La Tiendita

The only way I think I could ever enjoy myself in San Clemente is if most of the people that lived there committed auto erotic suicide. Especially the Christians. As for the children of San Clemente, stop it with the heroin and the Xanax, already before you choke on your own vomit. There is nothing "cool" about that. You have not even finished High School yet. Now on to this little store. I used to have a weekend home pretty close by this place and found myself eating here frequently. My neighbor was Darryl Gates. Imagine that. While the burritos consist of a lot of food, they do not include any quality ingredients. For certain, you are going to get a football sized mass of shit wrapped in a tortilla for under $5.00 and it is going to fill you up until you can get to a town with a real Mexican restaurant (17 miles North of here in Santa Ana). Caution: do not order a fish burrito here. It is a good place to take a bunch of hungry teenagers to eat if you are sick of In n Out Burger and unable to leave this culinary/cultural wasteland. To be fair, the people that work here are pretty nice. A nice destination if you want to get into a bar fight, San Clemente is.

El Migueleno

I bet a lot of people go to eat at Salvadorean Restaurants because they may sound exotic. Sadly, the Salvadorean contribution to world cuisine, the pupusa, is a tasteless hockey puck of griddle cooked masa with cheese and pork skin that could easily be used to fill a pothole. A good pupusa is not even as good as a bad homemade tortilla! I have been to El Salvador previously, and if you are at Playa La Libertad ordering fish and lobster fresh out of the water and washing it down with cold Supremas, you are eating the very best food available in this little country. The comida tipica, which you will get at El Migueleno and most other Salvadorean restaurants however, is terribly bland and disappointing. A typical Salvadorean meal consists of lard fried plantains, refried black beans, cream, pupusas, curtido and some Pollo Campero if you are lucky. It is a nice meal, I suppose, if you have to fuel up for the day. I could go on and on about how bad the food is, and how bad it is in most of Central America in general, but the beer is cold and the people are wonderful.

Sam's Hofbrau

Having worked in the Pico Union neighborhood for the past fifteen years, I had often wondered where all of the street prostitutes working James M. Wood Blvd. went to retire. Well, after discovering Sam's Hofbrau, I finally found my answer. I find the sex industry to be pretty repulsive. Once you have seen one trashy skank that smells like tobacco smoke, rancid panocha, alcohol, and halitosis you have seen em all. But this is more than a puke-stained club filled with defective sex workers. It is a monument to filth and bad taste that serves up cheap beer, BBQ beef sandwiches, chili dogs, and haunting images that your mind will never erase. Violence can easily break out at this place. Be cautious. Alas, I am not daring enough to eat here. Sam, you have an odd sense of humor, but I likes you anyway.

Father's Office

If there is one thing that makes my blood boil, it is the people that come here and put their brittle, chapped lips on a beer glass, take a drink, and say how the burger here is the best burger they have ever tasted when these morons refuse to bring you ketchup. What is the matter with the owner of this place? Is this guy missing a chromosome or something? A hamburger without ketchup? Well, I think that it is up to me to decide whether or not I want to put ketchup on my fucking hamburger. So I brought a squeeze bottle of Heinz Ketchup for my burger and fries. Pretty good burger and fries. Nice white sauce with the fries. Of course, I covered them in ketchup, and without it, I would have thought, where is the fucking ketchup? I liked the arugula, and the onions, and the meat. The bun was okay. The beer selection here is very well thought out. No complaints here. The feeling that I am sitting in a factory courtyard with a bunch of former fraternity and sorority people makes me want to take a rape shower when I get home. Who died and made this asshole the determiner of burger free will. Motherfucker, please! People thought this was:

Sweet Lady Jane Bakery

I see a lot of fuckers coming in here cramming luscious cake into their cake holes, with their collagen injected lips thinking they are eating the best sweets on the West Coast. Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed every single solitary slice of cake that I have ever ordered from this place but I am not jumping on the excessive admiration bandwagon here. My favorites are the cocoanut, and the orange cake, hands down. The coffee is also very good. But supposing that you or a close relative have kitchen competency, access to good ingredients and can follow a recipe, a cake from your own kitchen is going to taste a hell of a lot better than the slice you are going to buy here. And believe me, you are going to pay out of the ass here.

Shojin Japanese Vegetarian Restaurant. The best vegetarian place in the world!

I have had this place bookmarked since I first read about it on Yelp last April. We eat this type of food regularly because my brother Paul is a vegan. We came here for his birthday today and immediately I got this premonition that we are going to be spending a lot of evenings (and money) at this place in the foreseeable future. The vegan delights that we tried here had immense flavor, great presentation, and a nice variety. SInce there were four of us, we were able to sample a good deal of the menu. I liked almost everything that we had, and the service and atmosphere were most enjoyable as well. We came at around 2PM, so there were not very many customers and the servers were really attentive but I could imagine that when it is busy here, it must be difficult to get their attention. We ordered the following dishes: 1) Dynamite roll 2) Dragon Roll 3) Shojin Roll 4) Pirates Crunchy 5) Kale Carnival 6) Stuffed shittake 7) Rock Mountain Roll 8) Shiso tempura 9) Gyoza 10) Hot, Spicy Ramen 11) Miso Soup 12) Orange Chicken 13) Pumpkin Chowder 14) Ice Cream The sushi rolls are obviously top of the line. The gyoza, well, these things are pretty fucking good and although I am accustomed to pork and shrimp, I could easily down a dozen of these in a sitting. The vegan ramen was just awesome but everything was five stars. I thought very highly of this place. Great service to boot. Hail seitan!

Kulak's Woodshed

I found out about this place because of the story in the LA Weekly last year about that retarded porn star who was fighting with this poor guy. This place is a true treasure of the City of Los Angeles. Kulak is a noble gentleman, and his fine establishment deserves our widespread support from Yelpers everywhere. It kind of reminded me of some shows that I used to go to at Luna Park over 15 years ago. True lovers of music will have tears welling in their eyes in this place. No have a cigar vibe going on in here. I place the music, atmosphere, and people here very high on a pedestal. I sincerely felt like I was in a different City because most of the venues in Los Angeles have been ruined by Goldenvoice, KROQ, and other corporate weasels. Not the Woodshed. Keep up the good work, Kulak. I tell all my friends about this place, without reservation. I am glad the LA Weekly did that story that led me here.