Fundamental LA Hits Westwood: 4-Visit Recap

When I was a UCLA student, my food options seemed to have ranged from Sak's Teriyaki to Gushi to In-N-Out. Oh, how lucky the current students are. Fundamental LA opened just South of Wilshire not too long ago, serving quality sandwiches and good beer at inexpensive prices.

Let's start with my current favorite:
chicken torta, heirloom tomato, lettuce, cotija, crema, pickled jalapenos, guacamole, bolillo bread ($9)

While I don't normally order chicken, they convinced me when they said there's only chicken thigh meat in this sandwich (dark meat FTW). I liked everything about this sandwich, from the moist and flavorful chicken, the fact that it's not overly heavy and filled with guacamole or sour cream, to the crunchy bread, and the sweet tomatoes and pickled jalapeno that refresh your palate.

The menu changes constantly, even if the main meat stays the same. On my first visit we had and loved the short rib sandwich with curried eggplant on sourdough. On my last visit this was served with kimchi.

Regardless, the short rib is always excellent.

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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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