bY jOHN fARRELL

SOPHY’S CAMBODIAN AND THAI CUISINE

Where: 3240 E. Pacific Coast Hwy, Long Beach:
Entire menu served daily 9 a.m.-10 p.m.: (562)494-1763
Atmosphere: Elegant Asian
Alcohol: No
Smoking section: No
Parking: Lot
Wheelchair accessible: Restaurant and restroom
Restrooms: Immaculate
Noise level: Conducive to conversation
Credit cards: MasterCard and Visa

The Thrifty Gourmet reviews restaurants at which you can find exceptionally good food at mostly $10 or less for dinner.

By John Farrell

Special to the Press-Telegram

Sophy’s Cambodian and Thai Cuisine has been in long Beach for some time, but it has moved around a bit. Those who love its delicious take on two delightful Southeast Asian cuisines have followed it as it sought out more spacious quarters. They know the restaurant has relocated on the southern slope of Signal Hill. Those who come upon the restaurant’s elegant premises for the first time won’t need a dose of history to be charmed.

The low-slung building on the south side of Pacific Coast Highway at Coronado was most recently a Chinese Buffet, and for many years was a successful bar and dance hall. When you see the new Sophy’s, with huge floor-to-ceiling windows open the street, intimate booths against those windows and family-sized tables farther down, with simple oriental decorations and gentle lighting, you may wonder that the restaurant has ever been anything else but Sophy’s. Sophy’s has the kind of understated elegance that goes with expensive restaurants, but one look at the large menu will tell you that isn’t true. There are a few items over $10, but the great majority are less than $9 and include some very unusual dishes from both national cuisines.

As is often the case with cuisines that come fro countries that share a long border and an equally long history, there are plenty of dishes that are favorites in both countries. But if you want to try just Cambodian (or Khmer) dishes, or just Thai, the friendly wait-staff can help you. If you want to do-it-yourself, order a Thai-Iced tea of Thai-Iced Coffee $2.75, relax and read the menu carefully. There are a lot of interesting specialties you have tried before, so many you may need several trips to educate your palate.

The great Thai favorites are all there. The Larb, $7.95, is called a salad, but it is much more: grilled ground meat, cilantro, chopped onions, mint, and a fish sauce, all rich with lime juice, served with chopped cabbage and eaten with steamed rice. It is addictive. The TomKah (CQ), $9.95, spicy and sour coconut soup is the classic Thai dish, and here it is rich and generously filled with chicken. And there are delicious curries, like Salaman Curry, $9.95, with beef or chicken in a slow-cooked sauce made with potatoes and coconut, a favorite tradition.

Right next to that on the menu is Kahrie TaLhoeng (CQ), Khmer Red Curry, $8.95, with beef or chicken, carrots, potatoes and onions served with French bread, rice or  noodles. The Kahrie TaPeang (CQ), $8.95, is its spicy cousin, with basil and kaffir leaves added to the rich mix.

There are Khmer soups as well, the Somlaw Machu Kreoung, $9.95, comes with beef, chicken or fish and is called “Khmer’s favorite soup. The Tom Yum, $8.95, is a rich, spicy and sour red broth filled with mushroom and chicken, bracing and filling.

The Thai Boat Noodles, $6.50, can be soup or dry noodles, and come with beef, meatballs, beef ripe and shrimp, spiced with onion, cilantro and roasted garlic. The Phnom Penh (CQ) Noodles, $5.95, is a wonderful rice noodle soup with a special broth including pork patties, ground pork, sliced pork, meatball, cilantro with green onion and roasted garlic.

Pad Thai, $7.50, stir-fried rice noodles with egg, bean sprouts, and green onions, with crushed peanuts and bean sprouts on the side, is just about everyone’s favorite Thai dish, and here it comes with chicken, beef, pork or tofu, and is as good as its reputation.

Other Khmer specialties worth trying include Fried Scramble Eggs (CQ, $7.95 with ground pork and green onions in this Cambodian specialty, and Prahok Kteih, $8.50, steamed vegetables with a dipping sauce made from curry paste, pickled fish, ground pork, tamarind, kaffir leaves and coconut milk.

There are also a large number of desserts, including Tao Sun, $3.95, tallow bans cooked in yucca flower with coconut milk and Banana Pudding, $4.95, a Cambodian favorite with banana, coconut and tapioca, are only two of many.

Sophy’s has the kind of elegance and look that makes it a perfect place for celebrations and a menu made for culinary exploration. It is the kind of restaurant you can take out-of-town visitors too, fancy, inexpensive and a showplace for the cultural mix that is Long Beach.

John Farrell is a Long Beach freelance writer. This article appeared in the Long Beach Press-Telegram Friday, February 13, 2009.

TEA STATION

Where: 11688 E. South St. #101, Artesia, take 605 Fwy. North to South St.
Exit eastbound, restaurant is on the right before Pioneer Blvd.;
Entire menu served Monday-Thursday 11:30 a.m.-midnight,
Friday-Saturday 11:30 a.m.-1 a.m.; (626)288-1663
Atmosphere: Asian fusion
Alcohol: No
Smoking section: No
Parking: Lot
Wheelchair accessible: Restaurant and restroom
Restrooms: Immaculate
Noise level: Conducive to conversation
Credit cards: MasterCard and Visa

The Thrifty Gourmet reviews restaurants at which you can find exceptionally good food at mostly $10 or less for dinner.

By John Farrell

Special to the Press-Telegram

If Starbucks had originated on the other side of the Asian rim from Seattle, it would look a lot like Tea Station in Artesia.

Elegant colored, blown glass lamps shine on the entrance and the large and friendly dining room features floor to ceiling windows, elegant wooden tables and chair, discreet decorations and quite music as a background to often lively conversation.

The often large and mostly young crowd that comes in for conversation and refreshment seems to know its way around the large and complicated menu of drinks, everything from traditional Chinese tea served loose-leaf in a pot $4.75 and up, to the most arcane of iced flavored teas (green apple green tea, $3.75 and $5.25, coffee milk tea, $4.25 and $5.75 and dozens of others.) They also know that the tea-flavored meals are filling and delicious, and the tea snacks, some as simple as peanut butter toast, $3.50, others as unusual as tea flavored squid balls, $5, can make a great meal.

Tea Station’s motto is “Contemporary Tea Fashions,” and most everything available is tea related, including some fifteen “tea-flavored” meals. Tea-flavored pork stew, $, is in a rich gray that uses tea as an ingredient. Tea flavored beef bowl, $8, is a rich and deeply flavored variation on the typical rice bowl, only with beef extra tender and delicious.

The tea-flavored fried chicken, $9, an occasional special, was a feast. It included a big piece of chicken leg and thigh that had been boned, marinated in tea and breaded and fried crisp, on top of a mound of steamed rice covered with spicy ground pork. On the side were dark brown fried onions, miniature stewed bok choy, a few pickles and, to top it off, a fried egg. Each of the tea flavored meals includes rice and three side dishes which vary daily. The tea flavored pork chop, $8, is another winning choice, and the tea flavored meat balls, $9, is an interesting oriental version of what otherwise seems to be a Swedish specialty.

The tea snacks include delights like squid jerky, $5, dried salty pieces of squid reconstituted with tea and fried with onions, and the Taiwanese sausages, $5, thin slices of a pepperoni-like sausage. They are served over a bed of thin-sliced raw garlic and a slice of sausage and a slice of garlic together are wonderful washed down with a sweet drink. Many of the tea snacks, including tea flavored fried tofu and tea flavored wontons, both $5, and be turned into full meals with three side dishes and rice or an extra $3.

There are a number of noodle soups available, including tea flavored chicken Alfredo pasta, $9, and tea flavored wonton soup with noodles, $8.

The tea drinks section of the menu will demand you return many times to explore its complications. A pot of traditionally served Chinese tea, with the tea leaves in the pot, ranges from $4.75 for Jasmine tea to $15.50 for Tan-Li tea, a rare high mountain oolong for connoisseurs. There are many between the two extremes, and, in Chinese style, you can have your pot recharged with hot water several times. The Chinese believe the third infusion of tea leaves is the best. The dragonwell green, $4.75, is a place to start. Order the large Royal Black Tea, $5.25, and you’ll get a large soup-bowl sized bowl of tea, flavored with ginger and with ginseng added, subtly sweetened (you can have it unsweetened if you ask.) From the bowl you use a ladle to serve yourself tea in a small tea-cup. It’s a great ritual and an unusual way to find tea served.

There are so many variations of iced drinks and hot drinks you’ll need your wait-person’s help through the maze. Some come in pitchers, some are served in bottles, and many can have boba, tapioca pearls, added to the mix. There are also flavored snow ices, including green mango snow ices, $5 and $6.50, flavored jelly ice like coconut grass jelly, $5.50 and $7, and even, for those who miss Starbucks, hot coffee, $4.75 for the house coffee, and Japanese Ma-Cha coffee, $5.

Tea Station is in the center of a strip mall filled with fascinating restaurants and shop, and part of  very lively dining and shopping scene all along South St. There are adventures to be had there.

This story appeared in the Long Beach Press-Telegram Friday, January 30 2009

KERNELS MEXICAN GRILL

Where: 3418 Long Beach Blvd., Long Beach; Entire menu
served Monday-Saturday 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; (562)427-4768
Atmosphere: Modern Mexican
Alcohol: Beer
Smoking section: No
Parking: Lot
Wheelchair accessible: Restaurant and restroom
Restrooms: Immaculate
Noise level: Conducive to conversation
Credit cards: MasterCard and Visa

The Thrifty Gourmet reviews restaurants at which you can find exceptionally good food at mostly $10 or less for dinner.

By John Farrell

Special to the Press-Telegram

You see them on street corners in Mexican neighborhoods: vendors selling cobs of grilled corn on a stick, with mayonnaise and a variety of flavorings to add to the experience.

If you have tried this Mexican treat, called Elote, you have discovered how good corn is as a base for a variety of flavors, from line juice to Mexican cheese to chili and salt.

Maybe, though, you’ve wanted a little more variety. Bacon, maybe, or Cajun spices or, yes, chocolate and marshmallow. And maybe you are a bit fastidious, and would prefer not to have everything running down your chin. (For many, of course, that’s half the fun.)

Kernels Mexican Grill, on Atlantic just north of Wardlow in Long Beach is the place to go if you want to experience Elote in more extravagant combinations that you can imagine. For $2.35 you can have an ear of fair corn steamed, fried, grilled or oven roasted with 24 different flavor combinations available, including Mongolian BBQ, Chipotle (smoke Jalapeno peppers) or Southern Corn with sour cream and onions. If you want to experiment, they offer three cobs for $6, and are cheerfully willing to cut them into pieces for sharing.

The cobs come on a stick (actually a bamboo chop stick: this is cross-cultural Los Angeles) in a small paper dish to catch the sauce. The staff recommends the oven roasted, but the grilled is also tasty.

If you are an even bigger neat freak, you can get corn bowls, $3.99 small, $4.99 large, where the corn is cut from the cob and mixed with spices and mixed with flavorings in a bowl: not so much fun but a good deal neater. There are even more flavors available this way, including Nacho cheddar and olive oil or plain butter, ranch dressing seasoning and Italian cream.

If you want your corn spicy hot, try the Buffalo on the cob, with Buffalo wings spices and butter, very spicy. The Bacon sweet and spicy is covered with chopped bacon and the mixture of spices, sweet corn and salt bacon is wonderful The garlic roll corn features a sweet and powerful garlic flavor, and the apple cinnamon is a sweet dessert treat. The Nacho fest comes with sour cream cheddar, onion, jalapeno and even corn chips. It will take you several trips to even make a dent on the varieties.

Even if you can’t eat corn, there is plenty of the grill side of the menu to please, and the portion sizes are big for the small prices.

Try the Louisiana Fried quesadilla, $4.99, if you are very hungry. It is a flour tortilla bigger than a plate, wrapped around pico de gallo, chicken and carne asada. The ends are folded so it won’t hang embarrassingly off the plate, and it is deep fried, then served topped with avocado slices and sour cream.

The house chipotle chicken enchilada, $6.99, comes with beans and rice and a fountain drink, and is filled with chicken in a sauce of smoked jalapenos. (That is what chipotles are.) It is a big meal, and the soda machine includes several Mexican sweet drinks so you can be entirely authentic.

The steak fajitas, $6.99, includes rice and beans and flour tortil las and is enough for all but the biggest appetites. The chicken or carne asada combo, $6.99 includes rice, beans, a salad, tortillas and a drink in one price.

The stacked tacos, $4.99, are four Mexican-style soft tacos of either chicken or carne asada. Tacos of the Sea, $5.69, are two fish or shrimp tacos with cabbage, pico de gallo, sour cream and chipotle sauce, served with French fires or grilled zucchini. Chile Verde tacos, $5.39 for three, are an unusual choice.

Burritos, of course, including the mucho hot and spicy, $6.46, which is exceptionally hot. A French burrito, $6.35, is so-called because it includes fries.

Nine more quesadillas, including a pineapple chicken or steak version, $3.99, are available, plus home style soups, $3.49 small and $4.49 large, and four salads, including the attractive pear salad, $5.49, which includes pear slices and blue cheese crumbles over mixed greens.

And there us a kids menu, too, offering a corn dog, $1.50, mac and cheese, $2, and other offerings for the young.

Kernels is closed Sundays because it is family day, they say. The rest of the week they are a wonderful place to take your family for an inexpensive culinary adventure.

This review appeared in the Long Beach Press-Telegram Fiday, January 16 2009

 

YOUNG & LAZY

Where: 6200-B Pacific Coast Hwy., Long Beach;
Entire menu served Monday-Saturday 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; (562) 498-3234
Atmosphere: Asian fusion
Alcohol: No
Smoking section: Outside table.
Parking: Lot
Wheelchair accessible: Restaurant and restroom
Restrooms: Acceptable
Noise level: Conducive to conversation
Credit cards: MasterCard and Visa

The Thrifty Gourmet reviews restaurants at which you can find exceptionally good food at mostly $10 or less for dinner.

By John Farrell

Special to the Press-Telegram

Almost everyone, of any age, wants to be young.

The number who want to be described as lazy are a smaller group, though those who will admit a bit of laziness to themselves are a far larger group.

Young & Lazy, the modest, laid-back teriyaki, sushi and roll restaurant tucked into a corner of a busy shopping mall on Pacific Coast Highway a few blocks from California State University, Long Beach, apparently has no trouble attracting crowds of hungry patrons, attracted by beautifully presented food and low prices, who are willing to take a chance on being called lazy, or perhaps even glory in they name.

For those who work at CSULB, at the Veteran’s Hospital and at the nearby Marina Pacifica shopping complexes, Young and La a great place for lunch or dinner after a long day at work. In the Puritan ethic, eating out is probably lazy. In the 21st century, healthy food prepared in generous portions is a great way to save a bit of time, especially for those whose lives are filled with multi-tasking, with soccer games and work taken home, with hungry children and spouses.

But if you are hungry and looking for a bargain, Young & Lazy is a great choice. Get there early, though. One recent night they had run out of rice by 7 in the evening, and what are sushi and rolls without rice?

Sixteen kinds of rolls, all delicious and all under $10, are on the menu, which explains the choices and offers attractive pictures. There is a vegetable roll, $4.25, filled with cucumber, avocado and other fresh choices. The Hawaiian, $7.95, filled with crab meat, cucumber and avocado, topped with avocado and raw tuna, is a great choice. The Alaska Roll, $7.95, is topped with fresh salmon and filled with crab meat. If you prefer your fish cooked try the baked salmon roll, $8.95, crab meat, cucumber and avocado topped with baked salmon. The caterpillar roll, $7.95, is filled with crab meat, avocado and cucumber and topped with avocado, comes on a plate like a long caterpillar, and is fun to see and eat.

One surprise at Young & Lazy is the presence of eel, a Japanese favorite, on the menu. The eel rainbow roll, $9.45, has eel, crab and avocado inside and yellowtail, shrimp, tuna, salmon and albacore on top: a chance to taste a lot of varieties in one dish. The eel avocado roll, $6.95, is just what it says, and a great way to try eel for the first time.

Young & Lazy also offers inexpensive rice bowls, with teriyaki chicken $4.50, a beef bowl, $4.95, and a bowl with Unagi, (eel), $6.50. They all feature the meat and vegetables on top of white rice.

Sushi on the menu goes for $6.50 for six pieces, $8.50 for 8 and $10.50 for ten, and varieties include tuna, salmon, red snapper, eel (of course), smelt roes (called Masago) and salmon roe (Ikura.) You can choose several for your meal.

Meal-sized salads are also available. Try the mango chicken salad, $6.50, for a tangy mixture of chicken and fruit. And if you want an adventure, try the seaweed salad, $4, something different and even challenging, but indubitably healthy.

Teriyaki combos are full meals, offering meat, rice, salad and four pieces of California roll served decoratively and deliciously. The chicken teriyaki plate, $6.95, is a classic, the beef, $7.95, and short ribs, Korean-style, $8.95. Or go for the combo beef and chicken, $7.95.

If you are looking for simple refreshment, Young & Lazy offers boba drinks, slushes, boba tea drinks and a yogurt smoothie, $4.50.

The restaurant is simple, just a few tables, but the food provides all he decoration you’ll need.

This review appeared in the Long Beach Press-Telegram on Friday, January 2, 2009 

PANDANUS LEAF THAI CAFE

Where: 763 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach; Entire menu served daily
10 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 10 a.m.-3 a.m. Friday and Saturday;
(562) 591-1970
Atmosphere: Comfortably Asian
Alcohol: No
Smoking section: No
Parking: Lot
Wheelchair accessible: Restaurant and restroom
Restrooms: Acceptable
Noise level: Conducive to conversation
Credit cards: MasterCard and Visa

The Thrifty Gourmet reviews restaurants at which you can find exceptionally good food at mostly $10 or less for dinner.

By John Farrell

First things first; just what is a Pandanus Leaf?

At Pandanus leaf Thai café on Anaheim St. in Long Beach you can see one of the leaves in the restaurant’s logo, you can taste its flavor (sometimes called the Thai equivalent of vanilla) in desserts and a very sweet, bright green drink, and you can quiz your waitress, who will offer samples of the liquid version.

If you are Thai, or Malaysian or Vietnamese, you’ll know at once. Pandanus Leaf, called by a dozen different names, is a staple flavoring for rice (which it perfumes in cooking) and many other dishes. Many cooks grow it in their kitchens and cut small pieces for the meals they prepare.

With that kind of culinary detail in its name, you might think Pandanus Leaf is a pricey, fancy Thai restaurant. It is instead a family kind of place, small and pleasant, with a secret life.

Like Clark Kent, Pandanus Leaf has two identities. In daylight hours it is a small place in a rather undistinguished (and very long) strip mall on Anaheim St., a block and a little more east of Atlantic Ave.

There are half-a-dozen restaurants in the mall, Vietnamese, Thai and Cambodian, a market and a lot more, with a parking lot that has its own traffic problems. Thai families come in for dinner; friends stop by for Thai iced coffee or boba drinks, and two big flat screen TVs, if they are working, offer Thai TV shows, mostly filled with rock music.

On weekends, what the waitress called “club nights,” the place is transformed. There may be karaoke on the TVs, and the post-club crowds will create a waiting line at 2 a.m. or thereabouts. There are more than 2 dozen seats at the simple wooden tables inside, but the crowds of hungry folks in their best (or most provocative) clothes will line up for Boat noodle soup, Pad Thai and other after hours nourishment.

With all that excitement, you might not expect great food. You’d be wrong. The ingredients are fresh, the tastes subtle, the staff friendly and glad to talk. And a couple of dishes are the best around. Come at dinner time, before the clubs empty, and you’ll have a feast.

Start with Tom Yum, $5.95, the classic Thai soup made with lemon grass, shrimp, seafood or chicken ($2 extra for shrimp, $4 for seafood.) Galangal, mushrooms, tomatoes and Kaffir lime leaves. The Pandanus version is very spicy (even when it is served not too hot,) and the broth is red with tomato, sweet and vinegary, rich and deeply spiced. The soup is filled with delicious mushrooms, tomatoes, and so much meat you may wish you had more broth than meat. The Boat noodle soup, $6.95, with sliced beef, beef balls, liver, tripe and vegetables, is a late night hangover remedy. (Like Mexican Menudo, the tripe may be the key ingredient.)

Curry is another Thai favorite. The Duck Curry, $7.95, is filled with pieces of roast duck, bamboo shoots and Thai eggplants in a rich and spicy coconut milk sauce. The mild version is hot enough for most folks, but they can make it spicier. The small green quartered vegetables are not limes but the Thai eggplant. The Red Curry, $6.95, with chicken or beef, is, according to a waitress survey, the favorite dish on the menu.

Pad Thai noodles, $5.95, is a classic dish at every Thai restaurant, tofu, egg, bean sprouts, green onion an peanuts stir-fired with rice noodles. The Pandanus version was less sweet than others, heartier and lightened by a squeeze of lime juice. The Pad See-Ew, $6.95, big flat noodles stir-fried with broccoli and egg in a dark sauce with either beef or chicken ($1 more for shrimp, $2 for seafood) is a bit like a Chinese dish, with a dark fish-sauce flavor.

The Spicy catfish, $7.95, has pieces of fish breaded and fried crisp served in a sauce that has eggplant, pieces of bell pepper and stalks of pepper berries in the mix, a very unusual and very Thai dish.

There are salads, including a classic Papaya Salad, $5.95, made with green papaya, dried shrimp, tomatoes and salted crab, and plenty of appetizers, including delicious Egg Rolls, $3.95, filled with pork, glass noodles and vegetables and with a chili dipping sauce.

Desserts include Coconuts Fruits Ice Cream, $1.95, and lot of boba drinks. The Pandanus Leaf juice, $1.75, is sweet and refreshing, and their Thai Iced Coffee and Thai iced Tea, $1.75, are great on warm days. There is a counter where you can sit and enjoy them while resisting ordering the food you watch the cooks making in the kitchen.

If you are part of the late night Long Beach Club life, you already know about Pandanus Leaf. If not, try it before the crowds arrive.

John Farrell is a Long Beach freelance writer.  This article appeared in the Long Beach Press-Telegram on Friday, December 19, 2008

Mexican Specialties Available 24/7

LOS TRES COCHINITOS

Where: 803 Pacific Coast Highway, Wilmington; (310) 549-0921;
entire menu available 24 hours a day, seven days a week except
breakfast special available 6 a.m.-noon
Atmosphere: Conducive to conversation
Alcohol: Complete bar service
Smoking section: No
Parking: Lot
Wheelchair accessible: Dining room and restaurant
Restrooms: Acceptable
Noise level: Conducive to conversation
Credit cards: Visa, MasterCard and American Express

The Thrifty Gourmet reviews restaurants at which you can find
exceptionally good food at mostly $10 or less for dinner.

By John Farrell

Driving home from a basketball game at Staples Center, or a concert at Disney Hall or an opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, you might want to end the evening with a late night dinner. Long Beach, though, doesn’t offer a lot of night-time options.

If you are hungry head down the Harbor Freeway and get off on eastbound Pacific Coast Highway. You are only a few miles away from home, and just a few blocks from Los Tres Cochinitos, one of Wilmington’s best and least-expensive Mexican Restaurants, open 24 hours a day and always ready to offer up a full meal, salad, soup and delicious entrees.

Los Tres Cochinitos (the name means “The Three Little Pigs” and the restaurant has a big collection of pig figurines) isn’t just for late night dining, though. The food is just as good at dinner time, when the clean simply decorated restaurant is filled with families, Ranchero music and plenty of happy diners. Breakfast is also a busy time, and the special breakfast menu, with both Mexican and American specialties, is a great bargain. (The menu says breakfasts are available from 6 a.m. to noon, but most can be ordered all day, except for pancakes items.)

The Three Little Pigs has been a landmark on its stretch of PCH for 35 years now, always in the same place and the same building, which was renovated and redesigned in the mid 1980s. The new design includes a full bar in the restaurant itself, and handicap accessible restrooms. Everyone eats there: families, dating couples, longshoreman, police officers taking their dinner break. The place is never empty and the big parking lot can be full at dinner-time.

The menu at Los Tres Cochinitos is huge. There are appetizers, seafood soups, seafood cocktails, regular soups, combination dinners, regular dinners, seafood dinners, sopes, burritos, tacos, desserts and a whole page of breakfasts. Only a few of the vast number pf choices can be mentioned here.

The soups are rich and delicious. The pozole, $5.75, is a stew of hominy, pork and chile that is filling and delicious. The Sopa de Tortillas (tortilla soup) $5.75, is also a wonderful choice. There is also menudo, tripe stew, $6.75, every day. It’s a Mexican hangover remedy, and is great with dry oregano and chopped onions, its typical accompaniments.

The Cenas, (dinners) all come with rice beans and soup or salad. The Albondigas is a great choice as a starter. The Machaca, $8, is rich shredded beef stewed with vegetables. Try the Carne de Puerco con Nopales (pork cooked with cactus chunks,) $9, for a true taste of regional Mexican cooling.

The most unusual dish in the dinners is Cesinas de Res (crisp thin seasoned steak,) a dish so unusual the waitress will ask you if you are sure you know what it is. It is a large piece of dried beef, reconstituted and then grilled crisp. The meat breaks off into crisp shred and is chewy and richly flavored, eaten with tortillas in hearty mouthfuls. “The name has several meanings in Mexico,” said Gloria Montez, a daughter of restaurant owner Isaura Castaneda. “We grew up eating it at home,” Montez said, “and we put it on the menu. A lot of people like it.”

 Montez should know about that: she has worked in the restaurant her whole life, starting when her mother worked at Tres Cochinitos while she was pregnant with her daughter. Mexican restaurants always offer seafood dishes, and here many are shrimp centered. The Camarones al Mojo de Ajo (shrimp in garlic,) $9.95, features fat juicy shrimp in a heavily garlicked butter sauce. There are also Tostadas de Ceviche Pescado (a tostada of raw fish cured in lemon,) $3.25 and a Tostada de Ceviche Camaron (tostada of shrimp in lemon juice,) $4.50, and many other choices.

There are a dozen burritos, from carne asada, $5, to Huevos con Chorizo (eggs scrambled with chorizo,) $4.25, and the Burrito Norteno, $7.50, a beef or chicken burrito deep fried and served with chile sauce and guacamole.

The dessert selection at Los Tres is bigger than at most Mexican restaurants. There is flan (caramel custard,) $3, and rice pudding, $2.25, and three kinds of cake, if you have room for dessert.

Los Tres Cochinitos is a friendly family restaurant with good service and a menu that will bring you back to try new items again and again. Even at 4 in the morning.

This review appeared in the Long Beach Press-Telegram October 3, 2008

Fresh Baguettes And Vietnamese Sandwiches

LEE’S SANDWICHES

Where: 9261 Bolsa Ave., Westminster; (714) 901-5788;
entire menu 5 a.m.-9 p.m.;
also at 15440 Beach Blvd., Westminster; (714) 373-1500;
entire menu 7 a.m.-9 p.m.;
also at 9200 Bolsa Ave, #305 Asian Garden Mall; (714) 903-8855;
entire menu available 8 a.m.-7 p.m.;
also at 1025 Westminster Mall, Suite 2133; (714)893-1169;
entire menu available Monday-Friday 10 a.m.-9 p.m.,
Saturday 10 a.m.-7 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m.-6 p.m.
Atmosphere: Asian-fusion
Alcohol: No
Smoking section: No
Parking: Lot
Wheelchair accessible: dining room and restrooms
Restrooms: Immaculate
Noise level: conversational
Credit cards: No

The Thrifty Gourmet reviews restaurants at which you can find
exceptionally good food at mostly $10 or less for dinner.

By John Farrell

Hard as it is to believe, the Thrifty Gourmet operates under strict rules.

Those who read this department regularly (both of you) may have deduced as much.  Nearly two decades of regular reviewing have created templates of taste and discernment, refinement and elegance – look, who are we kidding here?  The rules are really about story length, restaurant address, if dinner is served. You knew that.

But there are times when it is important to take the broad view and bend a rule. 

Here goes: Lee’s Sandwiches doesn’t do dinner. Sandwiches, yes. Fresh baguettes, in some of their outlets 24 hours a day. Croissants, Vietnamese style dip coffee, iced coffee, Thai iced tea, smoothies, pastries and appetizers and, oh yes, what the Vietnamese call French Sandwiches. But dinners? Sorry.

The rule needs to be bent, though, because Lee’s is an experience, a downright cheap experience, that you can’t miss. Lee’s is a product of American and Vietnamese history of the recent past, and a picture of what the ongoing mixture of cultures in our country and all around the Pacific rim is creating.

Some call it Asian-fusion, and if you need a name, that is as good as any Vietnam was, before it became an American defeat, a French colony, and one thing the Vietnamese took from their French governors was what we would now call fast food. The Croque Monsieur, a fried ham and cheese sandwich on a piece of baguette, is the standard French railway station staple. The Vietnamese took that concept and added their own spicy and delicious touches to create what they call the “banh mi” or in the United States the “French Sandwich”

The central offering at Lee’s are variations on that idea: ten inch sandwiches on freshly baked baguettes, augmented by appetizers, drinks, specialty coffees and croissant sandwiches, fruit smoothies, coconut waffles and Manjoo cakes. The restaurants (there are four in Westminster alone) are all brightly lit, friendly with lots of pictures on the walls and fresh baguettes most of the day. You’ll see students working on their laptops while drinking Lee’s coffee, and moms and dads stopping on the way home to but freshly baked baguettes, ten or 12 at a time. The baguettes are $1, and day-old baguettes are sold two for one.

Lee’s is the family-owned chain created by the Le (CQ) family of San Jose. They came to the United States in 1980, and soon were selling food from a local truck. More than 20 years later Lee’s Sandwiches have more than 30 locations in California, Arizona, Oklahoma and Texas.

There are a lot of treats at a Lee’s Sandwich shop. The coffee, hot and sweet or chilled on ice, is a favorite for early-morning stops, as are the varieties of pastry, everything from fresh baguettes to muffins.

Lee’s also offers a large variety of ice creams, from Awesome Avocado to American favorites like Mint Chocolate Chip to Pistachio Vanilla Chocolate Chip and even a Lee’s Coffee flavor, with a single scoop at $1.49.

There are generous appetizers, too. The pork and shrimp roll, wrapped in a see-through rice dough wrapper, features two big rolls on sticks like popsicles and a dipping sauce, $2.25.  Others include a vegetarian roll, $2.25, and hot wings, either five pieces, $2.50, or 20 pieces, $9. Smoothies, in nearly thirty flavors, both tropical fruit and American fruit, $2.95, are delicious and very cold. Watch out for the painful brain-freeze they can induce.

There are dozens of sandwiches, with the Vietnamese-style sandwiches, each served in a ten-inch piece of fresh baguette, all under $3. American-style sandwiches, served with international flair on a croissant, are all under $5. The ham and cheese on a croissant, $3.70, was generous and filling, the croissant fr4esh and soft with just the right amount of crusty bite-resistance.

The BBQ Pork on a baguette, $2.20, was full of meaty flavor. The Asian Veggie, $2.20, had a great mixture of subtle vegetable flavors, dominated by cilantro and red-leaf basil. The Cured Pork and Pate, $2.50, featured thin slices on each meat with fresh vegetables and a subtle sauce. The only caveat is that the sandwiches are not quite as full as they look on the menu, but you can have two and coffee for about $7, or have two different ones cut in half and share the experience with a friend.

The baked good at Lee’s are great, too. The baguettes have just the right amount of hard crust and are great when they are warm and fresh. You can take a few home or buy a bag of baguette ends to make bread crumbs from. The Deli Manjoo cakes are little sweets cooked in a mold on the premises. Each looks like a corn cob, and they are sweet and a bit like donut holes in size and density. Try a bag of four, $1, just for the experience.

Okay, so you can’t get a sit down dinner at Lee’s. But you can have a lot of fun trying new things, from sandwiches to ice cream without spending more than a little money. Lee’s Sandwiches is a bright, friendly wave of the future of Asian and American food.

This review first appeared in the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

Mexican Delights Next To CSULB

GREAT MEX GRILL

Where: 5530 E. Atherton St., Long Beach; Entire menu except special breakfasts available 9:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m.- 8 p.m. Sunday; Special breakfast menu available Saturday and Sunday; One dollar tacos available Tuesdays and Fridays;(562) 493-4761
Atmosphere: Simple and festive
Alcohol: No
Smoking section: No
Parking: Lot
Wheelchair accessible: Dining room and restroom
Restrooms: Acceptable
Noise level: Conducive to conversation
Credit cards: Visa and MasterCard

The Thrifty Gourmet reviews restaurants at which you can find
exceptionally good food at mostly $10 or less for dinner.

By John Farrell

Special to the Press-Telegram

California State University Long Beach has almost everything, from a glass-faces pyramid for basketball games to a Student Union designed to look, from the right angle, like an Assyrian Temple.

There are cafeterias, restaurant, sandwich machines and even an on-campus bar.

Fine. But where do you go to get a decent taco?

Now there is an answer. It’s called Great Mex Grill and though it isn’t on campus, it is so close you could toss a chili pepper onto state land with a good tail wind. Located on Atherton St. just east of the corner of Atherton and Bellflower, it is a good long hike from the center of campus, but the prices (there are two days, Tuesdays and Fridays, when tacos are just $1) and the fact that nearly everyone at CSULB drives to school will probably keep business brisk.

Great Mex Grill was, if memory serves, a KFC in a past life. It is a small space, with cheerfully painted walls and Mexican tsatkes on the wall. One side of the mall dining area has small plain pine tables, a wall-long bench and chairs: the other side has a high bench, high tables and stools. Don’t ask why. In front of the open kitchen there is a counter with a picture menu, room for a salsa stand and, on the other side, a soda dispenser.

The service is cheerful and quick: you order at the counter and your food is brought to you, along with chips for the salsa. There are plenty of take-out orders as well, so everything moves efficiently. You can order from the wall menu, but there are more items on the printed take-out menu, so you’ll be rewarded for going slow.

You’ll find all the standard Mexican specialties on the Great Mex menu, from burritos to tacos to enchiladas to combination plates that offer great in size and items. The combinations include soft tacos (chicken, carnitas, carne asada, fish or shrimp, ) crispy chicken, beef or potato tacos, been tostadas, cheese chile relleno, flautas, enchiladas, pork tamales and bean and cheese burrito.  Refried beans and rice and one item is $4.95, two items, $6.95 and three items, $7.95. Chips and salsa come with all regular meals.

There are more than half-a-dozen burritos available, all the standards plus the fajitas burrito, $8.45. The fajitas burrito is something special, filled with either steak or chicken fajitas plus plenty of julienne peppers and onions, the latter cooked down to caramelized sweetness with a rich depth of flavor.

Chimis are also known as chimichangas, deep-fried burritos that are crisp on the outside, filled with carne asada, carnitas or chicken on the inside, $5.95, enchilada style $.85 extra, and with rice and beans for another dollar.

There are fajita plates, $845, salads like the taco salad, $6.45 and quesadillas from$4.45. Nachos, $4.45 or $5.95 with chicken or carne asada are great to share. Tortas, Mexican style sandwiches, $5.96 come with cheese, beans, guacamole and pico de gallo plus carnitas, chicken or carne asada.

There are breakfasts, too, with huevos rancheros, $6.95, machaca, $6.95 and chorizo and eggs $6.95, available all day, along with breakfast burritos. On Saturday and Sunday there are additional breakfasts including omelettes and carne asada and eggs, $6.95.

Tacos have not been forgotten. Soft tacos of chicken, carne asada and carnitas are $2. Shrimp and fish tacos are $2.45. Mexican tacos in corn tortillas are $1.75, crispy corn tortilla tacos are $2.00. And for the real bargain hunter with a big appetite, all tacos at Great Mex are $1 on Tuesdays and Fridays. They are also sponsoring in the near-future a taco-eating contest.

Great Mex Grill makes for kinds of salsa fresh every day, and you can help yourself to those salsas, sliced jalapenos, chopped onions and cilantro. There is a tomato-based salsa, a mildly hot green tomatillo sauce, a dark red chipotle sauce and a smooth red sauce that is really hot. Try a little of each as an experiment.

Great Mex Grill will certainly attract taco explorers from the nearby CSULB campus, but it is also a great place for a weekend breakfast or a quick Mexican snack.

This review first appeared in the Long Beach Press-Telegram August 24, 2008.

A Colorful Touch Of The Real Mexico

FRUITILANDIA

Where: 865 E. Seventh St., Long Beach (562) 432-8521;
restaurant is one door north of Seventh on Martin Luther King Blvd.;
Entire menu available seven days a week 7 a.m.-11 p.m.
Atmosphere: Colorful and tropical
Alcohol: no
Smoking section: Outdoor tables
Parking: No
Wheelchair accessible: Dining room only
Restrooms: No public restroom
Noise level: Conducive to conversation
Credit cards: No credit cards accepted

The Thrifty Gourmet reviews restaurants at which you can find
exceptionally good food at mostly $10 or less for dinner.

By John Farrell

Special to the Press-Telegram

Fruitilandia is not quite a Mexican restaurant, though you can get some great Mexican dishes there, salads, shrimp tostadas and something called a “Sincronizada,” a sort of super-sized grilled tortilla filled with carne asada or carnitas and avocados, spices and cheese.

It’s not quite an ice cream stand, though they have a dozen flavors, some you’ve never heard of, a banana split, $3.29 and a melon ice bowl, $5, served in half a cantaloupe and garnished with fresh berries.

It’s not just a snack bar, either, though they have colorful racks of bagged Fritos in flavors direct from Mexico which they can turn into a delightful meal with beans and cheese and other ingredients. There are also Mexican ice cream bars and “palletas,” what we call popsicles, plus a case full of iced soft drinks, including Mexican specialties and small glass bottles of Coke and Mexican beers.

Fruitilandia is not just a juice bar, though they offer more fresh fruit and vegetable drinks than you can name, sometimes in exotic combinations that include cactus leaves and cilantro and ground corn meal, some with a foreign flavor, others sweet and familiar.

It isn’t a vegetarian health food restaurant, either, though you could easily eat nothing but wonderful fruit salads, dishes of raw vegetables served with halves of Key limes and desserts that feature mangos, coconut milk and almonds.

Fruitilandia is clearly a neighborhood resource for the thriving Mexican community that makes its home near the classy Museum of Latin American Art on Alamitos Blvd. just south of Seventh Street. Fruitilandia is on Martin Luther King Blvd. just north of Seventh, just a short walk from the museum and a great place to taste the thriving and unusual culture that produced some of the striking art in MOLAA.

Any time you go to Fruitilandia you’ll see locals coming in for meals, lunches, bracing healthy juices and ice cream treats. It might be a local woman, more than five months pregnant, having a regular mango and strawberry smoothie for her baby’s health, or a couple of workers, a little sweaty, drinking a vegetable cocktail which centers on salty Clamato juice, a traditional way to replenish electrolytes. A family of five comes in for ice cream and fruit drinks, a treat on a hot day. And there is almost always someone a little confused by the sheer variety of offerings that decorate the walls on bright colored posters.

Fruitilandia is a small place crowded between a locksmith on one side and a tire store on the other. The outside is decorated with hand-painted murals and an electronic sign that offers everything inside on a bright, repeating electronic crawl. Inside the store is scrupulously clean and looks a bit like a candy store, with a glass refrigerator counter filled with mounds of chopped fresh fruit on one side, and an ice cream freezer on the other. There is no printed menu at Fruitilandia: everything is displayed in colorful posters on the walls, everything from fancy drinks to salads and sandwiches in bright professional posters full of tropical colors and Spanish names you may not recognize. Three brightly-clothed tables sport large plats, and there is a wall television tuned to a Mexican channel.

You’ll want to spend a little time considering the choices: a variety of salads, tostadas, sandwiches and tacos with six or more kinds of meat, all kinds of fruit drinks, specialty drinks, ice cream dishes and other specialties.

The food is authentic and delicious. Try the “Torta Ahogada,” $5.35 with Carnitas, $5.75 with Carne Asada, a haguette “drowned” in chili sauce a specialty from Guadalajara. Big chunks of pork in the Carnitas version are stuffed into a fresh baguette end. The sandwich is then bathed jn rich chili sauce until the roll is soft. It is served on a platter with lots of sauce and fresh-chopped cabbage and slices of red onion, delicious and different.

The “Syncronizada,” $4.87, is a big flour tortilla filled with meat (try the Carne Asada,) melted cheese, avocado slices and cilantro, grilled and served in slices. Itos hearty and the slices of pickled jalapeno are great with it. The salads are tempting, too, the barbecue chicken salad, $5.95, coming with fresh greens, grilled chicken and croutons drizzled with barbecue sauce, a big helping for the price.

The tacos, $1.20, come in Carnitas, Carne Asada, Lengua, Buche, Cabeza and Al Pastor, with small soft tortillas, a hot green sauce on the side and slices of radish for the spicy heat. They look small but have a lot of meat in them.

Ot if you like, start with the healthy fruit and vegetable drinks. If you are feeling low in energy, try the “Gasolina,” $5, which is centered on the energy drink Red Bull and augmented with carrots, orange, apple, celery and carrot juice, plus a little cactus. There is the “Klaklamato,” $4 for a small, which uses Clamato juice as its basis and adds half-a-dozen vegetables to give it all a vitamin kick.

You almost have to have, at one point or another, a “Vampiro,” $3 for a small, a favorite of locals from the number that go out the door, and something you’ll be able to brag about at your next dinner party. It features fresh-squeezed orange juice (you can watch them squeeze it) plus the juice of apples, carrots and celery, all produced by a large stainless-steel juicing machine that grinds everything it is fed into a small quantity of juice and a lot of pulp. The final ingredient is a raw beet, which makes the drink look just like blood. Stick your straw into the plastic top and the froth will bleed out a bit. The drink has to be healthy (Have you ever seen a sick vampire?) and has an earthy taste, strong I the musty range of beet juice, sweet from the orange and apple ingredients.

There is a lot more to try (the fruit salads are exciting and refreshing, the varieties almost endless) and a lot to learn about real Mexican culture. And don’t forget to brag about the Vampiro.

This review first appeared in the Long Beach Pres-Telegram.

Asian Fusion For Everyone

DOLPHIN BAY

Where: 17806 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia; entire menu served all day; (562) 865-9901
Atmosphere: modern and nautical
Alcohol: No
Smoking section: Outdoors
Parking: Lot
Wheelchair accessible: Restaurant and restroom
Restrooms: Immaculate
Noise level: Conducive to conversation
Credit cards: No

The Thrifty Gourmet reviews restaurants at which you can find
exceptionally good food at mostly $10 or less for dinner.

By John Farrell

Special to the Press-Telegram

Artesia is sometimes known as Little Bombay, because of the Indian stores and restaurants that cluster together on Pioneer Blvd. there.

But Southern California being the diverse place it is, there are plenty of places in the same neighborhood which offer the look and tastes of other cultures. Mexican restaurants are everywhere, of course, and Chinese and American, even Korean.

Nearly lost in a small strip mall on Pioneer Blvd. (they are quick to note they are across the street from the much larger 99 Ranch Market) is Dolphin Bay, a storefront wide but bright with neon lights.

Dolphin Bay doesn’t look that big from the outside, where a fountain of dolphins spouting for the amusement of the smokers, and inside it features a dozen tables, walls painted with seascapes featuring, yes, dolphins and, surprisingly, most of the front end of a reasonably large boat which serves as the centerpiece of décor and the restaurant’s business counter as well.

Dolphin Bay has more than one identity, like the comic characters featured in the library of Japanese manga stacked for customer use on a bookcase in front of the restaurant. It is a boba shop: a place where you can go to get a tea drink flavored with dozens of exotic juices and syrups, and with tapioca sitting in the bottom. Juices are also available, slushes, milk teas. The tapioca milk tea, $1.99, is refreshing and performed, and there are dozens of other choices, none more that $2.25.You’ll see students sitting at tables, sipping a drink and doing their homework or tapping on a computer keyboard, doing homework or sending messages. That’s one identity.

But Dolphin Bay has a hardly secret second identity. It is also a restaurant, a Japanese restaurant, a Taiwanese restaurant, a Korean restaurant. Read the huge menu, with so many different choices and so many different cultures, and you can spend an interesting hour discussing just what kind of a place you’ve landed in.

One thing is sure: you’ll have to work very hard indeed to spend a lot of money. There are big meals on the menu for under $6, and you can even get fed for under $3.

Let’s start with the frighteningly inexpensive. Try the egg soup, $1.35, a single serving of a rich brother filled with Chinese cabbage and what elsewhere are called egg flowers. It is delicious, a perfect snack and big enough for a meal. Add the small fired ground pork over rice, $1.50, a large mound of steamed white rice covered with spicy pork, another meal-sized portion, and you can manage a boba and still spend less than $5.

But why stint your self. The Taiwan Sausage plate, $5.50, offers a variety of tastes on a large fish-shaped platter. There is the poached scrambled egg at one end, a mound of white rice covered with spicy ground fried pork, a healthy helping of Chinese sausage slices, smoky and chewy, a warm salad with a rice vinegar dressing, and, at the fishes tail, a heap of kim-chee, Korean fermented cabbage.  The Taiwan Sausage comes with a free milk tea, too. The Korean BBQ with rice, $5.29, has the same accompaniments but instead of sausage it feature small slices of well-cooked beef, called bulgogi in Korean.  There are lots of other plates and specials, and the staff is ready and eager to explain what they are.

There are a lot of soups available, from the single-serving to meal-size, and none are over$ 6. The Taiwan Peddler’s Soup, $4.36, features noodles in a clear broth with small pieces of pork on top, includes scallions, bok-choy and a heap of fresh sliced garlic. It is enough for a meal, or for two to share. Other soups include Squid Soup with noodles, $4.36, or without noodles, $3.96.

There are desserts as well, tapioca pudding is $2.25, and there are about a dozen other including peanut pudding, $1.99 and eggnog pudding, $1.99. In its first identity as a café Dolphin Bay offers a variety of snacks. Try the deep-fried Tempura, $2.70, which is very different from what you may expect. It uses sticks of prepared fish paste dipped in batter and fried crisp, served with a sweet dipping sauce. Have a fruit juice, if you like. Orange juice or tangerine juice are $1.99. Or try watermelon or wintermelon juice, $1.75.

Dolphin Bay is open from 11 a.m. to midnight, so you can stop for an after-theater snack on your way home from a film or the Cerritos Performing Arts center, or in mid-afternoon for a quick and interesting lunch. You might even get hooked on reading those manga serials.

John Farrell is a Long Beach freelance writer.
This review first appeared in the Long Beach Press-Telegram.