HERMANO SEGUNDO LOST IN LA LA LAND: DAY EIGHT

An early morning start had me on the I-5 and heading back South to L.A. By the time I arrived, after a non-stop five-hour drive, I was famished and did not take much, if any, persuasion to join the waiting Sybil for a rather splendid hot Dog at Let’s Be Frank in Culver City.

Bizarrely, Sybil “does not eat the cow” so was happy to see that as well as my own choice of a frank smothered in onions, relish and mustard she could indulge in a porky bratwurst, which she covered in sauerkraut, at $5 a pop, the perfect budget lunch.

That night, I had been informed that I was taking Sybil on that most American of institutions, a “date” and that if it was not up to scratch both me and my appendages would suffer untold consequences. Minutes of research had secured reservations in Ford’s Filling Station, the restaurant credited with revitalising the former movie hotspot of Culver City and whose chef, Ben Ford has a famous carpenter, President and Space Adventurer for a father.

We began our evening with a short walk to Gyenari, a local Korean restaurant, for drinks and some half decent dumplings before walking over to Ford’s Filling Station for our reservation. It was at this point that Sybil decided to point out that 9pm was considered the middle of the night in L.A where most people seem happy to eat supper about 6pm. It was a fact confirmed when we were finally seated and presented with menus with so many “SOLD OUT” stamps it resembled the tour date list for a Led Zeppelin reunion concert.

We tried, we really did. As we nibbled on some rather good garlic bread, we tried to find things left on the menu we might actually want to eat. The Suckling Pig, OFF, The Braised Rabbit, OFF, The Scallops, OFF. There was some cheese but this being America, we left that well alone. There were some flatbreads, but those are just pizzas by any other name and therefore, snot on toast, so we ignored them too. In the end we gave up, apologised to our server and walked out of the restaurant with no plan B.

Fortunately, right next door was Honey’s Kettle Fried Chicken, the second branch of a famous joint in the city of Compton. We ducked in, found a table and were soon continuing our date with a shared platter of crispy skinned chicken, dipped in hot sauce or honey, and buttery biscuits, which we washed down with fresh lemonade. So good that neither of us was sorry we had been forced to change our original plans.

In the golden age of movies, Culver City was the place to be. MGM studios were just around the corner and The Culver Hotel, once owned by John Wayne, was where real movie stars hung out, including the cast of The Wizard of OZ. The Munchkins apparently ran drunken riot every night in the corridors of the hotel. We stopped by for a quick drink before our final stop at Cold Stone Creamery for some hand mixed ice cream with cookie dough and Reese’s Pieces, which we carried away to eat at home.

Not quite the evening we had planned, but never let it be said that I don’t know how to show a woman a good time.

HERMANO SEGUNDO LOST IN LA LA LAND: DAY ONE

It tells you everything you need to know about the current climate in the USA that, as I sat at Washington’s Dulles Airport, I was surrounded by life size cut outs of Barack Obama, John McCain and Sarah Palin but there was not one of the venerable Joe Biden to be found. It would seem that general decency, integrity and long service count for little these days in the good old US of Stateside and that now, more than ever people are on a constant search for the new, loud or controversial.

Fitting therefore that my first supper in La La Land, selected by my host, Sybil, was not at one of the city’s many famous old stalwarts but at Fraiche in Culver City, a much hyped restaurant, only a little over one year old and placed, in February, at No. 6 by Frank Bruni in his “Coasts to Coast: Restaurants That Count.”

A short walk from her apartment, fashionable Fraiche was already in full flow when we arrived and, although the room with its terracotta colouring was welcoming, they should consider serving a loud haler along with their rather dreary bread plate so you can actually have a conversation with you dining companion without using sign language.

The menu is a slightly uncomfortable hybrid of Italian, rustic French and identikit American dishes and, both being capable of turning seafood to vomit within a matter of minutes, we avoided their vaunted Fruit de Mer in favour of starters of Boudin Noir with Marinated lentils and a salad of Burrata, Watercress and Speck. No chefs were harmed in the making of our starters, both dishes requiring decent plating rather than decent cooking skills. However, the Burrata, with its creamy centre surrounded by excellent mozzarella was a hit with Sybil although I thought it only came to life when eaten with the the Speck. Much less palatable was the boudin, which had good texture but lacked seasoning, as did a pile of lentils that tasted as if they came straight from the fridge.

Main courses too were a mixed bag, the perfect texture of the braised short ribs being lost when I realised where they had put most of the salt lacking in the boudin. A base of soft polenta reminded me of HP’s tales of how he “spent many weeks working with polenta only to realise that it’s just a worthless culinary ingredient” He is, as usual, totally correct and even a slug of vibrant salsa verde did little to convince me that polenta is more than a slurry of flavourless gunk best left to those who have lost teeth and sense of taste in a terrible accident.

A thick pork chop, on the other hand, rocked (technical LA term, I am told) and although a rubble of mushy “Summer shelling peas” added little but potential for future flatulence, the perfect medium cooking of the pork had Sybil gnawing every last scrap of flesh from the bone as I looked on with admiration.

The wine list is weighty and impressive and, as we had begun the evening with a Argentinean Malbec, it seemed sensible to carry on in the same theme with an Old World expression of the same with a well priced Cahor, which worked to good effect with both dishes.

Desserts returned to identikit land with something with nuts, something with ice cream and something with fruit, so we declined the kind offer from our charming server and headed home after Sybil treated me my first meal in her “hood”

$130 + tip struck me as quite a lot to pay for a meal of loftier ambition and middling execution and I can’t quite see what all the fuss is about, even after re-reading Mr Bruni’s review. There is a lot to be said for longevity and perhaps, if it is around as long as Joe Biden and so am I, I might well give it another try.