Midtown Lunch

As is customary on Midtown Lunch, every Tuesday we’ll profile a random reader to get their recommendations for the best spots to lunch near their work. This week it’s Matt, an interactive producer who works on the westside, but is looking for some good shawarma downtown.

Name: Matt

Age: 34

Occupation: Interactive Producer (and blogger at Dig Lounge)

Where in L.A. do you Work?: Where Culver City and Marina Del Rey meet.

Favorite Kind of Food: Such a tough question. Classic American comfort food would fit a lot into one genre I guess. But my first real job was slinging pizzas, lasagna, manicotti, et al, at a small Italian cafe in Whittier, so I would have to say Italian too.

Least Favorite Kind of Food: Maybe African. On a Jungle Food Marathon with some other bloggers we stopped in at Nkechi African Cafe and tried some Ogbono Soup and Egusi Soup. It just didn’t agree with my palette at all.

Favorite Place(s) to Eat Lunch: The newly opened Mendocino Farms in the Marina (4724 Admiralty Way), their sandwiches are so good. Otherwise I go to Taqueria Sanchez (4525 Inglewood Blvd.) The lomo there is outstanding. When a taco joint is filled with the local hispanic residents and workers, you know you’re in the right place. It’s one of the few places you get lunch for under 5 bucks on the West Side.

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I don’t know what “Museum Dining” evokes in your mind, but for me two things immediately pop into my head: “overpriced” and “mediocre”.  Having a captive audience is never a good thing when it comes to eating (I’m looking at you theme parks and airports), and cafes inside museums tend to fall into that category.  So when I heard that Cafe Hammer, the Wolfgang Puck run cafe inside the Hammer Museum in Westwood had a grilled cheese lunch special with a soup and salad for $8.75 (!?!) I was kind of shocked.  (As was the person who recommended it to me.)  Add to that a rare roast beef sandwich with horseradish aoli for $8.50, kobe beef sliders for $7.25 (!?), and the hammer joe (ham-turkey-swiss-coleslaw-russian-dressing) for $8.50, all in an open to the public, beautiful atrium setting, and you have all the makings of a great midtown lunch.

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Potato Stick Pizza (!?!) from Bella Vista in Culver City

• CULVER CITY All you can eat Brazillian pizza for $10 [Squid Ink]
• KOREATOWN Hello mutton kebab! [Gourmet Pigs]
• KOREATOWN Finally a bibimbap that’s worth $10 [SinoSoul]
• SILVERLAKE Cowboys and Turbans gets a new menu [Quarry Girl]
• HOLLYWOOD “The Guru” recommends the boat noodles at Pa-Ord [LAW]
• HOLLYWOOD Whoa! Should have gone here for my cajun seafood fix [Glutster]
• SANTA MONICA Nonna’s Empanadas should open today [UD via Eater]
• MOBILE Fresser’s becomes the latest food truck to call it quits [LAist]

I have a confession to make.  I love steam table “Chinese” food.  You know the places I’m talking about, right?  You walk in, point to two or three things plus rice and/or noodles, pay around $5, and walk out with a delicious meal that leaves you with nothing but regrets a few hours later.  I can’t help it.  I love dim sum.  I love Sichuan peppercorns.  I wish I lived in the San Gabriel Valley.  But I also love Panda Express, and will defend their orange chicken and lo mein as benchmarks of their genre until the day I die (possibly from eating General Tso’s chicke too much…  it did send me to the hospital in college.)

That being said, Panda Express isn’t really a Midtown Lunch.  Sure, if one opened in Midtown Manhattan it would be huge news… but here, they’re on every corner.  In every outdoor mall. In every food court.  And this site is about finding the off the beaten path places.  The lunch spots that your boring non Midtown Lunch’er co-workers would turn their noses up at (as they order another turkey $5 footlong.)  So when a friend of mine and I walked by the never been reviewed on Yelp (we’re talking off the off the beaten path here!) Patty’s Chinese Express Downtown the other day, after discovering that Uncle John’s Ham & Eggs had closed, and he said “why don’t we try this place out?”, I couldn’t resist taking it as a personal challenge.

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Like many attendees of this years Grilled Cheese Invitational I left hot, sweaty, and completely grilled cheese-less.  If you didn’t have a “judges pass”, the entries were off limits, and if you didn’t want to wait in long lines at one of the few mobile vendors selling food, you were basically SOL. So when I heard that Locali, the “conscious convenience” store on Franklin & Van Ness was selling their DaVincheese sandwich- the 1st place winner in the Professional/Kama Sutra category– I headed right over to see what I had missed out on.

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The nominees for the 1st Annual Los Angeles Vendy Awards have been announced… congrats to India Jones, the Hot Dog Kings, Bigmista’s BBQ, Nina’s Food, Grilled Cheese Truck, & Tacos El Galuzo. The winner will be crowned on May 15th in MacArthur Park, tickets are $50 and all proceeds go to benefit non profit organizations that advocate on behalf of street vendors here in Los Angeles. (It’s like a charity street food version of the Oscars!)

Watch a video about all of the nominees, plus buy your tickets for the event here…

Related:
The Vendy Awards Are Coming to L.A.
India Jones’ Butter Chicken is a Force to Be Reckoned With