2012-366 Day 56 – Food

Everyone has their favorite restaurants, the places that they go to when they want a certain type of food or a specific dish. I’m sure over the course of the year I’ll be writing about all my favorite places, maybe I’ll even compile them into a list of some sort. But how do you find these places? Did someone tell you about them? Did you stumble across them by sheer fortune? There are actually a few different ways Jess and I have found the places we love to go.

One way is a new “thing” we’ve developed in the last year or so, and that’s using Yelp to find restaurants whenever we are in an area we are unfamiliar with or we just want to try something new. It has actually worked out rather amazingly, as I don’t recall being disappointed with a single place we’ve visited, and we’ve actually found some all-time favorites (ask Jess about the chocolate lava cake in Big Bear sometime). As a matter of fact we found a place quite literally around the corner from us (San Carlo Italian Deli) which we love by looking for a place with good reviews in the area on Yelp when we moved in.

Of course there’s the old fashioned way too, as in the past couple weeks we tried three new places around Ventura Boulevard, one of which we passed by and decided to try (after checking it out on Yelp first, of course) and two other places recommended by two different friends. We passed The Slaw Dogs on the way to an appointment and decided to head back there for dinner after the reviews looked promising. I already mentioned Nicola’s on our anniversary, and then finally we tried The Stand down on Canoga recommended to us by Brian. All of them were excellent meals (we’ve already been back to The Slaw Dogs and The Stand another time), and it’s nice having so many different ways to track down something different and delicious. I’d actually put The Stand up there as one of the best burgers I’ve had in the Valley.

Of course our favorite burger place of all time came to us courtesy of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives (video) when we saw the piece on Hodad’s in San Diego and decided we had to go down there and try it. We’ve actually tried a couple other places that have been featured on the show when we were in there neighborhood, but Hodad’s is the only grand slam home run to come from it.

Today’s outing took our small group to Porto’s Bakery in Burbank, a place that serves Cuban inspired food along with delicious baked treats, which delivered as usual. We were exposed to them via a combination of friends and people bringing in their baked goods in to Jess’ work, although we don’t make it down there too often to avoid gaining 20 pounds from their cheese rolls (sooooo good).

The thing about food is we have to eat everyday, so it’s good to find places you like and a variety of them as well. I’ll continue looking, but let me tell you that the one constant I’ve found is the best places have the worst parking. Just a little heads up there.

Weight: 233.4 Max: 240 Min: 233.4 Body Fat %: 24.7
Yearly Mileage: 35.4 miles
Current Belt: Purple – Next Belt: Orange – Next Test Date: 3/3/12
Fitocracy Level: 14 (19792 points, 192/3250 to next level) – ID: disciplev1
Soccer – Next Game: 2/26, 7:30 pm