Thanks, but no thanks I am the albatross around the neck, the black cat crossing the path, the red sky in the morning, the howling dog at night. Once I review a restaurant, it is game over, a permanent vacation via the bullet train to Insolvencyville. First, I find a gem of an artisanal pizzeria…
More than buddhas, ladyboys and Thai stick “Braindoc, where have you been?” inquired one of my esteemed medical colleagues. “You haven’t published any reviews recently which leaves me idle while I hold my morning audience on the porcelain throne.” One of the members of Goldstein Party of Five, the greatest rock cover band in the…
Se habla español??? As a callow youth, I never showed much facility for foreign languages. In order to honor California’s past and to foreshadow its future, Spanish was a required subject in the sixth grade at La Tijera Elementary School, strategically placed at the swampy, scissors-like intersection of La Cienega and La Tijera Blvds. Our…
Yo Quiero Taco Bell Newton’s three laws of motion, Dante’s nine circles of hell, the Bible’s seven pillars of wisdom. Tragedy or comedy, poetry or prose. Over the centuries, the brilliant minds of humanity have organized, categorized and classified knowledge so that we peons may better comprehend our universe and mankind’s place within it. Without…
Friendship I know that the public depends upon Braindoc, the maestro of mastication, for objective, impartial and dispassionate judgment (and occasional witty reportage) to guide your culinary selections among the multitudinous options throughout the Los Angeles Basin and the four corners of the earth. To sift, to winnow, to separate the wheat from the chaff…
You are what you drive I want to take you for a trip in the Wayback machine. When I was in medical school, I invited two classmates from large, rectangular states in fly-over country to join me at home in L.A. for the beginning of summer vacation. They traded their Polo shirts and Brooks Brothers…
The Waste Land I had intended to start this review of BLVD Steak, a new swanky restaurant in the San Fernando Valley, in my typical pseudointellectual fashion with a reference to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: “April is the cruellest month”…blah, blah, blah. To be honest, I never really understood poetry. At every lecture that…
Veni Vidi Mangia My worldly and sophisticated wife was born in Sansepolcro in the Valtiberina region of Tuscany, near the birthplace of Michelangelo. It is a rural area of picturesque forested rolling hills, quaint family farms and tiny walled medieval towns. Other than her parents, the remainder of her family stayed in Sansepolcro to live…
Are we really going to eat little Furball??? What flashes into one’s brain with the thought of Peru? Machu Picchu, the source of the Amazon, the Andes? Those with a more juvenile mindset might think of Lake Titicaca or toilets flushing counterclockwise due to the Coriolis Effect. I harken back to my teenage years, before I…
Omerta “Mista Silverstein, how they hangin’?” boomed raucously across the main dining room in the unmistakable voice of Johnny “Roastbeef” Williams. Roastbeef is the greeter, raconteur and wisecracker at Rao’s in the heart of Hollywood, the west coast branch of the famous and exclusive East Harlem Italian haunt. My Tuscan born wife and I were…
Third time’s a charm My close friend Morrie Grossman, brother of producer Les Grossman of Tropic Thunder fame and himself a celebrated food critic (and who introduced me to Dear John’s), has another brother, Bernie Grossman. Bernie is a power attorney, a mover, a shaker, a rainmaker. He is the supreme managing partner of the…
In vino veritas “Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was ever granted by the gods to man” said Plato, who knew a thing or two about a thing or two. It has also been said that a bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world, so you can thank…
A Tale of Two Cities It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was…
Can we all get along? While valuably spending last Friday afternoon lounging on the couch with Nolan, my pet Yorkie, and a Bombay Sapphire and tonic watching reruns of The Rockford Files, my usually dormant cell phone rang. Who do I know with a 202 area code? Out of sheer curiosity, I answered the call…
“Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading!”—Laurence Sterne My movie producer friend, Morrie Grossman, co-authored a classic book of reviews of dive restaurants in Los Angeles. This was back in the day when people actually read books. When it comes to commentary and criticism of eateries he knows of what…
Man shall not live on bread alone; he must also have a bagel According to urban legend, the bagel was invented in the shtetls of Poland by the Ashkenazi Jews in 1610. It was brought to the United States, along with the other foods that form the staples of Jewish deli cuisine, during the immigration…