Offbeat Eats

“After the doing… there is the undoing.” We’ve had a long tradition of celebrating our longer backpacking trips by finding a good celebratory dinner spot, often a steakhouse when this is viable. So after we got back to Tacoma after a week backpacking in Mount Rainier National Park, we decided to find a spot suitable for a good celebration. A quick check of various reviews led us to a Brazilian steakhouse located near downtown Tacoma, El Gaucho.

One of the things I like to do when visiting various metro areas is to visit their art museums, and I was surprised to realize that, despite 8 visits to Seattle since the 1990s, I had not yet visited the Seattle Art Museum (SAM). So, after a rather pleasant visit (pictures here), we found ourselves looking for a light lunch. By this point Pike Place was getting pretty busy (it was a Friday), but we found a nice, quiet spot just around the corner from SAM, Musubi Kai, an informal restaurant focusing on musubi and poke bowls.

Over an extended Labor Day holiday, Carol and I did another Fitpacking backpacking trip to Mount Rainier National Park, and that was a good opportunity to catch up with friends and revisit some favorite locations (well, we tried to do this back in 2022, but Covid-related complications threw a big wrench right into our plans). Before we headed out on the trail, we were meeting up with my college roomate Steve and his wife Emily at their house in Seattle’s Wallingford district. There are a number of good smaller restaurants and breweries in the area, and one I was interested in revisiting for a simple meal after our travels was a favorite from a 2016 (my, how time flies), TNT Taqueria.

Sometimes we get into comfortable patterns. Much earlier in my career, I had project assignments that had me visiting Edwards AFB frequently, and for a variety of logistical reasons it was far easier for me to fly into LAX than other area airports, and then drive up to Palmdale. Usually I’d take a late arriving flight (to avoid the worst of LA-area traffic), and on the way out of town, I’d stop off at Pink’s Hot Dogs for a late evening treat.

After a day out and about, we wanted to grab some dinner close to our hotel, but that stretch of Pico in West LA doesn’t have a lot of offerings, especially on a Friday night. It’s a heavily Jewish neighborhood, a lot of places are closed on Friday evenings, and just like I’ve found elsewhere, “extended operating hours” were one of the first casualties of the Pandemic, an effect that continues to linger. So if you are in this part of West LA and not wanting to venture far, your options are pretty limited. A notable exception to this, however, was Melanee Thai Asian Cuisine, which was obviously quite popular with the locals.

After relocating to a new hotel in Beverlywood, we decided that we’d spend two of our days in LA revisiting some of my favorite museums from previous visits. Before hitting up LACMA for an afternoon of art, we decided to find a light lunch. The Meyers Manx Cafe, located in the Petersen Automotive Museum just across the street, was both convenient in location, and had just the sort of light lunch menu we were hoping for.

Before we relocated from Hermosa Beach to LA’s Beverlywood neighborhood for a few days of museum visits, we wanted to grab breakfast in Hermosa Beach. Right next to our hotel on Aviation Boulevard was a smaller, easy to miss diner, the Ocean Diner, which looked like just the perfect spot to grab breakfast.

After a week spent on Santa Cruz Island (part of Channel Islands National Park, we arrived back in Ventura, CA, looking for a nice dinner to celebrate our trip before wading back into LA-area traffic getting back to Hermosa Beach. Ventura has quite a vibrant dining scene, but since we were fairly scruffy (and somewhat smelly) folks literally fresh off the boat, I was hoping for a spot with good outdoor seating, and that led us to Bright Spark Brewing.

As we explored downtown Hermosa Beach as we got everything prepped for our trip out to Santa Cruz island, we walked by an interesting looking store: Redwood Pie, right on Pier Avenue. Notably, it had a short line for the lunchtime crowd, and seemed to be doing a pretty brisk business, so when we wanted a light dinner before calling it an early evening, we decided to go down and check them out.

After a nice breakfast revisiting our old favorite Uncle Bill’s for breakfast, we packed up in Manhattan Beach and moved just down the coast to Hermosa Beach to rendezvous with Beau before heading out to the Channel Islands. We spent part of the afternoon exploring Hermosa Beach (where the modern surfing craze started), and then wanted to have a light lunch before packing up for our trip. Right next to our hotel was a small shopping area right on the Pacific Coastal Highway that included some rather pleasant roasted chicken smells wafting over our way: El Pollo Inka. We decided to drop in and give it try.