Midtown Lunch

In case you missed it, the cover story of this month’s Los Angeles Magazine is dedicated to a topic that is near and dear to our heart… Lunch! The issue is jam packed with lunch ideas, including 10 Food Truck Finds, 4 Lunch Deals at Fancy Restaurants, and a feature on 4 food courts by our good friend Noah Galuten.  (It also has a little feature on Midtown Lunch, but you don’t care about that because if you’re reading this, you’re already in the know!)  The best part of the issue, though, is a scanwiches style list of 17 sandwiches that all look pretty amazing.   Sadly the issue isn’t online (yet), but the sandwiches I’m most excited to try from the list are after after the jump.

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If you like gourmet sandwiches, the west side is the place to be these days.  Popular Downtown staple Mendocino Farms opened in Marina del Rey last month, Skratch has become Choppe Choppe in Downtown Culver City, and now- filling the hole in between- Earl’s Gourmet Grub has opened in Mar Vista, on Venice.  If you live in the area you may already be familiar with Earl’s.  They’ve been selling their gourmet sandwiches at the Mar Vista Farmer’s Market, preparing for the opening of their brick and mortar storefront- which finally happened last week.

Some of the sandwiches look good in that healthy, has vegetables, marinted not fried, safe for L.A. kind of way (I’m looking at you heartichoke) but I look for something a bit meatier in my sandwiches. Also, paying $9+ for a sandwich is not my idea of good deal, but I can be persuaded by interesting combos, quality ingredients, and cutesy names involving two of my favorite foods (hello “pig n fig”!)  So yesterday, I headed over to try some of their less healthy sounding sandwiches and see for myself whether this was a worthwhile “Midtown Lunch’ish” option or one of those new places that sound good on paper, but ends up not being worth the $$.

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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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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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I don’t like turkey sandwiches.  Is that crazy?  Don’t get me wrong… freshly roasted turkey topped with cranberry sauce, stuffing, and gravy is one of the greatest sandwiches of all time.  But Boar’s Head roast turkey on a roll with lettuce, tomato, and mustard?  Meh.  In fact, this site was founded pretty much entirely on my desire to find an alternative to boring turkey sandwiches (and salads.)  But what about a Korean twist on the turkey sandwich?  I do love Korean food.  And they did wonders with fried chicken.  Could they possibly make a turkey sandwich on white bread palatable?  2000 locations of Isaac Toast in Korea would say yes… and the first U.S. location opened in Westwood a few months ago.

What exactly is this “toast” craziness?

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When I first read about Deli Bar on Thrillist a few weeks ago, I was mildly intrigued.  I’m not usually down with “hip” new lunch spots, that do a “new” take on grilled chicken sandwiches and salads topped with grilled chicken… but Deli Bar arose out of the Fairfax/Mid-City ashes of a high end Moroccan restaurant (Chameau) and sounded interesting enough for a looksee.

My terrible first taste, and how a french fry stuffed sandwich came to the rescue… is after the jump.

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