Real Restaurants

Last Friday evening, just after vespers, I was fortunate enough to have a big, bitchin’ burger in a takeout bag, swinging from the handlebars as I headed home up the hill.

Then the e-bike ran out of juice.

Full disclosure I: I was a little juiced myself, having had a few pops with Fish and Green and Billionaire Charlie. That’s how I ended up with the big, bitchin’ burger. No impulse control. I could smell the burger sizzling a block away. I like two sounds more than any others: 1) the crack of a baseball bat; 2) a sizzlin’ cheeseburger. To me, they’re like Brahms.  

Full disclosure II: Electric bikes are magic carpets, a really fine form of transit. But their gas gauges are lousy. I went from half-charged to ugh in about 90 seconds.

So up the steep hill I pedaled. When e-bikes run out of juice, it’s like pedaling a wood-chipper.

Boy, did I earn that big, bitchin’ takeout burger.

I’m telling you – as if you don’t already know — there is no greater gastro joy than a good burger. Even kinda cold and a little jostled (the way mine was Friday night). 

Burgers are carnal. Avocado. Bacon. Ground beef, with various lubricants, bound together with cheese.

Diving into such a burger – a big, bitchin’ burger – is like taking someone’s head in your hands, someone you like very much, and movie-kissing them deeply.

A big burger is like smooching Rita Hayworth on a sweaty bridge.

Speaking of Hayworth, my lovely and patient older daughter sends a morning text:

“Turned last night’s green pasta sauce into a green shakshuka/baked eggs and served it on toast with my homemade ricotta.”

Yum I guess. Actually, my mouth’s mind can’t imagine what shakshuka tastes like. But the older daughter is a Promethean cook, inventive and passionate. Generally, I’ll try anything once, which is how I ended up having four kids.

So it could be with shakshuka and baked eggs. I might like it a little too much.

Know what else I like maybe too much? My buddy Bittner. He’s like a brutha to me — a big, bitchin’ burger brutha.

The other night, Bittner and I are at this famous tiki joint (Damon’s in Glendale), where Los Angeles itself is embedded in the old carpets and the woodwork seems glazed in BBQ sauce. A place like this takes time. Like a good novel. Like a good friend.  

FYI, guys like us – real men who enjoy real food — are slowly going the way of mood rings and pocket combs. Thank gawd for outposts like Damon’s, to my mind the greatest restaurant in the world.

Here they serve stroganoff and coconut shrimp, and not in tiny portions, the way fussy LA restaurants often will …smeary food on crackers, you’re not even sure what it is.

To me, fussy restaurants have no boogie-woogie. They have no inner being.

Here’s how you know you’re in a real LA restaurant: The menus are laminated and from the ’50s, with little cowboys in the margins throwing lassos.

And the waitresses…have I mentioned Damon’s waitresses? They are a cadre of sassy old aunts who maybe stormed Okinawa. They’re always digging around for a pen to write the orders and asking how the kids are.

That kind of hallelujah experience lives on in places like Damon’s, and the Smokehouse, and Canter’s Deli, food that outlasts the trends of narcissistic psycho chefs.

That’s what I don’t like about that highly regarded show “The Bear,” by the way. If you haven’t seen it, “The Bear” is about a fussy high-end kitchen devoted to the dreams and aspirations of the staff, not the customers.

Gimme a place like Damon’s any old time, where the customer is king.

Or gimme that most-California of pleasures — a big, bitchin’ takeout burger (medium rare), swinging like Sinatra from the front of my e-bike.  

Scooby-dooby-doo…what were the chances…

If you like burgers, you must like bears. “What the Bears Know” is now in its third printing. It’s the life story — funny and poignant — of “Bear Whisperer” Steve Searles. What do you like about life? Surprise? Humor? Courage? Passion? They’re all there in our best-selling book. Thanks to all those who have supported it. Order it at {Pages} in Manhattan Beach – they’ll ship it. Or on Amazon.

FYI, we’re still working on the email distributions of the column. Outgoing messages have been frozen over some authentication issue involving DKIM or SPF. It began in February when a couple of email services changed their security protocols. Thanks for your patience.