20. Bruhaus

So after a delightful dinner in Brentwood, my friend Scott, a couple of out-of-town visitors, and I decided to go check out the new German sausage and beer house "Bruhaus."

Nestled snugly between Wilshire mainstays Cabo Cantina and Q's Billiards club, Bruhaus is Brentwood's attempt at bringing a taste of class to the otherwise party-hearty environment that local residents have come to know, love, hate, and somehow always wind up at.

Before I get too much into Bruhaus, I should explain that when you go to Q's or Cabo, you go to get silly drunk and try to sleep with as many liquored up post-grads that you can rapid-fire hit on. It's a college bar scene through and through, with sexual exploits including my friend Brian getting public domers on the balcony. But, why, you might ask, would I EVER want to listen to rocking music, screw floozy chicks, and drink reasonably priced booze with my bro's?? Good question, and the very same thing occurred to the founders of Bruhaus, who decided to deviate from that winning recipe and bring a taste of Hollywood douchebaggery right smack into Brentwood's Party Alley.

Because Bruhaus is new, I understand that people will check it out squarely out of curiosity. But it was literally shoulder to shoulder packed when we arrived. Mind you, we didn't walk immediately inside because the "Bouncer" (some dorky emo looking Brian Setzer wannabe) informed us that we were "at capacity" and would need to wait until people left. At that moment a guy walks straight out the door.

"Hey," I said, "that guy just left."

The Bouncer looked left, right, then for cocky measure, up and down, and replied, "He's just going to smoke a cigarette."

"Yes," I retorted, "that means he left. And look he's not smoking a cigarette at all, he's just hanging out outside with his friends and that blonde chick." I replied as I watched the man walk outside to meet up with some friends and a blonde chick as they continued to talk and mingle nearly 10 yards from the bar entrance.

The bounce pretended to ignore me. We waited another 45 seconds and a group of 5 people walked outside. I looked at the bouncer he looked at me, and he let another 30 seconds or so pass. He took a long breath and finally replied, "Ok let's see your ID's."

What a prick. Seriously I expect that kind of pompous crap in Hollywood, but not in Brentwood. This is where people go with one shoe on, wreaking of day old puke, and still manage to shack up with some sloppy co-ed before the night's out. Whatever....we went inside.

As previously mentioned, it was packed. Everyone was shoulder to shoulder and merely getting to the bar proved to be a 20 minute errand.  Everyone was dressed to the nines in their hippest outfits making lame attempts to yell at one another over the poorly chosen DJ set. Most people just wandered aimlessly from one end of the bar to the other hoping something would happen, because conversation and dancing were both certainly out of the question. A lot of people just stood motionless and stared at their phones hoping a random  text message would come through.  I would estimate that 75% of the patrons at Bruhaus were incredibly uncomfortable with this environment, but because most people are malleable sheep they thought that since this was the "cool" place to be then they should just keep their mouths shut and pretend to love it.
 

This is what you do in Hollywood, stand around pretending to have fun.

I don't understand why people could be so spineless as to not actually vocalize that this place clearly sucked. Worse still, Cabo Cantina was at a perfect mingling capacity, offered cheaper drinks, and was a merely 2 second walk from Bruhaus. After 2 drinks at Bruhaus we cut our losses and went to Cabo Cantina to meet up with some other friends who were enjoying an actual table and binge drinking Tecate's instead of sampling a flight of Czech pilsners for $27. I'm not defending one type of partying and denouncing another, to each their own of course. But it's unfortunate that a strip of property that was once a haven from Hollywood socialites has now become a hub for them. Seriously, Bruhaus has a valet. How fucking retarded.

This is what you do in B'wood, try to bone girls while acting like an idiot.

People in Los Angeles are constantly reminded that they aren't rich enough, attractive enough, or cool enough. Cabo Cantina and Q's were a great place to just be yourself. The same poor, socially awkward weirdo we all love. Thanks to the assholes at Bruhaus, that's no longer the case. Best put your flip flops back in the closet.






Name: Bruhaus
Genre: German Beer and Sausage Bar
Value: Never tried the food (heard it's decent from the idiot patrons) Liquor a bit overpriced.
What You'll Need to Enjoy Your Meal: A story about the show you're "developing", an agent, and an incessant need to check your iphone/blackberry.
Rating: 1.5 / 5

19. The Veggie Grill

I found myself running some works errands in El Segundo (wallet intact) and I had a brief break for lunch. Because I'm probably the fattest I've ever been in my life I thought I could passively lose weight be eating at this place called the Veggie Grill. It's in the big random El Segundo shopping plaza way in the back.

At first glance the decor is something out of an IKEA nightmare. But I'd heard good things about the food so I figure I'd stay the course and order something.  As you hopefully already guessed, there's no meat served at the veggie grill. But rather than rely on the brash assumption that people want to eat vegetables, they pretty much make sandwiches and burgers as usual except instead of meat they make a slurry of reconstituted proteins and curds and flavor them with chemicals to resemble meat (which vegetarians somehow think is better for them.)

The creepy moustachioed teenager at the counter took my order of a Santa Fe Chicken Sandwich and handed me a number. I opted out of the sweet potato fries as they unfortunately were $2.50 extra and also as previously mentioned, I'm fat. I sat at a seat and waited for my order.

Something struck me as awkward. As I waited for my food I looked around and while I couldn't put my finger on it, I felt there was something about this place....The ambiance music in this place played in this order: Jesse McCartney, James Blunt, LFO, Howie Day, Sarah McLaughlin, repeat, repeat.

Then it hit me. Excluding the workers, I was the ONLY male customer in the entire place. And mind you, this wasn't like there were 4 girls and me. There had to have been close to twenty women sitting and eating with even more in line. It was either the beginning of some awesome porno movie or some twilight zone nightmare. They were all dressed in either yoga pants or business suits, neither of which were appropriate since there's really nowhere to exercise nor many office building in the general area.

Thankfully I was dressed in probably the most heterosexual outfit I own (replete with hockey team hat) with masses of unkempt facial hair, so it was clear as day that I was obviously lost and not looking to discuss their relationships, bosses, or insecurities. I did however, have to overhear 47 women discuss those subjects with one another. All  My food was brought to me and I dug in, silently.

Truth tell, for not having any chicken in the fucker, it was a damn good sandwich. And I mean REALLY good. Modern science has somehow not only chemically found the flavor for chicken, but also for slightly mesquite, crispy chicken. The taste, consistency, and presentation were all spot on. I also really like How the soda machine only serves water, so you don't have to feel like a freeloading chump for ordering free water like you do at the movie theater.

Notice the man in back sitting quietly.

I wolfed the sandwich down REALLY fast. It was so good! Needless to say, all the jabber-jockey chicks in there were about 1-2 bites in and still running their mouths to one another by the time I finished. I was full despite no fries and I had a feeling of pride for eating quasi-healthy. Bachelors take note, there are a gaggle of women in this place, old and young. I can't verify if this would actually be a good place to meet women though, lest you be caste as a potential man-friend or shopping partner, but it's worth a shot if only to try the awesome food.

I will say that you're going to drop around $10 per burger/sandwich at this place. Which is a little on the steep side, but the quality shows through in all their ingredients. They have lots of juices and shit too if that's your thing but water is usually enough for me. If you're into good food and cockblocking some chick's gossip hour, then I would totally suggest the Veggie Grill, no yoga pants required for dudes.

Name: The Veggie Grill
Genre: Women-Only Vegetarian Sandiwches
Value: A bit steep but good quality ingredients, around $10 bucks to fill your face.
What You'll Need to Enjoy Your Meal: Heavy Duty Earplugs.
Rating: 4.5 / 5

18. Ramenya

It was yet another insufferable morning of alcohol induced regret. Waking up sleeping on a leather couch is probably the worst feeling in the world. I was at my friend Mark's condo, blurry-eyed with an insatiably sore throat and an urge to both piss and vomit simultaneously.

The kitchen counter was littered with last night's post-drinking munches: Chili-cheese fries with stale cheese forming an impenetrable crust, half eaten hamburgers with too much mayonnaise dropping from the bun, it was truly a dismal site.  Chris, Mark, and I each took turns expelling our demons in the bathroom before we convened on the couch to rehash last night and formulate a game plan.

Conveniently, and not surprisingly, Chris had weed. (He has dreadlocks - hence the lack of surprise). The drugs helped take the edge of the hangover, but left us with *gasp* an insatiable lust for food. The problem with getting stoned and discussing something simple like where to eat is that while ideas come free, no one has the conviction to decide on a place. We'd literally suggest a place, agree, get excited, then find ourselves trailing off and sitting on the couch for another 10 minutes before one of us starts the cycle anew.

After about 1.5 hours of trying to leave, we exited Mark's condo still with not a 100% idea of where we were going. We got to the bottom floor of his place and finally one of us asked, "Hey, where are we going, anyway?"

"Let's go to Ramenya," Mark drove the final nail into the coffin of our indecision.

Ramenya is a Japanese noodle house on Olympic. I could tell it was generally going to be good by the wide variety of customers in the place. There was one table left which we took. A cheerful old asian lady with a comically fat ass handed us some menus.

We started with some Gyoza and Mark and Chris ordered some kind of ground pork ramen. I opted for a corn, tofu, and egg style soup which was not so different from Eggdrop soup. We waited for what seemed like forever (I'm sure the weed helped that.) until the waitress brought out our soups.

Holy Shit! These bowls were massive!!! Each of us had a punchbowl sized bowl of ramen. They seriously were the size of a DirectTV satellite dish. If these bowl's followed the Goldilocks principle of dish sizing, these were Great-Great-Grandpa bear.

Worse still, our fat asses finished every last drop. I have to admit, it really hit the spot. It wasn't too salty and it had ample noodles so you weren't just drinking your meal. Also, I was REALLY impressed with the spoon design... I'll try to give a visual example:

We left with over a gallon of soup each in our bellies. And honestly, while I liked the soup a lot, the feeling of carrying that soup with you all day was terrible and made me shit like 5,000 times. Though with that being said, I'm sure the hangover helped in that venture.

This is a great place to go while stoned. But please, exercise caution and don't finish your meal. We went back to Mark's place to smoke more pot to make our stomach's feel better.

Name: Ramenya
Genre: Japanese Noodle House
Value: Good, but cash only.
What You'll Need to Enjoy Your Meal: OG Kush and  throbbing headache.
Rating: 4 / 5

17. The First Couple Days After Grocery Shopping

Things were looking grim in the kitchen. I needed groceries.

I swear to you there is no better feeling than a full fridge. More divine than the sweetest of manna. I'm not sure how the rest of you roll, but I literally am spooning jam, eating ketchup packets, and mixing up dubiously purchased baby food before I'll admit to myself that I need groceries. So when I've been running on fumes in my kitchen for a week or two, the magic carpet ride (aka Ralph's) seems like Mecca itself.

When I grocery shop I literally go into a zen type of lucid meditation. I no longer acknowledge moronic people and nuisances, life goes quiet and I am alone with my thoughts.

"Pickles...fuck yeah!!!" seems to be my first message.

I returned home with armloads of groceries from meats to drinks, to frozen goods,and grains. Everything under the sun was now plucked, packaged and placed in my kitchen in easy-to-open packages.

I live alone so I constantly have sweat-inducing nightmares of my food going bad before I eat it. I also always purchase too much out of greed and bouts hedonistic gluttony. I'm stuck between a rock of value and the hard place of excessive supply. So there's nothing left to do but make myself eat a lot of the food in the first couple days to make myself feel better...it's a tough responsibility that I've bestowed unto myself.

It's just so great a feeling when you have exactly what you want when you want it. Even when you're fridge is pretty stocked, it's not the same. Your sandwich will invariably be missing one ingredient, like pepper jack cheese. And sure. your sandwich is pretty good, but you just can't get your mind off of that missing cheese. How good it would have been...how those peppers would dance a flavorful tango of lust with your taste buds. That would have been so good, that cheese. Sitting on that sandwich, cheesing it up. Cheese. Cheese. Cheese.

It's downright murder. You don't have those horrible feelings of frustration those first couple days after grocery shopping because everything is there. You might as well have two dinners, with dessert.




Name: Kitchen (+ pantry)
Genre: Gastronomy
Value: Dependent on ownership of Ralph's Club Card.
What You'll Need to Enjoy Your Meal: A fridge that won't run away

 

VIDEO - Magic Milk

Because regular milk is stupid.

16. 1739 Public House

It was hipster Sunday Funday, ironically taking place on a Saturday, because Sunday's are too mainstream. And of course it wouldn't be a hipster Sunday without massive (literally gallons) of sweet, unadulterated irony.

"Soccer" Brian told me over the phone, "The UEFA Championship League Final, it's on today and we're watching it at Public house in Silverlake."

I furrowed my brow in a lame attempt to grasp the situation. "Soc.....cer?" I replied bewildered. "Yooo ayyyyyfuhhhh?"

After being called a random slew of things such as, "jankster" "turkey" and "honkey" Brian reluctantly agreed to pick me up. A trip to Silverlake means I can't just wear a t-shirt, jeans, and some Nike's, lest I be laughed out of the neighborhood. (Note: It is acceptable to wear a T-shirt, jeans, and Nike's if, when accused, you reply "Yeah, I'm just SO over the wannabe hipster scene." This trick is known as Pointing out the Irony of Being Ironic and should only be used in moments of true duress.)

The real foundation of Hipster-casual is your ironic T-shirt. I had the perfect weapon, a vintage, slightly too small San Francisco 49er's T shirt with football player Dwight Clark leaping over the golden gate bridge making a catch with the words "THE CATCH '82" printed across. It was true Hipster gold. It had all the ingredients: a) Too small, b) A date prior to 2000, c) a universally recognizable city or landmark, and d) it was a football shirt when going to a futbol match. Solid gold, baby.

I topped it off with my Father's Safe School Bus Driver Award jacket which he gave me because it's horribly ugly. I would normally agree, but when I go hipster, I go hard. Wait until those 1950 greaser throwbacks get a load of my sweet ass jacket which indicates I'm a safe school bus driver only to find out that *gasp!* Not only am I not a safe school bus driver, I'm not a school bus driver at all!! Suffice to say, I was ready for soccer.

Brian and I met up with a large group of friends at 1739 Public House in Silverlake. I was genuinely impressed with their ample placement of many large television sets placed unobtrusively around the entire dining area as to let every have an adequate view of the game. I sat down and was quite disappointed to see that there were minimal hipsters proliferating the premises. I was quickly reminded it was 11:00am on a weekend and I would need to wait until at least 1:30pm to being seeing the Ironic Army. Fair enough.

These people are cooler than you.

1739 Public House, I would soon learn, had an ironic idea of customer service that "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if the customers wait on themselves?!" I sat patiently for about 10 minutes before realizing that I needed to grab my own menu from the front, bring it back to my seat and figure out my order. Normally not a problem but the place was littered with Soccer fans so getting up and down was a real pain. After you wedged your way back to your seat, you had to wedge your way back out again and place your order at the bar. They gave me a number and was instructed to sit back at my seat and wait for my order, but not before asking for a tip.

I'm sorry, but what am I tipping you for? Entering my order into the cash register? That's literally all you did. And how do I know the food will be up to snuff? What if it was terrible and brought out over an hour after I ordered it?

Well, surprise surprise... After tipping. I returned to my seat and literally waited over an hour for 1 hamburger. It finally arrived, cold, small, and with soggy fries. I opened my mouth to complain but the server had scooted off without even offering me ketchup. I didn't see another waiter that day.

The service was TERRIBLE. Like, it wasn't bad, it was godawful. Even buying a beer was a laborious feat. Here 1739 Public House was, choked full of ready-to-drink soccer fans and they were making them all stand up and return to the bar to buy drinks. I'm no Donald Trump, but I'm business savvy enough to know that when well-to-do soccer fans are ready to shell out money on premium beers, you make every attempt to eliminate the steps between collecting money and serving a beer as humanly possible. The good news was, at this point I had my first hipster-spotting. (It was a girl with thick black frame glasses, a terrible haircut - with bangs of course, bright red lipstick, and a dress from the 1950's.)

I wish I thought of this.

I estimate 1739 Public House probably missed out on at least 50-75 extra beer sales by not having servers available for the event. Seems silly to me, but I suppose to irony of NOT wanting to sell beer is not lost on me. If you're a recovering overweight alcoholic who likes non-mainstream sports like soccer, rugby, Aussie Rules football, or *shudder* cycling, then 1739 Public House is the place for you. If, on the other hand, you like to get actual service and good food and beers brought to you by a waiter, then try every other restaurant in the world.

PS: I don't know who won the soccer game.

Name: 1739 Public House
Genre: Craft Beer Bar and Grill
Value: Waste of money and dignity
What You'll Need to Enjoy Your Meal: Prior experience as a waiter or waitress as you'll be serving yourself.
Rating: 2 / 5

15. Phillipe

It was one of this Sundays where you slowly open your eyes, picking out flecks of regret and remorse as you feel the impending hangover settling in. I awoke on my friend Brian's floor at noon realizing that the prior nights activity's had left me in a place of contempt for life, friends, and fun. I located my pants and rolled to the couch to play Xbox baseball. 

Saturday nights fit of hedonism left my stomach full of beer, whiskey, vodka, and Zima. Unfortunately, no food. So even in my putrid state, food was tantamount. Visions of pizza dancing merrily in my head and began to make me salivate.

Brian came out of his room and I greeted him. "Man, what a night. We should get Pizza."

"Yeah," he replied, "Last night was nuts."

"I feel like pizza."

"The Sharks game is on." Brian remembered.

"Hey we should just order a pizza and watch this game." I tried again.

"Nice," he stated, Giants are up 1-0."

"Are there good pizza places in Brentwood?" I asked.

"Adam McKay is one big ass dude" was his response.

At that point Brian's Roommate Billy arises from bed to greet us in the living room.

"Man, what a night, "Billy said. "Brian can you give me a ride to downtown to get my car? I'm super hungry too, we should eat at Phillipe."

"Good idea," Brian said. "Let's go there."

"Fuck." was all I could think.

And that's the story of how we ended up at Phillipe. A staple of downtown Los Angeles located adjacent from Union Station. Phillipe (not Phillipe's) is famous for it's French Dip Sandwiches and boasts that it even invented them. Their story is that a police office named Officer French ordered a sandwich and the worker accidentally dropped the bread into a conveniently located open bucket of Au Jous sauce. French said it was fine and to make the sandwich with the same bread. The rest was supposed history. Bill, Brian and I all deemed this story to be marketing hogwash and proceeded to hypothesize what actually happened. (I suggested that Officer French was actually the local pedophile.)

Inventor of the French Dip Sandwich.

Anyway, not unlike most landmark restaurants, this place was packed. The offered mainly French Dip sandwiches with a small selection of alternatives. Meat choices included pork, beef, ham, lamb, and turkey with like 4 or 5 cheese options. I went with turkey because I'm trying to passively lose weight while Billy got lamb and Brian got pork. The Sandwiches were reasonably priced around 6 bucks each. I only say reasonably because I didn't feel entirely full at the end. But they offer lemonade for 45 cents, iced tea for 65 cents and coffee for 9 cents, so that was an absolute steal.

They also offer a super spicy mustard to douse your soggy ass sandwich in, which I deemed fantastic. This place is cash only which  normally isn't a problem, except I'd emptied my wallet drinking the night before so my whole meal cost an extra $2.50 per the ATM surcharge. I just don't understand how a consistently packed, world famous restaurant still  tries to duck the IRS and not take cards. This was a major issue for me on principle. 

Overall this place is good, but plan on waiting in a long ass line. Also, you can order double meat, or betteryet just play it safe and order two sandwiches to genuinely feel full. But police officers and pedophiles agree, this place is pretty good. Also, parking is ample.

Name:  Phillepe

Genre: Sandwiches

Value: Great!

What You'll Need to Enjoy Your Meal:  Cash money, baller.

Rating: 4 / 5