Anne Marie Panoringan

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When you're wandering a mall, hunger isn't your friend. It usually means some average meal to temporarily satiate, which you'll forget about as soon as you dump the tray. So to discover something left of center is a welcome treat, especially when your playground is the Bay Area.

Their signage was in the distance. Jollibee? Calbi? Oh, Calbee! What the heck is Calbee? As I walked closer, familiar packaging came into focus. It was those Caesar snap pea crisps typically found at Trader Joe's, or next to the croutons and minced garlic everywhere else. That stuff was pretty tasty and good for you, but why stop when I can pick up a bag back home? In a word, options.
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Marisa Gerber/ OCWeekly

​Three vans of people -- many from El Centro Cultural de Mexico and others from Justice for Janitors and an inter-faith group -- carpooled from Santa Ana to Monrovia today for a protest at Trader Joe's headquarters. More >>

Wish they were back in SanTana, but what are you going to do...

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Out of the many restaurants that we've lost in the near-decade I've been the food editor at this infernal rag, few pained me more than the departure of Nancy Puebla Restaurant, a SanTana dive that was one of the first regional Mexican restaurants in the county to cross over to the mainstream. Its take on moles were legendary, as was its unique specialty on the little guys: godornices (Cornish game hen) and quilotes (quails). And best of all were the aguas frescas, which many a Mexi non-profit used for their fundraisers.

Then, around late 2007, Nancy Puebla just up and left. The owner told me he was moving to Perris, to take advantage of the housing boom at the time, and was relocating his restaurant with him. Perris? That tiny town off I-15, whose only claim to fame is it's not Menifee? I wished him well, but feared the move wouldn't work--after all, how many poblanos could possibly live in the Inland Empire?

There was never any reason for me to check up on Nancy Puebla--until this past Saturday.
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​A huge column of smoke rises from a charcoal grill set into a counter; the air fills with the scent of beef grilling and the sound of fat spattering onto the fire below. It takes just a minute or two, and I'm fascinated. My rapt gaze is lost on the taquero, for whom this is not new. He hacks the beautifully charred diesmillo of beef--still miraculously tender in the center--into slices, then throws it unceremoniously into homemade tortillas and cocks an eyebrow at me.

"Con todo," I instruct him, and he throws--literally--salsa, onions, cilantro and guacamole onto each taco and slides the plate across the tile counter. It takes maybe ten seconds from the time the beef comes off the grill to the first bite. The flavor is primordial, the meat perfectly cooked, the red salsa as necessary to the dish as the meat itself. Suddenly, I look up from my food. This is not some shiny franchise; this is a run-down stand open to the air on two sides near the so-touristy Rosarito Beach Hotel. There's a self-service cooler of bottles of water and made-with-real sugar soda. Outside, groups of bewildered norteamericano college students wander by, oblivious to the wonder inside. I pay my bill--$2.50 for three tacos--and shake my head in bemusement.

Welcome to Baja.
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They use that skillet as the "o" in "Lodge" to create one of the best logos EVER...

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As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the chica and I spent the first two weeks of August driving all the way to Kentucky for the World's Longest Yard Sale, taking Highway 127 from Frankfort down to Chattanooga. The plan was then to take I-24 to Nashville for the night, but a fortuitous detour came before us in the form of a massive billboard: the Lodge Cast Iron factory store, just off the freeway in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, the home base for the country's premier maker of cast iron cookware.

I am not a cook, but am a beneficiary of cast iron cookware, whether it was the massive comal that has served my family for decades, or the wonderful home meals the chica cooks. I would've never swung by the Lodge Cast Iron store--I didn't even know who they were until the chica nearly became apoplectic with excitement and insisted we visit. They're the nation's oldest-continuing family maker of cookware , having been around since 1896. Check in on a piece of Americana cookery? I'm there.
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You may or may not like Carl's Jr's. commercials. They're purposely polarizing and provocative. The ads use either tits or creepers to capture your eyeballs and your wallet.

Now they're using both at the same time--creepy old man moobies to sell Hardee's Fried Bologna Biscuit breakfast sandwiches.
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​Craving some authentic Mexican tuna ceviche? Well, next time you order it, the fish might actually be from Mexico.More >>

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Update: Amy Scattergood unfortunately had to pull out of the "Future of Food Writing Panel" for Saturday, but we got a great guest for Sunday's panel on the Great Mexican Food Authenticity Debate: Matt McCollum, the main sales guy for Gringo Bandito. It'll be awesome to have Matt--a Dallas native--defend the wonders of Tex-Mex and explain to us Californians what, exactly, is a cheese taco. Remember that the Saturday panel is at 4 p.m., Sunday is at 1 p.m. See you there!

Original post July 7, 11 a.m.: As everyone and their mother knows, next weekend is Carmaggedon: when the 405 Freeway between the 10 and the 101 will close, creating a catastrophe that will result on all of us becoming zombies battling replicants. But before you go picking my brains, at least fill your stomach at the Eat Real Festival, the two-day food festival happening at the Helms Bakery complex in Culver City far enough from the Desmadre Zone to be comfortable. My chica is running the programming part of the event, which (as Dave previously noted) will include more than a few OC names; me, being a nerd, has organized two food panels to make YOUR brains that much juicier: the future of food writing, and arguing the eternal question--what's authentically Mexican, and what's not?

Panelists after the jump!
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Joshua Lurie / Food GPS

​When you think of concentrations of good Mexican restaurants, you think of Santa Ana, East Los Angeles, maybe North Hollywood. But Bell? It may be famous for its awful City Council, but culinarily it's already home to La Casita Mexicana, one of the very best examples of the genre in Southern California. Now, Rocio Camacho, who was at the helm of Moles La Tía in East Los Angeles before she took on the executive chef job at La Huasteca in Lynwood, is opening a new place in the city.
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