Have you been to Beechwood or the Brig in Venice? Somebody took Beechwood's DNA and cloned it into the Alibi Room (it's actually the same owners). The Alibi used to be a total c@!%!y dive bar (they didn't serve Maker's Mark there, for Chrissake) but now it's an upscale bar with expensive ($10) drinks and fancily-dressed young'uns, except for the hipsters in t-shirts and track jackets who are Making a Cultural Statement (or perhaps Rebelling Against The Man) by being inappropriately dressed. Worth checking out if you like this type of bar - I do, so I go here.

Even though this place is called a cafe, it's a dive bar. There's sawdust on the floor, the beer is cheap, they've got pool tables, and it's on Washington within walking distance of the beach. They have tasty burgers but no fries (it comes with a bag of potato chips). This place is recommended.

My Indian buffet holy grails are Jaipur on West LA or Star of India on Melrose. This place comes nowhere close. I have eaten dinner here as well and it's pretty much the same. I recognize there are different styles of Indian cooking, so YMMV.

I came here last weekend with some friends for a fancy dinner to celebrate nothing, and it was pretty cool. Sutra is fairly fancy upscale American food - fancy $25-40 per entree steak/fish place with a high-price/not-so-much food steez.

The waitress wore a short skirt, but after she mentioned she had a 20-pound cat and had photos of it on her phone, she refused/ignored my repeated requests to show me the photos. This is not the kind of service I expect from a high-end dining establishment like this - it wasn't like I was going to stalk her or do anything creepy. I just wanted to see the 20-pound cat, which would have been the highlight of my night after finding out the cute English girl that came along with us for dinner was going to get married in a few weeks (rightonbro is a sucker for English accents).

This place turns into a nightclub when it gets late, so we got kicked out of our table after dinner because we decided not to opt for the $300 bottle (for mid-level stuff like Absolut) service. Age range here varied widely, including 40s or perhaps maybe 30s who didn't age so well. I am not the clubbing type so I can't really comment on the quality of the club except to say there were lots of people there and the music seemed contemporary enough.

Hmmm. Worth trying for you, me personally would not return.

A lot of Web reviews compare this place to Versailles. I like Versailles a lot, but this place is a good alternative for slightly cheaper, and without having to deal with crowds and the wack parking situation in front of the Versailles in Venice. The goal of this review is to attract people who go to Versailles to, just one time, stop going to Versailles and check this place out instead of Versailles.

Plus they have Jupina, which is like, the best pineapple soda ever.

Jason's is a small chain of New York-style delis, and it's good. You get a big-a@s tasty sandwich and free ice cream for a reasonable price. Definitely a lunch stop, and I wish they had these in Los Angeles where I live, because sandwiches out here generally suck.

This is an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet that used to be an old bingo parlor. There's a bar, the service is great, the name is great (who doesn't want to eat at a place called Ming Tower?) the owner was really nice when he came up and greeted us, and the waitresses seemed to all be cute college chicks, but the food is straight up not good. I've eaten at a lot of buffets, and a lot of food in general - this is why I had to ask for size XL when YellowBot offered to send me some T-shirts - and this ranks slightly better than the $1.99 one-pound hot dog at the Westward Ho in Vegas, which pretty much made me barf.
Speaking of low-rent casinos, the attached business called "The Pyramind" is a slot machine parlor made up in a cool Egyptian theme, but depressing nonetheless. So....if you happen to be in Lehigh Acres, FL, have $10 on you, just want to eat a lot of food and don't care how it tastes, and want to play some slot machines afterward, Ming Tower is for you.

This place used to be called Greece's - in fact, the sign is still out there. It is now, of course, NY BBQ - the owner of Greece's retired and they changed ownership, but it's still good. I picked up the beef ribs, which were cooked with a dry rub and then had sauce dropped on them. Mac & cheese feels homemade with chunks of cheese on it. Overall, this is one of my favorite BBQ places - it's more of a takeout spot than a place to go for dinner, but it's better than Benny's, Outdoor Grill, and Mr. Cecil's. Check it out when you feel like picking up some food and eating elsewhere.

I came here in 2004 while driving across the country. Sitting here at the bar eating freshly shucked oysters and drinking beer was one of the culinary highlights of the trip. I had a lot of good food on that trip so this is saying a lot. If you want oysters in New Orleans, you need to eat here, period.

2007 UPDATE - Dudes and dudettes, if there is a oyster and fried catfish heaven, it would be look like this. The clouds would part, and I would eat oysters and fried catfish. I went back here three years later and it was just as good. Screw the hype - it's good here.

This is a cool old bar. Apparently Jack Dempsey used to work the door here, so says a plaque on the front. And it survived the 1906 earthquake. However, the beer here leaves something to be desired. I drank through the entire selection (except the stout, which I don't d) and it was consistently kinda watery. Try 21st Amendment in the South of Market area for better local microbrews.

Order a South Park Blonde and you'll be happy. This place is better than Gordon Biersch and San Francisco Brewing Company. The food (burgers, fish/chips) is excellent as well. As somebody who drinks a hell of a lot in the Market Street and South of Market areas, this place is worth making a trip to.

I can't speak for the wine here but the deli at Hennessey's makes one hell of a good sandwich. It's a little expensive but absolutely worth it if you are in the area.

The Royal Pacific gets points for its location - right near the intersection of Broadway and Columbus. Which means you get very easy access to lots of Chinese food, lots of Italian food, strip clubs, and Beat Generation haunts such as Vesuvio's and the City Lights bookstore. This means you can gorge yourself on cheap dim sum, get drunk, go visit some strippers, and then sell your Kerouac-style stream-of-consciousness memoirs about the whole thing, all within a few city blocks.

Other than that, it's like a Motel 6 and the walls are thin, but it's clean and fairly comfortable. There is a computer terminal in the lobby that you can use and there is free parking, which is a rarity in SF. The front desk will print boarding passes for you if you want to check in to your airline via the Internet.

This is a really small restaurant in San Fran's Chinatown that serves cheap dim sum at all hours. You can get items in sets of 3 for as low as $1.80. It's pretty good. Definitely not a place to have an actual dim sum experience, but when you are hungry for it and just want to grab some, it's fast, cheap, and good. There are many restaurants like this in Chinatown and this is one of the better ones.

Okay, so if you are like me and are from the East Coast, you hate pizza in Los Angeles - it's generally tasteless and they frou-frou it up here like CPK. Well, at North End, it's about as good as it gets for plain old freakin' greasy pizza, straight up East Coast style. If you live in West LA and want good pizza, try here. Sandwiches and salads leave room to be desired.

Nottoway is apparently the largest remaining plantation in the South. I was here about a week ago to eat lunch and man the Louisiana cooking was excellent - try the riverbend chicken, with its layer of tasty thick etouffe. This place is apparently quite the bed & breakfast as well. I didn't get to check out the entire plantation but the grounds looked peaceful and Southern, just like you'd imagine it would.

I broke the cheese machine here once. You know how you can get hot dogs from AM/PM and there's a machine that dispenses cheese and chili? Well, I was on my way to Vegas back in the day with my buddy Matt - we stop here if we need to get gas 'cos it's generally the cheapest in Baker. So we roll up in here, and I figure it's a good idea to get a hot dog with some cheese and chili on it. I grab a hot dog, put it under the cheese dispenser, and hit the button. The problem is - the cheese machine won't stop dispensing cheese. I'm sitting here and, there's like cheese getting all over the place. Finally I put down the hot dog and go tell the cashier. He glances over at the cheese machine, and says, in a non-chalant manner, "Don't worry about it." I end up without a hot dog, and there's cheese all over the counter. I bought some beef jerky and ate that instead, and I ended up losing like a G that trip in Vegas. Freakin' AM/PM and their busted-a@s cheese machine causes bad luck.

The Neon Museum (aka the Boneyard) is not so much a museum as a group of people dedicated to preserving Las Vegas' neon cultural heritage. They've managed to acquire a number of old vintage neon signs from casinos & hotels, which are actually in a locked-up dirt lot across the street. You can't just show up and visit - you need to schedule a group tour well in advance, and there is a donation required, but in return, you get a docent giving you a tour and some wonderful stories about old-school Vegas. If you don't have enough people to schedule a group tour, punch this address into Google Earth and you can actually see some of the signs in the satellite view. But if you can get into the Boneyard, it's a great way to spend an hour or two.

Two things going for this McDonald's. One - they have signs that say "Mahalo" on them. Two - as of April 2007, they were serving a DOUBLE Filet-O-Fish sandwich. That's right, it's like their regular fish sandwich, but with TWO pieces of fish. I got really drunk at a wedding here (in Lahaina, not at the McDonald's) and made my friends Matt and Michele take me here to buy one afterwards. It is truly the best food item McDonald's has produced, ever.

Ahh, the L.A. Convention Center. Where yours truly produced his very first ever live television broadcast on the most prestigious of media outlets, the City of Los Angeles' own L.A. CityView 35. Where yours truly also attended a restaurant owners' exposition, in a semi-successful attempt to sell cost-per-click advertising for an online yellow page Website very similar to Yellowbot. And, where many a good E3 video game convention was snuck into, using borrowed passes and/or invitations obtained under questionable circumstances. Ahh, LA Convention Center - you are pretty much the only place in the area if anyone want to hold a major convention, and you act like it, with your expensive parking and even more expensive food. But, good times, good times.