Happiness is ...
Money really can buy bliss during happy hour at Kabuki and elsewhere
By Dan O'Heron 08/07/2008
Considering the prices that modern restaurants charge for snack food, to call a little stretch of time in the early evening a “happy hour” is oxymoronic — minus the oxy, with the bill for two people drinking three short beers coming to about $30 without a tip.
In the sundowns of my youth in downtown Los Angeles, I recalled happy hours that featured half-price drinks with little bits of ham and cubes of Kraft skewered on a toothpick: There was more wood on the plate than meat and cheese. But it was free!
Even if the company around City Hall was unpleasant (a lot of surly plainclothes cops were in those bars) and the surroundings disagreeable (a lot of LA Times pressmen brought ink stains with them to bar stools), with a half-price drink you could sometimes get a free bowl of peanuts and throw the shells on the floor — unless the place had a rug, that is.
The idea was to sit around and drink and nosh for a couple of hours, spend $10, avoid evening traffic jams and later whiz home.
But at Kabuki, as I was putting a serious smear of wasabi on dewily glistening salmon sushi ($2.50, two pieces) followed by a slightly baked scallop sushi ($2.50), spicy enough not to need wasabi fury, I snapped out of my nostalgic reverie. The problem of price was giving way to the charm of the tastes.
The 12-ounce frosted glasses of Kirin draft ($1.95) mated beautifully with six plump gyoza dumplings ($3.95), lightly fried beef slathered in an amazing amber sauce. Sip and nibble, it could go
on forever.
The best Kabuki appetite grows with the eating — expecting the next dish to equal the one before. Excitement mounted with two mounds of “firecracker” spiced raw tuna, mixed with tomato ($4.95) and scooped with wonton skins, followed by a $3.95 batch of mixed tempura, including crunchy shrimp, and a four-piece salmon roll ($3.95), complete with shiso leaves (mint affiliated with basil), daikon, Japanese sprouts and a citrusy yuzu sauce.
In the end, I parted happily with the 30 bucks: I did not seek food; the food was seeking me.
Clocking in at Neomeze (20 E. Colorado Blvd., Old Pasadena, 626/793-3010) from 4:30 to 7 p.m. earns you half-off on all that pours. Moments will shimmer with glasses of full-bodied wines like a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon for $4; Moët & Chandon Champagne for $6.50, plus imported tap beers for $3 and a beach-party array of martinis and cocktails for $6. Food prices won’t go down as easy.
A lounge menu gone upscale includes items like baby back ribs for $15.85, Cobb salad for $14 and a real burger for $12. “To maintain high standards and fine distinctions, we can’t drastically cut the price of our food” said Jason Hardy, a Neomeze partner. To the rescue, there’s always a $6 edamame bowl.
Elsewhere — munching on these soybean pod yawners — a happy hour ticks off like an eternity. But here, cooked in a dashi soup stock made with dried bonito tuna flakes, plus soy sauce, garlic and a hint of jalapeño, the flavor is impudent and addictive. If only we could turn the pod around and use it as a pea shooter, how much more fun a happy hour would be.
On call at Sushi Roku (33 Miller Alley, Old Pasadena, 626/683-3000) from 5 to 6:30 p.m. (and until 10:30 p.m. Mondays) is an array of appetizers for just $3 each. Among a choice of nine dishes are shiitake mushroom skewers, popcorn shrimp tempura and albacore tataki, plus a variety of sushi hand rolls. But they make up for those bargains by charging $5 for drinks. The lounge-area setting — pillowed banquettes, suede ottomans, curvaceously cut and low-slung oak tables and cherry wood lanterns casting a soft glow — makes it worth the trip.
AFTERTASTE
In Matthew Lombardo’s play, “Looped,” which ended its run at Pasadena Playhouse this week, Valerie Harper gave the audience a brilliant guided tour of the difficult country of Tallulah Bankhead — her renegade ramblings and Southern inhospitality. Between the acts, veteran theatergoers, excited by Harper’s decadent drawling, were telling each other Bankhead stories. I contributed the lulu about her eating habits and how they set up a delicious sight gag without her saying much of anything.
As the story goes, Bankhead always had tables set up backstage so she could enjoy her favorite foods: bologna sandwiches, celery and beer. Reporters and critics were required to share the repast and often left her dressing room with much of the supper still in their mouths. Nobody dared to complain since Bankhead countered every slight with death sentences that newspapers loved to print.
On the set one day, she invited George Jean Nathan to lunch, promising the famous Broadway critic a “big, big scoop,” typically adding the put-down: “Something really worthy of your little gossip column.”
For more than an hour, she was coy and evasive and said nothing of importance. Nathan, also good at pouring acid, had once disparaged Bankhead’s performance in “Cleopatra,” as “Queen of the Nil.”
After five bologna sandwiches, wilting celery and warm beer — but no scoop — Nathan finally threw up his hands: “OK, Tallulah, you win. I’ll say it was a misprint.”
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