Whoa, Pie!

(note of caution: This is a magnificently long blog, which will require the use of your attention span muscles.)

It is a surprising feat that my friends and I are not obese. We love to eat; eat often and a lot. Well I’m a pound-packer, but my friends are perfectly healthy and well-managed people. Our outings usually revolve around food, and if we do embark on an expedition that is non-food related, the chances are very good that food will appear somewhere along the way.

This last Wednesday I had a gut-busting tour of the heart of Los Angeles. My friend Jenny wanted to go to the beach and I wanted to get out of my roach-infested apartment. She also wanted to eat Pinkberry, the very L.A. chain yogurt place. Yes, that is an important detail. By the time, she reached my house, our meeting place for the day, the beach was out of the question. Traffic is shit by certain hours and the day was getting late. We needed to go somewhere else. She was ravenous, so I suggested Philippe’s, the famous French-dipped sandwich house in downtown Los Angeles.

Philippe’s is the home of French-dipped sandwiches in Los Angeles. Since 1908, it has been serving all of Los Angeles these juicy sandwiches, in addition to tasty soups, divine desserts, and um…beer. Woo! Now this place is not a delicatessen because it’s low on the Jewish food. No matzah bawlls or knishes. What you’re looking for here is real deal French-dipped sandwiches. The interior looks like it hasn’t changed in decades, most likely because it hasn’t. The walls are adorned with accolades and achievements from newspapers, magazines, the city of L.A., the world, and everyone who has taste buds. The floor is covered in sawdust to give the place its character and personality. So if you have some bizarre aversion to sawdust then you might have a reason to not go to Philippe’s. Weirdo.

Are you now asking what the heck is a French-dipped sandwich, Melanie? Basically, you have a French roll, meat, and if you want cheese, you can have it. At Philippe’s they serve beef, lamb, ham, oven-roasted turkey, and pork. Since I neither eat pork, lamb, or ham, I go with beef. Turkey? Save that for Thanksgiving. It’s good, but this place is known best for their beef French-dip. The actual dip is beef au jus, which are the natural juices that are released from the beef when it is roasted. The sound of that might be off-putting to some people, but to me “natural beef juices” screams succulent deliciousness. Ohhh yes. They dip the bread lightly in the jus, top it with your meat choice (beef *cough*), and cheese if you want it. They also have side dishes like bag o’chips but that’s shit. Go for the cole slaw, potato salad, macaroni salad, dill pickles, pickled pigs’ feet. Whatever suits your fancy and whatever they have laid out in the display cases. They also have iced tea and lemonade, for the dirt cheap prices of $0.60 and $0.70 respectively.

That particular day, Jenny ordered a French-dipped, roast beef sandwich with American cheese and a lemonade. I had boysenberry pie à la mode; the ice cream came courtesy of Balian’s. I don’t know who Balian is and/or why that brand is special, but that is one kick-ass Armenian ice cream maker! I was quite filled up when I had my pie, but Jenny was hungry and she was loving her sandwich. Philippe’s lays out courtesy jars of hot mustard. (Read: motherfucking hot, tear your eyes out bitch hot). Jenny had quite the catastrophe when she opened the lid of the jar.

I said to her, “Oooh be careful. That’s hot stuff.” I told her with a coy grin.

She was wide-eyed and intrigued. “Really?” she asked while dabbing on a spoonful of the good stuff in a concentrated area of her sandwich.

I just love big beefy things.

Jenny's face became fire! Her eyes watered like a fountain and gushed like a geyser. Her eyes conveyed a sense of astonishment and overwhelmed senses, like the twinges of a person's first climax. My poor friend Jenny fell victim to the hot mustard that plagued every new customer of Philippe’s, myself included. Jenny described it as similar to a hit of wasabi, or mixed with horseradish. Don’t let the hot mustard scare you away from wanting to visit Philippe’s. It does not come with the sandwich, but as I had described, it comes in jars laid out on the tables. In small doses, the mustard is tasty and adds a tantalizing dimension to your already amazing sandwich. I didn’t want the rest of my pie, so she ate it. Mmmm betrayal to Coco’s never tasted so good!

After lunch at Philippe’s, we hit Olvera St. This place is old, too. Oh and historic. This street was one of the first. In the 1800’s through the early 1900’s, Olvera St. was the epicenter of the Mexican American community that had settled in that area. Up until 1877, the street was named Wine St, before it became Olvera. In the early twentieth century, the place had become run-down and dilapidated. In 1930, it became a marketplace. Today, it is the symbol of the olden days of L.A. and homage to the Mexican American community. Although homages to the Mexican-American community can be found all over LA, this is one of the few places where white people can visit and feel safe during their visit.

It’s a touristy place and the vendors sell a large number of kitschy items like fake guitars, shawls, and sombreros. They sell trinkets and Mexican candies like the infamous Pelon Rico, Lucas, and spicy mango lollipops. The old houses where people used to live still stand and you can take guided tours during the day time. Frida Kahlo and her unibrow are all over the place, so if you’re grossed out by caterpillar faces, I suggest you eat before you visit Olvera St. Of course, then you’d be missing out on all the food Olvera has to offer. There are many little shops that sell food like taquitos and taquito-type of things but there are three sit-down restaurants and sometimes you can have someone serenade you as you eat your meal. It was very romantic. Too bad it was Jenny and I. Neither of us have a man-organ, therefore nil romance. No penis, no romance? You betcha.

We visited the oldest Catholic church in Los Angeles, La Placita Church, or Our Lady the Queen of Angels. I admire the devotion of Catholics.

Last on the tour, you cannot forget Mr. Churro who deep fries and then buries your churro in sweet cinnamon sugar right before your eyes. Mmm long, crunchy, sweet, phallic things…

Two thumbs up to Olvera Street for a fun trip through historical Los Angeles and for the Frida Kahlo portraits. I’ve got enough eyebrows to last me a lifetime.

After a trip to Mexico, Jenny and I went further on our trip around the world. We went to Little Tokyo, by way of Cuba. In Cuba, we stopped at a bar for drinks. I had water with lime, she had Yerba Mate soda. It was very Ernest Hemingway. Except we’re not Hemingway, we never went to Cuba, and we did not have any alcohol like Hemingway. But we did go to a Cuban restaurant, Cuba Central, after having just eaten Philippe's and a churro. Cuba Central was across the street from Little Tokyo. I really wanted Cuban appetizers and to take advantage of the Happy Hour mojitos. Alas, my stomach was already blossoming into heifer status. I could not take food, nor allow it into my system.

In Little Tokyo, we found a shoe shop and I was goofing off with the lady who worked there because she was telling me about the beautiful Crocs with the Fur at 20% off. Gee, I wonder why those stank factories are 20% off? Jenny and I continued to complain of our achingly full bellies when she quietly reminded me that despite everything, she still wanted to fulfill her craving of Pinkberry. We walked around Little Tokyo some more, and perused the sights. There was not much to see, apparently, or we had just gone to the wrong spot. All of a sudden, a tiny yogurt place called ceFioré and we were amazed because it looked exactly like Pinkberry and they served frozen yogurt on top of waffles. That’s fucking fat kid paradise. Not minutes later, we then turned a corner and lo and behold…

There was a Pinkberry before our eyes. We had no words until I finally broke the silence with a hand gesture and a happy grin: “There you go!” Pinkberry is here! We could do nothing but laugh. Our search for Pinkberry and we could not fit a single ounce into our bodies. Life is over.

But it’s okay because then we went to a skater shop that smelled like leather and weed. The guy that worked there was this dude with messed-up teeth. He talked to us about…absolutely nothing. Because he’s a stoner.

After we left Little Tokyo we weren’t sure where to go next.

“Let’s just get lost in L.A. then,” I suggested to Jenny.

“Sure!” she concurred. “What’s the worst that could happen? Unless you go to those weird places if you know what I mean.”

I thought about this for a moment. This is true. There are some pretty awful places to get lost in L.A. and I certainly didn’t want to take that chance. My only suggestion for a solution was to say:

“Well…you have instincts don’t you?”

After driving around, we decided to go to the Los Feliz area, the place of our adolescence. And because it reminds me of my friend Flo, who I miss. It was yet still early and the sun was out. It was much too early to go to Los Feliz at this hour and we weren’t even hungry yet!

“Want to go to the park and play?” I asked Jenny.

“Yes! And it’ll help us get more hungry,” she happily agreed with glee.

We played at a playground in Griffith Park, Los Feliz that we realized was a park built for able-bodied children and for disabled children, which I thought was just precious. I wondered if others must have thought we were mentally disabled, though, because we are 21 years old, we play at a park, and we squeal. It takes a huge amount of confidence and a cemented sense of identity to admit that you want to play at the park and actually do it. And squeal. If people stopped caring so much about what other people thought, we would do so much more of the things we want to do.

After the park, we exercised our brain at Skylight Books on Vermont Ave. Then we ate at House of Pies. We were hungry again and even though HoP is a shitty place for food, it's got a special place in our hungry little gluttinous hearts. Towards the final stretch of our meal, I spotted a bulbous piece of pie, burgeoning full of banana slices and whipped cream. The kind of pie that makes you want to throw in someone's face as a joke. Or lick off someone's body, I don't know, that's your fantasy not mine. When I saw that pie, and I thought of all the the things we did, the people we talked to, the volume of food we ate, I could think of nothing to say but, "Whoa, pie!"

In conclusion, did you ever wonder if Jenny got her Pinkberry after all? No, she didn’t. But that’s okay. We ate most of the rest of what L.A. has to offer, anyway. I'm glad we are hungry friends.