Orange County Blog

When Asian Deli skedaddled to Diamond Bar a few years ago, it left Orange County deprived of its only Indonesian restaurant. The nearest alternative for hungry expats existed just beyond the Orange County line, at Toko Rame in Bellflower. Meanwhile, in O.C., Indonesian food remained the Rodney Dangerfield of Asian cuisine. It gets no respect.

So when a reader* tipped me off to a new Indonesian restaurant inside the Orange Curtain, my exact words were: "HOLY SH*T!!!!"

The news couldn't have come at a better time. A week ago, I'd learned that Pondok Kaki Lima -- the every-Saturday outdoor gathering of Indonesian vendors at the Duarte Inn -- was recently shut down by the state**.

As fortuitous as it is bitter sweet, and in a "one door closes, another one opens" kind of way, I found myself in a parking lot at the corner of Harbor and Garden Grove Blvd. There, next to Chuck E. Cheese's and a 99-Cent-Only store, in the shell of what was a Chinese take-out, stood Warung Pojok, the newest and so far, the only Indonesian restaurant in Orange County.

It was a quarter past one.

After catching a late morning matinee at The Block's AMC, my friends and I found ourselves hungry. If we weren't lazy and famished, we would've made a beeline for the parking lot and bolted out of there to the nearest banh mi shop or burrito stand.

Instead we wandered mindlessly, zombie-like, into O.C.'s version of the Universal City Walk food court. In the sun-drenched, gaudy alley of billboards and tourist-trappy fakeness, we ambled around dumbstruck.

I have a friend named Mike (who among us doesn't have a friend named Mike). Although his life doesn't revolve around food as much as mine does (read: he's not a food blogger), our tastes are often parallel. It was more than a decade ago (in college) that he tipped me off to Alerto's fish burrito; something I've been enjoying ever since. So if he likes something, I will too.

There is one point of contention where our opinions diverge: the guy despises anything burnt, scorched, or charred. He'd rather not see grill marks on his chicken breasts or on his burgers. And those bits of carbonized sauce on the ends of barbecued ribs? It tastes like grit to him, the equivalent of getting sand in his food.

Me? I think of it as extra flavor (oh-so-yummy carcinogens!!). A steak can be juicy, but it's not as good as it could be if there isn't just a little bit of crust and char.

Recently, Mike moved back to Orange County from The Valley, in search of milder climates, better opportunities, and of course, food. Since then, my itinerant dining companions and I have been re-acclimating him to the wonders of our cuisine. But after a whirlwind tour that stretched from our southern coasts to Fullerton, it was Mike who had a place to show us -- a Little Saigon hole-in-the-wall he liked when he lived here all those years ago.

The weather's balmy. The sun attacks from above and below, heating the very ground you walk on. People are in flip flops, shorts and sunglasses. So what the hell am I doing sitting in front of a hot plate, cooking my own lunch over a steaming, gurgling vat of water?

Because I can.

Thanks to the wonders of A/C, you can just do about anything in spite of the climate outside. Indoor skiing in Dubai? No problem. Eating shabu shabu on a hot August day in Fullerton? No sweat...literally.

Moreover, the meal was cheap. At $8.40 per person for their lunch special, Mitsu E Shabu Shabu offers one of the lowest price tags I've seen anywhere for this, the Japanese version of hot pot.

And since what I pay for shabu shabu is inversely related to my enjoyment of it, this is well below my ten-dollar threshold of tolerance. Any more than that and the meal becomes less palatable, no matter how freezing cold it is outside or how well the meat is marbled.

Call it a reverse knee-jerk response, but when I saw this story about L.A.'s City Council's ban on new fast-food restaurants in South Los Angeles to combat obesity and the highest incidence of diabetes in the county, it made this blogger realize that he hasn't sunk his teeth into some Popeyes Chicken in a while.

And when one has such an epiphany, there's no better day of the week to have it than Tuesday. Tuesdays, as most people know, is when you can get the leg and thigh special for $1.29 at participating Popeyes.

Some folks may recall a time when gas prices were low and the Tuesday two-piece deal was $0.99. Those days are over.

Still, it's exactly this kind of discounting that has L.A.'s City Council worried. $0.99 Whoppers, Extra Value Meals, Taco Tuesdays; it's pricing that L.A.'s citizenry allegedly cannot resist, resulting in unhealthy eating behaviors.

Truthfully, if my own gluttony on that Tuesday night was any indication, then they are right to be concerned.

So here's what happened since we last checked in: Lima City (a Peruvian food stall in an Irvine food court I previously reviewed) is gone, replaced by Peruvian Kitchen, who moved out from its Fountain Valley digs, which is now occupied by another Peruvian restaurant called Casa Inka.

I won't attempt to explain the reasoning behind this game of Peruvian restaurant musical chairs, except to say that it sounds like the plot of a bad telenovela. But whatever may have occurred behind the scenes, it's a good turn of events, at least for Irvine.

At first, I didn't think so. When I saw that new owners had taken over Lima City in a bloodless coup, I shunned their offerings. I was a Lima City loyalist, entrenched in a comfortable routine of ordering nothing but their mushroom chicken from a heated trough.

I ate the dish once a week. Sometimes even twice or three times. Sure, it wasn't something I'd ever seen at any other Peruvian restaurants. And yes, the dish's authenticity was dubious. It's deliciousness, however, was undeniable. Above all, it was quick, good, and cheap -- perfect for a working schlub with only an hour to spare for lunch.

If 7-Eleven and Mitsuwa sired an offspring, that child would be Famima!! And contrary to what may seem like an overenthusiastic beginning to this post, the exclamation points -- both of them -- are part of the brand name concocted by FamilyMart, the Japanese company with over fourteen thousand such stores throughout the planet, including about a half dozen already in L.A.

The first Orange County store opened in Fountain Valley last week, hawking onigiri and boxed sushi, "gourmet" sandwiches and curry bowls along with the Icee's (subtitled as Famima!! Freeze) and hot dogs rolling on a weiner treadmill.

But besides that and other convenience store staples like chips, magazines and lottery tickets, Famima!!'s main attraction just might be the wall of Pocky. They've got no less than ten varieties of the beguilingly popular, chocolate-dipped Japanese bread sticks. There's a Pocky for every mood; even Pocky Men's, for those too masculine and macho to eat just regular ol' Pocky.

First things first: if you are Vietnamese or otherwise familiar with the culinary terrain and back alleyways of Little Saigon, stop reading right now. If you do not heed this warning, I will not be responsible for the damage your spit-take will do to your computer screens.

The restaurant I'm about to review is not meant for you. It's cut from the same cloth as The Slanted Door in San Francisco, and Crustacean in Beverly Hills; places that charge $8.95 for a bowl of pho without batting an eye, catering to customers who might even think it's a bargain. Need more proof? The dinnerware looks like a showcase for Mikasa and in the crowded room, my Asian face was in the minority.

Perhaps my lovely dining companion said it best when she said, "no self-respecting Vietnamese would ever eat here."

But unlike Crustacean, a regrettable experience that still makes my blood boil, I liked Benley, a lot.

This is an eatery that shares the same sort of vibe as one of my favorites, Cafe Hiro. It's in a sparsely decorated, long, bowling alley of a room that feels as casually unpretentious as it does claustrophobic.

And just like Cafe Hiro, the kitchen takes the base flavors of an Asian culture and blends it with a touch of European prep and presentation. Use the dreaded "f" word if you must. Yes, it is "fusion".

But with that said, I still couldn't justify paying nine-dollars for bowl of pho.

A large, leafy tree stands in the middle of the room. Near the queue to the register, there are two booths made up as jail cells, complete with metal bars and wanted posters.

It's corny. It's kitschy. It's the kind of interior design cribbed straight out of the Walt Disney playbook on Western theming; a cartoony, fun, Frontierland-version of the Old West, intended to disarm and put you into a playful mood conducive to eating lots of BBQ.

I didn't need any more convincing. BBQ was already on my brain. Why, after all, would I drag my friends to Dana Point to Smokey's House of BBQ if I wasn't looking forward to a night of sinking my teeth into a rack of baby backs, stripping meat from bone, licking my sauce-sullied fingers.

Unfortunately, despite the open kitchen that boasted a steel-grated, platform roasting rack that can be lifted and lowered into a pit of fire; I am still waiting for my night of BBQ bliss.

Say you've been invited to potluck but you can't cook. Or your family's hungry, and you don't have much time or money to burn. There are a myriad of options, of course, most of them involving take-out. But for my hard-earned cash, there's Little Saigon's food-to-go shops -- establishments that exist just for these very reasons.

In particular, there's Huong Huong, a stop-in-and-get-out food-to-go shop with its own parking lot (albeit a tiny one) on Westminster's main drag of Bolsa.