Eating South Eastern Sicily

I've fallen in love with Sicily. Well, the tiny corner of it where I spent a week in May. Sicily is a big island and you'd be crazy to spread yourself too thin covering its vast, diverse geography- from Palermo in the North West to Etna and Catania in the East and down to the baroque hillside towns and ancient Greek cities of the South East.

Sicily is also quietly becoming a destination for food and wine lovers looking for an unspoiled corner of the Mediterranean. My Instagram feed has recently been a steady stream of snaps of Sicily's white washed towns, empty beaches and stunning plates of food. There is no greater advocate for the island than my favourite food writer Marina O'Loughlin, whose gushing fangirling about the food and drink of Sicily had me set on visiting.

Marina has written extensively about her tips for eating and drinking on the island, and was generous on Twitter in dishing out a few more. Each one was 100% on the mark, and I found quite a few other places that were well worth a visit. Almost anywhere you go will be great because there is so much pride in local food and wine, because the produce is so so fresh - straight out the sea or picked at a nearby farm. You will weep.

All I can say is get over there, and get a car so you can get to the most stunning beaches, nature reserves, more off the beaten track towns like Scicli. Off season is amazing - we went in mid May and couldn't believe how quiet it was, although the weather was mixed. I reckon June and September are ideal times to visit.


Ragusa
Ragusa is perched on two dramatic hills, with jaw dropping views between Old and New Ragusa and across the surrounding valleys. Ragusa Ibla (old) is the more beautiful and where most of the action happens.

Il Barocco
We rocked up late after a mad dash to the airport (caught our flight with 5 minutes to spare), a long flight, a tired night time drive down unfamiliar roads. Our Airbnb hosts showed us to Il Barocco and we couldn't have been happier with our first meal. The antipasti platter was sublime and generous, with salami, cheese, ... I had tagliatelle with sun dried tomatoes and pistachio, classic Sicilian ingredients combined simply for a rich, earthy, tangy set of tastes. Mmm. We were knackered so ordered wine by the glass. House is €2.50 and they have a more interesting white and red at €4. We went for the latter, and though I can't recall the wine, it was very very good.

La Bettola
A Marina rec, La Bettola is an old school little trattoria in Ragusa Ibla, all chequered table cloths, menus of the day and locals drinking wine by the carafe for a late dinner. We make our way through the daily specials - a gorgeous fennel, orange and sun dried tomato salad, spaghetti with anchovy-herb-breadcrumbs - historically a poor man's parmesan, but very delicious. The prices are low cheap, so make sure you reserve - it's booked up pretty much every night.

Ortigia (Syracuse)
Ortigia is the island part of Syracuse. the third biggest city in Sicily and once the third most important city in Ancient Greece.  It's a bustling metropolis compared to everywhere else we visited in SE Sicily. Be warned though: parking is a nightmare. Just look up the Talete paid carpark at the mainland end of the island and go there - you'll never find a free parking space on the island.

Fratelli Burgio
Everyone recommended this place to us. It's just at the end of the food market (watch massive tuna get chopped up with massive knives!) and is a salumeria, wine shop, and restaurant. We make three visits here during our stay - we get the most delicious sandwiches to take away. All DOC cheese, ham, sundried tomatoes, herbs, oil. Utterly dreamy. We come again for a lunch and enjoy buratta with the most excellent grilled courgette antipasti and more cheese, ham and sandwiches. And finally we clear them out of wine. They delight in our enthusiasm for the wine of Sicily, ask our price range and come up with a diverse selection of the most interesting wines we can get. I'm using all my restraint to make the haul last.

Apollonion Osteria da Carlo
This is another Marina rec, and one of our most memorable meals of the trip. A seven course fish menu for €35. It starts raw, with giant oysters, red prawns and anchovies, then mussels with almonds, mint and tomatoes, seared tuna with caponata, fried squid and fish cakes with a dollop of agrodolce puree, then a prawn spaghetti, followed by some grilled white fish. It was epic, and perfectly finished with a zingy lemon granita. Apollonion's wine list is excellent and incredible value. We like our €13 grillo so much we buy a bottle to take back to London.



Sicily fish and chips
Tucked away in a backstreet is this cute little chippie. Despite the anglicised name, this is a great spot to go for some fried fish and a glass of prosecco or a crisp white wine in the sun. We tuck into a big box of assorted fish (lots of squid, anchovies, small fish and a couple of prawns and anemone) and a big portion of chips. It's all super simple, but hits the spot.

Moon
We visit a vegetarian restaurant on the recommendation of a non-vegetarian friend. And now we non-vegetarians recommend it to you. It's a cute hipstery restaurant on Via Roma, not far from the main square. They have a nice selection of natural and organic wines and the mwnu is great. There are lots of Sicilian vegetarian dishes as well as some more international flavours. Of course there's the fried Sicilian fried caciocavallo cheese, some of the best caponata we have during our stay, and I have a blue cheese, pear, honey and walnut risotto.

Movimento Centrale
Another sign of hipsterism in Ortigia, this cycling cafe/natural wine bar is just over the square from our Airbnb. We only make it for breakfast (I fail to convince my other half of the merits of second lunches and aperativo every day) and love the home made organic ricotta with home made organic brown bread toast (a special ancient recipe) with local organic honey. The coffee is a cut above too. The menu has some deliciously well sourced panini filling on the menu, and the wine list is an exciting selection of local natural and biodynamic wines.



Scicli
Pronounced Sheegly, Scicli is a true gem of a town, set in a series of dramatic valleys and amidst a sleepy rural landscape off the main trail around the Province of Ragusa. We fall in love instantly, as we tuck into the amazing homemade snacks that our Airbnb host's mum has made for us, sitting on our roof terrace watching the sun go down and cast the most amazing golden light on the town. It's well positioned for towns on the coast like Sampieri and Marina di Ragusa, both of which were totally dead in early May, but are bursting at the seems through July - August.

Satra
A Marina O' Loughlin recommendation, Satra is a stylish restaurant just tucked off one of the main pedestrian streets in Scicli. It's in a big stone vaulted room, with luxuriously large circular wooden tables, linen napkins and fancy glassware. The menu is traditional and it's all about the techniques and best seasonal ingredients. I have a bean and wild fennel soup, which is unbelievably velvety, earthy, refreshing. We also have an almond cream and dried tuna pasta, octopus with a cheesy potato croquette, palamita fish with a rosti potato and wine reduction, and the best ricotta cannoli with have all holiday. It's pricier than most, but they also throw in amuse bouche and a glass of prosecco. The wine list is very reasonable and service is refined.

Trattoria da Carmelo
So, not technically Scicli, but you might find yourself down at the beach in Marina di Ragusa if you're staying in Scicli. This is our final meal and our final Marina rec of the trip, and definitely the best. Carmelo is a refined shack of a building, literally on the beach. Reserve a table by the water, ask for them to open the windows, and you can eat your meal with an uninterrupted view of the sky and sea. The food is exceptional - the most generous antipasti platter we have in our stay: scallops with breadcrumb and tomato, frittata with thin strips of baby courgette, caponata, octopus ragu filled arancini, and sardine fillets with agrodolce onions, raisins and pine nuts. It's a miracle we can even look at our main courses, which are the classic sea anemone spaghetti, and pistachio crusted tuna steak. Everything is exceptional, but nothing more so than the view.

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Come what may with Brexit and a plunging Pound, I will find a way to keep exploring Sicily, a little corner at a time. 

Affordable Marseille and Cassis restaurant tips

To bouillabaise or to not bouillabaise, that is the question. Or was certainly my question when planning a trip to Marseille and Cassis. Bouillabaise is a 'must do' according to many blogs and guidebooks - the signature dish of the area. But boy is it pricey - a bouillabaise ceremony starts at about 45Eur, high in price because of the rare fish that need to go in, only found in this part of the Mediterranean.

After consulting our Marseille guru, British-born but Marseille-based restaurant and architecture critic Jonathan Meades (well, we googled his views on it), we decided to skip the tourist traps and see what good things were on offer. 

Le Souk

High on our list was North African food, and we followed a Jonathan Meades tip to Le Souk on the Old Port. In any other city you'd expect there to be little to recommend in such a prominent spot, but Marseille is wonderfully low key like that - no sign of droves of tourists in our late June trip. The menu has all sorts of mezze and grills, but this place is all about the tagines and cous cous. We ordered a delicious mixed mezze platter, but it did too good a job at filling us up before our generous mains.

I went for a sweet'n'sour tagine (pure savoury is also an option): duck with figs, prunes, honey and onion. IT came with two confit duck legs, and the thickest, sweetest, richest sauce you can imagine. The figs and prunes gave it a real intensity, and only pungent meat like duck and lamb feature on the sweet/sour menu because anything else would get lost amongs the flavours. Toasted almonds cut a crunchy, earthy taste through it, contrasting nicely with sprinklings of icing sugar. The cous cous itself was fluffy with a crunch and a lovely plain vessel for this intense dish.

I also tried a classic cous cous stew - which was served in all its component parts - chicken, cous cous, a light and watery broth, with stewed vegetables, soaked sweet raisins and chick peas. It was simpler and lighter and every item sung for itself. Mains cost from 12€ to 18€.

Le Souk Marseille, 98 Quai du Port, 13002 Marseille, +33 4 91 91 29 29.

Café des Epices

'Neo bistro' is your search term if you're looking for something a bit more modish and cheffy, and when the Euro's as affordable as it is in Summer 2015 you can get some pretty good value in Marseille. I agonised over which neo bistro to try on our trip, but settled for Cafe des Epices, just a block back from the Old Port. The tables are spread over a large square, surrounded by massive potted olive trees. It felt a little less in-the-know than other spots, with a few guidebooks on the tables and a few bigger parties. Our table was at 8pm, and the place was deserted when we arrived, but every table was full by 9, which is worth noting for reservations.

The forumle is set at 45€, includes some delicious bread and olive oil, and a selection fo 4-5 dishes at each course. I had major food envy of my partner's gazpacho-like dish - the most perfect, zingy, cool tomato base laced with top drawer olive oil, with confit tomatoes, stunningly good smoked mozzarella, olives and a parmesan crisp.

My sea bass tartare was fresh and cut with an Asian inspired sesame dressing. It was good, but I wish I'd had the gazpacho.

Not to worry - I won on the mains, with an exceptional lamb and aubergine dish. There was so much lamb, it was basted with a moreish, anchovy, herby sauce. It came with quinoa, which was lifted a couple of levels above with rich sun dried tomatoes, caperberries.

Desserts were nice but not especially memorably, but the main drag was the struggle to get service - we were forgotten about after an intense service start. We were compensated with a large glass of the rose we were drinking, but by the end of the meal we'd probably had enough and would rather have had a little bit docked off the bill. Alas, language barriers!

Café des Epices, 4 Rue du Lacydon, 13002 Marseille, France, +33 4 91 91 22 69.

La Boite à Sardine

Our favourite find was the lunch-only, reservations-necessary fish and seafood restaurant on a busy junction not too far from the station. La Boite à Sardine is one of those places you just want to rave from the rooftops about - definitely locals only (telephone only reservations and limited openings help), but the whole thing is just so bloody convivial and conducive to a happy meal. 

The chefs rotate daily on days off from other restaurants, the menu changes up daily with a few consistent numbers - such as deep fried sea anemone and platters of sparklingly fresh prawns with their *unbelievable* aioli, and are introduced to you personally by the knowledgeable waiting staff.

Wine is served in the Disney glasses that mustard comes in and are staples in every French family home, the mark ups are reasonable, and there are some fine wines available at 500ml for your moderately sensible weekday lunch.

As well as the sea anemone and prawns, I devoured a bowl of sweet little clams in a herbalicious sauce, made all the more delicious by the generous scatterings of aniseedy chervil. It came with chick pea chips - shaped like good chunky chip shop chips, but paying a nutty, earthy compliment to the clams. 

To end we shared clafoutis, which was served from a tray, family style, and got hoovered up too quickly to get a photo.

La Boite à Sardine, 2 Boulevard de la Libération, 13001 Marseille, +33 4 91 50 95 95.

Le Bonaparte, Cassis
Cassis is the fanciest seaside village in this part of the South of France. We stayed for three nights, as a base for exploring the wild Calanques national park for stunning beaches and walks. Cassis itself is very pretty and relatively small, but it's jam packed with restaurants bars and shops. It's a proper place to see and be seen, with lots of promenading down the front, and every table in every seafront bar is occupied.

Prices are relatively high in the restaurants and quality is variable. Some are targeted at once-and-never-again tourists, others at monied locals. But find your way down some of the back streets and there are some classic little neighbourhood restaurants that have a loyal following of return customers. Le Bonaparte is one such place, tucked down a side street, with tables spilling out into the little alley. All the tables outside were fully booked on our evening there, so we took a table inside.

There are menus at different prices depending on how fancy you want your mains. The 26€ menu's options worked fine for us, so we both started with fish soup - the real deal, with bread, a garlicky saffron rouille and grated emmental. It was rustic and simple, a big pan of the stuff, which was really just an excuse to have lots of rouille and cheese topped baguette rounds and dip them in the soup.



The 26€ menu afforded the most perfectly cooked and prepared sea bass - crisply grilled, then filleted by the waiter and presented off the bone, lightly seasoned and drizzled with olive oil. It was sheer, delicate perfection. And it came with ratatouille (the best ever) and roasted new potatoes; simple, homely, perfectly cooked.



Le Bonaparte had an excellent wine list, with a good selection of wines from the immediate Cassis area (great for whites, rose and red!), and the staff were very good at recommending one to our taste. Drop by earlier in the day if you plan to go - reservations recommended for a good table.

Le Bonaparte, 14 rue Gén Bonaparte, 13260 Cassis. +33 4 42 01 80 84.

Top eats in Kreuzberg and Neukoelln, Berlin

When I lived in Berlin from 2005 to 2006, it was not the place for exciting, high quality food. Eating out was cheap and cheerful - there were heaps of generic "national cuisine" restaurants which did watered down versions of curry or noodles, and it kept us happy as Erasmus students. You could probably say similar of London back then. The fetishisation of food has benefited both cities, and it's always a pleasure to go back to Berlin and see how the food scene is developing.

Like London, the last decade has seen the city's gravity shift. In Berlin it's all slunk south-east from Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg to Kreuzberg and Neukölln, which have that potent mix that leads to hipster-led regeneration: a history of protest and radicalism and melting-pot feel from being the home to decades of waves of migration.

I was lucky enough to stay with my amazing multi-talented friend Elizabeth Rushe, who has worked for many years in food, design, travel, start ups and music in Berlin, and is an excellent source of knowledge for what's new, old and interesting in the city. Follow her on twitter, instagram or just admire her photos.

For older tips (google them to see if they're still open), check out my blogs on Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg in 2012, and a five year old general round up.

Stella
Stella is New Yorker Suzy Fracassa's cafe and take-out on Neukölln's Wesestrasse, which is like a much more sleepy, low key version of Kingsland Road, or a suped up version of Lower Clapton Road. Suzy's been doing gorgeous catering of fusion-y salads, meals and sweet delights for many years, earning a big enough cult following to open up this permanent space. There's a daily selection of cold dishes a single hot dish, decent coffee, cakes and cold drinks.

Suzy's Italian background, time in New York and admiration of Ottolenghi's dab hand at Asian and middle Eastern fusion influence the cooking. There's a pretty price guide setting out the cost of all the combinations of portions of cold and hot dishes and different sizes.

I go for three cold salads, but have a nibble on a friend's meatballs in tomato sauce - sublime. I try the sesame noodles - a homage to a late-night New York Asian fast food staple, made with Italian spaghetti, expertly seasoned with a sesame dressing, spring onions and toasted sesame black and white sesame seeds. There's a broccoli slaw, which has a lightly creamy dressing and lots of toasted bits, a wild rice salad with sweet potato and asparagus (Germany goes WILD for Spargelsaisson!). I also try a friend's wild garlic pesto potato salad. Everything is delicious, with carefully balanced flavours that sing in your mouth for ages afterwards.





We finish sharing some rich and gooey chocolate brownies and marshmallow Rice Krispie cakes. There are tables on the pavement outside, and a lovely back room with a big table, views of an overgrown garden, and a beautiful mural of verdant plants along one wall.


(photo by Elizabeth Rushe)

Suzy knows how to feed the soul and put a smile on her customers. Watch this space to see how Stella develops.

Street food nights at Markthalle Neun, Kreuzberg
Markthalle Neun is a stunning old covered market building in an understated Kiez in Kreuzberg. Through the week it's a mixture of farmers selling vegetables and other produce with a good few specialist mini delicatessens selling booze, olive oils, salamis, cheese, smoked fish and much more. But every Thursday night lots of street food stalls and bars open up inside, and people flock from all over Berlin to savour the food, drink and atmosphere.

There is so much to choose from, but we try Korean hot dogs (available vegan too), loaded with kimchi, sriracha, cheese and crispy onions.



I love the bar siu steamed buns, made by a Chinese lad and his mum. The pork mince filling is nicely pungent, full of flavour. The rice dough is light and pillowy and literally steaming from the steaming.



Bao Kitchen's open steamed bun (Momofuku-style, so now) with pork is more pulled than those perfectly cooked, glazed pork belly slabs done by the pros, but it stills tastes good.



And I'm blown away by the smoked veal ribs from Big Stuff Smoked stall - one of the most popular, demonstrated by all the beef brisket and short rib gone by 7pm when I develop enough appetite to order. You can choose from a number of specially made sauces - I get their barbecue cherry cola sauce, which is every bit as sweet, sour, smoky and delicious as it sounds.



By 8pm it is heaving. So many people. There are a decent number of tables, so it's all quite grown up, and the queues are rarely too long. It's nice that the demographic is much more mixed than it would be in London - lots of families, older groups, not just brash 20/30 somethings. Some of the stalls change each week, and there's a huge selection, so lots of reasons to keep going back. Most of the prices are sub 7€, comparing favourably with the likes of London's Street Feast.

Thai Park in Preusselpark
Sundays are a big deal in Berlin. All the shops are closed, and you've probably had a late boozy night, so it's all about being outside (when the weather's good) and nourishing yourself with good food and a good mosey. Flea Markets are a big part of the Sunday experience, with Mauer Park in Prenzlauer Berg being the biggest and most famous. Boxhagener Platz in Friedrichshain is also nice, and Ankona Platz in Prenzlauer Berg has much more high quality bric a brac than a lot of the junk at Mauer Park.

Quietly gaining in popularity is the Thai Market in Preussel Park, deep in West Berlin. Berlin is home to a big Thai population, but many of the restaurants serve a duller version of the cuisine. Not so here, where you'll find about 50 stalls run by Thai (mostly) women, who're all sat on mats on the grass, with a few implements (cool boxes, gas powered grills) to make usually a single dish. The flavours are totally unedited - pungent cuts of meat, copious quantities of fish sauce, chillies with a proper kick.



A foodie friend guides us to a longish queue for green papaya salad. This is one of my benchmark dishes, and it blew every other version I'd had out the water. Each portion is made from scratch and to order. The papaya is shredded with a mandolin, tipped into a huge pestle where it meets its mortar, along with lime, chilli, fish sauce, dried shrimps, roasted peanuts and a few tomatoes, and is then pummelled and tasted and adjusted and pummelled and tasted and adjusted, until she's happy with it. Oh boy - this was so hot, ask for her to hold the chilli if you've not got a pretty hefty tolerance for spice. But it was so good, and a steal for a huge portion at 5€.


(photo by Elizabeth Rushe)


(photo by Elizabeth Rushe)

I also try some squid skewers, which are a steal at 2€ each, loaded with tentacles, griddled on high and lathered in a chilli sauce. I grab the last three pork and peanut skewers (1€ each, WTF), and
enjoy some ludicrously sweet ice tea - which is strong and bitter, Thai style, then topped up with lots of condensed and evaporated milk. It's sublime.


(photo by Elizabeth Rushe)

Cocolo Ramen, Maybachufer
I love a stroll by the canal down by Maybachufer, a couple of blocks south of Kottbusser Tor. The Ankerklause pub down by the water is legendary. But there's another reason to go there now - a nice ramen restaurant, with a lovely garden for schlurping down noodles on a warm evening. I'm totally spoiled when it comes to ramen, what with Tonkotsu Mare Street a 5 minute walk away. Over in Berlin, I order their Tonkotsu as a comparison - the broth is not quite so creamy from the bones, but it is full of porky flavour, and comes with a generous amount of pork belly and other cuts. lots of fungal, seaweed and gingery bits and decent noodles with enough of a bite on them. You get a neat selections of oils and shakes to pimp your Tonkotsu - I go wild for their onion oil, which has a lovely rich umami taste.



We also enjoy their pickled king oyster mushrooms, an almost creamy sesame spinach, and edamame beans. Schlurp schlurp.



Kirk, Skalitzerstr
I don't usually focus on drinks, but I have to tell you to go to Kirk on Skalitzerstr for cocktails. Everyone I know or met in Berlin would light up if you mention the place. It's the best spot for cocktails for miles, possibly hundreds of miles. The star of the show is the mixologist, a Nick Cave lookalike, rumoured to be from Croatia but to have learned his craft in New York. He silently makes the orders, having the odd chat to the waiting staff but never with the customers; he chain smokes and puts on dark records. I was delighted to hear a vintage PJ Harvey album while I supped my (first class) negroni.



The decor is retro without being kitsch, and it gets really busy later on, so get there before 9. Grab a seat at the bar if you can. Their whiskey sours comes highly recommended.

Last stop: Los Angeles

Los Angeles is a crazy town. For Olde Worlde Europeans like me, it needs to be seen to be believed. That sprrrrawwwwllll, sprawling out as far as the eye can see. Only mountains and oceans get in its way. The scene is stunning though: palm trees, clusters of skyscrapers in the haze, helicopters zipping from downtown to the beach cities, a backdrop of rugged mountains full of wildcats and coyotes and birds of prey.



The pollution didn't get to me too much, but you feel the dominance of the roads. The six lane roaring beast of West Sunset Boulevard is the central focal point for slacking 'hoods like Silver Lake and Echo Park, meaning an outside table at brunch comes with lots of hot metal ripping past at 40mph.

London's a sprawling city too, but it feels human scale - hundreds of small villages run into one another. There aren't too many parts of town that feel like no-man's land. In LA, each mini centre is miles away from the next, and you go through miles of nothingness to get from Central Hollywood to West Hollywood, or you go to complexes which exist in isolation of their surroundings.

This throws whole new dimensions into going out for a meal. First, you'll probably have to drive. Which means you'll probably need to find parking. And you won't want to pay for it. And you won't really want to drink, although driving is a bit easier at night. We purposefully stayed in Silver Lake, which proudly claims to be LA's most walkable neighbourhood, so that we didn't have to drive too far in the evenings, but you could easily see how much of an effort eating out might be.

Despite the endless driving, LA blew my mind and I'm going to have to find a way to live there at some point. Which is tricky when you work in politics and don't drive.




Dante Fried Chicken at Short Order
After tasting some Dante Fried Chicken at his book launch earlier in the year in London I was hell bent on having a full Dante meal when I was in his hometown. Dante works in Short Order - a upscale-ish, seasonal, locally sourced burger restaurant in the Farmer's Market complex (we're talking mammoth, with a mammoth car park to boot) in Central LA. On Wednesdays and weekend brunch he has a dish on the menu, usually involving his signature fried chicken - buttermilked, brined, and coated with more spices, herbs, seeds and nuts than you could ever imagine.



When we were there the Dante special was a fried chicken sandwich, served with an apricot crack glaze, topped with avocado. The batter was crisp and full of flavour, and the chicken was succulent as anything. We went a bit OTT on sides, ordering sweet potato fries, normal fries, and delicious griddled corn with avocado, feta, parsley and chilli- an excellent combination.

I have since acquired Dante's cookbook Ride or Fry, and it's blowing my mind. He calls his take on food as 'Transatlantic African Cuisine' with inspiration from his travels across the world, his Creole grandmother, life in multi-cultural LA. It's fun, exciting food - so track the book down, and if you'r ein LA - Wednesdays and weekend brunch over at Short Order.

Forage
On our first night in LA we were pooped. So I skipped up to Sunset to grab a take-away from Forage, a (posh) rotisserie joint serving up Ottolenghi-esque salads at the side. The clientelle fitted the deep-gentrification Silver Lake mould, all wealthy arty media metrosexuals (mostly men), mulling artfully over whether to go for heirloom tomatoes or kale, feta and breadcrumbs with their protein (chicken).



We opted for both, and some tasty beans, and a really good, yoghurty potato salad, and two very generous portions of chicken. All for $30, which is a lot less than you'd expect for somewhere so fresh, organic and on trend.

Cliff's Edge
Cliff's Edge is Silver Lake's destination California Cuisine restaurant, located behind an anonymous looking door (with valet attached, natch), then through a bar, and then, through the back, you're in a lovely covered, multi-level garden, with lots trees, the air filled with the chatter of well-heeled bohemian Angelanos. The menu is short, seasonal, local. We started with a Californian cheeseboard, followed up with delicious pork loin with beetroot and beans, and diver cough scallops with a fragrant carrot curry.



It was all about the desserts; namely a thick, cold, super sweet caramel custard served with a large butterscotch shortbread cookie. Oh, and topped with a dollop of mascarpone with honeycomb crumbled on it.



The most coma-inducing dessert I've had since Snickers Sundae back at Pitt Cue Co. It was probably our priciest meal of the trip, but top quality and deliciousness for it.


Bulan
After a couple of really greasy, unhealthy days of eating, we had to go all Angelano and go out for a vegan Thai meal at Bulan, a neighbourhood staple in Silver Lake recommended to us by our airbnb host. Our host promised that even the most committed meat eaters would go away full and satisfied with their meal. After delicious summer rolls, I had a dish of raw spinach, onions, cucumber, cashews and tofu served on a sizzling hot plate with hot peanut sauce poured over it.



It was so so good, I can pretty much still taste it two months on.

Cole's 
A classic LA eat is the french dip sandwich: roast beef, typically, smothered with mustard, in a sub, halved and dipped in gravy. Cole's is said to be the best place for it, deep in the belly of LA's weird and wonderful Downtown district, which is as stale and corporate as Canary Wharf on one side, has some wonderful art deco markets and buildings in the middle, and slides down to (the beyond edgy) Skid Row on the other side. Cole's is on the border of the latter two, with neon sides and a 20s gangster vibe adding to the seediness.

We were there for a late midweek lunch, and the place had a Lynchian vibe, all empty but for a few eccentrics propping up the bar. We drank unlimited ice tea, and enjoyed our sandwiches and the atmosphere, but it didn't quite compare to the ox cheek french dip at Hawksmoor Spitalfields.





Millie's Cafe
Our final brunch was at Millie's Cafe, a bustling pavement cafe on West Sunset, and perfect for people watching in Silver Lake. All of your favourite LA characters were there: the feminist bloggers dissing Katy Perry prefixing every sentence with "I'd never say this online or in print", the tattooed session musician, the model/actress, the posh English guy like totally cracking the LA scene, the small dogs - lots of them.

I had the best breakfast in a long time - a huge portion of  scrambled eggs, with Creole turkey sausage, cheese, guac, salsa, sour cream, served with a corn muffing. Flipping incredible. The service was warm and welcoming - the restaurant's been open for almost a hundred years, and they know their craft.

On the road in California

Driving all around California you realise how much local life and food culture revolves around the road. A whole discipline of marketing and architecture developed around luring drivers in off the road, and new iterations sit alongside original Googies all along the roads.

Household name chains - like Denny's, Wendy's, Taco Bell - all seem to mostly exist out in the middle of nowhere, on a cross-section, where its convenient for people to meet and, crucially, parking is free. Nobody likes to pay for parking.

The ultimate Californian roadside eating experience is the cult SW chain In-n-Out, serving up affordable and delicious burgers, fries and shakes decades before muppets like us were standing in the cold, queuing to get into MeatEasy. This is the real deal, and there's not a carefully-crafted beard in sight. Just regular families getting served by super efficient, politely scripted staff in pristine uniforms.

The official menu is short and simple - one burger or two (their Double-Double is the inspiration for MeatLiquor's Double Bubble), cheese or not, fries.

But their cult status rests on the loyalty of their customers who know about their "not so" secret menu. It's basically the same core ingredients, but varied up. You could have a triple burger, a grilled cheese (extra cheese, no meat - their veggie option), grilled onions instead of fried, or their Animal Fries - which is fries with their sachet sauce, topped with melted cheese and grilled onions.

We ate twice on the road, and once, late at night, we drove through the In-n-Out in central Hollywood for a surreal LA experience. It was packed at 1.30am, and we enjoyed their faultlessly polite and efficient service while teens hung by their cars slurping down milkshakes.



Motels are a big part of the scene too - outside the big cities and picturesque lodges in the countryside, tourist accommodation is centred on the idea that you're just passing through on your way between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The same chintzy accommodation could cost you £200 a night in ritzy-parochial Carmel-by-the-Sea but £60 100 miles down the coast in San Simeon. But the most famous of all lodgings is the incredibly kitschy Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, midway between California's most famous cities.

It's like something from a Disney-drenched dream of fibreglass seashells, grottos and caves, swirly carpets, winding staircases, turrets and lots and lots of parking for people coming in off the motorway roaring past outside.



We stopped for lunch and had fittingly kitschy pineapple and chicken sandwiches, prawn salad with copious volumes of thousand island dressing, and pink champagne cake.





Fellow diners were retro roadtrip fans, local ladies doing birthday lunch, all served by vintage tattooed ladies. One of those "only in California" places.

Our final roadtrippin' destination was Santa Barbara, which is a well-heeled university town 100 miles north of LA. We shunned its fancy seafood, yachty seafood restaurants, for Los Agaves,  the city's top Mexican taqueira, by the coastal highway.



We had the best Mexican food we've ever ever ever had - mine was a shrimp and halibut enchilada, topped with pineapple, served with a mango salsa, red rice and local cheese. All for $13. Venture a little bit off the highway and you can avoid the dull chains and have some really good food at a very good price.