Tower Pizza -- Westchester on Lincoln

One of my fave places in W'chester, Tower Pizza won my heart early on. For $5.50 you can get a big burger and fries. Friendly service, free popcorn or peanuts, depending, and Stella on tap. I've been in many times and take people there when there are in for a visit. Sit at the bar, and they do nice things for you like give you the "mistake" pizzas or a final free splash of beer to wash down the last of the peanuts. I like that. LOTS of regulars. I like that, too.

Took my brother there for lunch and got the specials: steak sandwich and ahi tacos. Sandwich was great, tacos were, well, the sandwich was great. What was I thinking ordering ahi in a bar?

Delivery is free, and with a coupon you can get a large pizza delivered for $11. When the wife is going to be late or not at all, I often give Tower a call. The pizza isn't the best, but by gosh it's pretty darned good and it comes in 20 minutes.

If I owned a bar and grill, I would want it to be just like Tower.

LAX Tacos - Inglewood on Arbor Vitae (just E of the 405)

I got kicked in the face playing soccer on Sunday, so I spent much of the next few days going from doctor office to doctor office in the Inglewood area. Where to eat? Why, why not try LAX Tacos? I've never been, but it is somewhat well-known. Surely a visit was in order.

With my brother driving me around because of my broken nose and "suborbital blowout fracture", what better medicine?

Two carnitas, two asada, and two birria (goat) for kickers. The horchata was terrific. There's not much for ambience here. The order window at an average taco truck has more charm than this one, and the service was short and a bit rude. The outdoor seating area was clean and very inviting on this lovely day. We dug in.

The goat was a bit, well, goaty. The asada was a bit, well, heat-lampish (sitting there a while?), and the carnitas was merely OK. My brother liked them all just fine. It was supposed to be $1.45/taco but we somehow paid less than that. The tortillas were a bit, well, dried out, and not steamy-delicious like they should have been. They have a nice condiment bar, but no salsa choices.

That being said, I would go there again. After all, they have the added convenience of a DRIVE-THRU!

Tacos El Pecas #2 -- La Brea x Olympic - 11:30 PM

We bought a bunch of Hollywood Bowl tickets this season. Being the first HB visit in a long time, we made a "wrong" turn and quickly realized that we were in the middle of No Freeway Land. While filling the gas tank, I spotted this truck across the street. Not really a truck, but a trailor. Despite the Weight Watcher riding shotgun, I made an executive decision and pulled over.

The order ahead of me was massive, apparently. Three bags of para llevar had me pacing about. But they were well worth the wait. They were about the size of my palm, and in the dark of our car, we couldn't see what they looked like. I promise you, they were juicy, spicy and muy, muy delicioso. So good, in fact that we seriously debated backtracking for a re-load. But with 9 more shows to go this summer, I'm thinking we'll get there again.

Mariscos Guillen in Westchester

Finally, I'm reviewing Westchester! I follow bandini's blog, so I've been fired up to get to a taco truck. I pass a couple on Arbor Vitae from time to time, but with two kids in the car, it's a tough call to make. But then, one day...I had only ONE kid in the car, and I kinda sorta had to go to the post office anyways...so....

Mariscos Guillen on Arbor Vitae betw Aviation and Centinela. Lots of parking. I got the carnitas and the carne asada tacos and a grapefruit Jarritos (sorry Bandini). I was able to park the car right in front of the truck, so I was able to leave my boy Henry strapped in the car. They seem to pull in a lot of foot traffic from the nearby apartments. There were quite a few people all spread out eating their food.

The carnitas was fantastic. As with my sushi, I like to eat my tacos puro -- no sauce, unless it calls for it. I like to eat at least 1/2 of the taco before I jump to the sauce. The carnitas was great as it came. Good thing in this case because the sauce choices was small. The ubiquitous red sauce and then there was something in a giant Clamato jug. Henry loved the carnitas chunks I fed him, but turned his nose up at the asada. I agreed with him. The asada may have been grilled at some point, but by the time it got to me it had become more boiled than anything else. I'll give it one more chance and I'll get a shrimp taco too.

$1.25/taco.

UPDATE: I've been back two more times. The shrimp taco was filled with perfectly cooked shrimp -- lots of mouth-pop -- but lacked flavor. My boy LOVES the carnitas. A second try of the asada was still a bit disappointing, but some salsa verde put it over the top. The al pastor was ok. I got a chicken taco for my little girl without sauce. It came with some tomatoes and lettuce, so she threw a fit. Again, my little boy loved it.

Bite in Venice

I took the little lady to Bite the other night in Venice. We try to go out together sans kids every other week or so. With a theme of Asian skewers and sushi and fancy cocktails, Bite looked right up our alley: we are lately into Asian fusion and she is Weight-Watching. We used Opentable to book a table.

My only worry was the location. A food snob of any order will tell you that the closer to the beach the worse the food. This was 1/2 block away.

We got there at 6:30 and didn't get to order until 7. As their upstairs wasn't open yet, we asked to sit at the bar (i nodded towards the, ahem, sushi bar -- we're here for food). Our hostess steered us towards the booze bar. Not necessarily a bad sign, you are welcome to think. But with the smell of beach crowd already on the air, I almost winced. This IS about food, right? And not sweet "martinis"? One look at the drink menu will set you straight. Good God Almighty, there are far too many craptinis offered. Their basic cocktail? Take high end liquor, cover it up with 3 different flavorings, dip rim of glass in some kind of spicy salt. Ugh.

That being said, my gaijintini was kinda fun!

The table next to us filled in at 6:55 with 5 or 6 folks in various states of beach undress. They quickly made a ruckus about ordering before Happy Hour ended. We had been patiently waiting to order for some time, but the waiter dutifully took their order first. When he came to our table, we kidded him about the rude table next to us and placed our order. We got the prawn salad and about 8 different skewers.

The food was pretty good for the most part. My pork skewer smelled a little off and was woefully undercooked besides. How that happens in the age of refrigeration and when there is a hot grill RIGHT THERE, I do not understand. We liked having the variety so that no one dish would need to carry the meal. In beachland, it's always wise to spread the food risk around. The service was spotty at best.

My ultimate take: NOT for destination dining and if the restaurant were 20 blacks inland it would be a lot better -- not just due to my expectations, but mostly due to the fact that it would pull in a different class of clientel. Still, if you are in the area anyway and don't want a burger or beach Italian food, it would be worth a try.