Pine State Biscuits

While most of my posts are about my food experiences in Los Angeles I've had plenty of foodie adventures in other places. Portland Oregon is one of my favorite food cities and any chance I get to visit I take. Pine State Biscuits started out of a house on the Northeast side of town. My first experience at Pine State came early in the morning and after a very long bus ride. My local connection and best friend Sean picked me up and brought me to Pine State. He told me since it was my first visit I had to order the Reggie . What's the Reggie you ask? This might be the most frequently asked question in Portland. Cut a fresh baked biscuit down the middle, top with a fried chicken breast some bacon and smother with cheddar cheese and gravy. Make it a deluxe with an egg on top.

The Gout got me

Well all my years of eating rich, decadent food has finally caught up to me, I have gout! Known in the past as the King's disease(that's kind of cool right) is because of too much uric acid. The uric acid creates crystals in the foot that hurt like hell when you walk. The things that create uric acid are beer, red meat, pork, shell fish, seafood, high fructose corn syrup, you know all the stuff I love. Gout goes away but it will come back, so for the last week I've cut out all those things. I have not eaten out once, I've cooked everything I've ate. I feel good, my foot is about 85% and I'm excited about the future. So your asking me Jason what is your diet like now? Chicken and veggies, I ate cottage cheese for the first time ever this morning. I still have coffee though. It's strange I didn't realize until I started writing this how much I was going to miss eating out :((( Well life goes on and so will this blog, I might have to jump into the past for restaurant reviews or start posting pictures and recipes of what healthy stuff I'm eating!!

Square One Dining, the place hidden behind that Ugly Blue Building

Square One Dining in East Hollywood (that's what the locals call the area, who am I to disagree) is nestled behind the bluest thing since Violet Beauregarde, the Scientology palace on Sunset. I love the food here but I do have one major problem, the service is soso when it gets busy. So that means Monday thru Friday for breakfast instead of the weekends. Oh and there will be a 15 minute if you go on the weekends. When I say love referring to the food, I don't mean best friend from high school love, I mean Mom & Dad thanks for the Sega Genesis on Christmas Love!! If you want to start with coffee your good because their serving Intelligentsia. From there you have three must try options. Maybe more but I'm still in a rotation of these three. A must try is what they were originally famous for, pancakes covered in a homemade Carmel bacon syrup. Yep, your drooling now, I know it, because so am I. Next on the list is the french toast covered in candied pecans and a to die for homemade vanilla whip cream. This is amazing and I'm not even a huge fan of french toast. My favorite though, and the thing I order the most is the in house cured smoked salmon eggs benedict on potato pancakes. Growing up in Alaska I became quite a smoked salmon snob so I'm weary any time I see it on a menu. I decided to give it a try and it was just like home, by way of Los Feliz that is. Please go and try this place, I promise you won't be disappointed, unless they lose your ticket for an hour. Yeah that happened to me on a weekend trip there lol.

I don't own these photos

LA Weekly Pancake Breakfast Part 3!!! Yeah it was that great

I've always been a big proponent of the LA Weekly; I believe Jonathan Gold's tenure at the paper made me a better foodie with the knowledge he passed on. Even though Mr. Gold is gone I still love supporting the food events they have and am always surprised about how well they turn out. The Pancake breakfast this year was no exception. The highlights for me were the savory pancakes at Gottsui, blueberry pancakes at BLD, the cronut at semi sweet bakery and prime rib quesadilla Chego's own Roy Choi was serving up. On the coffee front Kris Fulton from LAMILL was pouring amazing single origins thru the Hario V60. The crew from Handsome Coffee was there also with espresso, americanos and ice coffee, hope you didn't ask for sugar when you stopped thru. Pastries were plentiful with Village Bakery and Monica from Nickle Diner. Met so many great people at this event, can't wait for the next one.

LA Weekly Pancake Breakfast

The best bang for your buck LA food fest has to be the pancake breakfast the LA Weekly is putting on for it's third year. The first year was curated by former LA Weekly stalwart Jonathan Gold. The food was great but there was one problem; too many pancakes. Well last years breakfast with out Mr. Gold was a vast improvement. With baked french toast from Auntie Em's, pastries from Village & Nickle Diner and single origin coffee provided by Handsome & Cafecito Organico last years event became a great eclectic breakfast event. The best part is it's only 30 dollars, and they have an open bar! Hope too see you there.


Click the link below to purchase tickets
http://microapp.laweekly.com/pancakebreakfast/


The first year they gave away these great mugs from Harry & David; definitely worth the 30 dollar price of admission! I still use it everyday at work.

Terri and her mom from Auntie Em's serving up some amazing french toast at last years event.