Taco Lita

Almost every person I know who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley has some sort of relationship with Taco Lita. They are not the best tacos by any stretch of the imagination - I lived for a year just south of Olympic near Koreatown and without thinking too hard I can come up with a dozen better taco joints that were closer to me than Taco Lita is to the house I grew up in - but there is undeniably something magical about the place.

My friends who grew up here talk about it in the way our parents' generation talk about Sandy Koufax. Whenever I mention that I have eaten Taco Lita that day, my friend Tracie gets a smile on her face and she says "Mmm. The ultimate Mexican food for white people." My buddy Murph's reaction is less subtle but no less honest: he simply says "You bastard."
When I was young my order was always the same - 6 tacos, no lettuce, no tomatoes. When I was 11 my grandparents sold their house up on the hill and moved to a condo two blocks away from Taco Lita. This excited me much more than the jacuzzi or basketball hoop in the complex. In high school sometimes my dad would take me there after basketball practice. I would order between 6 and 9 tacos (again with no tomatoes; I think it wasn't until I was about 25 that I was willing to just pick the tomatoes off myself.)
As long as I can remember they have had a "Friday Special." When I was a kid it was 5 tacos for the price of 4. Tacos were each 95 cents back then. Now tacos are $1.55 each, and the special is 5 tacos for $6.95. It's not quite the same savings but it's a good deal.
Last Friday I stopped by my parents' house to use their computer, which is faster (and more secure) than mine, and they were both home. I went down to Taco Lita to get lunch for all of us. I ordered 15 tacos (my dad eats the leftovers all weekend long) and the only thing my mom has ever ordered there: a jumbo burrito, no beans, extra lettuce, easy meat. I had never really studied the burrito before but I was impressed with its size.
My tacos were the same as they have always been, which is to say delicious. There is nothing remarkable about the meat, although it is not terribly greasy, which is always a plus. The cheese and lettuce are the same as you get at any fast food joint. The thing that pulls it all together is the sauce. It is unquestionably the best hot sauce out of a packet that I have ever had.
It would be impossible for me to accurately state how many times I have eaten Taco Lita tacos, but it is likely that I have eaten there more than anywhere else. Maybe I have been to In-n-Out more, but probably not. And I do not ever see the day coming when I pass up an offer of Taco Lita tacos on a Friday.

Garlic & Basil Pizza

There are some absolutely exquisite flavor combinations: lobster and drawn butter. Milk and cookies. Spaghetti and meatballs. Bratwurst and beer. Baby seal and anything.

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But I'm not sure if there is anything as good as roasted garlic and basil on a pizza. As I have quoted my hero T.E.L. above, it is an almost divine combination. (That's not T.E. Lawrence, by the way. A couple people have asked me that.)

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I was in the mood for pizza but I wanted to watch the UCLA basketball game. And I won't ever get pizza delivered unless there is a very good reason. (The only reasons that come to mind are if I've had too much to drink or am too sick to go pick up the pizza.) I had a package of pizza dough in the fridge, though. I never used to like making pizza in the oven with fresh dough because it always cooked too unevenly. Even years ago when I had a pizza stone, it never seemed to work.

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But a few weeks ago I got an email about an after-Christmas (er, "after-holiday") sale at Macy's. A pizza-cooking pan was marked down from $30 to less than $10. It looked good so I bought it. It is one of the best kitchen gadgets I have ever owned. The dough gets cooked on the bottom but not burnt. I have made two or three pizzas on the pan and they have been great.

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I felt like making my standard roasted garlic and basil pizza. I tossed several cloves of garlic with some olive oil (more specifically, the garlic oil that was part of the set my parents gave me for Christmas, which made the whole house smell like roasted garlic - which is not a bad thing) and roasted them in a pan over low heat for about 15 minutes. I rolled out the pizza dough and let it sit on the pan for a few minutes and covered it with pizza sauce, the garlic, some tiny pieces of a sharp New Zealand cheddar, and slices of mozzarella cheese.
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The mozzarella I had was from Trader Joe's and was pre-sliced. On the package were the words "Individually sliced for convenience." You know, so you don't have to go through the anguish of slicing a mozzarella log. Christ, we're lazy. (Years ago I was taking a cooking class at a bakery/cafe and the instructor was showing us how to toast spices for a pumpkin pie. She threw a bunch of spices in a dry frying pan and cooked them over a flame for about 30 seconds. A woman immediately asked if she could save time by purchasing pre-toasted spices.)

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After cooking the pizza in the oven for about 15 minutes I added lots of very fresh basil. There is nothing better than fresh basil. Basil always smells good, even the dried flakes I've had in a plastic container in my cupboard for 5 years. But fresh basil has that anise scent and peppery, sweet flavor.

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This was the best homemade pizza I have ever made.

T.G.I. Friday's Frozen Snacks

I have been to T.G.I. Friday's restaurants four times. Once I had a very good pulled pork sandwich, but the other three visits were all terrible. Years ago, when I saw they were coming out with a line of frozen snacks, I shuddered and thought 'well, there's some food I will never try.'

My friend Elizabeth loves fried cheese, though. It's not only her favorite food in the world, it's probably her favorite thing in the world (other than her cat, which makes sense, and her framed Don Mattingly poster, which does not.) So one day I decided to get a box of TGIF fried cheese and see how it is. We both thought it was surprisingly good.

Last week Ralph's had most of the TGIF snacks on sale for $1.97 each (the normal price is about $4.99.) I decided at that price I should give several of the items a try and see how they taste.

The "Sweet & Smoky Popcorn Chicken" was my favorite of the bunch. The chicken was white meat, the breading was really tasty, and was actually both sweet and smoky. (I know that's what it's called, but I expected them to be lying; years ago my brother and I ate at TGI Friday's in Boulder, Colorado, and had items with their barbecue sauce that they proclaimed was "the best ever," and we both felt sick after lunch.)

The mozzarella sticks were again good. I like the marinara sauce that comes with it but Elizabeth does not like it at all. Every time we have had these cheese sticks together she uses Ken's Steakhouse honey mustard, which is also great.

The cheddar and bacon potato skins were also very good. Unfortunately I do not have a picture of them. I was making dinner for Elizabeth and my friend Tracie and I made them as a snack while dinner was cooking; I was so preoccupied with making sure I didn't screw up dinner that I didn't stop to take a picture.

The beer battered onion rings were lousy. They were mostly breading and little onion, and even though I fried them, the breading still tasted rubbery and not crispy. I will never eat these again.

The Mexican-style chicken quesadillas were good and bad. The chicken, cheese and salsa was all very tasty. But there was hardly any of it. If I had combined the filling out of both quesadillas into one, it would have been acceptable. But I had to put some barbecue sauce and cilantro in each of them so they weren't so dry and empty. These are definitely not worth the full price.

If Ralph's ever puts these items on sale again for such a low price, I will get more of the popcorn chicken and potato skins. And I will probably always get the fried cheese. But I will not have the onion rings or quesadillas again.

Philly's Best: Philly Chicken & Pepper

The other night I agreed to continue the search for a bridesmaid dress that I mentioned in the post about Jake's Roadhouse. Before that lunch we had gone to the David's Bridal in Duarte, which was a nightmare. Not a single person there tried to help us and there was not a single dress in my friend's size. So I offered to go with her to the David's Bridal in Burbank. Except it was pouring down that night and traffic was bad, so she did not want to drive home and then have to drive up to Burbank. I volunteered to meet her in Hollywood, where she works, and drive up to Burbank with her.

She offered to buy me dinner anywhere I wanted. I ran through all the options: Mozza? Hungry Cat? Ruth's Chris? But then I realized what I really wanted: a hot cheesesteak, fries, and to watch the Lakers game on the flatscreen TV at Philly's Best. What could be better than that?

Every time I have eaten at Philly's Best - which is getting more and more frequent these days - I have had the same thing: the Philly Pepper Steak with cheese. I had never tried the chicken. If ain't broke, don't fix it, you know? But I was curious.

It was fantastic. I added a few hot peppers, as usual. I gave my friend - who is also a huge fan of the steak - a taste, and she agreed it was great, much better than expected. Of course, it wasn't as good as the steak, but still a nice surprise. My fries were the best I have ever had there.

As usual, I only ate half my sandwich and took the rest with me, either to eat later that night or for breakfast the next day. This time it was the latter. Unfortunately, the chicken does not reheat as well as the steak. The steak sandwich is almost better the next day when toasted in the oven. The chicken is nowhere near as good.

The chicken sandwich was a one-time thing. It was really good and if Philly's Best only offered chicken sandwiches I would still eat there frequently. But that steak is just too damn good to pass up ever again.

Jake's Roadhouse

I've written about Jake's Roadhouse twice on my barbecue blog. I like the place a lot, although their barbecue is not great. Recently I took my friend over to Monrovia to look for a bridesmaid dress (for her, not me) and afterwards we wanted to get something to eat outside. It was a nice day, not rainy like the last couple days, so we sat at a sidewalk table. I wasn't in the mood for barbecue and the "Diablo" sandwich - buffalo chicken - sounded good to me. My friend went for the cheeseburger.

The chicken breast was very thin. It was probably a quarter-inch at most. But it was still good, because it was battered with a fresh beer batter and dipped in a tasty hot sauce. Not very spicy, but tasty nonetheless. My friend's burger, which she ordered well done, looked overcooked to me (I'm a medium-rare guy as long as the beef is decent quality) but she really liked it. We both enjoyed our fries, which I always do at Jake's.

I'm sure the next time I go to Jake's I will switch back to barbecue. I've never tried their tri-tip or hot link sandwiches. But this was a nice meal. Being able to sit outside on a February afternoon underneat a neon "B-B-Q" sign is always a good time.