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I recently took a vacation to Los Angeles, California to visit the one and only Alison O’Daniel. During my trip I visited many taco joints, danced at a Japanese piano bar with the Zunkley brothers, got naked with Korean ladies at a spa and got a sound bath at The Integratron in Joshua Tree. It was a wonderful trip and my experience at Joshua Tree was rounded out with a visit to Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, the only cool and “hip” restaurant/bar in Joshua Tree, or so I hear. And apparently, as their website boasts, the best honky tonk west of the Mississippi!
The vibe of this place was pretty chill country western meets family chain but nowhere near as cheesy as Friday’s or something. They have stuff hanging everywhere but it’s all got that metal-hesher-country feel to it so it works.
And the food is awesome!
Here are some shots of the restaurant:
The restaurant exterior. Seeing this car here was a good sign.
Pool room when you walk in. Nice.
The bar.
A cool area of the restaurant with bottles inside the walls.
The BBQ pit area in the back.
Some of the cool things on the walls.
So we were there on a Sunday evening and they have live music. We were served chips and salsa, which was rather incredible, while we waited for our food. I was surprised considering this place seems more like BBQ to me. Or rather, you’d be crazy NOT to get BBQ here. They did have some southwest tex-mex shit on the menu though.
We got two orders of ribs, a burger and the grilled chicken (mine, now that I am eating chicken again).
Here is Alison enjoying her burger.
Here is my half grilled chicken with mashed potatoes and broccoli. The mashed potatoes and gravy were INCREDIBLE!!!!! The chicken was juicy and shit, even the broccoli was amazing. It was lemony and buttery and SO GREEN and fresh you forgot about how much meat you’d been eating lately.
An overhead view of our feast.
So the food was really good. The ribs were pretty right on. They give you way too much food, but most restaurants do these days anyways. After we ate we enjoyed some live music and their awesome outdoor patio/sand-trap.
This is the stage. There was good sound too.
The girls enjoying beers in the outdoor patio area.
All in all, if you find yourself in Joshua Tree definitely hit up Pappy and Harriet’s. What a wonderful way to spend the evening. And, if it gets dark you can see all the stars in the universe from their front yard!
Lisa liked it too!
On a recent trip to Wisconsin, Shawn and I stopped at The Mars Cheese Castle.
Get it? It is everything you think it is, a castle shaped building with an outlandish assortment of cheese and varying degrees of snackage for you to smell, taste, and then eventually purchase. I am still on a fish only kick these days, so the sausage was off the table so to speak. And when I bit into the wildest freshest ( possibly haunted) cheese curd i have ever eaten, and it squeaked against my teeth, I decided on buying some fun sodas instead. And here’s what I bought…
Meet “Dang! That’s Good” Butterscotch Root Beer.
Dang! is a part of a line of sodas from Imperial Flavors of Wisconsin, including energy drink and diet versions of Rootbeer and this simple but tasty looking little twist, Butterscotch. The marketing is simple, it’s dang good. Just like the name says.
But to be honest, I spent the whole weekend eating all type of vacation-y shit, but never drank that soda. There is nothing wrong with it. I just never got around to opening it. until now.
I have recorded my first sip for you to enjoy.
See.
Today on a never ending email chain that many Food Party blog contributors are on, there was a short but brief discussion about fast food chicken products, thanks in part to this lady.
This eventually led to me posting this internet (is this racist?) classic:
Followed by this wonder from South Korea:
I would post some of the videos from the times Popeyes and KFC were giving away fried chicken but ran out of chicken and people freaked out and ended up on the news, but then I would be here all day. I’ll end it with the following two things.
The first is a Pulp Fiction line I paraphrase from time to time. It’s from when Tim Roth and Samuel L. Jackson are talking about whatever in the diner at the end:
“Normally, both your asses would be dead as fucking fried chicken, but you happen to pull this shit while I’m in a transitional period so I don’t wanna kill you, I wanna help you. But I can’t give you this case, it don’t belong to me. Besides, I’ve already been through too much shit this morning over this case to hand it over to your dumb ass. “
And of course, Delonte’s classic KFC freestyle:
Peace and chicken grease.
I can barely make out the text, but I think that is cheese stuffed/covered hotdogs in a bath or creamed corn and mustard.
Madmen seems to be pretty popular these days and people are having viewing parties where they dress the part, drink the drinks, and pretend like it’s the 50′s. I don’t watch the show (yeah I know) but I do like to pretend like I’m from the 50′s, except in my world I’m a time traveller from the 1980′s. I digress.
I recently stumbled upon Retrospace, a pretty amazing site chronicling all sorts of stuff from times past. Considering my weird interest/obsession with f’ed up junk food, i went directly to the Gastro-Abominations section and perused the images. I guess to go full circle, is anybody having Madmen viewing parties where they are serving some of this gnarly cuisine? And if so, can I come?
Asides from the image up top, here are some more of my favorites:
I guess this is meat wrapped around celery covered in some sort of cheese?
This really isn’t that crazy, I just think it’s a cool ad and concept.
And this image which won’t show up for whatever reason. I can imagine some executive being like “Well have YOU tried it? That’s what I thought so JUST DO IT.”
The whole site seems to be full of treasures, and I’ve just barely cracked the surface. Here’s another one of my favorites, this one from the Retro Ads section.
Anything on the site make you smile?
I don’t really eat out that much, but I was on the internet today reading about hot dogs, and was interested in Crif Dogs for their deep-fried hot dog style. And then upon rereading some of the old blogs on this food party blog, I remembered that one of our favorite bloggers, Doan Buu, had mentioned preferring this place over another hot dog place that he reviewed.
Walking down St. Marks, I never really crave a hot dog, but today, Danny B and I were debating over what to eat for dinner. He was into eating some hummus, but then would not stop talking about hot dogs, and then I said, “Well I’d rather eat Hot Dogs than Hummus!” So we went to Crif Dogs!
We walked in on an early Friday evening, and the place was half empty, double dragon and donkey kong arcade games in the front, old skate videos playing on TV with little kids skating, cute trucker-hatted blond lady manning the counter with pigtail braids, dim lighting, and mainly yuppie couples having quiet little dinners. Danny B and I ordered; he got the “Spicy Redneck” (chili, cheese, jalapenos, coleslaw, hotdog is wrapped in bacon) with a plain dog, and I got the “Chihuahua” with jalapenos. (“chihuahua” has sour cream, avocado, hotdog is wrapped in bacon).
"chihuahua." I was really worried it wasn't going to be spicy, so I added jalapenos. Thank god.
"spicy redneck" and a plain dog; Danny B anticipated the toppings being overloaded enough to spread on another hotdog. He was right.
This was the "small" order of tater tots. They came out piping hot.
Is this picture upside down? I don't care.
The deep-fried aspect of this hot dog was awesome. Nice dry snap on the outside, juicy on the inside. Loved it. The toppings we got felt totally L.A. oki-dog/danger dog style, which are my favorite hot dogs anyway. Danny B and I enjoyed this place a lot, and all in all, this place gets two swift farts from us.
Oh! I forgot to mention there was this totally spooky phone booth in the restaurant that people kept going into and then disappearing. Later I found out it’s a speakeasy.
Anyway, I always think it’s a little weird to out of your way for a hot dog, and if you’re on St. Mark’s and crave a hot dog, this place does rule. If you’re in Greenpoint though, I hear the new 7-eleven that just opened up on Manhattan Ave serves a very good JUMBO DOG!! (Dana Strasser testifies requiring 4 hands and 20 napkins!!)
This is actually a cheeseburger, not a hot dog, but this sums it all up. (Apparently, it's also the awesome album art for a Greenpoint band named "Cheeseburger.")
