Toll for the Road: The Epic Quest for Gluttony

by Tony Chavira

To place a very deliberate plug, I was eating at this place in Arcadia across from the Santa Anita Racetrack called Derby with a good friend of mine and the food and service were mind-blowingly, breath-stealingly, jaw-falling-offingly awesome. "Awesome" in the biblical sense of the word: awe-inspiring, awe-inducing. The review that my friend dug up came from a book written by Jonathan Gold called Counter Intelligence, a collection of his food critiques from his former LA Weekly articles, and had the coolest anything I had read in a while in regards to Derby's filet mignon, calling it "steak-flavored butter." With a promise to temporarily cut off my circulation like that, we headed down to Derby to feast plentifully or/and die trying.

detail from Hieronymus Bosch, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things

Admittedly, I have some problems digesting overly complex proteins so I got the lamb chops (as if they were going to be any easier to digest) while my friend happily ordered the aforementioned steak cut. Apparently the butter comes in both steak and lamb flavors, and when you throw in the butter/cheese/chives mashed potato mix, bacon-wrapped scallops, and garlic bread we both left that place feeling the happy onset of a food-induced coma. We both agreed that we needed to walk for at least 15 minutes in the cold bitterness of 10 pm winter Arcadia to get some of the energy flowing into our respective bloodstreams, instead of sitting around in the warm car in all of its cozy comfort waiting for the cholesterol to move to our larger capillaries. Arcadia at night's still a nice place visually, but there were negative numbers of people walking on the streets, even on Huntington Boulevard. Eventually we just decided that the ride back to Monterey Park would still be about 25-30 minutes, so we should probably just get rolling.

The Derby's just one example of the multitude of amazing restaurants you can find sprinkled throughout Southern California. I've got a massive list of personal favorites which include Dumpling Master in Monterey Park, Garibaldi in East L.A., Moonshadows* in Malibu, Electric Lotus in Los Feliz, Las Brisas in Laguna Beach, Harold & Belle's in South L.A., Tito's Tacos in Culver City, Aroma Coffee and Tea in Studio City, Z-Sushi in Alhambra, Kareem's Restaurant in Anaheim ... I need to stop writing or else I'll actually pull the list out and start getting all obsessed over what to eat tonight and for the rest of the month.

But come on, are you really going to drive to Fullerton for delicious Turkish food on my recommendation? Is it worth it to leave your cozy Koreatown residence to head down to Laguna Beach for breakfast? If you're in Riverside you're probably not going to head over to Moonshadows for lunch on a whim. And that's really too bad, and, yes, you're missing out. But I wouldn't say that it's your fault. Traffic definitely gets in the way: urban sprawl makes it harder to get to the freeway in the first place and once you're on it you might as well be moving through a parking lot.

Buses in Los Angeles aren't conducive to getting anywhere either, unfortunately for you. That mouth-watering Derby steak won't be eating itself, but you're also not going to wait for five bus transfers from Redondo Beach before you get there. But I know there's a point at which a food recommendation will outweigh the distance and effort it takes to get there. When you're living by USC, Harold & Belle's is a 5-minute drive, 15-minute walk. Las Brisas, being a 50-mile drive, seems pretty out of hand.

So here's the question: how easy does it have to be before a place seems within-reach to you? Southern California is essentially uninhibited urban sprawl, so you'll always technically be connected. Everything's technically accessible. These restaurants aren't technically out of your reach. But you need to ask yourself a tough question: are you going to let the effort of light travel stand in the way between you and "steak-flavored butter," or are you going to undertake the epic quest to fill yourself to contentment on deliciously decadent fare, even if you have to slay your whole afternoon, your gas budget, and eventually your arteries to do it?

Take my recommendation, go forth and eat like you've never eaten before: EVERYWHERE!

*[No link for Moonshadows because Flash sites are lame.—Ed.]