Road Tips

Parantha Palace - Etobicoke, ON

When I found out that I was going to Toronto for my first time ever this last fall, one of my former colleagues who was also going to be there the same time told me that there were a large number of Indian restaurants in the greater Toronto area.  "There's so many good ones that you almost can't go wrong with any of them," he told me.  We took a stab at one place that wasn't far away via Uber - Parantha Palace.

Parantha - also known as Paratha - is an unleavened flatbread that is popular in Indian cuisine as well as in southeast Asia and parts of the Caribbean.  It's a little more thick than naan bread and is usually stuffed or topped with meats, vegetables, chiles, and cheese.  I guess you could call it a type of Indian pizza.  

Parantha Palace has been in business since 2007 in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke (pronounced eh-TOE-bi-koh) providing different types of paranthas as well as Indian specialties.  In 2021, a second Parantha Palace opened in Mississauga, ON.  

The Parantha Palace we went to was the original one on Rexdale Boulevard in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke west of downtown Toronto.  (see map)  It was about a five minute Uber ride from our hotel and it was around 8:30 p.m. when we pulled into the parking lot.  From the outside, we were both a little hesitant - the building looked like it may have been a convenience store at some point, the parking lot was lit up like a used car lot, and there were bright neon signs and large pictures of Indian food in the front windows.

But when we opened the door to walk in - WOW!  The succulent smell of curry, masala and those great Indian spices just enveloped us.  My buddy turned to me and simply said, "Oh, yeah..."  And the other thing we noticed in the dark restaurant - we were the only Anglos in the place.  And we both knew that meant the food had to be great.  Funky Desi music videos by artists such as Arjan Dhillon, Jordan Sandhu, and Navaan Sandhu were playing on the flat screen televisions and on the sound system of the place.  

We took a booth toward the back of the place with the pick-up/to-go counter not far away from us.  The menu was on the wall behind the counter and there was a glass enclosure with bottled drinks available.  A young lady came over with menus for us to look over and we both ordered Kingfisher beers as they were on the menu.  However, the young lady said that they were out of Kingfisher - and had been for some time.  (Kingfisher is even tough to find in Canada!)  We each ended up ordering Stella Artois from her.    

Just over the counter was a man whose only job was to make the parantha.  It's similar to naan bread in that it's an unleavened flat bread but made with wheat flour where naan is made with a white flour.  And whereas naan is baked, parantha is applied with ghee and cooked in a frying pan called a tava (or tawa).  Traditionally, it's more of a breakfast item topped with butter - sort of like toast.  But some people will add toppings such as vegetables, meats or even sweeteners to the parantha.  We watched him make a handful of them and he was certainly keeping busy.   

The menu was similar - yet somewhat different - to many of the Indian restaurants I've been to.  They had lamb, goat, chicken and shrimp dishes.  Vegetarian dishes such as paneer tikka masala (fried cheese in a spicy sauce), bhartha (egg plant), and bhindi do piayza (mainly okra and lots of onions) were also on the menu.  I was mindful of that in case I wanted to bring my vegetarian colleague back to Parantha Palace at some point.  

We started out getting a couple samosas off the appetizer part of the menu.  The deep-fried pastries were light and flaky on the outside, but had a great spicy flavor with the potatoes, onions and peas inside.  A traditional plum sauce and a side of creamy mint chutney - more thin than the mint chutney I've experienced in the past - came with the samosas.  The plumb sauce had a nice spicy kick to it.  It was so good I almost drank it directly from the serving cup.  

For our main courses, I pretty much knew what my friend was going to get - the butter chicken, the same thing I think he's always ordered every time we've gone out for Indian food together.  The butter chicken had a deep orange color to it and my friend said the taste was outstanding.  

I got the lamb masala.  It was a traditional lamb masala with the bones still in the stew.  I had to be careful of that fact so I didn't accidentally swallow any of the joint bones.  It was absolutely off the chain.  The lamb was so tender and full of flavor.  I could taste the lamb through the excellent masala sauce that had a bit of a kick on the tongue.  We got a couple orders of garlic naan and I used mine to dip in the great masala sauce as well as in the spicy plum sauce.

Man, I was absolutely stuffed when I finally finished.  But my buddy said that we should get one more entree to share or - at least - another appetizer.  I said, "No way!  I'm so full right now that I don't know if I can get up out of this booth!"  My buddy finally decided to throw in the towel, as well.  

After we paid our bill at the counter, the young lady who had been waiting for us came over with a treat.  They were two gulab jamun - an Indian dessert sort of like donut holes dunked in a sugary syrup.  "For you!  For you," she said excitedly.  I protested saying that I was so full, and my buddy said that we had already paid our bill.  "No, no," she implored.  "Free.  You were nice.  I'll get bowl for you."  She came back out with two gulab jamuns in a small container covered in a light sugar syrup.  

We Ubered back to the hotel and went to the bar for a nightcap.  My buddy opened the container and pulled one of the little ball-like cupcakes out and took a bite.  "Holy shit," he said with his eyes widening.  "This is going to give me a sugar rush!"  And he was right, the little ball of deep-fried goodness could put someone into a diabetic coma if they ate too many of them.  Even though I was still stuffed from dinner, I couldn't help but inhale the scrumptious treat she had given us for being absolute gentlemen to her while she waited on us.  

Finding a place like Parantha Palace and having a meal like my friend and I had makes traveling and being away from home on the weekends somewhat more tolerable.  First of all, the service we had from the young lady was outstanding.  She was cheerful and her happiness to wait on us was evident throughout the meal.  But the food was just off the hook.  The lamb masala I had was so good that I overate.  My buddy absolutely loved his butter chicken.  The sauces with the meal and with the samosas we got were all just out of this world.  I think we have a pretty good Indian restaurant back home and I've eaten at some other good ones in my travels, but Parantha Palace was off-the-chart excellent.  

The Old Man River Restaurant & Brewery - McGregor, IA

During a road trip up the Mississippi River last fall, we ended up in the river town of McGregor, IA.  My wife was starting to feel a tad peckish and we decided to find someplace locally to get something to eat.  We decided to go to a place that we'd been to a couple times before - The Old Man River Restaurant & Brewery.  

The building that houses Old Man River dates back to the 1880's and was once the offices of "Diamond" Jo Reynolds, an entrepreneur who owned grain elevators, steamboats, and mines along the upper Mississippi River.  The building has been a brewing facility since 2008 when Dave and Marci Strutt realized their dream of operating their own brewpub.  Joining the Strutt's was brewmaster Jake Simmons who was a quality control team member at the Schlafly brewery in St. Louis.  Simmons was actually going to school for his PhD in biology, but realized that he'd rather be brewing beer than finishing his doctorate.  

In 2011, Schlafly came to Simmons and asked if he could brew some specialty beers for them for distribution into Iowa, northern Illinois and Wisconsin.  Simmons readily agreed, but it turned out that Old Man River was at full capacity and had no room to add more brewing vessels.  Dave Strutt and Simmons' father James financed a new brewery on the Iowa River Landing in Coralville, IA as - at the time - there were no active breweries in the greater Iowa City area.  

The new venture was called Backpocket Brewery (click here to read the Road Tips entry on Backpocket) and it was large enough to make not only their own German-style beers, but to make the specialty beers for Schlafly.  (Backpocket brewed a very excellent American Pale Ale for Schlafly for a few years.)  Even though The Old Man River and Backpocket shared ownership and a head brewer, they were two separate entities.  

Because they were focusing more on the Backpocket Brewery, the Strutts and Simmons sort of let Old Man River Brewery go by the wayside.  It closed in the fall of 2015 and sat empty for a couple years.  In August of 2018, Duane and Diane Vorwald purchased The Old Man River, but it needed some work on the place before it could reopen.  They were finally able to reopen in March of 2019.  My wife and I had stopped in on our way back from a weekend trip up to Decorah in the fall of 2019 and we just had beer that trip.  This time, however, we were going to get something to eat.  

We pulled into downtown McGregor around 1:30 and pulled up to the two-story stately brick building with arched windows on both floors at the corner of Main and A streets.  (see map)  In the park across the street, there was a re-enactment of some sort going on.  We stood there for a moment watching people in 19th century garb doing something and it was obvious that we were late to the party and didn't know what was going on.  

We went inside Old Man River and found that the place hadn't changed since the last time we were there. Exposed wooden beams with exposed ductwork were above us while a refinished wooden floor was below.  Large wooden beam supports were placed around the middle of the dining area.  The 3-sided bar area is right up front as you come in the door from A St.  

The sign up front said, "Please Wait to Be Seated" and we stood there for a few moments before a lady with a couple plates of food whizzed by us.  "Sit anywhere, folks," she called back over her shoulder.  It was evident that they were understaffed that day - they had just two people waiting tables and serving beer at the bar.  Later on, I saw that they put a hand-drawn sign over the "Please Wait to Be Seated" sign that said, "Please Be Patient as We're Understaffed."  

It was a cold day and the patio area out back was empty.  It's actually a nice patio with metal chairs and tables attached to the west side of the building.  We've never been there when the weather is warm enough to be able to sit outside, but it looked like it would be a great place to hang out.  Below the decking on the outside of the patio were water troughs filled with dirt that held hop vines.  There were still some hops on the ropes going up the outside of the patio.  

We found a seat at a table near the north entrance of the establishment and we had to tell a couple people who came in that way later on who also waited to be seated to just find a seat on their own.   And it was cold in there - my wife is usually chilly in most places, but even I thought it was cold in the place.  There were a number of people seated at tables and at the bar who kept their coats on.  In the corner behind us was a small stage that is used for live music from time to time 

The menu at The Old Man River Restaurant & Brewery is your basic bar food - burgers, sandwiches, wraps, appetizers, soups, salads - nothing fancy.  Entrees such as steaks, stuffed pork tenderloin, seafood and stuffed ravioli were available after 4 p.m.  A prime rib special was available on Saturday nights.  They also featured pizza with a 14" regular flour thin crust or a 10" gluten free crust available.  

When one of the two ladies running around the dining room finally got to us, I ordered up an IPA they had on tap and my wife ordered some green tea to warm up from one of the ladies.  She brought my wife's tea, but forgot to get my beer.  I finally did get my beer about 10 minutes after I ordered it.  I did cut them both some slack because the place was about half full or more and they were working their asses off.  

I wasn't all that hungry and my wife thought she needed some soup.  I suggested that I order a sandwich and get some fries with it that we could split and she could get a cup of soup to help her warm up.  There was a caldron of tortellini tomato soup on a table near the door out to the patio.  My wife finally deduced that it must be self-serve.  She sort of shrugged her shoulders and went over to ladle out a cup of the soup.  

I ordered a reuben sandwich with the Thousand Island dressing on the side.  We also asked for an extra plate.  When it was brought out, there was no dressing on the side, no ketchup, salt or pepper for condiments, and no side plate.  My wife went up to the same table where the soup caldron was and picked up a small plate that is used to put the soup cups on.   I knew that we wouldn't be able to get either the side dressing or ketchup to go with the fries.  I gave my wife half of the sandwich and we decided to just eat up and cut our losses at that point.  

The sandwich was fine, a basic reuben with oven-roasted corned beef, Swiss cheese and sauerkraut.  They did have some Thousand Island dressing on the sandwich so it wasn't a complete loss.  The fries were very good - crunchy on the outside and flaky warm on the inside.  They would have been better if they would have had some black pepper on them and some ketchup to dip them in.  

Now, my wife and I are pretty understanding and patient when it comes to situations like this where the restaurant is understaffed by one or two people - especially since COVID.  But there were a couple ladies at a table next to us who were not.  They were pretty vocal with their displeasure of slow service and one of the ladies working the floor said, "Ladies, we're sorry.  We are short-staffed today.  We're doing the best we can."  

It was one of those moments when I just wanted to get up, walk over to the table and say, "Just shut up and eat!"  I mean it wasn't fine dining.  

While there were a few problems with our visit to Old Man River Restaurant & Brewery, I was more than satisfied with the food and the beer we had that day.  Service was choppy only because they were understaffed.  And it was sort of uncomfortably cold in there.  It's a neat place - the restored building has some distinctive character and an interesting vibe.  But like a lot of restaurants and brewpubs fighting to hang in there these days, it's got some problems.  If you can get past all that, you'll find that The Old Man River is a good destination to hang out for a while.  

The NAMM Show - Anaheim, CA

For years, one of the most famous shows for professional sound has been the annual National Association of Music Merchants, or the NAMM Show in Anaheim, CA.  My company had shown at NAMM in the past in conjunction with their former North American distributor - the former company I worked with for nearly 20 years.  We decided last year that we needed to make our presence known at the show this year to let everyone know that we were now on our own in North America.  I had never been to a winter NAMM Show, so I was sort of excited.  (I'd been to a couple of the summer NAMM shows in Nashville.  The summer show is much smaller than the winter NAMM.)   

The NAMM show is one of the oldest trade shows of its type in the world.  The origins of the show date back to 1902 when the National Association of Piano Dealers of American - NAPDA - had their first convention in Baltimore.  10 years later the association changed their name to the National Association of Piano Merchants of America and the show changed its name to the NAPMA Convention.  

By 1919, the rise of early jazz and marching band music forced the organization to change their name to the present day National Association of Music Merchants. The NAMM Show was held the next 50 years alternating between Chicago and New York City.  In 1937, the show required people to register in advance for the first time.  237 attendees and 86 manufacturers ranging from piano manufacturers and distributors, to music publishers, to radio and phonograph manufacturers were at the show in New York.  

In 1970, NAMM added a west coast show that was alternately held in either San Francisco or Los Angeles.  It moved permanently to Anaheim in 1979 under the name Winter Music & Sound Market while continuing to have a summer show in Chicago.

By 1990, the summer NAMM Show at McCormick Place in Chicago had lost its luster - it was so poorly attended that people referred to that year's show as "The Wake by the Lake".  In 1993, the summer show moved to Nashville and was more of a guitar and recording studio show.  20 years later, the Anaheim convention was renamed the NAMM Show and in 2018 the show expanded into the new north hall at the Anaheim Convention Center.   

The pandemic meant some changes in the NAMM Show which saw a record attendance of 115,000 attendees in January of 2020.  The show was cancelled in 2021 and it was moved to the summer in 2022 with just over 46,000 in attendance.  The 2023 show was held in April last year and moved back to its regular date in late January this year.   However, attendance was still about 40% lighter than their record year in 2020 and about 15% lower than anticipated attendance by show organizers.  

Our company debated back and forth about the merits of going to NAMM this year.  Talking with many of our accounts in North America in the previous months, they all thought it would be a good thing if we had a presence at the show.  But showing at NAMM is expensive.  We decided to do a small booth - a 10' x 10' foot print in the north hall.  I have to say that my colleague Stef from Montreal did a stellar job spearheading the plans for our appearance at the show.  

One of the other things we had to deal with was housing.  I suggested that we stay at a hotel and rent a car to get us back and forth.  But being the rookie in our group at NAMM, that was roundly shut down.  We decided to rent a house in the area through VRBO.  

The house was a 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath house about a mile walk from the Anaheim Convention Center and about 3/4's of a mile from Disneyland.  In fact, the house was set up more for families than for 4 conventioneers as it had a game room, multiple strollers, tricycles and kiddie bikes, bunk beds, extra smaller beds in the bedrooms, and a large common area for families to gather for dinner or whatever.  The funny thing is that we only found 2 of the 3 baths that had showers in them - 3 of us shared that one while our boss from Germany took the big room with the private bathroom.  

It was after we had all gotten home that I realized the 3rd shower was in the pool house next to the garage that had been converted to a game room.  Our international sales manager from France had the bedroom that had doors that allowed him to walk out to swim in the pool - which he did numerous times during our stay - and he noticed the small building at the far end of the pool next to a covered patio.  "I never even thought to look in there," he said later on.  "But who would want to walk out to another building just to take a shower in the morning!"  

The back patio area was very nice and relaxing with a covered patio with a gas grill, a hot tub, a seating area with a table-top gas heater, and there was an orange tree from the neighbors next door that my Montreal-colleague - who is about 6'4" - could reach up and grab oranges to eat off the tree.  We were close enough to Disneyland to be able to watch the fireworks they would shoot off at night.  

It was about a 30-minute walk one-way between the house and the convention center and the weather was absolutely gorgeous the whole time we were there.  We were lucky - our stay was sandwiched between two large storms that wreaked havoc on Southern California the week before and the week after we were there.  It rained lightly one morning while we were there, but by the time we left the house to walk over to the convention center, it had cleared off and was just a bit muggy.  My colleague from Montreal said, "I've come to NAMM for 12 years and that was the first time I ever saw it rain here."  

We made dinner on our own a couple times - two of our guys Ubered over to a grocery store nearby, while a liquor store near us actually delivered a bunch of beer, wine and liquor to our house.  The other nights, we did Uber Eats - two nights sushi and two nights Thai.  And it was way too slick.  I passed around my computer for the guys to order what they wanted, I clicked on the "order" button and each time it was less than 30 minutes and the Uber driver was pulling up to the house with the deliveries.  And the sushi and Thai food were excellent - the Thai was still warm when delivered, and the sushi was fresh and very good.  I overate the whole time we were there as there was also a great burrito place in the food court at the Anaheim Convention Center.  I think I gained 10 pounds while I was there.  

After we all got home, we were talking during a Zoom meeting about how well we all got along during our time together.  "No drama, no problems, no hard feelings," our guy from France said.  "I don't get along with my boys as well as we all got along in Anaheim."

And it was a good show for us.  We were situated in an area where a number of friends in the industry were also showing.  Good friends of mine from my previous job were showing their gear just across the aisle from us, a company from Utah that makes similar gear as we do - but we're friendly with - was directly behind us.  A Southern California headphone manufacturer that uses our headphone amplifiers and digital-to-analog converters to display their wares was just down the aisle.  We made new friends with some of the other small booths surrounding us.  

It wasn't the epicenter of celebrity-sightings - the musicians and performers were hanging out in another hall with manufacturers such as Gibson, Fender, Marshall and other companies.  But we did have the "who's-who" of recording engineers and producers such as Bob Clearmountain (Bruce Springsteen, Huey Lewis and the News, Bon Jovi); Gentry Studer (Bush, Ryan Adams, Metallica), Darrell Thorp (Foo Fighters, Beck, Paul McCartney), and Michael Romanowski (Alicia Keys, Peter Frampton, George Strait) who stopped by to say, "Hi!" as all of them use our gear in their studios.  

Each year, the NAMM TEC Awards are given out in 24 categories ranging from studio monitors to microphones to signal processing to wireless technology.  Our company had 4 products in the finals this year - the most we had ever had in nearly 15 years of showing at NAMM.  But our boss was convinced that we would not win.  ("We don't spend enough money to win like the big companies do," he said with a shred of sarcasm.)  So, we didn't go to the awards on Saturday night and hung out at the rental home eating sushi, drinking beer and wine, and watching basketball - all the while wondering if we really WOULD win an award.    

The next day, a mastering engineer from Brazil who we were friendly with came by and told us that he had gone to the awards banquet the night before and said that we had won for our stereo image enhancer that is one of - no, it is - the best selling product we have.  We couldn't verify it and we were skeptical, but later in the day I was able to bring the TEC Awards site up on my phone and - sure enough - we did win!   We were absolutely floored!  We thought that maybe the same people who came around with our table placards touting our products that had made the finals would come by with our award.  Nope - never happened.  And trying to get the award from the TEC Award people in the days and weeks after the show was over turned out to be quite the ordeal.   

For our first big trade show after going direct in North America, I'd have to say that it was a rousing success all the way around.  Four 50-year-old-plus men in a house didn't have any problems being around each other for hours on end.  We ate some good food and probably drank more than we should.  We reconnected with people and made our presence known in the professional audio industry once again.  But it was expensive to show at NAMM - booth costs, transportation costs and housing costs were well over $25,000 - a chunk of change for our little company from Germany.  The jury is still out if we're going to go back to the NAMM Show in 2025, but if we do we've already said that we'll probably have to send one guy to the awards ceremony because - who knows?  We may win another award!

North Italia - Irvine, CA

While I was out in Southern California last fall, I was jonesin' big time for some Italian food - especially something with either a marinara or a bolognese sauce.  I did a quick look on line to see if there were any good Italian places in the immediate area around my hotel.  I did find one place that sounded like it fit the bill - North Italia.  I headed over to North Italia to get my Italian food fix.  

Of course, I had no idea that North Italia was a chain restaurant of casual Italian restaurants with nearly 3 dozen locations in 13 states and the District of Columbia.  The reason I didn't know about North Italia is because the restaurants are located in states and cities that I either haven't traveled to or haven't been to on a regular basis.  (Although there is a North Italia in the Kansas City suburb of Leawood, KS.)  

The man behind North Italia has quite the story behind him.  It turns out that Sam Fox is a serial restaurateur who has been a 10-time James Beard Award semi-finalist for Restaurateur of the Year and has a New York Times best-selling cookbook author, and has been named numerous times as one off the Top 50 annual restaurant influencers by Nation's Restaurant News.  But Fox almost went into real estate and if it wasn't for a flat tire, he'd probably be selling real estate in Arizona.  

Fox came from a family of restaurant owners.  His grandparents ran restaurants and his parents owned restaurants in Tucson, AZ, most notably the popular Hungry Fox, a local institution that has been in business for 60 years.  Upon the advice from his parents and grandparents to stay away from the restaurant business, Sam Fox went to the University of Arizona to study real estate finance.  One summer while working for a local realtor, his boss asked him to go to his home and fix a flat tire for his wife.  Fox dutifully went to his boss' home and changed the tire, then he went back to the real estate office and quit on the spot.  Fox was determined that he was not going to work for anyone again.

Pictured right - Sam Fox.  Photo courtesy Arizona Republic

Fox dropped out of college, then set about to open his first restaurant.  At the age of 20, Fox opened Gilligan's Bar and Grill (now Gilligan's Pub) in Tucson.  Fox ran it for three years taking little to no income for himself and ended up selling the restaurant for $500,000.  That was his seed money that he needed to start his next venture which became Wildflower, a contemporary American cuisine restaurant that Fox founded in 1998.  

Eventually moving to Phoenix, Fox established Fox Restaurant Concepts and the company oversaw the development of restaurants such as Blanco Cocina + Cantina; Flower Child, a healthy farm-to-fork fast casual concept; The Arrogant Butcher, which focuses on upscale American comfort food; and Culinary Dropout, a casual American-style bistro.  

In 2002, Fox opened the very first North Italia in Scottsdale.  More North Italia's opened in the Phoenix area before migrating to California and Texas.  By 2019, Fox's holding company was overseeing 12 different restaurant concepts employing nearly 4,000 people.  

In 2016, Fox realized that he was spreading himself thin in terms of money for his plans of expansion, especially for the North Italia and Flower Child brands.  It was then that Cheesecake Factory, Inc. - the parent company of The Cheesecake Factory - came in with a cash infusion.  Cheesecake Factory, Inc. invested in Fox Restaurants Concepts with money earmarked for North Italia and Flower Child expansion in 2016.  The expansion plans went so well that Cheesecake Factory, Inc. invested more money in the two restaurants in 2017.  Once again, the investment proved to be good for both Fox and Cheesecake Factory, Inc. and more money was infused into the two restaurant brands in 2018.  In total, Cheesecake Factory, Inc. invested about $88 million into North Italia and Flower Child.  

Obviously, Cheesecake Factory, Inc. saw a great thing happening with their investments in the two Fox Restaurants group restaurants and in 2019 they came to Fox with an offer - $308 million for the Fox Restaurants Concepts group of restaurants.  Fox agreed - only if he could stay on and continue to oversee the 12 different restaurants under the Fox Restaurants umbrella.  Usually, the CEO of a restaurant group that is getting acquired usually takes his cash and runs, so Cheesecake Factory, Inc. execs were more than pleased to allow Fox to stay on board.

Under Cheesecake Factory, Inc.'s ownership, North Italia has flourished.  Sales were up 21% in 2021 and they expanded the North Italia brand into markets such as San Diego, Atlanta and Miami.  30 years after opening his first restaurant on a shoestring, Sam Fox has become a multimillionaire and has been one of the top influencers in the restaurant business over the past 15 years culminating in having his company purchased for 9 figures.  Not bad for a guy whose parents and grandparents told him to stay out of the restaurant business!  

It was a drizzly day in Southern California when I went to North Italia.  The Irvine location for the restaurant is located in a complex of restaurants, stores and markets at the corner of Carlson Ave. and Michaelson Dr.  (see map)  Because there were a number of popular eating establishments in the area, the parking lot was packed.  I could have valet parked the car at North Italia (it shares a valet area with a Ruth's Chris steakhouse across the way), but I went the cheap route and found a parking spot after a couple minute drive around the parking lot.  

The main dining room was a large room with a high ceiling made with wood slats and large windows on three sides letting in a lot of natural light.  The recessed lighting was still noticeable on the diners thanks to the cloudy skies that day.   In the back of the restaurant was a large window that looked in on the kitchen.                                          

There was an outdoor patio behind the bar in the front of the restaurant.  An awning over part of the patio shielded patrons from the on-and-off drizzle that was going on that day.  There were some people who were under large umbrellas away from the awning.  

As I normally do when I have the chance at a restaurant like this, I ended up at the bar area.  An open window that allowed people to eat at the bar from the patio was facing me as I sat at the inside bar.  It was a trio of bartenders that day who were working behind the bar and the first one who came up to me was named Brian.  He was soft-spoken and sort of laid-back.  I ordered a Peroni beer from Brian to get started.

The lunch menu at North Italia was still on when I was there.  (You can click here to see the dinner menu, but I didn't see much difference between the two.)  I was definitely going for some sort of pasta dish, but they also had sandwiches, wood-fired pizza, a braised short rib entree, and a chicken parm entree.  Starters included calamari, bruschetta with prosciutto, and a shrimp scampi appetizer.  They also had a number of salads on the menu where you could add either chicken or salmon for protein.  

For pasta dishes, North Italia had a crushed meatball ragu with bucatini pasta, a spicy vodka rigatoni, and tiger shrimp and calamari with squid ink tonnarelli pasta in a spicy tomato sauce.  But I ended up getting what appeared to be their signature pasta dish, the tagliatelle pasta with a traditional house-made bolognese sauce topped with a grated Grana Padano cheese and sprinkled with wild oregano.

The only problem was that I seemed to be sitting there for quite sometime before I realized people at the bar who had come after me were getting their food.  I noticed at some other restaurants during my trip to Southern California that it took an inordinate amount of time between the time I ordered and when I finally got my food.  Most of the places were busy and North Italia was no different.  Still, I wasn't in that big of a hurry.  

While ordering my third beer while I was sitting there, I asked Brian what the hold-up was on my food.  He looked sort of perplexed and said, "Man, I don't know.  You don't have your food yet?"  And off he went.  

Moments later a manager came up and apologized for not getting my food out to me.   He said that they had misplaced the order in the kitchen and promised it would be out shortly - and it was.  But I certainly didn't get a discount or a free beer out of the deal.  

But it was worth the wait.  The tagliatelle pasta with the bolognese sauce was the perfect spot-hitter for my pasta craving.  The fresh wild oregano gave the pasta a bold and pungent kick to the overall flavor.  But it was light and not so filling.  It was just enough food to satisfy my appetite.  

If I were to come across another North Italia restaurant in my travels, I'd probably consider it - especially if I couldn't find something local and in the immediate area.  But each North Italia location is a bit different from the others in terms of their menus, so what I had at the one in Irvine might be different from one that I may run into in Arizona or Washington D.C.  The tagliatelle bolognese pasta was very good and the perfect dish to quell my pasta hankering.  Other than the kitchen forgot to get my meal out to me, the service was fine and it was a nice place to get a meal.   For a serviceable Italian restaurant, I'd give a "thumbs up" for North Italia.   

Sushi Ya Japan - Etobicoke, ON

While in Toronto, my buddy told me about a sushi place that he and his company went out to the night before.  He said the sushi was outstanding.  I had been in a bit of a food funk and really hadn't had anything to eat other than snack stuff for over 24 hours (thanks to a big - and very good - burger I had at the hotel the previous afternoon).  After I got out of the show on the final day, I took an Uber over to Sushi Ya Japan.  

For 20 years now, Sushi Ya Japan has been serving some of the finest sushi in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke (pronounced e-TOE-bee-coh) in a quaint and casual setting.  There is another Sushi Ya Japan in the nearby town of Milton, but I couldn't determine if they were related in any way.  

It was a short Uber ride from my hotel to Sushi Ya Japan located on Dixon Road just west of it's junction with the MacDonald-Cartier 401 Freeway, the main freeway through Toronto (and the busiest freeway in North America).  (see map)  It's right in the flight path of Toronto Pearson airport, but the building seemed to be solid enough where I never heard a jet the whole time I was inside.

From the outside, the restaurant is pretty nondescript.  I was a little confused because there was a Vietnamese restaurant next door in the same building with an outdoor dining patio in the front.  At first I thought that was part of Sushi Ya, but I determined the door to get into the sushi joint was on the side where an alley way took you back to a parking lot behind the building.  

As I said, from the outside the place didn't look like much.  But on the inside I found a quaint, cozy little place filled with wooden high-backed booths, tables in little nook area, and some small rooms off toward the back for larger groups.  It reminded me of a tiki bar more than a sushi place.  

I ended up taking a seat at the sushi bar.  Three sushi chefs were cutting seafood, making rolls and placing orders on the counter in front of them.   There were two young ladies who tag-teamed in waiting on me while I was there.  The first young lady sat a menu down in front of me, while the other one came back to ask what I wanted to drink.  I ordered a bottle of Asahi Super Dry beer to start out. 

I gathered they had a kitchen in the back as the menu showed a number of teriyaki dinner plates, stir-fry dishes, and tempura offerings.  Noodle entrees and bento boxes were also available as was a four-course meal for larger groups.

My wife has gotten me hooked on kani salads when we go out for sushi.   And Sushi Ya had a good kani salad - stringed crabmeat mixed with tobiko (flying fish roe) mixed with lettuce and a spicy mayo dressing.  Man, it was outstanding.  

I had to get a couple of Sushi Ya Japan's rolls.  I went with the spicy salmon (on the left) and the spicy tuna (on the right).  The rolls were generous in size and were simply scrumptious.  The sushi rolls came with ginger and what appeared to be shaved pickled onions.  Everything was delicious, but I was still hungry just a bit.    

I was ready to get some regular sushi at that point and I order up four pieces of the maguro (tuna), and two pieces each of the sake (salmon) and the hamachi (yellow tail).  The presentation was something I normally don't see at a sushi place.  The ruby red tuna was offset by the orange and white striped pieces of salmon and the pink of the yellow tail.  A cross of tobiko roe gave the plate a little bit of flair.  

And the sushi was out of this world.  They were large pieces with small rolls of rice underneath.  The salmon had a long tail and I almost needed to cut the salmon into two bites.  The yellow tail was extremely fresh and didn't have any hint of a fishy taste.  And the tuna - wow!  The texture was firm, yet soft on the chew.  This was some exquisite sushi.  It was just killer.

My friend certainly didn't steer me wrong when it came to his effusive praise about Sushi Ya Japan.  This was some of the freshest sushi I've ever had.  I liked everything about the place - it was cozy and clean, the service was very good and I can't say enough about how great the sushi was.  As I said, Sushi Ya isn't much to look at on the outside, but as I've learned over the years is to never judge a book by its cover.  Sushi Ya Japan was some of the best sushi I've ever encountered.  

Saggio's - Albuquerque, NM

During our vacation in New Mexico, we were sort of burned out on green chile sauce, fried potatoes and sopapillas (although I don't know if you could EVER get burned out on sopapillas).  We were talking with a waiter at a restaurant in Albuquerque one evening and I casually asked him where the best place to get a pizza in the city.  He didn't even flinch.  "Saggio's," he enthusiastically replied.  I told him that we had been seeing Saggio's when we would pass by it on Central Avenue.  "It's a little kitschy," he told us.  "But if you can get past that, they have the best pizza in town."  One night during our stay in Albuquerque, we ended up at Saggio's for dinner.  

Michel "Michael" Casale and his wife Francesca were Italian immigrants who landed in New York and lived in the Bronx.  Over time, Francesca gave birth to 3 boys - Frank, Nick and Tony - and the family had a small pizza place in the Bronx.  Looking to get to a warmer part of the country, the family settled in Albuquerque in the mid-70's and it wasn't long afterward when they opened Saggio's, a pizza-by-the-slice establishment near the University of New Mexico.  

Frank, Nick and Tony were the main players in Saggio's and it wasn't long before they had outgrown their little pizza shop.  They found a building near the corner of Cornell and Central Ave. just across from the University of New Mexico.  Over the years, the brothers added decorations, murals, statues and anything sort of off-kilter and funky to their restaurant making it a favorite of students and locals alike.  Today, Tony's son Gian is the managing partner in the restaurant which opened a 2nd location in the fall of 2021 in the Coronado Center shopping mall on the city's northeast side.

We actually went to the Saggio's on the northeast side first because I'm not big on restaurants with a lot of noisy kitsch.  But when we found that place was packed (it was a Saturday night), we decided to suck it up and go to the Cornell Dr. location back toward the center of Albuquerque. (see map) 

After finding a parking spot just down Cornell Dr. SE, we walked up the street to the colorful building that housed Saggio's.  Just inside the door was a life-sized statue of Babe Ruth, across the walkway was a life-sized statue of Muhammed Ali, and sort of tucked back into the corner was a life-sized statue of former Green Bay Packers quarterback Bart Starr.  That one sort of puzzled me because while Babe Ruth and Muhammed Ali were thought of to be the best in their sports, Starr was a fine quarterback, but there were others - even in his day - who were better quarterbacks.  

Among the first thing kitschy thing we encountered - other than the statues - was a red Mercedes with its top sheared off.  It was a serving counter for desserts - named after the Saggio matriarch Francesca - with a glass case that held a few items.  While most people might think it was ingenious, novel or cute, I just sort of shrugged my shoulders.  

The dining area was a busy mix of plants including white columns with royal blue urns at the top filled with tropical plants.  Large spider plants, a banana plant, and other plants were hanging or in pots throughout the dining area.  Colorful lights, more kitschy items, and a ceiling mural hovered above the slat bench seats in the dining room.  

The center piece of the dining area is a pop art mural which depicts celebrities and historical figures in a colorful mélange.  The Beatles, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe playing a guitar, The Three Stooges, John Wayne and The Supremes were all portrayed in the mural.  It gave us something to look at while we passed the time after ordering our pizza.  

Saggio's is counter service - counter ordering and counter pick-up - with the menu on the wall behind the front wall.  In addition to pizza, Saggio's tag line says "Italian Scratch Kitchen" and they had a number of pasta dishes on the menu, as well as salads, sandwiches and calzones.  

The thing I didn't like about Saggio's was that after we placed our order for food at the front counter, we had to go over to another counter in their bar area to order drinks.  That's two separate charges that I had to deal with rather than being able to order everything at one place.  My wife got a glass of chianti while I got a pint of the La Cumbre Elevated IPA.  

My wife needed some greens and she ordered a side Caesar salad to start out.  It was a basic romaine lettuce salad with croutons, shaved parmesan and some Italian seasoning sprinkled on top with a creamy Caesar dressing drizzled over the greens.  My wife thought it was fine for what it was.  

It was about 15 minutes after we ordered that our number was called for our pizza.  We went with our usual Italian sausage, mushroom and pepperoni.  We had a pretty big lunch earlier in the day and we weren't terribly hungry for dinner that night so we got a small thin crust.  It wasn't as thin as we like, but it was hand-tossed and the crust held up well with all the toppings.  Curiously, the sausage was shaved like they had shaved it off a spit like you would shave lamb meat for a gyro.  But we could tell the sausage had a spicy kick.  The mushrooms were fresh and earthy, and the pepperoni slices had a nice salty and spicy flavor.  

Was it a good pizza?  Sure, it was good.  The tangy tomato sauce and the mozzarella cheese coagulated well together with the toppings.  It was a filling pizza and we were glad we only got a small.  

While Saggio's came highly recommended by locals we talked with, it's evident that it was another instance of local bias where you like the pizza that you grew up with.  While Saggio's pizza was good, it didn't give us a jolt like we get with some of our favorite tavern-style pizzas in Chicago.  Everything about the pizza was fresh and it had good flavor.  I wouldn't call it a Top Ten pizza, but for Albuquerque I'm sure it was fine.  When we travel, we like to go where the locals go and it's wholly evident the locals go to Saggio's for their pizza.  Just remember - I warned you about the kitsch.  

Bear Flag Fish Co. - Newport Beach, CA

Out in Southern California last fall, I was hungry for some good fish tacos.  I knew there had to be a number of places near the Pacific Ocean that had great fish tacos that were made with fresh-caught seafood.  I found this one place on line that looked promising over in Newport Beach that was located on the Lido Peninsula in that city's downtown area.  Later that night I headed over to Bear Flag Fish Co.  

It turned out that I hit the jackpot on a place that has fresh caught seafood for their tacos as Bear Flag Fish Co. has their own fleet of fishing boats that go out daily into the Pacific Ocean to bring back only the freshest caught seafood.  And the captain of the fleet - and the owner of Bear Flag Fish Company - is Thomas Carson.   

Thomas "Thos" Carson grew up in Newport Beach and learned to love the ocean at an early age.  His father was a steel fabricator by day and built his own fishing boat when Thomas was a baby.  Thomas' father started to fish commercially his boat - Bear Flag (the California state flag as a grizzly bear on it) - when Thomas and his brother were younger, both boys heading out to sea with their dad for the daily catch.  The Carson family would go as far south as just off the Mexican coast or up to the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara to catch fish.  

Eventually, Carson worked on other people's commercial boats in various roles - scrubber, deck hand, chef, first mate, captain.  But the land eventually called and Carson put his chef training to work by working in restaurants, primarily in sushi restaurants.  

Pictured right - Thomas "Thos" Carson.  Photo courtesy Orange County Register. 

It was at sushi places where Carson put his knowledge of fresh fish to the forefront.  Carson could tell the quality of the fish - whether it had been stressed when it was caught - from first glance and a couple touches along the side.  

It wasn't long before Carson wanted to get into the restaurant business.  He found a spot in Newport Beach in what was an old garage.  With the help of his father - who did a lot of line work and welding for the renovation - Thos Carson transformed the garage into a 1200 square foot restaurant.  Along with his wife Erika, the Carsons opened Bear Flag Fish Company in 2007.  

The word about Bear Flag's awesome fish tacos - caught fresh in the morning and thrown on ice in their own fishing boat - spread like wildfire in Orange County.  Lines out the door and down the street in front of the restaurant were the norm.  But people stood in line for the tacos and it was definitely worth the wait.  

Within a year, Thos Carson realized that he needed a bigger place and found a spot just down the street from his original location.  This space was about 1500 square feet and he was able to put in a fish counter to sell fresh fish caught from his boat in addition to selling the freshest fish tacos in Newport Beach.  The Newport Peninsula location located in downtown Newport Beach opened in 2008.  

In March of 2012, Carson opened a second location in the Crystal Cove Promenade shopping mall along the Pacific Coast Highway on the south end of Newport Beach.  A third Bear Flag Fish Company location opened in 2016 up the road in Huntington Beach in the brand new Pacific City beachfront shopping and entertainment complex.   All three Bear Flag Fish Company locations offer fresh catch seafood caught from not only the two fishing boats Thos Carson continues to operate, but from other local fishermen Carson is friendly with.  

I set off heading west on the 55 Freeway from Irvine toward Newport Beach.  The freeway literally drains into downtown Newport Beach and my GPS took me right by Bear Flag Fish Company.  The only problem was that I didn't see it.  The building is small and there's no distinct sign in front of the place to let the first-timers like myself that this is the place.  I ended up heading out onto Lido Isle before turning around and heading back up Via Lido.  As I got up to where the GPS said Bear Flag was supposed to be and I saw a mast with an American flag on top with small burgee pennants hanging on cables on the side of the mast.  A small sign on the side of the white brick New England-style building announced that I had found it.  After some maneuvering with my rental car, I was able to park just across the street from Bear Flag.  (see map)

Upon entering Bear Fish I found a small space with counter-service.  Bright white tiles were on the facade of the counter and further down was a sushi bar and seating.  A large mounted swordfish was prominent on the wall above the menu hanging below.  There was a small seating area inside with more seating on a patio outside a back door and another small patio off to the side.  

Off to the left side from the service counter/sushi bar was the fish counter filled with filet cuts of fresh seafood.  And everything looked fresh - there was no discoloration between the slabs of tuna cuts that I usually see at seafood markets back in the midwest.  The sword fish and tuna filets had my mouth watering.  

Even though I was set in getting fish tacos that evening, Bear Flag Fish Company also had tuna, salmon or octopus poké, sushi, ceviche, and seafood platters with a choice of fish and two sides.  They had poké available by the pound and I had a refrigerator back in my room.  I seriously thought about getting a pound of the tuna poké to take back to my room to snack on while I was in Southern California.  

I placed my order at the front counter and the young lady gave me a small flag with the order number on it to place on top of the table wherever I sat in the place.  I took a small table on the side patio and sipped on a Stone Hazy IPA that they had on tap while I waited for my fish tacos.  

It had been about 20 minutes and I still hadn't gotten my fish tacos.  I was starting to worry that possibly the order didn't get in - the girl at the front counter where I placed my order was getting trained that evening - and I began to think that possibly something got wrong.  I thought 20 minutes for 3 fish tacos was sort of long, considering the place wasn't all that busy that evening. I was just getting ready to go back to the counter to check on my order when a guy brought out the basket of tacos.  

I got three different tacos, a seared bluefin tuna taco, a Scottish salmon taco, and a shrimp taco.  I thought that possibly the Scottish salmon would be smoked, but it was cooked.  I generally can't eat cooked salmon since I got sick on salmon in France about 15 years ago.  But it wasn't too pungent and the combination of the cabbage and pico de gallo laid across the salmon helped mask some of the smell and taste of the cooked salmon.  (Salmon sushi - I have absolutely no problem with.  Smoked salmon sushi is probably my favorite kind of sushi.)  

The shrimp taco was fine - it was chunks of shrimp that were flat-grilled in butter.  But the seared bluefin tuna taco - OH MY GAWWWD!  The taste of the tuna was so fresh I could easily tell it was probably caught earlier in the day.  I'm still kicking myself to this day for not getting all three tacos with the seared bluefin tuna.  It was just fabulous.  

I needed fish tacos while I was in Southern California and I believe I may have gone to the best place in Orange County for my fix.  Bear Flag Fish Company had the freshest catch available for their tacos.  The seared bluefin tuna tacos were absolutely amazing, the flavor of that taco stomped all over the taste of the Scottish salmon and grilled shrimp taco in the triumvirate of tacos I got.  The place isn't big and I was lucky there weren't a lot of people in there that evening.  But it did seem to take an inordinate amount of time to get my fish tacos once I did place the order.  But the wait was well worth it.  You want some of the best fish tacos you've ever had?  Don't hesitate if you're in Orange County to go to one of the three Bear Flag Fish Company locations.       

Chop's Kall Inn Supper Club - Hazel Green, WI

We love the atmosphere and food at many of the Wisconsin supper clubs we've visited over the years.  We were going to take a weekend getaway up toward Dubuque and check out some of the fall foliage last year.  We knew there are a handful of supper clubs in Grant County on the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River from Dubuque including the Village Bar Supper Club in Kieler, WI that we visited a few years ago.  But there was one that I wasn't familiar with - Chop's Kall Inn near Hazel Green, WI. 

Ben and Mable Kahle started the Kall Inn Tavern and Dance Hall ("Kall" the pronunciation of their last name) in Kieler, WI in 1945.  The main draw to the Kall Inn was a television set that marveled and entertained diners when programming was available to be watched.  Five years after opening, the Kahle's purchased an old fish market near the Mississippi River west of Hazel Green along US 61/151 near the narrow bridge that would cross the river at Eagle Point in Dubuque and turned it into a supper club, changing the name to the Kall Inn Supper Club.  

Ben and Mable were joined in the business by their son Wayne after he got out of the Navy in the late 50's.  Ben Kahle died in 1964 and Mable passed the following year.  Wayne, his wife Mary, and their five children continued to run the Kall Inn Supper Club up for over 45 years up to and after Wayne and Mary had retired and were wintering in Texas and three of their children had moved away.  Two of the remaining daughters in the area decided to close the business in 2012.  

Not far from the Kall Inn was another supper club - the 3 Mile House Supper Club - so called because it sat 3 miles from the Mississippi River bridge between Dubuque and East Dubuque, IL.  It was located at the corner of Wisconsin State Highways 35 and 11 outside of Hazel Green, WI.  Originally known as the High Hat Supper Club, it suffered a devastating fire in the 40's.  It was rebuilt, but further back from the highway intersection.  It was - and still is - one of the more popular supper clubs in the Tri-State area.  

In 1980, Paul and Velma Moor bought the 3 Mile House Supper Club and like many people who own supper clubs, it was a family affair with their six kids helping out in the restaurant.  One of their sons - Jeff, also known as "Chop" - became deeply involved in the business.  Shortly before the Moors bought the supper club, Chop had started to date a young lady by the name of Julie.  In fact, Chop and Julie's first date was dinner at the Kall Inn Supper Club.  When the Moors took over the 3 Mile House, Julie started as a waitress.  It wasn't long after that Chop and Julie were married and raising their own children.  

In 1997, Chop and Julie took over ownership of the 3 Mile House and ran it for 21 years before Chop decided he wanted to do something else in life.  Chop and Julie sold the supper club and laid low for a couple of years.  

In 2019, Jeff and CeAnn Kaiser, owners of one of our favorite little roadside dive bars - the Kieler Mall in Kieler, WI - bought the Kall Inn as an investment.  The Kaisers reached out to Chop and Julie Moor to see if they would be interested in running the place for them.  Chop was ready to get back into the restaurant business and he readily agreed to run the Kall Inn for the Kaisers.  Chop brought over many of his famous dishes from the 3 Mile House including his beef tips bowl, broasted cod, and the popular prime rib and barbecued ribs on Saturday nights.  And to let everyone know who was in charge of the place, the Kaisers named it Chop's Kall Inn Supper Club.  Chop's Kall Inn opened in late November 2020.  

My wife and I had taken the Friday afternoon off and we got checked into our hotel in Dubuque around 3 p.m.  After getting settled in, we took off to enjoy a couple craft beers at the newly expanded Jubeck New World Brewing in downtown Dubuque, then we went on to the Wicked Dame to get my wife a martini or two.  We had made reservations in advance at Chop's Kall Inn for 7 p.m.  But we decided to head out early and I popped the address into the GPS.  

After crossing the Wisconsin side bridge over the Mississippi, we got off at the Badger Road exit - the 2nd one into Wisconsin on US Highways 61/151.  The GPS had me get off on a black top road.  It was well after the son had gone down and we were suddenly going down a dark road with trees lining the roadway.  My wife remarked, "This looks like the kind of road in the movies where two people drive down, but only one comes back.  Are you trying to tell me something?"  At the bottom of the hill, the road opened into a clearing and on the left was Chop's Kall Inn.  (see map)  

We were about 25 minutes early when we walked into Chop's.  There was a long narrow three-sided bar off to the side, but it was the most prominent feature in the dining room.  Royal blue was the defining color of the restaurant with the wait staff wearing royal blue polo shirts and the chair backs at all the tables were a deep royal blue.  It wasn't a fancy place - more homey than posh.  The atmosphere fit us like a glove.

A young lady behind the bar asked us if we had reservations.  I told that we did, gave her my name, but I also said we were early.  She said, "We have your table set up back in the corner!"   

The young lady led us back to a four-seat table in the corner.  Already on the table was a good ol' fashioned relish tray complete with veggies, a cheese spread, a liver spread and ranch dressing.  The little packaged bread sticks were available in a basket on the table.  

My wife and I were looking through the menu when our server for the evening - Brooke - came over to greet us.  Here's a spoiler alert - Brooke was fabulous that evening.  She was cheerful, had a great sense of humor, and was more than helpful all night long.  She would have been the kind of waitress where you would have invited her to sit down at your table at the end of her shift and just hang out having a couple beers.  

Brooke asked us what we wanted to drink.  My wife ordered a dirty Absolut vodka martini - I was sort of surprised she wanted another martini after she had two stiff ones at Wicked Dame.  I saw that they had Old Style in bottles on the beer menu.  I immediately signed up for one of those.  Wow!  Old Style in a Wisconsin supper club.  I was loving this place already.

The only problem - Brooke came back and told me that they were out of Old Style.  "Out of Old Style," I said in feigned indignation. 

Brooke laughed and said, "I know!  What kind of place is this?"   

I jokingly said, "Well, I'm gonna trash this place!"

Brooke laughed again and said, "Could you do it in one of the other girl's stations so I don't have to clean up?"

I knew I was going to get a steak, so I immediately switched to the house cabernet they had at Chop's.    

Even though I pretty much knew I was going to get steak that evening, it turns out that Chop's Kall Inn also had pork chops, grilled or broasted chicken, a chicken or shrimp pasta alfredo, and a number of seafood entrees including the stuffed-broasted cod that Chop made famous at the 3 Mile House.  We were a day early for Chop's prime rib and barbecued ribs night.  Appetizers included chicken wings, mozzarella sticks, onion rings - and since we were in Wisconsin - fried cheese curds.  

After ordering up our meals, we had a choice between cottage cheese, a tossed salad, house-made cole slaw or soup as a starter.  My wife got a small bowl of the cole slaw, while I ordered a salad.  My wife thought their cole slaw was very good and she offered me a bite.  It was creamy and sweet with a nice crunch to the cabbage.  Dinner rolls were provided along with the salads.  

My salad featured fresh lettuce greens - the dish was cold to the touch so they were making the salads in advance and pulling them out of the refrigerator when they were needed.  And I have absolutely no problem with that.  There were cherry tomatoes, sliced cucumbers and large crouton chunks on the sale and it was slathered in what was called a French dressing on the menu, but it was more of a sweet Western-style dressing.  It was a great start to the meal.

My wife and I both got steaks for dinner that night - the tenderloin filets.  I don't think we considered anything else on the menu.  Hers was a 6 ounce cut and she ordered it medium at first.  Seconds after "medium" came out of her mouth, she changed it to "medium-rare".   She cut into it and I would have called it rare-plus - it was pretty rare.  But years ago, my wife would have sent it back.  She went ahead and ate it like that.  And she thought it was excellent.  

Sides came with the steak and we had choices such as mashed potatoes and beef gravy, a baked potato, wild rice, steak fries or French fries, or a steamed vegetable of the day.  My wife got the hash browns with grilled onions and cheese mixed in.  

I got the 10 ounce filet that evening.  And, as always, I ordered it rare.  I got steak fries to go along with the filet.  I had requested Brooke bring out some fresh ground horseradish and she provided a little tub of it 

And my steak was a perfect rare - very red and cool in the middle with a great salt and pepper flat-grilled seasoning on it.  It was tender and flavorful.  It, too, was excellent.  And the steak fries were outstanding, as well.  They had to be broasted as they weren't oily or greasy, crisp on the outside and had that pillowy potato inner core.  After tots, steak fries - good steak fries - are my second favorite way to prepare potatoes.  

And that was a problem because I was stuffed from the steak and I couldn't stop eating the steak fries.  I finally got Brooke's attention to come over to the table.  "Take these away before I eat more," I said as I gestured to the less than half-full bowl of steak fries.  

Can't stop, huh," Brooke said as she picked up the bowl.  "The steak fries are my favorite," she said.  

Brooke tried to entice us with some dessert, but we were too full to even consider any more food at that point.  (Besides, we figured that if we needed dessert later on, the hotel had a restaurant.)  She dropped off the check and I took a quick look at it.

Now, this is my pet peeve with some restaurants - restaurants who suggest a tip on the bill.  The tip suggestions at Chop's Kall Inn - 18%, 20%, 22% - were based upon the meal, the tax on the meal, and the credit card fee of 3.5%.  I only tip on the cost of the meal, not the tax or tip.  I think it's somewhat dishonest when restaurants suggest a tip that includes taxes and extra fees.  

But that was the only bad taste that was left in my mouth with our visit to Chop's Kall Inn.  The steaks we had at Chop's were excellent.  The service we had from Brooke was excellent.  She was really fun and we like fun servers when we dine out.  And the atmosphere was homey and far from stuffy.  Grant County in Wisconsin has 8 supper clubs and we're going to try to eat at each one.  But it's going to be tough to beat everything we experienced at Chop's Kall House.  

 

Flying Star Cafe - Albuquerque, NM

During our time in Albuquerque last year, my wife wanted some breakfast.  We had researched some places and we were told by one of our waiters from a previous meal that quite probably the best - and most unique - place for breakfast was the Flying Star Cafe.  There were six locations to choose from around Albuquerque and we decided to drive out to the Paseo del Norte address to give Flying Star Cafe a try.  

Jean Bernstein was born into a family of entrepreneurs, so it was a natural move for her and her husband Mark to open a franchise of a popular San Francisco-based ice cream shop by the name of Double Rainbow.  In 1987, the Bernsteins opened Double Rainbow along Central Avenue in the Nob Hill neighborhood near the University of New Mexico.  8 years after opening Double Rainbow, the Bernsteins opened their second location in the Northeast Heights neighborhood along Juan Tabo Boulevard.  A third Double Rainbow location opened in 2000 in Albuquerque's Uptown area.  

By this time, the Bernsteins were looking to do more than ice cream.  They had been slowly working food in the mix - especially locally-sourced/farm-fresh breakfast items.  By the time the Bernsteins opened their fourth location in 2001 in the North Rio Grande area of Albuquerque, they mutually broke their franchise agreement with Double Rainbow and renamed their restaurant Flying Star Cafe - they got the Flying Star from a Chinese-manufactured aerial display rocket they saw in a fireworks magazine.  

The North Rio Grande location of Flying Star Cafe was unique in that it was near horse trails and they put in a hitching post for people traveling by horse could stop in for a meal.  It also featured a large outdoor patio - they called it the "Petio" - where patrons could eat along side their pets.  

Pictured at right - Jean and Mark Bernstein.  Photo courtesy The Flying Star & Satellite Coffee Blog

In 2002, Bon Appetit named Flying Star Cafe as one of the 10 Best Places in the United States to get breakfast.  They continued to expand their menu including sandwiches, pasta dishes, and Southwestern-regional cuisine.  They followed a philosophy of serving food that's "not fancy, but delicious and plentiful."

Buoyed by regional and national accolades, the Bernsteins and Flying Star Cafe were really on a roll.  In 2005, Flying Star Cafe opened their fifth location in downtown Albuquerque in what was the former Southern Union Gas Company Building, a 1930's modernism-designed structure that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Bernsteins remodeled the building to pay homage to the original modernistic-theme including colorful murals, brushed aluminum light fixtures, 1930's modern-style furnishings and a contemporary color scheme.  The downtown location was also unique in that they had individual meeting rooms where people could use for working lunches.  

Their prolific growth continued in 2006 when they opened their sixth location in the Albuquerque suburb of Corrales, then their 7th Flying Star opened the next year along Paseo del Norte in northeast Albuquerque. (This was the one we went to.)  2008 saw the opening of the eighth Flying Star in suburban Bernalillo, and the following year the Bernsteins ventured outside greater Albuquerque to open a Flying Star Cafe in the Railyard District up in Santa Fe.  

But as economics professors teach in college, rapid expansion doesn't always lead to rapid growth.  Flying Star Cafe began to garner a reputation for being too pricey, so the Bernsteins listened to their clientele and put in a "value" menu.  That helped for a while, but local economic conditions led to more setbacks for the Flying Star Cafe restaurants.  With some restaurants underperforming, the Bernsteins were forced to file a Chapter 11 business reorganization in 2014.  Within a year, Flying Star Cafe closed their downtown Albuquerque location, the one in suburban Bernalillo, and the lone non-Albuquerque area location up in Santa Fe. 

The reorganization worked and within three years Flying Star's cash flow was positive, the Bernsteins had paid off all unsecured creditors and the restaurant broke out of bankruptcy protection allowing the Bernsteins to continue to run the restaurants.   In addition to running the six Flying Star Cafe locations, since 1998 the Bernsteins have also owned Satellite Coffee, a five-location artisan coffee boutique that roasts its beans in small batches.      

The Flying Star Cafe location we went to was in a shopping complex at the southeast corner of Paseo Del Norte and Wyoming Blvd. NE on the northeast side of Albuquerque.  (see map)  The parking lot in front of the contemporary-designed building was packed and we had to park out a ways from the front door.  

And when we walked up to this Flying Star, the line was literally out the door - and this was at about 10:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning.  But the line was moving pretty quickly.  In all, it took us about 25 minutes from the time we queued up in line to when we were able to place our order at the counter.  Had the place not come so highly recommended we probably would have bagged it and sought another place to have breakfast.  But the wait gave us time to take a long look at the menu which was on a board above and behind the front counter area.     

It also gave us time to take a look at the delectable muffins, pastries, pies and cakes they had in the glassed in front counter.   They had a number of different cookies and treats on display - the espresso truffle brownie caught my eye.  My wife was pretty interested in the blueberry scone, as well as the salted almond crème caramel baked vanilla custard.  

The dining area was a splash of vibrant colors in a brightly naturally lit room.  The booth backs and banquette seats along the long wall were varieties of orange and bright red.  There was a small central area where there were small tables surrounding a four-sided banquette seating area.  The outdoor patio area was packed that day, so after we ordered at the counter, we decided to sit inside at a table near the door that opened up to the patio.  

It's breakfast all day at Flying Star Cafe which means you can get French toast with strawberries and bananas, blueberry pancakes, breakfast burritos and "make-your-own" omelets throughout the day.  But they also had a number of sandwiches, burgers made with grass-fed beef, soups, salads, protein bowls, and their house-made mac & cheese which has won several awards for being the best in Albuquerque.  The grilled fish tacos that I saw on the menu made me pause for a moment, but I was in the mood for breakfast.  

After 15 minutes after we ordered, our food showed up carried out to us by a cheerful young lady.  My wife and I both went with omelets that day and we both got a big glass of orange juice to chase the food.  I got the turkey sausage, mushrooms and pepper jack cheese omelet with a "side of green" - Flying Star Cafe's house-made green chile sauce.  The omelet came with home fries and a side of toast with some house-made jelly.  The green chile sauce was thick and chunky that was a wonderful complement to the turkey sausage, mushrooms and pepper jack cheese inside the omelet.  It was actually very good - and very filling.  

My wife got the spinach, bacon and Swiss cheese omelet.  She also had them add tomatoes and chopped onions in the omelet.  She got some salsa to pour onto the omelet.  Toast with the house-made jelly and home fries also came with her omelet.  My wife was more than happy with her omelet and while she wasn't able to eat the whole thing, she finished off most of it.  

Flying Star Cafe has won a number of national, regional and local awards over the years and given the popularity of the location we went to that beautiful Saturday morning it's no wonder.  Our omelets were very good - they didn't skimp on the ingredients and there was certainly a lot of home fries on the side.  We still had food on our plates and we noticed a lot of people taking "to-go" boxes with them that they could eat later on.  Since we were traveling, we couldn't do that.  But for a counter-serve place, the support staff was very helpful and friendly.   And the place was colorful, vibrant and bright.  Flying Star Cafe is a great place for breakfast for people of all ages.  

Rance's Chicago Pizza - Costa Mesa, CA

Spending a few days in Southern California last fall, I was sort of hankering for a pizza.  Most of the pizza places I found on line seemed to be Neapolitan, wood-fired, artisan pizzas with vegetarian toppings and blistered crust.  No, I wanted a PIZZA - Italian sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms with a tangy sauce and a thin, crisp crust.  Lo and behold, a pizza place jumped out at me when I saw a place on-line that featured the 3 different styles of Chicago pizza - deep-dish, stuffed and thin-crust/ tavern-style.  And it wasn't far away from my hotel.  I ended up heading over to Rance's Chicago Pizza in Costa Mesa.

In 1991, Rance Ruiz and Aaron Tofani met for the first time at a Little League practice in Long Beach and became fast friends.  As they grew up, Tofani took the pragmatic route in life studying business and finance at Cal State Fullerton.  He continued his post-graduate education in real estate and construction finance and analysis at University of California-Irvine, then got his Master's in real estate development from the University of Southern California.  

While Tofani toiled away at school, Ruiz was trying to figure out what he wanted to do in life.  He visited his sister who was going to college up in Berkeley at California and one evening they visited Zachary's, a Chicago-style pizza joint that was a favorite of people living in the East Bay.  It was at Zachary's that Ruiz had his epiphany in life - he needed to find the best of the best Chicago-style deep dish/stuffed pizza and figure out how to do it on his own.  The only problem - there weren't any true Chicago-style deep dish pizza places in Orange County. 

For the next few years, Ruiz traveled the country to find different styles of pizza.  He got to the point where he would get a pizza and try to dissect the ingredients, even going back to the pizza parlor to ask the owner or head cook exactly what was in the sauce or the dough.  It was basically trail and error for Ruiz at that point trying to come up with the perfect pan-stuffed pizza.

By 2011, Ruiz figured that he had it down and opened up his first pizza joint in Yorba Linda, CA - P.H.A.T., an acronym for "Pretty Hot and Tasty."  The problem was that Ruiz knew how to make pizza, but he didn't know the business side of things.  P.H.A.T. was open for about a year before Ruiz closed the business.

That's when his childhood friend Aaron Tofani came to Ruiz to offer his assistance.  Tofani knew everything that had to come together to get a business of the ground, a good location, the correct procedures, the right name for the business, and having a cash flow to keep the doors open.  With Tofani on board as a partner, Ruiz didn't have to worry about the day-to-day operations of the business allowing him to make his Chicago-style pizzas in the kitchen.  

Pictured right - Aaron Tofani and Rance Ruiz accepting their Golden Foodie award for the best pizza in Orange County in 2016.  Picture courtesy Rance's Chicago Pizza - Costa Mesa Facebook page.  

The business partners settled upon finding a place in Costa Mesa based upon demographic studies of age groups in the area.  They found a small space in the Costa Mesa Square shopping center and in early December of 2012 Rance's Pizza had a soft-opening before opening full bore in January of 2013.  

Rance's Chicago Pizza was an instant hit.  They offered the holy trinity of Chicago-style pizzas - pan, stuffed and thin crust tavern-style pizza.  There was nothing like Rance's pizza in Southern California.  Chicago ex-pats, patrons who had visited pizza places in Chicago, and those who were wanting to see what the hubbub was all about streamed into Rance's small 67-seat restaurant from the first day.  

By 2016, the business partners were looking to expand.  They set their sight on their old neighborhood of Long Beach, the Belmont Shore area.  In February of 2017, the Long Beach location for Rance's opened their doors.  

In 2018, Tofani had a chance to put in a Rance's in the USC Village dining hall at Southern Cal.  A third Rance's opened there and things weren't right from the start.  School administrators had promised that Rance's would be part of the network of USC student credit cards that could be used to pay for food on campus.  However, that turned out not to be true and Rance's (along with one other restaurant) closed their doors and filed suit against USC for fraud and deception.  It was probably a good thing as it allowed Ruiz and Tofani to focus on the two successful locations for Rances.  

Rance's Pizza in Costa Mesa was about a 15 minute drive from my hotel.  It was somewhat difficult to find as it was tucked in the back of one of the buildings between a sushi place and a ramen noodle joint in the complex at Baker St. and Harbor Blvd.  (see map)  The small narrow space had bench seating along the long wall with tables and chairs.  It was well lit and sort of busy with both people dining in and people picking up pizzas to go.  They closed at 8 p.m. and I was there after 8 p.m. when a large group of people including small children came into the place and appeared to be having a party.  (I understand that the Rance's Chicago Pizza in Long Beach has a bit more character than the bland interior of the Costa Mesa location.)  

I took a table along the wall toward the back of the restaurant.  It was a Thursday night and I was sort of surprised to see that they had Amazon Prime's Thursday night football game up on all the flat-screen televisions hung on the wall throughout the restaurant.  Having a friend who owns a sports bar and knowing how expensive it is for small bars and restaurants to show Amazon Prime NFL games games in an establishment, I was sort of surprised to see the game on the TV's.  

My server for the evening was a nice guy by the name of Derek.  He brought over a menu for me to look over and asked me what I would like to drink.  They had a number of craft beers on tap and they rotate the selection on a regular basis.  That evening they an Offshoot Relax hazy IPA on tap from The Bruery, a microbrewery from Placentia, CA.  

Before Derek left to get my beer, he asked if I had ever been to Rance's before.  "Nope!  First time here," I said to him.  Then he started to tell me about the different styles of Chicago pizza.  As he started to describe the different pizzas, I waved him off.  "I live about two-and-a-half hours from Chicago," I told him.  "I'm there all the time and I know the difference between the pizzas."  

"Oh!  Perfect," he exclaimed.  "So, you already know that it takes about 45 minutes for our deep pan pizzas."  I told him that I certainly did.  "That saves me time, then!"  He went off to grab my beer.  

I'm partial to a good thin-crust pizza and most people from Chicago will tell you that the thin-crust pizza cut into tavern-style squares is the REAL Chicago-style pizza and that deep-dish or stuffed pizza is for tourists only.  But I have friends in Chicago who turned me onto Burt's, Lou Malnati's and Pequod's for the deep-dish style.  It's just that I can't usually finish even a small deep-dish pizza on my own and usually only get a deep-dish when I'm hosting people who don't get into Chicago all that often.  

A couple who were seated a couple tables down from me got the deep-dish pizza.  I have to say that it looked great - big chunks of tomatoes in the sauce, large chunks of sausage and loads of stringy mozzarella that oozed off the slices Derek was putting on the plate for the couple - similar to how servers serve a deep-dish pizza in Chicago.  The pizza looked very good and very Chicago-like.  

They had a number of specialty pizzas on the menu.  The "House Special" pizza had sausage, green peppers, onions and mushrooms; the "Best Seller" featured spinach and mushrooms (I thought of my wife who loves spinach and my vegetarian colleague when I saw that pizza); and "Rance's Favorite" - Rance Ruiz's signature pizza with meatballs, diced bacon and jalapeños.  All the specialty pizzas were available in either deep-dish, stuffed or tavern-style.  

Well, if you're a regular reader of Road Tips, you know what I'm always going to order - the sausage, pepperoni and mushroom pizza.  That's my gold standard and a lot of people like that combination if I'm with a group of people in a pizza joint.  When Derek set the small (10") pizza in front of me, it looked promising.  Big chunks of sausage, fresh mushrooms, pepperoni slices with a tinge of burnt edges and loads of mozzarella.  

And from the first bite it was like I was transported back to Chicago.  The sausage had a spicy taste balanced out by the great flavor of fennel mixed in the meat.  The pepperoni was salty and spicy, and the fresh mushrooms had that earthy tang.  The pizza sauce was a perfect mix of sweet and savory.  And the crust was buttery in taste and definitely thin, but the sag factor was minimal even with all the toppings on each slice.  This pizza rivaled some of the better tavern-style pizzas I've had in Chicago over the years. 

For me, Rance's Chicago Pizza was a spot-hitter.  For anyone in Southern California who is craving a Chicago-style pizza - whether it be a deep-dish, stuffed, or tavern-style pizza - Rance's would be the holy grail.  While the decor and atmosphere at the Costa Mesa location is a little sterile, I understand that the Long Beach location has a bit more warmth and pizazz.  Derek's service was very good - he came over to tell me that he would be indisposed for 10 to 15 minutes working on another project for the restaurant and brought me another beer because he saw that they were going down pretty easily.  For a midwesterner looking for a familiar taste and style of pizza, Rance's Chicago Pizza checked all the boxes.    

Chop - Etobicoke, ON

During my first ever visit to Toronto last fall, I wanted to get together with a former colleague who lived in the city.  He was the first one from my former company to contact me when they were looking for a guy in the Midwest in 2002 and after I was hired he was sort of the guy I turned to over the first couple of years go make sure that I was doing things correctly.  He had retired shortly before I was let go in 2021 and because of the pandemic we hadn't seen each other for quite sometime.  I called to tell him that I would be up in Toronto and I wanted to get together for dinner at some point.  He heartily agreed and suggested some places out by my hotel near the Toronto's Lester Pearson International Airport   One of the places he suggested was a steakhouse by the name of Chop in the suburb of Etobicoke.  (Pronounced e-TOE-bi-coe).  Another former colleague of ours was going to be in town for the trade show and we ended up making it a threesome for dinner at Chop.  

When I looked up Chop before I went to Toronto, I found that it was a chain of 17 steakhouses stretching across Canada from British Columbia to Nova Scotia.  Chop started in 2007 with its first location in Calgary.  But even though it's owned by a large corporate conglomerate, one man has been instrumental in Chop's growth since Day 1.  

In the early 90's, Marcel Blais went to work as a busboy at Moxie's Classic Grill - now Moxie's Grill and Bar - in Grand Prairie, AB.  He impressed his supervisors so much that they soon promoted him to work in the kitchen, then as a server.  Before he graduated from high school, he was promoted to the assistant manager of Moxie's Grand Prairie location.  

After graduating high school, Blais went on to college at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta.  After getting his degree in business, Blais got a job working as a sales representative for Labatt in Alberta.  But after two years, he went to work at Shark Club Sports Bar in Grand Prairie, a sister to Moxie's of which both were owned by the same company - Northland Properties Corporation.  

Northland Properties Corporation is a multi-tiered conglomerate owned by the Gaglardi family out of Vancouver, BC whose patriarch Bob Gaglardi founded Northland Properties in 1963 and whose son Tom is the CEO of the company today.  In addition to restaurants such as Moxie's, Shark Club and Chop and the Denny's franchises across Canada, Northland Properties also owns resorts, hotels, construction companies, and professional sports franchises including the Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League.  

Blais did a little bit of everything at the Shark Club including working behind the bar eventually becoming the restaurant manager.  Within 2 years Blais became the regional general manager of the Shark Club restaurants in Western Canada before he named the Director of Operations for the Shark Club restaurants.  It was a fast rise in less than six years after graduating from college.  

Pictured right - Marcel Blais.  Photo courtesy CEO Magazine.  

Behind the scenes, executives at Northland Properties were working on a new concept - a casual dining, yet upscale steak and seafood restaurant.  The directors at Northland Properties knew the guy they wanted to run all operations with the new steakhouse concept which would be a combination of company-owned and franchisee-owned locations.  In 2007, Chop Steakhouse opened their first location in Edmonton with Marcel Blais as the Vice-President of Operations.  In 2014, Blais was named President of the Chop Steakhouse brand and in 2021, he also became a franchisee of two locations in Ontario.   

My former colleague from Montreal and I were staying in the same hotel and my former colleague from Toronto had made reservations for the three of us for 7 p.m.  I had gotten into Toronto earlier than expected and my Toronto friend decided to just come out to the hotel and have a pre-dinner drink before the three of us Uber-ed over to Chop just before 7 p.m.  

It was about a kilometer (just over a half-mile) from the hotel to Chop.  (see map)  Had it been a nicer day, we would have easily walked the distance.  But we took the 2 minute Uber ride to the restaurant.  

To say Chop was nice is an understatement.  The main dining area had two tiers with booths on the upper and lower tiers.  The atmosphere was elegant, but not pretentious.  

The lounge area at Chop was a classy room with an open ceiling with direct lighting over each table with comfortable cushioned chairs for seating.  A horseshoe-shaped bar was the centerpiece of the lounge.  

We checked in with the hostess and she said that our table was ready.  She shepherded us to the step-up upper level of the dining room and dropped off menus for us to look over.  Our server that evening was a pleasant and outgoing young lady by the name of Caroline.  She was fun and genial with a bit of sass for the 3 smart-assed guys she was waiting on.  My friend from Toronto got his normal rum and Coke, while my friend from Montreal and I got a couple of pale ales to start out.  

Later on we ordered a bottle of the Canciller Reserve Malbec.  When we worked together at our old company, we all loved Malbec wines as our former boss turned us on to the Argentinian wine after a trip there a number of years ago.  I reminded my friends of the time we went to a Brazilian steakhouse in New York City a number of years ago and our old boss ordered a bottle of Malbec and one of the guys from our French factory ordered a French wine.  "And the Malbec just stomped on that French wine," I said in recalling that evening.  And the Canciller Reserve Malbec also had that big and meaty taste for a red wine.  

While steaks are the focus at Chop, they do offer seafood dishes such as a pistachio-encrusted cod and a crab linguine.  They also had an oven-roasted chicken entree and baby back ribs.  They even had vegetarian options for people like my current colleague who doesn't eat meat.

The steaks at Chop are all seasoned with a combination of salt and spices and cooked on a high temperature (1800F) grill to create a crunchy outer crust.  All the steaks are CRSB Certified beef which monitors and certifies sustainably grown beef for Canada.  All the regular styles of steaks - rib eye, filet, strip and sirloin steaks - are available on the menu at Chop.  They even had a flat iron steak on the menu - something you don't always see at a steakhouse in the U.S.  

My two friends went with the rib eye that evening.  (They also have a bone-in rib eye and a smoked rib eye on the menu.)  They called it 13 ounce in the menu, but it certainly looked bigger than that.  A side of steamed vegetables came with the steak and my friend from Toronto got fries for chosen side.  Sides of a brown beef gravy and ketchup came with the steak.  

I thought about getting the center-cut New York strip, but I ended up getting the prime rib.  I asked Caroline to make it the most rare piece of prime rib the chef had in the kitchen.  And she certainly came through with flying colors.  While the guys got the gravy on the side with their steaks, they put the gravy directly on half of the prime rib.  I had never had prime rib with gravy on it before and would have preferred it was served on the side.  But it certainly wasn't a deal-breaker.  I also got the steamed veggies and fries for my sides.  I didn't even attempt to touch the vegetables because I was much more interested in the prime rib.  I had also asked Caroline for extra fresh ground horseradish and she didn't disappoint there, either.  In addition to the regular dollop on the plate, she brought out a healthy-sized container of the pungent horseradish that had a great punch to it.  

And everyone was happy with what they got.  My friends steaks were cooked to a perfect medium rare and my rare-plus-cooked prime rib was just excellent.  It was tender, juicy, and full of great beef flavor.  And I certainly didn't mind the gravy they had put on half the prime rib slab.  I hadn't gotten prime rib for quite sometime and this was a major spot-hitter for me.  The fries were also very good with a crunchy outer shell and a light and flaky potato inner core.   

We hung out for a while after dinner catching up on things before we realized that we were the last people in the dining room at Chop.  My friend from Toronto said that he needed to get heading back home, about a 30 minute Uber ride to his house.  My friend from Montreal suggested that we walk back to the hotel, but it was a cold night and I didn't have a heavy coat with me.  I said that I'd spring for the short Uber ride back to the hotel.

Knowing my former colleague from Toronto as I do, I knew that he wouldn't steer us wrong on a restaurant to have dinner at and to catch up on what is going on with everyone's life.  And Chop was a perfect spot for three old friends to do just that.  The prime rib - even with gravy slathered over half of it - was outstanding, and my friends were very complimentary of the rib eye steaks they both had.  Caroline was a great waitress, on top of her game with a bit of friendly smart-assed demeanor.  All in all, Chop was a winner of a steakhouse.  

South of the Border - Hamer, SC

Maybe I should have a category called "Tourist Traps" because I've now visited two of the biggest ones in the U.S.  The first one - the famous Wall Drug in Wall, SD - I visited nearly 17 years ago.  (Click here to see the entry on Wall Drug.  You will also see a very uneven Road Tips in its early days.)  On a recent trip to the Carolinas, I was heading down the famed I-95 corridor to meetings in South Carolina.  As I got closer to the border, I kept seeing billboards touting South of the Border - a tourist stop just over the South Carolina border from North Carolina.  I had heard about South of the Border before and I was going to need some gas at some point.  Just before I got over the South Carolina border, I got off I-95 at the US Highway 301/501 exit, then took a left to go into South Carolina and a stop at South of the Border.  (see map)

Like most tourist traps, South of the Border got its start back after World War II as a rest area/oasis for travelers heading south to Florida.  How it started came from an opportunity when a South Carolina man saw a need to give the people of North Carolina something that they wanted after it was taken away from them.  

Alan Schafer was born in Baltimore in 1914, but soon moved to South Carolina when his father Samuel joined Alan's grandfather running a small general goods store/cafe in the village of Little Rock, just a few miles from the North Carolina border.  When prohibition ended in 1933, Sam Schafer found that he could drive a truck 400 miles to the north back to Baltimore, pick up beer from one of a number of breweries in the city (Baltimore was known as the "Milwaukee of the East" because of the large German population and the breweries that dotted the city just after Prohibition ended), and drive the beer back to northeastern South Carolina to sell in his general store.

Alan Schafer was attending the University of South Carolina studying journalism when he had to drop out to help his father in the family business after Sam had fallen ill.  After learning of his father's beer runs up to Baltimore and back, Alan saw the opportunity to help his father grow his beer distribution business.  Alan convinced his father to sell the general store and cafe to focus on beer distribution.  With Alan Schafer's business acumen, Schafer Distributing was founded and became the Miller High Life distributor and, later on, the Heineken distributor for much of South Carolina.  

Sam Schafer had been sick off and on for a number of years before passing away in 1945, but Alan had been the main cog in the company since before World War II.  However, a movement that was afoot just across the border in North Carolina brought to light an opportunity that Schafer was able to capitalize upon.  

Pictured right - Alan Schafer.  Photo courtesy S.O.B. and the Legend of Alan Schafer documentary.

In 1948, Robeson County, just over the border from Dillon County in South Carolina, became one of the first counties in North Carolina to vote to abolish sales of beer and liquor in what had become a statewide temperance crusade.  Suddenly, those who wished to imbibe in alcoholic beverages had to drive to nearby Dillon, SC to buy beer and booze.  

While visiting a store in Dillon one day, Schafer saw all the North Carolina license plates in the parking lot and discovered that they were coming across the border to get alcohol.  It was then that Schafer saw the opportunity to help out his neighbors from across the border in their quest to get their booze.

Schafer - who by then was a well-to-do businessman and becoming a powerful man in local politics - bought a three acre plot of land from a black woman that abutted up to the North Carolina border just north of Hamer, SC.  He paid the woman $500 for the land - a more than fair price in the day as an acre of land was going for about $115 in Dillon County in the late 40's.  On the site, Schafer built a simple 18'x36' cement block building, painted it hot pink and opened a beer stand.  His continued efforts in local politics - especially within the Democratic Party - made sure that Dillon County stayed wet while other counties in both North and South Carolina were turning dry.  

Schafer's place never really had a formal name - Schafer referred to it as the "beer depot" - and it was actually the local post office who came up with "South of the Border" for him.  Schafer would get mail that was addressed to "Alan Schafer, South of the North Carolina Border, Hamer, SC".  Schafer thought it was a great name for his place and South of the Border was born.  

Of course, Schafer's beer stand was a hit - not only with the locals from just across the border, but with the large number of tourists heading south to Florida. Schafer's beer stand was located just a few feet inside the South Carolina state line along U.S. Highway 301 - the main road from just south of Philadelphia, through Washington D.C., then through Virginia, the Carolinas, eventually ending up in Sarasota, Florida.  U.S. Highway 301 was popular with people traveling from New England, New York City and even Canada down to Florida's beaches.  And the South Carolina/North Carolina border was just about the halfway point for people traveling between New York City and Florida.  

Schafer's success riled politicians just across the border and North Carolina governor W. Kerr Scott pressured then-South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond into pushing legislation through the South Carolina legislature that would outlaw beer joints that didn't sell food.  When the law was passed in 1950, Schafer shrugged his shoulders and put in a food counter with 10 seats and called it the South of the Border Drive-In.  He soon found that he was making more money selling food to travelers than he was to the North Carolina residents coming across the border to get beer.   

There weren't any large towns between Fayetteville, NC and Florence, SC, so Schafer's South of the Border added more seats and became a full fledged restaurant in the 1950's.  There was a cotton field just to the west of the restaurant and one day Schafer noticed people walking into the cotton field and coming out with fistfuls of cotton balls as souvenirs.   This gave Schafer the idea to lease the cotton field from the farmer who owned the land, put a large fence around the property to keep the tourists out and then sold bags of fresh picked cotton to those who wanted some.  And, of course, it was an immediate hit.  Suddenly, Schafer and South of the Border were in the business of selling souvenirs.  

Not long after that, a traveling salesman from New York was traveling home from a trade show in Florida.  Low on money and not having enough cash to get back home, the salesman offered Schafer his samples of toy bears, elephants and lions.  Schafer gave the grateful salesman $100 for the lot and put the stuffed toys around his restaurant.  Within a week, he had sold out of all the toys and garnered a handsome $400 profit. 

In 1954, Schafer built a 20-room motel that was a precursor of what would end up to be a 300-room hotel a number of years later.  It was then that he took his first trip to Mexico to look for curios and trinkets for his gift shop that was part of his ever growing complex.  He met two Mexican men during his trip and hired them to come back to South Carolina to work as bellmen at his hotel.  Schafer couldn't remember their names, so he called one "Pedro" and the other one "Pancho".  The names became interchangeable and he finally just settled on one name - Pedro - that was used.  When more bellboys were hired for the hotel after it was expanded, they were all referred to as "Pedros".  A caricature of a small paunchy Mexican man wearing an oversized sombrero eventually became the mascot for South of the Border.  (Photo courtesy South of the Border.)   

By the late 50's, Schafer had expanded his search for curios, toys, and collectables to Asia, Africa and Europe.  And as his business grew, his need for people to work for him grew, as well.  Schafer was said to be "color blind" when it came to hiring people.  And it caused some consternation with white supremacists - mainly the Ku Klux Klan - who frowned on two things: Schafer's Jewish heritage, and he was hiring black people to work at South of the Border.  

When Alan was a little boy, Schafer's mother died during a flu epidemic and he was basically raised by a black woman who helped the Schafer family out with their business.  In an era where whites and black didn't mingle, Alan Schafer grew up having black friends and going to the local Baptist church.  When Schafer hired black and Mexican workers, he was confronted more than one time by local Klan members who tried to intimidate him.  But Schafer - sometimes armed with a rifle during these confrontations - never backed down and the Klan harassment eventually went away.  

When the Klan organized a boycott of South of the Border, Schafer paid his employees in cash - both white and black employees - in $2 dollar denominations.  When store owners in Dillon, Hamer and surrounding towns saw the influx of $2 dollar bills into their cash registers, they pressured Klansmen to stop the boycott of Schafer's business.  

In the early 1960's, North Carolina had banned the sale of fireworks.  Almost overnight, Schafer put up a fireworks stand at South of the Border.  It quickly became the biggest seller of fireworks in the nation.  It was said that South of the Border's three gas stations - Shell, Standard and Phillips 66 - each pumped more gas than any gas station along the Eastern seaboard.  Schafer built an amusement park with a Civil War theme - Confederateland USA - that was more of a poke at the century old perceptions of the Old South.  Confederateland U.S.A. didn't quite resonate with northern tourists and the amusement area was revamped to a more neutral theme by the early 70's. 

In 1964, it was announced that Interstate 95 would parallel U.S. Highway 301 on its way through the Carolinas.  And that wasn't a happy accident for Alan Schafer.  His political clout pushed the interstate closer to South of the Border than original plans had it.  Some local officials in North Carolina weren't too happy, but Schafer was able to convince planners that if they started the exit ramps just north of the border, North Carolina could develop land on their side of the interstate.  Other than a gas station, a Waffle House and a small hotel, there has been little to no development on the North Carolina side of the border.  

Once the interstate came through, Schaefer knew he needed a sign that people could see for a couple miles up and down Interstate 95.  He built a 104-foot sign in the shape of a Mexican bandit with a large lighted sombrero on his head.  It was said to be the largest neon sign east of the Mississippi River.  

Later on, a second southbound exit ramp was put in on the South Carolina side of the border people who may have second thoughts about stopping at South of the Border after missing the first exit.  The cloverleaf design curves around to the north, crossing back into North Carolina before hooking up with U.S. 301/501 to take people to the South of the Border entrances.  

But it was almost impossible to NOT know that South of the Border was coming up x-amount of miles ahead of you on I-95.  Schafer owned a billboard company that put up South of the Border ads from New York through North Carolina from the north, and from Florida up through South Carolina coming from the south.  At one point, there were nearly 250 South of the Border billboards along I-95. (Billboard photo courtesy Roadside America.) 

And many of them were politically incorrect by today's standards.  Much of the wording was butchered Spanglish such as "When You're Hot, You're Hot!  Cool Eet Weeth Pedro!", "Pedro No Shoots Ze Bool!" and "Too Mooch Tequila!".  When the Mexican Embassy in Washington complained about the billboards, Schafer shot back with a reminder that he spent millions of dollars of trinkets and other goods from Mexico on an annual basis.  The two parties came to an understanding that if the billboards were changed to be less offensive, Pedro could stay on as South of the Border's mascot.    

The billboards were all from the mind of Alan Schafer.  It was said that Schafer was a night owl who would sometimes sleep in his large office - the size of a gymnasium - with desks of drawings and designs in case he woke up with a clever saying in his head in the middle of the night.  Of course Schafer preyed upon kids with billboards that said, "Keep Yelling Kids!  (They'll Stop!)"  But most were innocuous billboards with head-slapping/deep-groaning slogans such as "Chili Today - Hot Tamale", "Bear Up a Little Longer" (with a brown bear or polar bear on the sign), and "You Never Sausage A Place - You're Always a Weiner at Pedro's". 

Going into the 70's, South of the Border had a barber shop, a drug store, a small amusement park, a go-kart track, a petting zoo, and even it's own post office with its own zip code. It was also when Schafer built a 200-foot tower with an elevator that took people up to a circular observation deck - shaped as a sombrero, naturally - to be able to take a look at the 300-acre empire that the irreverent Schafer had dubbed S.O.B.  Soon there were more restaurants - a steak house, a cocktail lounge, a family restaurant, an ice cream parlor and, of course, a Mexican restaurant.  Souvenir shops popped up on both sides of U.S. 301.  There was a Mexico East shop (on the east side of U.S. 301) and a Mexico West shop (on the west side of the road).

As the 70's gave way to the 80's and into the 90's, Schafer encountered two problems - airline deregulation gave way to cheaper flights allowing travelers to leave their cars at the airport rather than driving to Florida; and the public's evolving sensibilities and notions on race put South of the Border in the crosshairs of activists who felt Schafer's empire was espousing racist perceptions.  It was said that these charges hurt Schafer to his core as he felt that he was the last person who would be racist growing up as a Jew in the South, his friendships with blacks growing up, and with him hiring black people, as well as allowing black travelers - who were banned in most public places in the South - to eat in his restaurants, stay in his hotel, and to enjoy all the amusements and shopping South of the Border had to offer.    

At one point in time, South of the Border employed 700 people - by far the largest employer in Dillon County.  And instead of his employees being referred to as employees or workers, they were all called "Pedros" - it didn't matter if they were white, black, brown, whatever tone of their skin.  Schafer once said that he remained politically incorrect at all times because it still wouldn't matter who complained - they still spent money at SOB. 

For as active in local politics that Schafer was, it also got him in hot water.  Long known as an activist within Democratic Party circles in South Carolina - he was instrumental in getting black voters registered in the 1950's, another reason Klansmen didn't like him - Schafer was caught up in a voting fraud scheme in the early 80's when he was in charge of the Dillon County Democrats.  Schafer and 25 others pled guilty and 5 were convicted of selling votes and destroying absentee ballots during a primary election for Dillon County Sheriff.  Schafer was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison and was released after about a year.  His active involvement in politics ended after he got out of jail.  

Even into his late 70's, Schafer knew how to push the buttons of the locals and so-called detractors of South of the Border.  He put in a soft-porn shop and called it "The Dirty Old Man Store".  He put in a store that sold African artifacts, curios and novelties angering some who said many of the items sold were not authentic and depicted the days of European colonization in Africa.  And because of a legal loophole in South Carolina's gaming laws, Schafer built a casino on his land and placed more than 400 video games in the building.  

The casino got Schafer in hot water with South Carolina officials who - after a protracted fight with Schafer and other gambling advocates - were able to get a referendum vote passed to close the gambling loophole.  Schafer still fought the referendum, but was his motions were struck down by the South Carolina Supreme Court who ordered that Schafer immediately close his casino.  However, Schafer kept the casino open for a time before officials charged the South of the Border corporation with illegal gambling and fined the company millions of dollars.  Schafter was forced to close the casino throwing 200 people out of a job.

Through all of this, however, Schafer was a philanthropist.  Through the Schafer Foundation, the Schafer family has given millions to local organizations, churches and associations - some of whom vocally deplored Schafer's business practices over the years.  Since it incorporated in 1961, the Schafer Foundation has helped finance hospitals, schools, fire and police departments, the arts, food banks and has donated to parks and recreational facilities, as well as children's organizations in and around Dillon County.   

And Schafer never forgot his roots and one of his last opportunities in life was to keep his favorite soft drink brand from going out of business.  Blenheim Ginger Ale was a South Carolina-based soft drink company that Schafer enjoyed in his youth.  When the company came upon hard times in the early 1990's, Schafer was determined to keep the company afloat.  He bought Blenheim in 1995 and repurposed one of the buildings near his office on the grounds at South of the Border to a bottling facility.  Blenheim Ginger Ale has now been in existence for over 120 years and the Schafer family continues to run the business to this day.

That was probably the last big thing Alan Schafer did in his illustrious and colorful career as a businessman.   With declining health and his son Richard taking over more of the day to day operations he had sold Schafer Distribution a few years prior, Alan Schafer began to wind down.  After battling leukemia for a number of years, Alan Schafer passed away in July of 2001 at the age of 87.  

Robert Schafer and his son Ryan kept a number of the attractions at South of the Border, but revamped or added a few things over the next few years.  Robert Schafer added a car lot and a car repair shop to South of the Border, they put in an RV park for campers to use as they traveled down I-95, a full truck stop with diesel pumps only, and they consolidated their gas stations into two stations - one on each side of U.S. 301.  Ryan Schafer - who runs the operation today - was an avid motocross rider and he put in a training facility with two competitive race courses and five training courses on the grounds of South of the Border.  Keeping the sense of humor that his grandfather possessed, Ryan Schafer called the facility SOBMX - South of the Border Motocross.   

The Schafers have toned down South of the Border over the past 20-plus years.  There's still the tower, the amusement park and a reptile exhibit that is touted as the largest in the United States.  And there's a revamped lounge, but the steakhouse, Mexican restaurant, and family restaurant are all still there.  The gift shops - including the Myrtle Beach Shop which caters to people heading to the beach (pictured at right) - are still in operation.  There's a motocross store that sells motorcycles and motocross accessories near SOBMX.  

I pulled into South of the Border just before noon.  Well, actually I drove by slowly on U.S. Highway 301/501 looking at everything and just trying to fathom what I was seeing.  I drove down the road a ways before coming to one of South of the Border's billboards that basically said, "Whoa, dude!  Turn around!  You missed it!"  

I really didn't have a lot of time to dig deep into South of the Border as I had an appointment in Orangeburg, SC scheduled for 2 p.m. and I was still an hour and 45 minutes from there.  I made my way back up the road to the Sunoco gas station on the east side of Highway 301/501 with a palmetto tree - the state tree of South Carolina - right between the road and the gas station.  

When I pulled into the gas pumps, I saw just how close the state line with North Carolina was.  This is a picture of the black-topped county road off of U.S. 301/501 where the texture of the pavement changes at the North Carolina border.  It was just a couple hundred feet from where I was gassing up my car. 

I still had about 3/8's of a tank when I stopped at SOB to get gas, and it turned out that I probably should have waited.  As I drove further south into South Carolina, I found gas station billboards touting their prices and they were all at least 20 cents a gallon cheaper.  I just shook my head thinking that South of the Border took more money than I expected to spend there.  But, then again, they've been doing that to tourists and travelers for nearly 75 years.  

And after I filled up my tank, I didn't get a receipt.  An electronic note on the self-serve pump said that I needed to go into the building to get a receipt.  There was a small nondescript outbuilding near the road, then there was a building that was one of the souvenir shops.  I drove over to the souvenir shop and went inside to get my gas receipt.  And it was packed with, well, tourist crap.  I didn't want to look around, so I just went to the counter and asked the somewhat portly lady with a thick Southern accent for my receipt.  "Oh, hon," she said with that syrupy Southern drawl. "You get the gas receipts out there," pointing to the small nondescript building by the roadway.  (I like how Southern people can take a one syllable word and turn it into two syllables - "Ge-yet" "Ga-yas" "They-yer".)

As you can tell, I'm not into tourist attractions, but I would have liked to have spent some more time just looking around at what South of the Border had to offer.  From the outside, it appeared to be schlocky, cheap and somewhat trashy.  Places like South of the Border have fallen by the wayside in recent years with the rise of mega-stops like Buc-ee's which cater to both truckers and regular travelers without the sensory overload that one can get from a place like South of the Border.  And with a less offensive mascot (for some).  I'm sure I'll be passing by South of the Border sometime later this year on another trip down to the Carolinas, but I'm not certain I'll stop in.  I'll probably hurt my neck shaking my head looking at all the stuff they have for sale in their gift shops.

The Original Tommy's World Famous Hamburgers - Fountain Valley, CA

I was flying out to Southern California last year and I had a short layover (with a long walk between gates) at Denver International Airport.  As I was flying between the Quad Cities and Denver a buddy of mine from the Denver area had left me a voice mail because a company who had been interested in hiring me contacted him after I told them to give my friend a call as I was happy with my current position. (Where were these calls when I was looking for work a couple years ago?)   He just wanted to know if this was a legitimate deal and I apologized and said that I probably should have let him know they were going to call him.  He asked me where I was and I told him that, quite actually, I was out at DIA heading to Orange County.  "Oh, man," he said in almost a jealous tone.  "You've got to go to Tommy's when you're out there."  I wasn't familiar with Tommy's and he said, "Oh, man.  Their chili cheese dogs, their chili cheeseburger, they're the best, man."  It turned out that after calling on a potential account in Orange County I passed a Tommy's.  I ended up going around the block and headed back to the Original Tommy's World Famous Hamburgers in Fountain Valley, CA.  (see map) 

Tom Koufax was the son of Greek immigrants who ended up in Southern California before the outbreak of World War II.  Koufax dabbled in a number of businesses before he saw a number of hot dog places were popping up around Southern California after the war.  Hoping the cash in the post-war prosperity, he opened Tommy's Hamburgers at the corner of W. Beverly and N. Rampart Blvds. just west of downtown Los Angeles.  Business was slow at first for the little walk-up stand relying mainly on "word-of-mouth" advertising.  By the mid-50's, Tommy's had garnered enough of a buzz that long lines began to form before they would open for their chili dogs, chili cheese fries and chili-topped burgers.  

Pictured right - the "original" Original Tommy's Hamburgers stand in Los Angeles.   Photo courtesy Historic Places L.A. 

By the 60's, Tommy's had outgrown its original location and Tom Koufax bought the entire northeast corner of Beverly and Rampart to put in a food storage facility as well as a second serving window.  But it became evident to Koufax that he needed to expand his business as Los Angeles was quickly becoming a megapolis with thousands of people moving into the San Fernando Valley on an annual basis.

In 1971 while celebrating 25 years in business, Tom Koufax opened his second location in the North Hills neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.  A year later, a third Tommy's Hamburgers opened in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of north Los Angeles between Pasadena and Glendale.  Expansion continued the next year as the fourth Tommy's opened in Burbank, and in 1974, the fifth Tommy's opened in Tujunga, CA on the far northeast side of the San Fernando Valley.  Today, there are 32 Tommy's locations with 29 spread across Southern California and 3 more in Las Vegas.  

Pictured left - Tom Koufax, Sr. (left) and an employee at the original Tommy's location. Photo courtesy Original Tommy's web site. 

Tommy's success spawned a number of imitators and it became evident that the company needed to trademark and copyright their name and product.  In the 80's, Tommy's Hamburgers became known as the Original Tommy's Hamburgers with the tag "World Famous" as they were getting press and visitors from publications around the world as being the quintessential Southern California fast food restaurant.  Tour groups from Asia and Europe would go to an Original Tommy's World Famous Hamburgers just to experience the food and atmosphere.

In the 1960's, Tom Koufax, Jr. joined his father at the original location working the grills and learning the business.  Tom Koufax, Jr. eventually walked away from the business and had no affiliation with Tommy's Hamburgers later on.  Upon Tom Koufax, Sr.'s death in 1992, the business was split among family members with Tom Koufax, Jr. retaining 10% of the restaurant.  Dawna Bernal, the daughter of Tom Jr's sister Dianne, was installed as C.E.O. of the Original Tommy's.  Tom Koufax's son-in-law is the chief financial officer and Koufax family members are on the board of directors for the Original Tommy's Hamburgers.  

However, Tom Koufax, Jr. decided to market his own chili that was a similar - yet different - chili recipe as the Original Tommy's chili.  He used a logo similar to the Original Tommy's for his chili - Tommy Jr.'s Original Chili - and started selling the product on-line in 2008.  He was sent a "cease-and-desist" letter at the end of 2008, and when he continued to sell his chili on-line he was hit with a trademark infringement lawsuit in 2009.  Tom, Jr. eventually moved his operation to Las Vegas where he, his wife and a business partner continued to sell his chili on-line and fought the lawsuit - all while Tom, Jr. was undergoing cancer treatment.  The suit was soon settled after Tom Koufax, Jr. agreed to stop using the name Tommy Jr.'s Original Chili.

Over the years, more Tommy's knock-offs have appeared across Southern California.  The Koufax family began legal proceedings against many of those Tommy's wanna-be's that had similar concepts and similar names to Tommy's - Tomy's Hamburgers, Tommy's No. 5 Chiliburgers, Tommy's Famous Drive-thru, Tomboy's Famous Chili Hamburgers and Tom's Original Super Burger.  By 2019, there were nearly 70 different Tommy's knock-offs around Southern California - 3 times the number of Original Tommy's World Famous Hamburgers locations.  But the Koufax family was through with trying to litigate against the imposters taking the stance that the most sincere form of flattery is imitation.  They've focused on strengthening the Original Tommy's image, logo and message to differentiate themselves from the others who have popped up on the coattails of the Original Tommy's success.  

It turns out that the Fountain Valley location was the sixth Original Tommy's restaurant to open.  This location opened in 1980 and was a counter-service only with a drive-thru lane.  However, they've since added seating in form of 9 booths in a small dining area.  Old photos of Tommy's original restaurant hung on the walls of the dining area.  

It was around 1:30 when I got into the Original Tommy's and I parked in the lot outside the building just off Magnolia Street just north of the corner it shares with Warner Ave.  I went inside and went to the counter.  Since no one else was in line, I was able to take my time looking at the menu on a wall board behind the counter.  But compared to a number of other fast food/fast casual places, Tommy's didn't have much to offer other than chili cheese burgers, chili cheese dogs, chili cheese tamales, chili cheese fries and a breakfast burrito.   

I figured I'd get a chili dog because I love good chili dogs.  But I was sort of up in the air as to what else I was going to get.  I'm sure that it would be way too much food, but I figured that I could get a couple things and not eat everything in front of me.  

I normally don't like chili cheese burgers and I almost got the chili cheese tamale along with a chili cheese dog.  But against my better judgment I went with the chili cheese burger - just one patty.  (They also have double and triple chili cheese burgers at the Original Tommy's.)  Besides, Tommy's chili cheese burgers are "world famous".  I had to at least give one a try while I was there. 

The chili cheese dog was topped with onions, dill pickles, and a sliced tomato.  I had to get back up and grab multiple napkins and a plastic fork and knife to dig into the chili cheese dog as it was a complete mess.  The chili cheese burger has similar toppings on it.  Why it did, I don't quite know as dill pickles and chili aren't in my book of combinations.  

The chili was the overriding feature of both the chili cheese dog and the chili cheese burger.  In fact, I couldn't taste any of the hot dog or the burger patty when I bit into each.  The chili was, well, interesting.  It was a Greek-style chili - similar to Cincinnati-style chili - but more thick and somewhat pasty in consistency.   It was definitely an acquired taste and I'm not certain I really liked it.  I ate all of the chili cheese dog and maybe about half of the burger.  

And, of course, the chili laid in my stomach like a gut bomb.  I was planning on going out that evening for some Italian food at a restaurant not far from my hotel, but it turned out that I just stayed in that night and didn't have dinner.  Tommy's chili was just too much for me.  

I talked to my buddy who turned me on to Tommy's about a month after I had been there.  I told him, "Man, I don't know about Tommy's.  That was a gut bomb, big time."  

He was sort of crestfallen to hear my critique of the place.  "Oh, man," he said dejectedly over the phone.  "I figured a guy like you would like Tommy's.  Man, I have to go to Tommy's every time I go to Southern California."  

Well, all I can say is that I gave it a shot.  And I didn't care for it.  But there are thousands of people in Southern California who love Tommy's chili cheese dogs and chili cheese burgers and the Original Tommy's longevity and growth attest to that.  The chili laid heavy in my stomach, I didn't care for the consistency of the chili, and I found the taste to be somewhat dull.  I found Tommy's.  I tried Tommy's.  And the Original Tommy's is definitely an acquired taste.