Burgers, Beer and Blues at Firefly Bistro

"You know I fed you when you hungry baby, held you when you're sad

I gave you everything, mama, that I ever had

You know I did, you never helped me at all

Give me back that wig I bought you, let your goddamn head go bald"

                                                                   -  "Statesboro Blues"

I wrote about Firefly Bistro one year ago, when I went to the Sunday "Blues Brunch." It was a great time, but I don't think I have been back. The other day I checked out Firefly's website to see what their winter menu looks like, and I noticed they are doing Thursday night "Burgers, Beer and Blues." I knew Elizabeth was leaving work an hour earlier than usual on Thursday, and I knew my parents had never been to the South Pasadena farmers market and wanted to go, so I suggested we all go to Firefly for dinner. My dad is almost surely the person most responsible for me loving the blues. When I was 15, and my CD collection consisted mostly of Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, I put on one of his Muddy Waters CDs one night just for the hell of it. I have never looked at music the same. 

The farmers market was as slow as I have ever seen it, perhaps one-tenth the number of people who would be there on a summer evening at the same time. Still, we bought a few things and sat down for dinner. My parents and Elizabeth all ordered iced teas, and I did as well, but then saw Abita Turbodog on the menu and quickly ordered one. There aren't many things I love more than a proper pint of Guinness, but Turbodog is one of them. We all ordered burgers: my mom, Elizabeth and I ordered the classic burger (adding different toppings to it); my dad ordered the burger special of the night: blue cheese with caramelized fennel and bacon mayo (two things I have never heard of and did not sound good, but it was his burger.)

We listened to the blues while we waited for our food. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy Barry Brenner. He played several rock & roll songs that he rearranged into a blues format ("The Weight," "Willin'" ), he did a beautiful version of "Statesboro Blues," and he did a version of "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" that was probably  the second-best version I have ever heard. (The best version, unquestionably, was Dylan & the Hawks on their 1966 tour. Check out this youtube clip if you want to hear what rock sounded like once upon a time. It's possible that better rock has been made since then, but I haven't heard it.)

All our burgers arrived after just a few minutes. Curiously, although we had requested them cooked three different ways, they all appeared to be medium-rare. That's how I ordered mine, though, so I'm not complaining. (Nobody else did either; the meat at Firefly is very high quality.) I only took pictures of my burger and Elizabeth's. Hers, the first pictured, came with gruyere cheese and avocado slices dusted with red chili. My burger had gruyere as well, with pickled jalapeno peppers.  It was fantastic: spicy, juicy, cheesy... it was one of those burgers you get on occasion that needs no condiments.  

The fries that came with burgers were worthless: limp, soggy pieces of potato that served no purpose other than sweating oil onto the plate. But the burger was so good I didn't really care. (And, to be honest, I ate all my fries and a couple of Elizabeth's.) Barry finished his penultimate set of the evening just as we finished our dinner, and, although it was tempting to have a couple more Turbodogs and listen to his last set, we left. 

I can highly recommend checking out Firefly for some Burgers and Blues on a Thursday night.  

Clearman's Galley (The Boat)

[Note: The official name of the restaurant is Clearman's Galley. But in all honesty, I don't believe I have ever heard a single person call it that.] 

One night early in the decade some friends and I watched a big Lakers playoff game while we had dinner at The Boat. The place was packed past capacity and everyone was loud. I do not remember how many beers or slices of cheese bread I had that night, but it's safe to guess it was a lot. I had a purple J Crew shirt that I wore for every big game in those days. It never let me down and, though it was stained with cheese bread that night, it came through again. The final seconds of the game ticked down, the Lakers won, I hi-fived more strangers than I ever have before or since, and got myself another schooner of beer. I never knew me a better time and I guess I never will.

And then I never went back. I got a little older and less tolerant of drunken crowds. The Lakers stopped winning championships. (I ruined the purple shirt in the wash that winter and the next spring the Lakers were eliminated from the playoffs for the first time in four years. I'm not saying it's because I ruined my purple shirt.... well, yes, I am. My bad.) I fell into a routine of eating most of my restaurant meals in west Pasadena. Friends and I would talk about taking a group trip to eat at The Boat but somehow we never ended up straying too far from Old Town.

By the time Elizabeth moved to California and I got around to showing her places I loved, The Boat was closed, torn down to make way for a Kohl's department store, the same bland building that exists in 1,058 other locations around the country. The space where the red Alaskan mail boat - something truly unique - had existed my entire life was now just the backside of a department store. There is a metaphor for something depressing there. (The last lines of Bill Bryson's autobiography sound more elegiac with each passing year: "Imagine having a city full of things that no other city had. What a wonderful world that would be. What a wonderful world it was. We won't see its like again, I'm afraid.")

Earlier this year I heard that The Boat reopened in a bigger, slick new building around the corner. But I didn't have much desire to go. It would be like someone telling me King Arthur's Pizza reopened, only now it's in the Arcadia mall and they don't have swords and axes hanging on the walls. When the physical makeup of a place is so integral to its greatness, how can you change locations?

Then, last spring, my mom and I went to North Woods Inn, just north of the new location of The Boat, and I realized that maybe it wouldn't be so bad. It looked like it had retained some of its charm. There was a boat out in front of the building - a smaller boat than before, true, but it was still a boat. There weren't any neon signs or attempts at modern architecture. It looked like simply a larger, cleaner version of what it used to be. I decided that eventually I would return, although I was in no hurry. While running errands with Elizabeth on Saturday, I suggested we try The Boat for lunch.

As soon as I walked in I immediately liked the new place. It's massive - I didn't take a picture of the main dining area but I would guess it can seat at least a couple hundred people - and ringed with flatscreen TVs. There is an attractive bar along one side of the room and the same old menu board suspended over the line in which you order food.

The place was packed. This came as no surprise; there were three football games on and several large groups of people watching them. We waited in line for about ten minutes, the line moving much more efficiently than I remembered it. Although it's possible I'm just not as grumpy as I used to be. I ordered a hamburger and blue cheese salad, Elizabeth ordered the fried shrimp dinner. My burger and salad were handed to me within 30 seconds and we got a number for her shrimp, with the explanation they would be brought out to us within a couple minutes. We paid for our food in the cafeteria-style line and took seats near the front of the restaurant.

The section we were in was less crowded, separated from the main dining area by a row of glass cases displaying different kinds of ships (or, you could say, boats.) Each case had a description of what kind of ship is displayed. Several older men were wandering around studying each case. I got up and took a look, and picture, of the Mississippi River stern-wheeler. Ever since I was a kid and first read Mark Twain I have been in love with this kind of boat. My favorite museum in the country is the Mississippi River Museum, on Mud Island in Memphis, due in no small part to the fact they have a cool replica of a river boat that you can stroll on. (Although their exhibits on the history of the Delta Blues are pretty amazing, too.) There are three American things I not only really want to do in my life, but feel I have to do: see the Midnight Sun Baseball Game, be in New York for Christmas, and go on a Mississippi Riverboat cruise.

By the time I was done looking at the boat, Elizabeth's shrimp had arrived, and I sat down to eat my burger. (She'd told me to go ahead and eat, but I like to be chivalrous once in a while. That was my attempt for 2009. And probably 2010 as well.) I'd forgotten how much fun these are to eat. They are not the best burgers you'll ever eat - not even close, actually - but they may well be the messiest, covered with Thousand Island dressing and The Boat's chili sauce. The chili is relatively bland by itself, but it complements the burger well. The burger always falls apart before it's done and the last of it inevitably has to be eaten with a fork, but I never mind. The blue cheese salad was great, as always.

Elizabeth's fried shrimp were outstanding. They were a little on the small side (the breading-to-meat ratio was higher than ideal) but they were perfectly fried: crispy and not overcooked. They were piled on top of a massive amount of fries. Even though I helped her with the potatoes, we couldn't finish them.

We both really enjoyed our lunch. I was sure that the reopened Boat was going to suck, that it was going to be a tinny echo of what it used to be. I have rarely been so happy to be mistaken. In the aforementioned musings of Bill Bryson, he wonders what it would be like to have the now defunct movie palaces of his youth still open, yet upgraded with digital projections and state-of-the-art sound systems. I kind of feel like that's what they've done with The Boat. They managed to retain a lot of the charm of the original and still make it a thoroughly modern place. It's almost enough to give you hope for the future of restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley.

Arroyo Chop House

One evening, in my misspent youth, I sat in a strip club on Bourbon Street, nursing a twelve dollar beer and watching Shaq score 61 points against the Clippers. Once the game was over and my attention turned away from the television, a girl came by and asked if I wanted to visit the "private room" with her for an hour.

"No, thanks," I said, without any hesitation.

"But it's only two hundred and fifty dollars an hour," she said, in a tone indicating she thought that was a good selling point.

"In that case... no."

"Well," she countered, "we have a half-hour special."

"How much is that?"

"One hundred seventy five dollars."

"How is that a special?"

"Umm... It just is."

-

I thought of that conversation the other night at the Chop House. We'll come back to that in a minute.

-

My parents got married on November 24th, 1971. (Admittedly, going from a strip club anecdote to my parents' wedding is one of the more bizarre transitions I have ever written.) That happened to be the day before Thanksgiving, so they have never celebrated on the 24th, they always celebrate the day before Thanksgiving, whatever the date may be. For the last ten years, my brother and I have gone out to dinner with them somewhere in Pasadena on Thanksgiving Eve.

At the beginning of the decade we went to P.F. Chang's a couple times, and I never argued, until I started eating at Chinese restaurants in San Gabriel and Monterey Park and realized P.F. Chang's is to good Chinese food as Lamar Odom is to James Worthy. The former is acceptable if you've never had any better, but anyone who has ever had real Chinese food made for Chinese customers (or remembers why Worthy got the nickname "Big Game James") will feel a little sick to their stomach when they eat Chang's grease-bomb entrees (or watch Odom brick layups because he is scared of contact.)

Then we went to Tokyo Wako for a couple years before deciding to change restaurants from year to year. Two years ago we went to Gale's. Last year we went to Yujean Kang's. This year, for a variety of reasons, we selected the Arroyo Chop House.

-

It had been several years since I had eaten at the Chop House. I view it like I do every other Smith Brothers restaurant: a good restaurant with the attitude and prices you would expect to find at a great restaurant. I admit I am too young to remember when the Parkway Grill opened in the 80s, but every time I have paid for a meal at one of their restaurants - or been told condescendingly by a host or hostess in a half-empty dining room that I "should have made a reservation" - I wonder where exactly the hubris comes from. Don't get me wrong, I like their restaurants and I eat at one of them at least once every few months, but I do not love any of them and I get the feeling that I am missing something.

It was almost empty when we walked in. This is not a dig at the Chop House; every restaurant we have ever gone to on the night before Thanksgiving has been like this. (Two years ago at Gale's, there were three other tables occupied, the least amount of customers I have ever seen there by a couple dozen.) We got some bread, my brother requested the garlic bread, and my dad ordered a bottle of Bergstrom Pinot Noir, from Oregon's Willamette Valley. I have never been a big Pinot drinker - I much prefer heartier Cabs or Temperanillos - but this was an exceptional wine. It was the best Pinot I have had. We had more than one bottle.

We decided not to get appetizers but to get a few sides for the table to share. Elizabeth ordered a Caesar salad and I had some of it. It was great. Not as good as the tableside Caesar that Club 41 used to make more than half a decade ago, but still one of the best I have ever had in Pasadena. For our entrees, my dad ordered the porterhouse (it was too dark where he was sitting to get a decent picture), my brother ordered the filet mignon, and Elizabeth ordered the petit filet. My mom and I both ordered the surf and turf special that the waiter told us about - a petit filet and a Pacific lobster tail.

For our side dishes, we ordered the caramelized sweet corn - something my brother said the Chop House is known for - and scalloped potatoes and creamed spinach. Unfortunately, they were all disappointing. The creamed spinach was my favorite of the bunch, but all three dishes were absolutely drowning in butter. I understand restaurants use butter a lot and I certainly like the taste of butter. But I also like the taste of whatever side dish I am ordering, and none of these dishes tasted like anything but butter. Sweet corn is one of my favorite things to eat in the entire world, and this corn had no flavor whatsoever, it was just a vehicle to eat more butter.

My entree was gorgeous looking when it arrived. My steak was the best steak I have had in many months. I had requested it medium-rare and it was perfectly cooked. The steak was buttery soft and did not require any condiment at all. (Which is a good thing; I tried the Bearnaise sauce - there is a picture of it on a piece of my steak - and did not care for it much. The other sauce I tried, the peppercorn sauce, was just bad.)

My Pacific (spiny) lobster was good. Pacific lobsters are more like large crawfish than lobsters. They aren't as good as Maine or Australian lobsters; they don't have that buttery, melt-on-your-tongue taste, but they are still very good when cooked properly.

For dessert my parents ordered a chocolate souffle and a Grand Marnier souffle. As I have written many times, I'm not much of a dessert eater, but I figured I might as well try some of the latter. So I did. I did not enjoy it. It wasn't terrible, and I guess I can see why people would love something like this, but the idea of eating something so rich and savory after such a great steak does not agree with me.

Now, back to that anecdote about the strip club. When the bill came it was pretty big, which of course we knew it was going to be, but the thing that blew us away is that my mom's and my surf and turf specials were seventy- five dollars each. Now, I did not get upset for several reasons. Most importantly, we did not ask how much the special was. I had assumed that if something was a "special" it would not be thirty dollars more than anything else on the menu, and if it was, I assumed the waiter would have said that. But you know what they say about assumptions. (I relayed this to my friend Murph later that evening and he laughed and said "Yeah, my dad always asks how much the specials are at the Chop House.")

But the thing that annoyed me is this - as I mentioned, it was a Pacific lobster tail, which is nowhere near as good as an Australian lobster tail. The Australian tail sells for 45 dollars on the menu. And the petit filet goes for 34 dollars. So, I could have ordered both entrees for 79 dollars - only four dollars more than the price of the "special" - and received a far superior lobster tail. Oh well. Both my mom and I agreed that we would not have ordered this special if we had known the price. (Which may well be why we weren't told.)

Regardless of that little issue, it was a very nice dinner. My parents both had a great time, and the waiter, overhearing that it was their anniversary, presented my mom with a bouquet of flowers. It may be another few years before I return to Arroyo Chop House. I may never return again. But it was a great time for the one occasion.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite days of the year. There is no pressure to buy presents and attend lots of parties, like at Christmas time. It's just about football and eating and hanging out with people. This year I went to my friends Jim and Rachel's house. It was a gorgeous day as we drove up Marengo. The idea that it can be 82 degrees on Thanksgiving is still a little foreign to Elizabeth, but I am just fine with it. 

There was a platter of cheese laid out for appetizers. We all love cheese and seem to eat it for any occasion. I was outside for at least a couple hours, though, so I couldn't eat very much of it. (When I fry a turkey I am always pretty safety-conscious. I don't leave the oil unattended once the flame is lit and I never leave the turkey once it's submerged in the oil, which means I miss out on some of the football and a lot of the snacks. Oh well. I suffer for my art.)

I had purchased a turkey from Trader Joe's the day before Thanksgiving a let it thaw for quite a while, although there were still some pieces of ice in the bird when I started prepping it. I ran water all over the inside and out to thaw it, then put a rub all over the turkey and let it sit while the oil heated up. 

There was probably still a little ice left in the turkey somewhere, because it immediately stated spitting oil out of the pot. Not a big deal - I had turned off the flame thinking this might be a possibility - so I just made sure the oil wasn't all over the burner and re-ignited it. But there was a fair amount of oil that had spilled onto the patio, so rather than take pictures of the turkey as it was frying, I did a couple things to help clean up the oil.

After about an hour I took the bird out and let it rest for a while. When I fry a turkey I like to take off the entire breast and chop it into thick pieces so that everyone can get a piece of skin. (I'm not a big fan of the skin, but Elizabeth loves it, so I gave her mine.) I sneaked a few pieces of turkey before plating it all; it was great.

There were 6 of us in total at dinner. Our friend Tracie, who was down in San Diego County, did not join us but made us her famous mashed potatoes. They are about as good as any I have ever had. Rachel was very sick and apologized for the dishes she made, although it certainly wasn't necessary. The stuffing was more moist than usual, but I thought it was great. (Rachel wished she'd added more bread.) The green beans were definitely undercooked, but that's how I like them. I much prefer beans with a little snap to them rather than completely mushy. Jim made the cranberry sauce, a recipe with a lot of Jack Daniels in it. I have never liked cranberry sauce but I tried it. It was very good. The booze was definitely noticeable.

We all cleaned our plates. My friend Murph cleaned four or five plates, actually. When everything was laid out on the table before the meal we thought we were going to have enough leftovers to feed twenty people, but we actually ate a lot of food and didn't have as many leftovers as we'd expected. We all took some. Kevin later informed us that he was hungry when he got home so he ate his that night. Jim ate his the next morning for breakfast, with a slice of pie. I put a bunch of leftover turkey on a piece of garlic naan and baked it in the oven for lunch the next day. It was awesome.

Back in April, Jim and Rachel got married at the Koehler Winery in Los Olivos. So we opened up a couple bottles of Koehler wine - the Sauvignon and the Cabernet. 

We had considered making pies - like we have in years gone by - but Rachel's uncle gave her an apple pie earlier in the week and Elizabeth and I decided that rather than buying all the ingredients and possibly making a sub-par pie, we should just buy one from Pie 'n Burger. So I went there the day before Thanksgiving and bought us a pumpkin pie, fresh out of the oven. 

Now, I am not a pie person - not even a dessert person, unless it's cotton candy or homemade ice cream. But both pies were fantastic. My favorite was the apple so that's what I had a slice of, although I took a couple bites of the pumpkin.

After dinner we all watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, then Elizabeth and I went home completely full and went to bed early. Another great Thanksgiving.

Porta Via

I've written about Porta Via twice before - once about their take-and-bake pizzas, and once when I ate there with Elizabeth's sisters. The other day, a slightly overcast autumn day, Elizabeth and I had lunch on their patio. It was busy - we both agreed it was as busy as we had ever seen it - but it did not take very long to get our food.

Elizabeth ordered the BLT and I had two turkey meatballs, and we split a small container of pasta with broccoli. My meatballs were good, but not as good as their regular meatballs. Obviously, the turkey contains less fat, and consequently they were a little on the dry side. I was asked if I wanted marinara sauce on top, which I did, and that helped, but then the dominant flavor of the bowl was mostly the sauce. I would not complain if I ate these again, but from now on I will stick to the regular meatballs. They are much better. 

The BLT, on the other hand, was phenomenal. "This is the best BLT I have ever had," Elizabeth said. I would not go that far, but it was indeed great. (I had several bites of it.) The pancetta was cooked perfectly. I use that word literally; there is no way it could have been improved. I would have liked some more of the basil aioli on the sandwich, but overall I loved it and I see many more of these in my future on chilly days. (By "chilly," of course, I mean anything colder than 75 degrees.)

The pasta was good but not remarkable. It was just a complement to our food, though, so it was fine. To drink I had a Diet Coke and Elizabeth had an Orangina. It has been years since I have had a sip of that - orange is not one of my favorite flavors - and I tried some of hers. I still do not like it very much.

I do not know why we don't eat at Porta Via more frequently. It is cheaper and the food is better quality than most restaurants around, certainly much better than restaurants of comparable price. Maybe one day we will get around to eating there more often. From what I can tell, they are in no danger of going out of business anytime soon, and that is a very good thing.