Dog Haus Biergarten

Dog Haus Biergarten has only been open for a few months but I'm going to miss it as much as most other restaurants around Pasadena. Once upon a time there were quite a few options for inexpensive dining in Old Town that I liked, whether it was the two sandwiches and pitcher of beer that my friends and I would split at Rack Shack, the tacos at Ernie Jr.'s or the slices of pizza from Bada Bing.

These days there are cheap places and there are good places and they don't really overlap. But Dog Haus Biergarten allows the two of us to get a couple burgers and sodas and split an order of fries for right around twenty bucks. In Old Town, where some places get four bucks for a single slice of pizza and others get fifteen for a deli sandwich, I've always been happy with that arrangement. And if I'm in the mood for a beer, well, they have that too.

The other day I stopped by for lunch with my parents, an easy trip for all of us but especially so for my dad: from our table on the patio I had a view of his office a hundred yards away. We ordered two burgers, a hot dog, fries and three sodas; it was twenty-five bucks pre-tax. (On our last lunch in Old Town, the name of the restaurant which needs not be repeated, the total was about three times that for much lower quality food.)

My mom ordered the Ringer: a burger with cheese, smoked bacon, barbecue sauce and an onion ring. She thought it was very good.

My dad went with the Holy Aioli. If you've been a reader for a while you've seen it before: Elizabeth gets it every time and it cracked the top 15 of my Top 20 For 2011: a burger with bacon, cheese, caramelized onions, and aioli. My dad thought it was fine although he did not care for the sweetness of the King's Hawaiian rolls. But take his opinion with a grain of salt: "Bread is just a vehicle to make it easier for me to eat the meat," he claimed. 

I had the Scott Baioli: basically the Holy Aioli in hot dog form, named after the star of my favorite sitcom of the 80s. Did I like it? Hell yes. Did I love it as much as the burger? No, not really. I think the toppings are better served on a burger.

As usual, I got some of Dog Haus's curry ketchup for the fries.

It was a good lunch. So good, I went back later in the day and got another dog.

This time I got the Cowboy: American cheese, onion rings, barbecue sauce, bacon and crispy onion bits. It was great.

And I may even go back again in the next four days.

Yujean Kang's Gourmet Chinese Cuisine

Ever see Mr. & Mrs. Smith? (The movie got ripped, but I thought it was halfway decent. Not great by any means, but considering how s**tty most action movies are these days, I didn't mind it at all.) There is a scene where Brad Pitt's character, after realizing his wife is also an assassin and he's probably going to have to kill her before she kills him, starts reminiscing with her about the first time they met. "I guess that's what happens in the end," he says. "You start thinking about the beginning."

It's hard, when thinking about leaving Pasadena, to over-emphasize how important Yujean Kang's was in my appreciation of food. There was a time, 20 years ago or so, when I would not go to a restaurant unless they had fried cheese on the menu. I am not exaggerating. The concept of eating something called "tiny dumplings with hot chili oil" was so foreign to me it might as well have been Sanskrit. Or girls.

But then, in my early teens, I finally tried those dumplings. You had to work for them - those little things are hard for me to pick up with chopsticks now; believe me when I say it was next to impossible then. But when you finally did get one, the payoff was remarkable: juicy, spicy, chewy... I just had no idea non-fried-cheese could be so delicious.

Maybe something else would have come along and kick-started my inquisitiveness for other cuisines, but it happened how it happened. Without those tiny dumplings it's safe to say I would not have tried any Chinese food besides orange chicken. Certainly I would not have discovered dim sum, which in turn would probably have meant no sushi or Thai food or banh mi.

So one more trip to Yujean Kang's was in order. Elizabeth and I stopped in for dinner. The place was packed. We took one of the only two available tables in the back of the restaurant.

I'm not a big drinker of white wines, but I felt in the mood for a Riesling, which complements Chinese cuisine relatively well. They were out of the first two I ordered. I asked if they had any of the listed Rieslings in stock.

"Our house Riesling," the waiter offered.

"Okay," I said, not wanting to put any more effort into the ordering.

It was a very fruity, even more so than I was anticipating. But we drank the whole bottle.

We started with the minced chicken lettuce cups. Sorry the picture isn't better, but the light was low and, as I mentioned, the restaurant was crowded. I did not want to distract other diners with the flash. I love these chicken cups, they are some of my favorite, especially with the spicy mustard.

Elizabeth suggested we try the "Spicy Prawns With Glazed Walnuts." I said sure. The shrimp were absolutely delicious: plump, hot and juicy and cooked perfectly. I don't know why they call these spicy, but I wasn't really expecting spiciness. I have never been a big walnut fan, but I ate a couple of these and they were fine.

I have yet to eat at Yujean Kang's (as an adult) and fail to order the Crispy Beef. When done right, it is one of my five favorite dishes in Pasadena. And these were done right. The portion was smaller than I ever remember receiving, but the quality was just as good. Crispy, beefy, salty, and a touch sweet.

I don't eat at Yujean Kang's nearly as much as I used to - it had been more than a year since my previous visit. But I am certainly going to miss it and I'm glad we made it back for one last meal.

King's Row Gastropub

I've gone to King's Row quite a few times since they opened last spring - probably more than twenty - and taken several pictures, but never written about the place in detail. Sure, at the end of last year I called their duck sliders the 10th best new item I tried in 2011, and during Pasadena Cheeseburger Week I called their rib eye burger my 7th favorite burger in Pasadena. (As you can see in the above photo, other people like them too.) But I never did a full rundown of the place. And now I find myself with only a week left in town and more than 50 photos of the place. So let's go through a few.

 The inside is really attractive, with high ceilings, wooden tables, and some brick walls.

But I almost always sit on the patio, usually with my friend Bryce.

And often his daughter, Lucy.

There are many different beers I have had here: St. Feuillien, Modelo, PBR, Lagunitas Pils, Racer 5, Victory Prima Pils.

Lucy has to drink water, though. Because she's only two.

One time my friend Penny was sitting at the bar and she gave me a taste of her Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron, a 12% alcohol brown ale that I would certainly describe as "aggressive."

The menu here changes frequently. When going through my photos of the last 11 months, I found no fewer than seven different menus I had photographed. So I am including photos from my most recent trip three weeks ago, but I won't be surprised if the menu has already changed.

Here are the duck sliders, which I have not had in months but absolutely loved the last time I ate them.

On one occasion I ate the burger by myself, on another a friend ordered one and cut it into quarters to share. Both times it was great.

The merguez sausage corndog, with a root beer batter, sounded like a great idea but was not. The incredibly salty sausage was tolerable; the gummy, semi-solid batter was not. I do not believe this is on the menu any longer. 

When I had the tandoori chicken pizza, it was five dollars on the happy hour menu. Now it's seven. (Like the menu itself, the prices have jumped all over the place in the last year.) The pizza was tasty but had been left in the oven a little too long, so several of the slices were burnt. At the happy hour price, I let it go. If it had been the full menu price ($11) I would not have.

I only had the fish & chips once and it was the best fish & chips I have ever eaten in Old Town. A crispy batter, delicate, moist fish inside, and perfectly-cooked fries. (Like Neomeze in this space before it, King's Row's fries are some of my favorite in town.) So why did I only try it once? Well, I was with a friend at the bar one day, told him how fantastic the fish & chips were, then watched him receive an order that looked embarrassingly awful. Which he said they were. So I never placed another order myself. Kind of silly, perhaps. Whatever.

I had lunch at the bar with my buddy Andy one time and he had that day's special: the lobster roll. It came topped with cheese. I have never seen a lobster roll topped with cheese before. I thought it looked horrible. Andy, who is one of the most optimistic people I have ever met, simply said "It's very rich."

I had the "Highland Park Pulled Pork Sandwich" that day - carnitas braised with Coke and OJ, with a chipotle-pomegranate barbecue sauce. It was was absolutely delicious, although the messiest sandwich I have eaten in years. (A small price to pay for how good it was.)

The "turkey pastrami" sandwich was supposed to come with cole slaw and I wish it had, because this was one of the driest sandwiches I have ever eaten. It's not on the current menu, however.

I was dining with Murph that day, so, like a mother instinctively cutting her child's steak, I immediately grabbed his ketchup and put it on my plate when it was served. Just the sight of it could have been enough to make him sick. True, he's not my child, he's acually five years older than I, but it was still for the best.

Murph had the pulled pork sandwich that day and also loved it.

On another occasion I ordered the quattro formaggi pizza. Like the tandoori pizza earlier, this was just fine during happy hour but if I had paid full price for it I would have felt ripped off.

So that's the rundown. I don't think I would ever make King's Row a regular dining destination (although from all these photos, it kind of looks like I did), and on a couple of occasions when it was crowded I did not enjoy myself, but for a weekday lunch or a drink on the patio during happy hour, it's one of the most pleasant places in town.