Breakfast and Beatniks

This food adventure starts off the same way most do--with a phone call.

Penelope ( I'm naming her this because she looks like a younger Penelope Cruz...and because she hates when people say so.): Hey! What are you doing??

Me: Nothing.

Penelope: Have you eaten, yet?

Trick question. I've always just eaten. Why doesn't she know this?

Me: uhhh......no?

Penelope: OK. I'm picking you up. I'll be there in 5 minutes.

Me: Crap!.....Ok...(It's mid-morning. I put food in my mouth before I put pants on my legs. It's just who I am.) I need to change. Bye.


Ten minutes later we're driving and I get informed that we're going to eat falafels. I'm shocked -- not at thought of falafels, but that any of my friends entertain the idea of eating anything other than burritos or pho without it being someone's birthday. She told me it was a place featured on the Food Network and she wanted to try it. (Friends have been more eager and adventurous when it comes to food now that I have started this blog and another position I'll mention another day.)

We get there and I realize it's a place I've eaten from before, but never visited. It is the humble home of the place that made my very first falafel, The Falafel Drive-In. It is everything it's name implies. A small, run-down building resembling those old-fashioned, roadside A&W eateries from the 1950's (or the Outkast video for "Roses"). A great American relic...owned by Middle Easterners - oh, America.

We gaze up at the menu, and I'm immediately disgusted. It's cheap. Ridiculously, impossibly, cheap.

Gyros, falafel, baklava.... specials, salads, desserts, burritos (because it's California, and to not feature burritos is to intentionally ignore the very obvious fact that this state is the first-world extension of Mexico). I'm getting greedy, and now my friend and I are publicly announcing the various combinations we'll shortly be inhaling.

"The special, no, yea...Large falafel, banana shake...and fries. Wait, no! Ok, no, fries."

I'm next.

"Small gyros, baklava."

We managed to order with our logic, not our gut.




We ate.

It was everything I remembered it to be: pockets of pita bread stuffed so generously that after two and a half bites it burst under the pressure of my anxious hands, crunchy veggies tossed evenly with a thick, white sauce that perfectly paired with the spiced outer layer of the tender gyros. And the freshly whipped topping on this metaphorical cake?? ....a homemade creation of tangy deliciousness. (Try to imagine a spiced and seasoned ketchup.)

My only gripe... the pieces of gyros were too big. (I like to take lady-like bites as I ravage my food like a rabid hyena.)

As I sat, -- cautiously flicking my tongue at my crispy baklava (it's the only way I can handle any amount of honey)-- I was suddenly proud; proud of the Food Network, and all the people sitting around me for that matter.

Who says you need a 5-star restaurant or indoor restrooms to enjoy good food? Who says "authentic" ethnic food can only be found situated between a loose-leaf tea shop and a Korean-owned sushi bar? Here we were -- Pink Poodle, the neighborhood strip club, around the corner and Korean Palace, Korean "restaurant" that never has its lights on or "open" sign up, to the left -- basking in the mid-winter sun, eating our fill for $7 or less on top of dirty picnic tables (and possibly a stolen Taco Bell bench).

Sometimes it is good to be pedestrian.

For those who think otherwise, well, this song is for you...



Artsy - The Grouch