Keith May

Protesting is fun!

​ You heard it here first in Dave Lieberman's post, and we sent photog Keith May to yesterday afternoon's PETA protest at a Santa Ana McDonald's location. Armed with some super uplifting shots of bloody chickens and scary clowns, PETA members rallied against cruel slaughter practices of chickens.

The best part? May edited these images whilst chewing on a Big Mac. See the full slideshow here.

Anyone who attended college, lived in campus housing with roommates, joined them in staring into a TV set playing Make Me Laugh at 11 every weeknight, finished the last of the 12-pack, desperately needed more brew, had to resort to walking -- because no one had a car, the campus shuttle stopped running at 9:30 and, besides, don't drink and drive, kids -- to the local liquor store, then realized upon pulling on the locked entrance door that liquor stores in this college town close at 11 can look at this from UC Irvine's New University online student news as a beautiful thing:

The Newport Beach company Midnight Muncheez has been serving night owls in the Newport and Costa Mesa area for 14 months and is now spreading to UC Irvine.

In addition to providing students with late-night grub, party supplies, toiletries and accessories all with affordable delivery, Midnight Muncheez is allowing UCI partiers one extra supply: alcohol.

Booze, brought to your door like it was a pizza, clean diapers or a notice to evict. Brings a tear to this old co-ed's eye. 

Anyone who attended college, lived in campus housing with roommates, joined them in staring into a TV set playing Make Me Laugh at 11 every weeknight, finished the last of the 12-pack, desperately needed more brew, had to resort to walking -- because no one had a car, the campus shuttle stopped running at 9:30 and, besides, don't drink and drive, kids -- to the local liquor store, then realized upon pulling on the locked entrance door that liquor stores in this college town close at 11 can look at this from UC Irvine's New University online student news as a beautiful thing:

The Newport Beach company Midnight Muncheez has been serving night owls in the Newport and Costa Mesa area for 14 months and is now spreading to UC Irvine.

In addition to providing students with late-night grub, party supplies, toiletries and accessories all with affordable delivery, Midnight Muncheez is allowing UCI partiers one extra supply: alcohol.

Booze, brought to your door like it was a pizza, clean diapers or a notice to evict. Brings a tear to this old co-ed's eye. 

For years, Barbeques Galore seemed to do brisk business in a little Costa Mesa strip center it shared with a liquor store, Big 5 Sporting Goods and Wherehouse Records. Then, in no particular order, Wherehouse went online only, a larger, adjacent shopping center at Harbor Boulevard and Wilson Street got a massive makeover and Barbeques Galore moved into a bigger, 8,000-square-foot space as a BBQ superstore while retaining its original spot as sort of the outlet mall version of its new self.

The Barbeques Galore chain filed for bankruptcy in August 2008, but the next month the Costa Mesa store and locations in Irvine and Laguna Niguel were separated out as Barbecues & More under new owners, the Maister Group of Companies of Santa Ana.

Anything BBQ related you could possibly want or need was carried among the three stores' 3,000 different products, which included enough hot sauces, grilling sauces and rubs to fill a wall, floor to ceiling. The store later began carrying saunas, so you could boil yourself while grilling your dogs. What more could Orange County suburbia desire?

Well, Barbecues & More had a problem. While it sold the Cadillacs of grills for thousands of dollars, much cheaper knock-offs could be purchased at Target, Costco and Home Depot, which had a store anchoring the same madeover shopping center the Costa Mesa Barbecues & More moved into. The Irvine and Laguna Niguel locations ultimately went bye-bye, and today the Maister Group announced that in the next couple weeks it will close that Costa Mesa store mere steps from where the original Barbeques Galore opened 22 years earlier.

"We are closing our final store due to the tough retail climate where consumers are extremely concerned about the economy and are holding onto their money," said CEO Brett Maister.

On the bright side, merchandise is marked off 40 percent and more, meaning I'd finally be able to afford it if only my credit cards weren't maxed out.

Stolen from our new food blog...

"Hola, readers, and welcome to the Weekly's latest Internet endeavor: a food blog! Expect the same gourmand insanity I have brought ustedes for the past six years as food editor and Edwin Goei has in his year-and-a-half as my classier half: Where's the great local grub, the great personalities, but also the great failures, great insanities and other great greatness (can you tell I need to stop writing?). And something new for our vigorously provincial coverage: national affairs (but always through la naranja's prism)! Stay tuned..."

Further notes...

It's called Stick a Fork in It, and the direct URL is http://blogs.ocweekly.com/stickaforkinit. You can also get an RSS feed--just look where it says "RSS feed" and subscribe. And comment! And comment! And comment!

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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It's my job as a food critic to have only one moral--tell readers about the county's best-tasting food. Little time to dwell on the many philosophical debates--corporate vs. indie, veganism contra an omnivorous diet, the virtues of organic against agrobusiness--afflicting modern-day cooking. My reviewing motto is Veni, vidi, comí--I came, I saw, I ate.

About a month ago, I told ustedes about a faithful reader's efforts to save the Yorkshire pig her son could no longer raise. None of you cold-hearted bastards bothered to contact Kat, so I offered to buy the pig from her for $250 on the condition the hog wasn't slaughtered. Kat found a great non-profit animal sanctuary, Animal Acres, who picked up the sow from La Habra High School yesterday.

Why did I save an animal who won't live with me? At the insistence of my vegetarian girlfriend partly, but mostly because of Kat, a longtime Weekly reader and frequent Navel Gazing commentator whose plea on behalf of her son to make sure the pig wasn't killed melted the heart of even this carnivore.

Before the pig--named Caboose after a character in the insanely popular XBox series Halo--was taken, I visited my new ward and met up with Kat and her guy at the La Habra High School Future Farmers of America stables. Kat apologized for the stable's smell, but I told not to worry--I'm used to it; I'm Mexican, for chrissakes. While most of the pigs lay down on the hard concrete, flies attacking any open wounds, Caboose trotted around with the personality of a puppy. Weighing in at about 200 pounds, with fine bristles and a healthy pink cmplexion, the year-old gal responded to her name, rubbed up against everyone's leg constantly, and dropped to the ground the moment there was the possibility of a belly rub. But mostly, she chewed--on a rubber hose (pictured), on her food, and on both of my shoes three times. "Don't worry about it--she's playful like that," Kat cracked as Caboose gnawed on my Chucks (the feeling was akin to somebody grabbing your arm repeatedly).

Another Caboose picture after the jump!

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