Father’s Office, Los Angeles CA

We heard about Father’s Office from several people. It made Jeff’s best burgers of 2009 list, and I’m sure many others. Like In-N-Out, it was also recommended by a mostly-vegetarian friend. (It occurs to me that I should start asking all my vegetarian friends where they get their favorite burger.) Anyway, this thing was in a class by itself.

To start, we had a basket of sweet potato fries. Sweet potatoes are one of the few foods that Eliza doesn’t like, but even she loved these. They are served with some sort of garlic mayo, or aioli if you want to be fancy. Apparently, they won’t give you ketchup if you ask, but if someone gives me anything resembling mayo with fries, ketchup is the farthest thing from my mind.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who think they know what a good burger tastes like, and those who have been to Father’s Office. I’m not sure what else to say about it. Jeff did get a better photo of it, though.

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The No-Grocery Store Challenge

Over at the Austin Urban Gardens blog, Carla is in month #3 of her year of not shopping at the grocery store. Check it out!

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Lost and Found

We found this on our morning dog walk today. Apparently, deer shed their antlers every spring. Who knew?

Maybe this will be the beginning of a new hobby.

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In-N-Out Burger, Los Angeles CA

Last weekend, we took a trip out to LA to visit some friends. Naturally, we planned pretty much every waking moment around meals. It made me wonder: Did we start this blog because our lives revolve around food or do our lives revolve around food because we have this blog? In any case, when you go to LA, you obviously stop at In-N-Out burger immediately.

The place was a total madhouse, both in front of and behind the counter. I took a few shots of the controlled chaos in the kitchen. Yes, I was that creepy guy taking photos of strangers in a fast food restaurant.

This location is right next to the airport, so you get buzzed occasionally by commercial jets.

There’s a lot of love for In-N-Out in this world. I work with a guy who’s a gluten-allergic, vegetarian, food-restricting maniac and even he breaks all his rules when he gets the chance to eat at In-N-Out. So what’s the big deal, you may ask yourself? As you can see from this photo, the secret ingredient is California sunshine.

We each had a Double Double Animal style and Eliza even went for the animal style fries. I’m generally skeptical of putting anything on top of fries, but after tasting hers I regretted my decision. It was a fitting beginning to a long weekend of gluttony.

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Grand Sichuan International, New York NY

On our very last night in New York, we visited the small factory that is B&H to find a new camera lens and bag for Ben. Then we stumbled down 9th Avenue to Grand Sichuan International searching for some soup dumplings. Ben enjoyed lots of soup dumplings on his trip to Shanghai, and I was eager to give them a try.

Here’s a shot of the restaurant scene with the new lens. Pretty nice, huh?

This one is not so nice. I need a nap. And maybe a hairbrush.

This little bowl arrived at the table with our hot tea. We had no idea what it was or what to do with it, and we were too embarrassed to ask the surly waitress, so it will remain a mystery.

Some very tasty wontons.

And then the soup dumplings. They were served in a bamboo steamer and, unfortunately, a lot of their soupy goodness leaked out before we had the pleasure of slurping it. But nonetheless, they were very good and still soupy enough that I managed to spill some on my sweater.

We shared one entree – twice cooked pork. VERY spicy and delicious.

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