I will have a 5 hour layover in Zurich in a few months. Have never been there, or anywhere near there, before. Am wondering if the OP has already been and if so where he ate, and also hoping anyone out there might pick up this unanswered thread. Thx.

Unexpectedly, ROC's line was very short when we walked by on Saturday night (it got much longer by the time we left), so we decided to give it a shot. We were pretty happy with what we got. Service was less chaotic than I was expecting, although they were out of bottled water(!) and also out of everything involving fish. Xlb were pretty darn good, if a little thicker-skinned than my druthers; 3 cup chicken and chewy rice cake were also both pleasers. We also ordered a bunch of veggies: corn (delicious but laborious to eat with chopsticks), snap peas, broccoli, all tasty. They gave us a complimentary order of popcorn chicken, which, honestly, we didn't like so much, but it's not one of our favorite dishes in the first place.

Fried crab balls at another table looked delicious; will try those next time.

It is on the expensive side, as others have noted--about $70 to stuff three hungry eaters but In these days of $4 gas it's really nice to be able to get this kind of food near home. (And I agree with Bradbury's comments about DTF's pricing.) I hope the early promise holds up and eventually draws some Westside imitators!

We had lunch at the Apple Pan on Wednesday and watched dozens of delicious-looking whole pumpkin pies go out the door. Since we knew we'd be eating a different pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving (which unfortunately turned out to be just ordinary), we ourselves opted for other flavors for our Weds. dessert (notably an even-better-than-usual slice of boysenberry cream).

So I can't comment directly on Apple Pan's pumpkin pie, but it certainly looked good. Can anyone else opine?

On a related note, egg nog ice creams are also starting to show up as well: Talenti Egg Nog Ice Cream at Gelson's Century City this week.

Yes, Simpang Asia.

(Although we're also making some very nice ones at home now, using coconut milk, chocolate sauce, and a bit of warm caramel for "body".)

I've had a couple of good meals at the Santa Monica True Foods--interesting menu, even if you have no idea who Andrew Weil is. (It helps if you like kale. :-) )

On the other hand, the waits can be unpleasantly long, and the last time we tried to go, early on a Sunday evening, they were talking about 30-60 minute waits even though there were clearly more empty, unused tables in the restaurant than there were groups waiting--maybe they had a staffing problem. At any rate, we moved on and ended up at The King's Head, which must be about as far from the True Foods approach as you can get!

Not a restaurant, but I'm fond of the wedding soup at Gelson's. You'll want to call first, since they don't have it everyday or at every store.

I've bought it at Whole Foods in Beverly Hills.

Thank you for the advisory. So, which of the many Mexican places in Oxnard are still worth stopping in?

There's also a brand new Turkish place called Cafe Istanbul, at 326 S. Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills (where Jacopo's and Clay Pit used to be). Haven't tried this one yet. Nor have we tried Anatolia on Westwood. Neither of these places seems to have a website, and when I asked the owner at Anatolia for a take-out menu he said they didn't have one.

I concur enthusiastically with the suggestions of Simpang Asia, Attari Sandwich. Mary & Robbs is also on our family's regular dinner rotation, although I'm not sure if it quite fits your price point. Another classic coffee shop well worth a try is the one at Rancho Park Golf Course, at Pico & Patricia.

I'd also suggest Fresh Corn Grill (especially the soup; Cajun shrimp pizza is also good but again might not fit your price point). You could give Aroma, on Overland S of Pico, a shot: the best thing on the menu, the pljeskavica (onion burger) is $12, I think, but very much worth it, one of the best burgers in LA.

The salads and sandwiches at John O'Groats are mostly too expensive for your budget, but if you stick to the breakfast side of the menu you could probably do pretty well.

Apple Pan's inflated prices put it outside your budget, as many have bemoaned here, but if you just had pie for lunch, once in a while, I think it might be worth it. :-)

Fundamental's website has a 2 day olf tweet: "still closed for lunch/brunch temporarily. " Too bad, because we still haven't gotten around to trying this place and want to do so.

As noted above, the place south of Wilshire is Saffron and Rose. 1387 Westwood Blvd. This is a great place: the flavor choices there go way beyond the traditional choices, and he's often coming up with something new--last time I was there, he had cherry/cactus flavor, which was very soft but stunning in flavor. Over time, this has become one of the best ice cream shops in L.A.

There's also more traditional (albeit less spectacular) Persian ice cream at Super Sun Market (formerly Rose Market), 1922 Westwood, and

Yes, they clearly have reduced the scoop size, and no, they usually won't serve the 2-scoop portion to an adult. (They did allow to me to have 2 scoops last week, but only because my son got 3.)

The other downside of the CC location is the limited flavor choices.

On the other hand, the hazelnut I had last week was utterly sublime--somehow had never ordered that at Bulgarini before, perhaps because the pistachio gets so much press.

It's a busy place. At 9:30am there was a short wait for tables, and a moderate stream of customers coming in the door. We sat at the counter.

I was surprised not to find any mention on Chowhound of Jacks N Joe, near USC at Figueroa and Adams. My son and I took the car in for maintenance at one of the nearby auto dealers this morning, and to pass the time we decided to try this place out, based on some warm reviews in the Daily Trojan and Yelp. Although they have other breakfast offerings, it is very much a pancake specialist.

I ordered this month's special, simple pancakes made with brown sugar in the batter and fresh peaches on top: these were outstandingly flavorful, and best eaten without any syrup. PoPJr. had the french toast made with sweet Hawaiian bread and served with eggs and Portuguese sausage; the toast was very eggy, and a very well done example of that style. It looked like the great majority of diners were having some sort of pancake--the banana/walnut cakes and the goofy "WTF pancakes", made by squirting the batter onto the grill in odd squiggly shapes and serving the crusty result with berries and cream cheese, both looked like winners. Based on our first visit, I don't think JnJ will compete for the best overall breakfast against a place like O'Groats, but when talking about pancakes, they belong on the list.

Jacks N Joe
2498 S Figueroa St
Los Angeles, CA 90007
Phone (213) 748-4565
http://www.jacksnjoe.com/menu/
Closes at 5pm most nights

A-Won has a TV: not visible from everywhere and often tuned to mysterious Korean programming, but we recently watched an NBA playoff game while enjoying our usual hwe dup bap/al bap/fishcake soup fest.

Steingarten has plenty of TVs and a nice sausage selection.

Yeah, somewhere the ghost of Edsel Ford Fong is smiling (grouchily). A shame about the OP's bad experience--it's always disappointing when high expectations lead to low performance. Re the poor food, I wonder if was just an off day or something worse.

There's tripe in their pho dac biet.

If not Chinese, how about Hawaiian? Shakas, baby.

(101 W Main in Alhambra)

PoPJr and I tried Nongla last night. Pho dac biet was OK, but the broth at Le Saigon on Santa Monica Blvd. (currently the best of the limited Westside pho choices) is beefier. We also thought the basil provided with the pho was a bit skimpy (although to be fair, the waitress said she'd bring more if asked, and Le Saigon is sometimes skimpy with their basil as well--to my knowledge, none of the westside places offer the more extensive variety of herbs we've sometimes gotten with pho in Little Saigon in OC) and the amount of meat in the pho dac biet was also a little light. Noodles were a little thicker than at some places, but tasted good.

Also ordered a grilled chicken banh mi with fried egg--not a bad sandwich,good bread, but missing a little flavor somehow: adding the jalapeno slices and/or some sauce helps. It's certainly better than the banh mi at Le Saigon . . . since they don't have banh mi at all. (On the other hand, Nongla doesn't seem to offer anything like the roll-your-own platter, piled high with all sorts of yummy greens, that's my wife's favorite dish at Le Saigon).

Another advantage Nongla does have over Le Saigon: they accept credit cards. And you can walk around the corner to Blockheads for dessert, as we did.

A year late on this (and sent here by this thread's inclusion in a recent Chow newsletter), I am posting to note than while there may not be much Turkish ice cream around Los Angeles, there is plenty of Persian ice cream with that stretchy/chewy quality. A nice variety of flavors can be had at Saffron & Rose on Westwood Blvd. (my faves: date, cucumber), and of course at Mashti Malone's in Hollywood.

I am sorry that you had to endure that. A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I used to live walking distance from Gladstone's in the Palisades, and I can provide witness that there was a time when, if you ordered carefully, you could have fun and decent food there along with the view. That time is long past.

If you're at the Aquarium and want that seafood-house experience, King's Fish House is downtown, maybe 15 minutes away on foot or by shuttle bus.

Not exactly dim sum, and not for brunch, but we did end up having lots of dumplings for early dinner at Wang Xing Ji (our first time there). The place filled up pretty quickly after 5pm.

This news makes me feel sad, and very old. I used to eat there 30-some years ago when I was in school, and even had dinner there one night while taking the bar exam. To the best of my recollection, I sat on Eddie's floor only once--preferred the perfectly civil service you'd get if you went up one more floor. The last time I was in SF with my family, a couple of years ago, we walked by and I thought about taking them up for the experience, but we ended up elsewhere. Dang.

Thanks for the early review.

It's too bad about Yashima, a place I'd named to my "been there 100 times list" back in 2010 but which had recently shown serious signs of neglect (we had to leave without eating the last time we went, because they started using some horrendously acrid cleaning solution on the tables that made it impossible to taste the soba). Finding another convenient udon/soba specialist may be tough.

We'll go try Morinoya expeditiously, although I would also be concerned if they're really planning to operate at a high price point. But maybe that was just a function of ordering so much. Here's a link to their menu, with prices.

http://www.restaurant-morinoya.com/?p...

Tried Menji last night: I loved the tsukemen, which is an absolute umami bomb, and as unusual as advertised--I don't remember having tasted a sauce with quite that combination of Japanese and Italian qualities elsewhere, even at the local yoshoku places like Sawtelle Kitchen and Blue Marlin.

The tonkatsu was good, but for that I'd have to give the nod to Tsujita across the street instead.

Menji also has curry ramen, limited to 20 servings a day; I didn't see anyone ordering it while we were there.

I wonder how long a restaurant can survive on Sawtelle with only 2 -1/2 menu items?

Very sorry to report that Xanh Bistro is closing "soon"--as soon as the end of this month, according to the staff on duty when we dropped in for lunch on Saturday (chef Haley wasn't there). Our meal was excellent as always: since we discovered Xanh from this thread four years ago, it had become our favorite Orange County restaurant.

We're told that they'll be looking for a new location and a March OC Weekly article says likewise. But in the meantime, if you haven't been in a while, or ever, now is your last chance, for the time being.

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/stickaforki...

We go to A-Won frequently, and always order the hwe dup bap and al bap. The hwe dup bap is more about volume than finesse, but the dressing is indeed excellent. I'm sure there's better al bap somewhere, but not really sure where, since the lamented demise of Odae-san as a sashimi specialist: Arado's has seemed more or less the same as A-Won's. As you say, the panchan is nothing to get excited about.

2 other good things we often order at A-Won: grilled eel, piled high with sweet hot ginger; and the fish cake soup, as simple and soothing in its impact as matzo ball soup, only with mystery fish and tofu skin instead of chicken fat.

Yes, that's Niki Nakayama at n/naka, 3455 S. Overland. She used to have Azami Sushi on Melrose.

By reservation only. http://www.n-naka.com/