Mouth to mouth
Passing the word about tasty experiences in unexpected places
By Dan O'Heron 07/22/2010
In a popular restaurant destination like Greater Pasadena, it’s easy to overlook extraordinary places that are limited by size, in off-the-beaten track locations or that employ unfamiliar ethnic tastes. You won’t hear any of them banging the media barrel with a baseball bat, but if you listen closely you might hear a family member outside the restaurant tinkling a small bell — when they’re not doing the dishes, of course.
Like a great steak is something rare that should not be forgotten, here’s a list of interesting places that survive and succeed because word gets around. So pass it on.
In trying to get away from fast-food chains with $1 plates and perpetual Pepsis, you’ll find much better fare at Café Linda’s, 34 W. Holly St., Pasadena, (626) 584-0712. You’ll always hear comments like, “This great little Thai place on Holly Street,” or “It feels like my private stash.”
During these rough times, man’s best friend is the hot dog. It feeds the hand that bites it, cheaply and deliciously. So hot-diggity-dog is the phrase marking the return of the hot dog to Old Pasadena. It addresses the new Big City Hot Dogs, 39 N. Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena, (626) 793-7203. Served here is a quarter-pound Hoffy with all the trimmings, starting at $3.50. You can call this “a place to relish.”
At the corner of Verdugo Road and York Boulevard, where the edges of Glendale, Eagle Rock and Glassell Park converge, there’s Polka, 4112 Verdugo Road, Los Angeles, (323) 255-7887. A place of wondrous stews and sausages, this Polish eatery is located in a slightly bruised strip mall. It’s gloomily quiet outside, save for the chugging of a Laundromat, But inside, the dining room hums like a banquet hall and often you have to turn sideways to thread through the tables to get a seat.
When Afghan food was first exposed here several years ago at Azeem’s, 110 E. Union St., Pasadena, (626) 683-3310, one might have felt out of place like a little green man from waterless outer space contemplating a salad bar. Would he be greeted by a black-turbaned fundamentalist? No. Then, as now, he’d be welcomed by Abdul Karim, a pleasant fellow with easy humor. A customer remembers that when asked if it’s true that Afghans never rush through a meal, Abdul replies, “Yes, but that’s because they haven’t got much to do in the evening.”
When former students from nearby San Marino High School go off to party and swing from the trees in the groves of academe with beer and pizza, they must spread the word that they are homesick for the pizza they once had at Tony’s Pizza, 2555 Huntington Drive, San Marino, (626) 793-4114.
Though the restaurant is hidden from easy view, Fanta-Sea Grill, 912 Fair Oaks Ave., South Pasadena, (626) 799-5588, is the place seafood lovers want to be seen. From the name alone, people conjure a fantasy like Venus rising from the gray mist on a half-shell.
Laboring under the threat of removal by eminent domain and caught up in the taut drama of the adjacent Pasadena Playhouse — taut in that it has no play — The White Hut, 26 S. Madison Ave., Pasadena, (626) 795-2575, continues to thrive in its ivied,
324 square-foot pillbox location. Said a customer from the nearby California School of Culinary Arts: “I prefer the Hut’s old-fashioned tuna melts to any slice of modernity.”
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