQ Pork, even, and they'd nod with approval. The texture, the grain, the flavor, is all there, firm and cooked. It's not meat, I'm told, and I laugh it off. The daiya cheese is more settled and cooperative on this pizza.

Bianca, upon her first bite: Are you kidding me.

Cruzer has a Vegan Meat Pizza, which I am nervous about trying. I am of course a slave to meat pizzas when given the option, but I can't yet imagine how sausage, pepperoni, meatball, Canadian bacon, ham and salami could all be rendered convincingly and separately as vegan. I will just need to keep placing orders.

And: a vegan Chicken Cheese Steak? A vegan Chicken Parmigiana? I must know.

The pizzas are available in a whole wheat crust as well.

The Los Feliz location uses only 100% animal-free vegan ingredients, the first ever pizza joint in Los Angeles to do so, so much applause for them. They are also incredibly nice on the phone.

They're open until ten most days, eleven on Fridays and Saturdays.

They get Downtown
524 S. Main St. (Downtown between 5th & 6th)
Phone: 213-623-8301 | map | website

On a stretch of Main which manages to juggle wholesale outlets, aging brick buildings pretending to be lofts, and high-end dog spas, populated by thin girls with expensive bags, people just trying to get by, and grumbling homeless, the Nickel Diner is becoming a shining beacon of downtown evolution.

It is down-to-earth, but chefly more than seedy. The decor is newish but has a retro honesty: new vinyl and chipped creamer jugs, shiny dark brown panels and battered tin signs.

For breakfast, before rolling up my sleeves and going to work on the docks*, the 5th & Main is a well-constructed source of fuel.

It's spicy BBQ pork hash, tender shreds of pork with rounded wedges of just-underdone potato. A pair of poached eggs adorn the top, smeary ovoids with yellow goodness waiting to add its soft opinion to the hash. It comes with a sweet red tomato chutney and a drizzle of spicy barbecue sauce.

For less carnivorous pursuits, the Vegan Ranchero delivers much yummunence (I just made that word up). Two cylindrical cakes of tofu, fried just enough to make their surfaces scratchy, are dressed with salsa. The golden exterior barely keeps their contents in check; breaking through with a fork yields a soft blossom of tofu.

Surrounding this is the heirloom house beans, rich and meaty, perfect chili-style beans if I had them in my kitchen. A sliced wedge of avocado rests nearby, and two corn tortillas are folded at either end, tasty but too sodden to perform any taco-creation duty. A few distracted strips of yellow soy cheese colors the dish nicely.

On to lunch. The BLTA is technically a bacon-lettuce-tomato-avocado affair, but more interesting due to its being suffused with a spicy aioli instead of mayonnaise. The bacon is thick and crisp but subdued, the tomato and avocado struggling to be present and adding a tasty cushioning factor. The arugula lettuce is highly successful here, necessary to stand up to the power of the aioli.

The sandwich is buried under a lattice of crispy, whitish shoestring fries that are just fine. However, you won't finish them, because the dessert tray will pass by you at some point, and your eyes will follow it, asking silent questions.

It's been written about already, so I'll let others pontificate on the devilishly crrayyy-zay charms of the Maple Bacon Donut. We have other goals.

For instance, Bianca is automatically in love with well-made red velvet cakes, and the version at the Nickel Diner is a lovely accident: a box of Valrhona chocolate balls had apparently fallen into the frosting, but they were stirred in anyway, and the effect is a properly moist, layered red velvet cake with crunchy ricey bits between frosty layers that are just sweet enough not to hurt anyone. It is insanely, eyes-fluttering-backward good. My only regret is a failed, blurry photo.

While I sputter in disbelief over the divinity of the red velvet cake, I also cannot help but acquire a homemade Ding-Dong. I mean, come on. Ding-Dongs. The king of snack cakes in my personal realm. And these are on. I crack through the chocolate armor to a gently moist, white-striped brown cake, my childhood screaming in envy from across the fence.

Co-owner Kristen Trattner came by to describe the delights, and nodded at my Ding-Dong-induced smile: "This made you wanna watch cartoons, didn't it?"

They make homemade pop tarts too, by the way...

The coffee here is quite good, hot or iced.

Nickel Diner is constantly reconsidering its menu and its hours, but is currently closed Mondays, open at 8 the rest of the week until 11pm, with a brief afternoon break. A large and gated parking structure lurches conveniently across the street.

* I'm slipping into some kind of turn-of-the-last-century industrialized humanity-as-commodity kind of mode here, don't mind me. I've been taking a lot of nineteenth-century literature classes.