Wine, Hot Dogs, and Cookies; Didn't We Just Eat?

As a follow up to our dinner at Canelé, we headed over to Silverlake Wine for CakeMonkey, sparkling Syrah and the Let's Be Frank hot dog truck.
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First the Drinks

I've mentioned before how dinners with bloggers inevitably become marathons. Don't get me wrong, I value always having a place I need to check out and great friends to bring me there. Silverlake Wine, frequented by Mattatouille and Christine every Thursday for wine tasting, focuses on "boutique, small production wine in all price ranges around the globe." When we arrived, the place was packed, but I loved the feel of the store. The checkout counter is in the front. You go inside, open up whatever bottles you'd like in the store, and pay when you leave. It seems like a very casual system, but one that's not intimidating at all to a stranger or a budding oenophile. They offer tastings Sundays at 3, Thursdays 5-9, and Monday 5-9.


Cleared out by the time we left at 11

Then the dessert

During dinner, Danny kept raving about something called CakeMonkey. Upon inquiry, he could only tell me that I'd have to try it for myself. I imagined a full-sized edible monkey made of cake. When I arrived at Silverlake Wine, I discovered the cookies he was referring to. Decadent hardly describes these circular morsels of oatmeal cookies sandwiching maple vanilla buttercream called Li'l Merri's. When a cookie bends under its own weight, you can imagine how much butter is in each one of them. I happily ate one, but more than that at a time might be too rich. Plus, having worked at Ben and Jerry's in high school had given me a natural aversion to buttercream. There's nothing like seeing buttercream by the bucket load that will turn you off to it.



And finally the dogs


The other draw of Silverlake Wine is the Let's Be Frank hot dog truck parked outside on Thursday nights. After hearing Fiona raving about Let's Be Frank being better than Wurstküche, I had to investigate. We ordered the all three of their frank offerings and compared.



Biting into each of these dogs, I realized that I can't compare Let's Be Frank to Wurstküche at all. I still think the best hot dog in LA is Pink's, but I'll give best sausage to Wurstküche. There are different criteria for rating hot dogs versus sausages in my opinion. For sausages, I focus on the combination of flavors and I'm looking for a heavy, complex mouthfeel. Contrastingly, for hot dogs, the appeal is always in the casing. The best hot dogs, like Pink's or Gray's Papaya in New York, have a snap that's unparalleled. I want to bite into a hot dog and have it bite right back at me. Let's Be Frank was somewhat in the middle between the two. Without quite as much snap as a Pink's hot dog, but definitely not as satisfying flavor-wise as Wurstküche. Still, they make a great frank, just not my favorite. Paired with a few white beers from Silverlake Wine, this made a fantastic second dinner/snack.

Of the three we tried, the beef "Frank Dog" beef frank had the best casing snap, the "Hot Dog" spicy frank had the best flavor, and the "Brat Dog" pork frank had the least appeal. Pork just doesn't make quite as a good a hot dog. Get each one with their house pickles and grilled onions.

Silverlake Wine
silverlakewine.com/
2395 Glendale Blvd
Silver Lake, 90039
(323)662-9024

Let's Be Frank
letsbefrankdogs.com
Culver City and Silver Lake, check the website/twitter
$5 per dog

See Kevin's detailed review.

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Kogi's Karmic Fail: An Introspection of Food Fantacism

Kogi Fail, ticketed for zoning

Step away from Twitter for a day and it feels like you've been out of touch for a week. Upon returning from a day trip to Universal Studios, I discovered the gem of drama surround Kogi's rebuff of Food She Thought. As luck would have it, the food gods blessed me with cosmic coincidence that Kogi would actually be a block outside my apartment today. So I stepped outside to see what the fuss was all about.

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Flushed with the amusement at Kogi's PR failure for ridiculing a budding journalist, I couldn't believe that the truck would just happen to be within walking distance of me. As a disclaimer, I write all this despite never trying anything from Kogi. This isn't a criticism of their food, which could be excellent for all I know. Instead, this is an examination of food fanaticism and how silly we all look from the outside.

Repeatedly, those who have tried Kogi tell me that it's NO BIG DEAL. It's Korean food, in a tortilla. And if you haven't tried Christine's grandmother's kalbi, don't tell me that Kogi is the best Korean food. My stance on the phenomenon is the same treatment I give any taco truck. If it's there, I'll eat at it. Do I really need to scout out the @kogibbq locations, and even in extreme cases, chase the truck when it moves?

Of course Kogi's success is mostly through word-of-mouth and viral marketing, two very powerful strategies in this increasingly interconnected world. As a blogger, I can see how fast new restaurants can spread, or even how soon they close just by blogger buzz. If Kogi wants to forge ahead, it can't abandon its grass-roots supporters. I've heard stories of Kogi not appearing at stated destinations or even abandoning lingering customers to find bigger crowds. This kind of business inevitably leaves a bad taste in the mouths of the consumers. As of the writing of this, Kogi still has not issued any sort of response or apology for the backlash it's facing on Eater.

But back to the events of this evening. I was thirty feet from white truck and the throngs of hungry students before I realized that the shutters were shut and the signs were down. This was the scene in the photo above, an officer citing some remote ordinance about serving food at a T-intersection for more than thirty minutes in a residential zone. My first reaction was internal satisfaction that Kogi would get punished in a karmic way after its poor treatment of a fellow blogger. But my attention snapped back into the current moment when a Kogi groupie ran up to the driver excitedly. "You can park around the corner. I just checked and it's fine to park there in ten minutes. Wait, let me double-check with the cop." He runs over to the police car, swaps a few phrases, then comes back nodding his head in hopeful affirmation. The line of young men and women behind me gather in unison, like some sort of freedom march for the legal union of short-rib to tortilla. They turn the corner and camp a strip of curb for their beloved truck.

This whole scene was oddly surreal to me. In most cases, I'd be one of those kids. Food has become such a peculiar fascination for me that it wouldn't be far-fetched for me to chase Kogi across town. However, given the opportunity to look in from the outside, those students looked ridiculous. Suddenly, all the images of food porn paparazzi (myself included) swarming a dish came to mind. It's funny to imagine the scene, and I can easily see why people are so vocal against the food blogging surge. We really just take ourselves too seriously. I'm not trying to cast doubt on the passion of any of my fellow foodies, but have we gotten so carried away in this journalistic hobby that we've lost sight of what brought us into it in the first place? I've been tempering my blogging as of late with my impending departure looming overhead. And I'll tell you, it's been nice just eating for the sake of eating, without notepad in hand or camera around my neck.


Poor groupies waiting there for a truck that never came

Despite the attention paid by the customers in preparing a truck stop, Kogi actually turns the opposite direction and drives away. I laugh to myself and walk back to my apartment to twitter share the ticketing picture. Half an hour later, I take a peek outside; there are still a dozen or so people hovering over that curb with fingers crossed. At the head of the pack--the guy who checked the street signs and cleared the location with the cop. He was looking down at his shoes, stomach probably growling. The light changed and his head perked up--the knock-off Calbi truck just drove down the street.

There's only one word to describe all of this: delicious.

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Too Bad Hot Isn't a Synonym for Spicy in Chinese: Boiling Point in Monterey Park (沸點臭臭鍋)

It's really a shame that I don't make the trek out to San Gabriel Valley (SGV) for Chinese food more often. I'm constantly complaining about the Chinese offerings on the Westside, but it's hard for me to find opportunities to travel East. In my mind, Chinese is always best enjoyed communally; at a dinner for two, there isn't enough variety. That's why I cherish my trips back to the Bay Area for a chance to see my family and eat Chinese. Additionally, my Chinese is too pathetic to order anything interesting, so I've been reluctant to climb into a restaurant that caters to the ethnic Chinese. In one embarrassing incident, my Mandarin was so terrible that the woman thought I was speaking Cantonese and gave me a chicken leg instead of a pork chop. It took a Korean, Christine, to show me a hot pot restaurant in SGV. Can I get some love from any other American Born Chinese who can't read menus?

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We came on Tuesday for their hot pot lunch special. What was normally $9.99 was discounted a dollar and supplemented with a free drink. While Christine insisted on the available garlic sauce, spicy bean paste, and spicy oil, I was perfectly content with the seasonings that came in the pot.

In fact, I questioned whether it's healthy to ingest something so dark red. Christine would call me a complainer, but her idea of "complaints" are more of what I consider "observations" for my health.

Each person receives a personal pot loaded with ingredients. Pork intestines, tomato, fish cake, napa cabbage, enoki mushrooms, sliced pork, fish balls, floated in the crimson soup. Below those treasures, I excavated blocks of stinky tofu (臭豆腐). This was the first time I encountered stinky tofu hot pot. It's amazing what you miss out on when you don't explore this culinary cornucopia called LA. As the name would imply, stinky tofu is rather robust in fragrance. The smell is fairly strong, but the taste is much more mild. It takes tofu to a whole new level in my opinion, since tofu is normally so bland.

I ordered the spicy pot, and it was just at the level of enjoyable for me. A milder one wouldn't have had enough flavor, but anything hotter would've been unbearable. I believe that pork intestines are best enjoyed in preparations like this--simmering in a spicy broth. Overall, I had a great lunch, but I wonder now if I'll experience any regrets the next day.

Boiling Point (沸點臭臭鍋)
153 Garvey Ave
Monterey Park, 91755
(626) 288-9876
$8.99 lunch special

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