Great little diner in Santa Monica. Fantastic sausage, perfectly cooked eggs, incredibly thick pancakes. Love the old Coke menu board. Feels like a small town coffee shop in the middle of the city.
You may remember a post from a while back from the guys at La Luz Del Dia asking reddit to help support the struggling vendors at Olvera Street. Well, after that post blew up, I got my little club together to lend our support for their now-monthly Mercado Night event, which happened last night! The DPS meets once a month at a classic LA establishments like La Luz Del Dia, though diners are our specialty of course. And what I've seen through the almost 2 years of running this club is that people do still care about these places! They want them around, and they have a good time when they're there. Maybe people just need an excuse, or maybe people just haven't thought about these old standbys in a while, but they need our help now more than ever. So quit putting it off, go to your local classic today, or they might be closed sooner than you think - and that means forever!
I just think this is neat and thought I would share. Of the restaurants included in the book, only 9 are still around (12 if you count chains that are still around, just not in LA anymore). Do you know which ones they are? I'll give you a hint—three of them have changed their names since this book was published in 1971.
We all know that big giant donut in Inglewood, but if you ask me, Randy's is more than just an architectural gimmick, they really do have some of the best donuts in the city. Over the course of the last year, I've tried all of the most classic varieties at Randy's since it's on my morning commute. Here are my findings:
Glazed Raised: the classic variety, no nonsense, just a good old donut. It's especially fluffy compared to your average glazed from another shop. I also like that the glaze is pretty light, and has a hint of lemon rind or something. But in general I prefer cake donuts, since I like to dunk them in my coffee, and yeast raised donuts tend to get all gummy and weird instead of absorbing the coffee 7/10
Cinnamon Crumb Cake: more cinnamon than crumb, this one isn't that remarkable 4/10
Pink Raised Sprinkles: Pretty similar to the glazed raised but instead of an all over glaze there's a shield of frosting over the top. the sprinkles are pretty 6/10
Glazed Old Fashioned: my personal favorite, the flavor of the glaze comes through better than the glazed raised, and it has that great crusty quality that none of the others have 9/10
Buttermilk: similar to the OF but not as good, sometimes less evenly cooked or a little stale 6/10
Strawberry Jelly Filled: the jelly in here is very fruity, though you won't get chunks of strawberry or anything 7/10
Butter Crumb: an especially decadent raised donut, the butter is quite pronounced. Better than the cinnamon if you like a crumb 8/10
Apple Fritter: it's big and dense but it's an extremely good apple fritter, very crusty with big tender chunks of apple 9/10
Bear Claw: the most interesting yeast donut to me, the almondy filling also has little chunks of apple in it, pretty good 8/10
Chocolate Long John:the yeast ones are starting to all feel the same. If you like chocolate it's a nice twist 6/10
Glazed Twist: glazed raised but longer 7/10
Devils Food: decently rich chocolate cake flavor, doesn't quite make the top 5 but a solid effort 7/10
Honey wheat: the dark horse of the bunch, the sweetness is nice and mild, with a somewhat complex flavor. Very impressed, would order again 8/10.
One of the oldest burger places in all of LA! Two big beefy patties, pastrami, and a hot link. Take it and eat it next to the Watts Towers.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays they make really good lasagna here! Comes with either meatball or sausage on the side, plus a roll for maximum carb overload. I like to make a lil lasagna sandwich out of it sometimes.
Little diner-esque place in East Hollywood, kinda expected the food to be homey but average, was actually kind of blown away, everything was really fantastic, not a single underwhelming moment. In order of appearance: "famous" empanadas, shanghai egg rolls, garlic rice with buchon in the back (should have gotten a better photo of the buchon, best thing in this whole meal, so perfectly crispy), pancit palabok, chicken inasal, arroz caldo, halo halo.
Love that cochinita pibil, and (possibly) my favorite burger in LA