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 The red walls are spanned with prints of vintage crate labels with uneasy historical references.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.

The shack with the island vibe
1906 Ocean Ave. (@ Pico, in Santa Monica)
Phone: 310-581-1684 | map | website

You can feel it as soon as you see the jaunty carrot-and-blue exterior; it feels local without being Sandals-resort contrived. Scents of cooking weave out onto the sidewalk, beckoning. Reggae, of course, plays.

The tables inside are colorful, but find a spot outside on the patio, shaded by grassy umbrellas and bordered by gaily painted oil drums like a Montego Bay roadside kitchen.

While pleasantly Jamaican in vibration, Cha Cha Chicken does not claim a single island as home, but pulls in influences from all over the sultry Caribbean.

The Jerk Veggie Enchiladas are coated in a mango jerk sauce that rings of habañero and pineapple; the effect is a spicy sweetness that permeates the carrots, cabbage, peas, potato and cheese inside, all rendered pliable under the fork. With this comes dirty rice done proper, purpled with juices, and a couple of darkly grainy plantains about which I will write in a moment.

I don't often order wraps, since they're usually lazily called a "caesar wrap" or a "jerk chicken wrap" and take the form of disappointment.

Ricky's Wrap, though, is a burrito-sized beast. Dirty rice, black beans, stubbornly hot potato, lettuce slowly losing its crunch, and carrot accompany the chicken. The chicken! It's shredded into a wondrous heap, tender and sodden, and from it you can probably wring out a shot glass of juice.

The chicken and its servants are wound in lavash instead of a tortilla, spotty-brown from the griddle and crisp around the edges. A cup of spicy jerk sauce is there, if you can manage to dunk the wrap into it without losing the contents to gravity.

The Fried Plantains are an attractive burnt gold, smile-inducingly sweet and soft. A spoonful of cool mayonnaise gives them an extra creamy angle.

There is also a reliable Black Bean soup, puréed into simplicity, with limp strips of tortilla and a dollop of sour cream. It's a worthy starter but not photogenic.

Oh, and hello, dear friend. Any place that carries this stuff knows what's up.

Cha Cha Chicken is open until ten daily, luring you in from your walk along the beach or when you're tired of the highbrow tourism and performance art of the 3rd Street Promenade.

I can't help but like it
9523 Culver Blvd. (in Culver City)
Phone: 310-842-8300 | map
8759 Santa Monica Blvd. (in West Hollywood)
Phone: 310-358-1919 | map
website

The Culver City location is green and beige and blocky, with a reserved clientele inclined toward neck scarves and iPods. The West Hollywood location is artfully walled with black and white photography from gay protests and street life of the '60s and '70s. White shorts, beards and sailor outfits abound (at least in the photos).

The menu* is split into salads, grilled meats, and soups, but is more creative than that sounds. The fare comes from those places of which you approve: produce from local farms, grain-fed, hormone-free, free-range meat, artisan bakeries, all the good words.

This is the gentlest and most rewarding thing you'll eat all day. The Salt & Pepper Chicken Sandwich is grilled to excellent firmness; it retains a little of the skin on it, peeling and crispy, adding touches of fat and flavor. Roasted red peppers are julienned and support it with an outspoken aioli sauce. The ciabatta bread is soft and powdery, sex in bread form, and I felt compelled to lay my head upon it and grab forty winks.

The salad that accompanies this is not outshined; the baby spinach is absurdly green, with softly crunchy hazelnuts. The cabernet vinaigrette is subtle and nearly absent, but still manages to balance the billowy taste of goat cheese that spackles your palate. The insistent freshness of the spinach is prominent.

The Chipotle Barbecue Chicken Salad is trendily named but is a mouth-caressing experience; at least four other people nearby will have ordered this.

Avocado and sour, suck-up-the-cheeks queso fresco lay atop lots and lots of cooled, crispy-skinned chicken. The tortilla strips add toastiness instead of annoyance; the cilantro dressing adds snap.

* The menu is scribed in a font that looks like the Dakota, Divine and Bradley Hand ITC typefaces got together and had a love child. Thankfully, it's not Papyrus.

More gastro than pub
9531 Culver Blvd., Culver City
Phone: 310-202-1470 | map | website

Ford's Filling Station is a deceptively workaday name for a high-end creative menu. We can banter buzzwords like gastropub and hyphenated labels like California-Mediterranean around all day, and Ben Ford is already a Google-worthy name among L.A. entrepreneurs, so we'll cut through all that and talk about dinner.

To drink we get a couple of Summer Slaps, and not the kind you might get when you proposition Miss Lula Mae at the church luncheon. These are concoctions of sweet tea vodka (yes, there really is such a thing), 10 Cane rum, and lemonade; the taste is somewhat like a Long Island Iced Tea but rummier, and oddly grapefruity. We like them, and carefully don't drink more than one each, because despite the svelte glass they come in, they're forceful.

We have been experiencing some damned tasty potato soups lately, and so far this is king. (Bianca: "French. Fry. Soup!") This has a roasty flavor, with half-inch cubes of crisp potato, topped by a green swirl of leek oil and chive cream. Grab one of the hard little buttery torpedoes of bread they bring you, and dip it into this.

There are some savory-looking meat, cheese and flatbread samplers that we must see to later (probably with two or three companions), but it's dinnertime. We cannot say no to this, however. The Macaroni and Cheese is a bed of heat, lightly breaded and just past al dente; Fresno chili adds no color but a little zing.

See that darkened bit on the left? That's not char, that's ham hock, dear friends, and it permeates the entire dish. Soul food purists beware--ham hock traditionally belongs in your greens--but it's devastatingly good.

Mr. Ford has put some eyebrow-raising yet fantastic combinations together onto large white plates. It might look dubious in the wrong light, but sweet Unforgiving Lord of Saucy Revelation, the Trenne Pasta is luxurious. The aptly-named triangular tubes are great for sweeping up the tremendously gentle yet sturdy sauce, with three chili pepper relish, roasted pepitas (pumpkin or squash seeds), a few shreds of spicy greens, and--this is the eyebrow-raising part--absurdly tender pulled pork.

Pulled pork in my pasta? I'd never thought of that, but it's an energetic yea from this corner, sir. Every bite is soaked with flavor and forces the closing of one's eyes to contemplate. This is a mighty dish.

Not to be outdone, this too looks like a tumbleweed-caused auto wreck, but it's Polenta Cake. Surrounded by mushrooms and well-sautéed pearl onions, and topped by a frazzled nest of spring salad, the cake is muffin-soft, soaked in an almost beeflike richness. Truffle mascarpone cheese slowly melts through as if aware of its own preposterousness.

We manage dessert. There is a Jack and Coke: cola cake with Jack Daniels ice cream. Jack and Coke? We must know. You remember those peppy ads from the '50s urging you to bake with 7-Up? The effect is more subtle here; it only appears in the finish. If you weren't told what it was, you might think it a fine vanilla bean ice cream and shiny chocolate sponge cake with a bit of excitability, but scratch your head wondering where that vaguely syrupy, oaky, maple undertone was coming from.

Ford's can be spendy. The Summer Slap comes in at twelve bucks, the outrageousness of which is arguable here in Los Angeles. Dinner can reach as high as an omakase sushi dinner if you try a few different things and have some drinks, but the sheer skill shown here, complexity without complication, is well worth it.

And hey: did you know Ben Ford's dad is named Harrison? Yeah, that one.

In the Name of All That is Mole
11619 Santa Monica Blvd. (in West Los Angeles)
Phone: 310-312-1079 | map | website

Oh, my, Oaxacan food. There are a number of excellent representatives hovering east of Arlington, but West L.A. has, thankfully, Juquila. It's small and friendly, with fútbol on the TV, bright pastel Mexican tablecloths under the glass, earth tones on the walls. Conversations in Spanish bounce pleasantly around the room.

Tortilla chips arrive on a small plate, drizzled with a sweet red sauce and crumbled queso, paired with a dark and mighty salsa. To counter this, order a Pacifico, Modelo Especial, or other appropriate beer. They bring you a glass mug, dusted with chili powder around the rim and insanely, double-dog-dare-you frosty cold.

Since it comes recommended, I try the Mole Verde de Puerco. It comes blanketed in a thick vegetal glaze of spicy green chilies, sweetly complex and velvety and unlike anything else in the mole world. The pork is an everyman's pork, great marbled cliffs with a solid quarter-inch jacket of fat that peels away, its work done. Long green beans, cabbage and zucchini keep it company, shrouded in green like sheets over furniture.

As I eat, the effect is subtle, not a blast of flavor, but I realize I am growing slowly and surely stoned from this meal.

Bianca tries out the Enmoladas, which are deceptively simple; tortillas are folded with cheese and topped with a tangled net of quesillo (Oaxacan string cheese), then submerged in a thick, raspy mole sauce black enough to see your reflection, black enough to dip in a quill and begin writing your memoirs. Rings of onion try to create spark, but are overcome by the nutty, chocolatey, burnt grain essence of the mole negro.

The moles oaxaqueños are of course a specialty here, but other menu items beckon: Caldo 7 Mares, Barbacoa Roja de Chivo (lamb with red sauce and dry chile), and Salsa de Chicharrón (fried pork skin in a tomato sauce. Which is, by the way, a breakfast item). They're usually open fairly late, 11 or midnight, so you have some time to look over the menu.

There is a brief pay lot behind Juquila and Cafe 50's, and street parking along Santa Monica.

A joyous tribute to retro
11623 Santa Monica Blvd. (west of the 405)
Phone: 310-479-1955 | map | website

Cafe 50's is an obvious student of the "Fiftiest Fifties Diner Evar" school, its exterior blinking and neoning and rocking around the clock at you. The interior is saturated with celebrity photos, tiled floors, diamond-pattern steel, vinyl, formica, soda pop signs, and pulp mags.

It feels like a true neighborhood joint. Red-clad servers dash through the narrow aisles and are generally really friendly. There are always daily deals going on: Mellow Mondaze, Thursty Thursdays, Fish-Fry Fridays, Á la mode Saturdays... you know the drill.

The menu is a combination of "Omigod I think my parents used to eat this" (such as New York Egg Creams and Alabama Cheese Eggs), and newer options like 7-grain Almond Granola Pancakes. Bianca loves when they're serving Sweet Potato Pancakes; with strawberries piled on top, they're like moist, oven-toasty muffin tops, even before the warmed syrup is poured over them.

For more lunchy burgery things, there's the Super Burger (you can get them turkey or veggie), with fatty, spitting-off-the-grill curls of bacon and avocado smothering under a queen-sized comforter of melted jack cheese. No mustard is needed, and I always put mustard on burgers if it's available.

The fries are skin-on and fried soft, so I like getting them well done. Make them Garlic Cheddar Fries, and they become almost painful; a yellow lattice of cheese barely covers mounds of pungent, pore-rupturing garlic. Less threatening but even more flavorful are the Chili Cheese Fries, with the same crissing and crossing of cheddar over an honest, brick-red mixture of ground meat, kidney beans and tomatoes. It's perfect chili for fries, requiring a bit of fork-work.

I'm not sure what makes the Frisco Club different from other clubs, but it's a brawny, dry-crunch sandwich on sourdough with thick cuts of bacon, a subtle schmear of thousand-island dressing, avocado, and a half inch of lettuce--I add mustard to this one. There's also a Tuna, Avocado and Cheddar Cheese Melt (do we see a pattern with the cheddar love? Yes. Yes, we do), an open-face sandwich that must remain so, as its soft, perfectly-meshing flavors are too structurally unsound to try to pick up.

Cafe 50's has thirty-five or so milkshakes, such as a Strawberry Cheesecake shake and a Coffee Banana Malt, but you know me by this point; I get the Oreo Cookie shake and have it made with chocolate ice cream. It's vigorously mixed, smooth and creamy, the Oreos reduced to a flavor-giving paste.

Boysenberry pie! Bianca is so happy! Lemon-Lime pie! Dave is so happy! Real Cherry Coke! And until 3pm, hazelnut coffee! We're both so happy! It's the little things, really.