Daily Grill Burger, Ground Twice Daily

Often, chain restaurants get automatically passed over - sometimes, they shouldn't be. With about twenty locations, Daily Grill is almost a big chain/corporation, but they're certainly not franchises. Not too long ago, they decided to up the ante by installing meat grinder in their restaurants and start grinding meat for their burger twice a day.

My fellow bloggers have tried this burger and said that they are actually pretty good, so I accepted their invitation to taste them myself. I joined Daniela, who recently started working for Daily Grill's PR company, for lunch at their downtown location.

We started with some Garlic Cheese Bread ($6.95) w/ grana padana on toasted levain bread (because who doesn't like garlic cheese bread?)

Nice crunch and weren't overly heavy. A good opener and side dish.

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The Foods of LA County Fair. Oh, Deep Fried Kool Aid!

It's time for the LA County Fair! Starting this weekend: Rides, live animals, and of course ... food!

The fair runs from Sept 3-Oct 2 (closed Mondays and Tuesdays), but for the first time, this year they invited food-related media in before the Fair opens so we can sample some of the food they offer. The fair's "specialty" is all the weird fried food from Chicken Charlie's. We didn't get to sample everything but we did try their new fried bbq ribs and the fried Kool Aid!

Fried kool-aid

Think of flavored donut holes (cherry flavored donut holes, perhaps?) dusted with Kool Aid powder. They're actually pretty good, not as weird as I thought they might be! Surprisingly, they're also not as greasy as many donut holes. We heard that the LA County Fair special will be "caramel apple fries" - if you get to try these, let me know what they're like!

For fairs and festivals, a must-item for me is a smoked giant turkey leg! Here they're served by Big Bubba's BBQ.

(here's a pic for size comparison).

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Giveaway! Tickets to THE TASTE Desserts After Dark

LA Times and Food and Wine's weekend-long extravaganza, The Taste, is happening this weekend!
Spanning 4 days over 3 locations and 9 events, there are plenty to choose from. Now, we know most of you can't afford to go to ALL of them, which why they've offered to give away A PAIR OF TICKETS (up to $300 value) to one of the events!

Now, since I love desserts, I'm going to give away tickets to the Desserts after Dark, taking place on Sunday evening. The event features Food Network star Duff Goldman, desserts from Craft Restaurant, Waylynn Lucas's fōnuts, Compartes chocolates, Sweet Rose Creamery, and much more. Wash them down with some Qream Liqueur, Dow’s Port and a little Villa Massa Limoncello.

You can enter in two ways (or get two entries if you do both):
1. Comment below with your email address and tell us what your favorite dessert is.
2. Comment on my Facebook Page with your favorite dessert.

Easy, right?
They need the name of the winner by the end of the day tomorrow, which means this contest will end at NOON tomorrow! Then if I don't hear back from the winner by 3pm with their full names, I will draw another name - so be checking that mailbox.

PS. If you want to attend the other events, you can get tickets at 40% off from Bloomspot or OpenTable.