Hash House A-Go-Go

If you ever find yourself in San Diego, jonsing for some amazing breakfast (or even lunch) , look no further than Hash House A-Go-Go on 5th Ave in Hillcrest, famous for huge portions and ridiculously long lines that go surprisingly fast.

Now I've been to HH a few times, and I have NEVER EVER been disappointed, not once. Not only is the food amazing, the portions HUGE, and the plating beautiful, it's a great place to take someone who's never been, just to see the look on their faces when their food comes. Honestly people, it never gets old.

Now just a heads up, the pictures below are from a few different trips over to HH, were not REALLY that big of pigs, I swear.

Charlie and I stopped in for lunch once (they serve breakfast all day), I was craving their French Toast, and I sadly found out that the French Toast is pretty much the only breakfast item they DON'T serve all day.

He wanted lunch I wanted breakfast, neither of us were hungry enough for our own plate, so we opted for the Sage Fried Chicken and Bacon Waffles, which was just recently featured on Man Vs. Food on the Travel Channel.

The plate comes PILED with bacon waffles, and TWO huge chicken breasts, pan fried golden brown, topped with fried leeks, drizzled with a maple reduction and stabbed through the center with a heftily aromatic spring of fresh rosemary. Yes, that's ONE serving. Thankfully for those of you who want this, and don't live near a HH, Food Network tackled this recipe, and I'm sharing it with you.

Another breakfast favorite of mine are their Farm Benedicts. HH's benedicts are unlike ANYTHING you've ever seen, tried or made at home. Seriously, it's pretty epic. Below is the Sage Fried Chicken Benedict.

It's served on a bed of mashed potatoes, a huge housemade biscuit, and topped heavily with scrambled eggs, fried chicken, bacon (which I got on the side) fresh spinach, ripe tomatoes and griddled mozzarella cheese then topped with chipotle cream sauce.

On our last trip, Charlie and I met Adam for breakfast since he was in town the evening before, and HH was my first choice when he asked where we should go for breakfast.

Adam opted for an Indiana Favorite, Andy's Sage Fried Chicken w/ maple reduction, 2 eggs, bacon mashed potatoes & biscuit.

I finally got my French Toast. It comes dipped in Banana Cinnamon Cream, grilled until golden brown and then topped with a griddled banana, sliced lengthwise, toasted pecans, powdered sugar and maple syrup. TO. DIE. FOR.

Being Fab in West Hollywood

I will admit it right now. I have a soft spot in my heart for gay men. They could quite possibly be, some of my favorite people on earth, really. My favorite gay EVER is my bff Adam. You've seen him on the blog, he's made a few appearances, here, here and most recently here, among others.

So after the faboosh party for Lisa's 40th, he insisted I go out with him to West Hollywood cuz we looked too amazing to just go home.

We started off at O Bar, on Santa Monica Blvd, where we met up with the lovely Michael.

I started off with a Key Lime Pie Martini. Not the BEST ONE I've ever had, but decent. The problem I have with most Key Lime Pie Martinis is bartenders think they need to add copious amounts of pineapple juice, and it just makes them too acidic and too pineappley. When I think LIME, pineapple hardly EVER comes to mind.

Plus, no graham crack rim? Puh-leeeeze.

Next I got a Caipirinha. Also, not the best I've had, but decent.

First off, to make a perfect caipirinah, you need to use Brazilian rum or Cachaca, which not too many bars carry. They try to substitute it with vodka, or tequila, and even though they are decent substitutes, they just don't cut it as being the BEST.

We danced a bit, and took many....

...many...
...many pics.

Then packed up and headed down the street to Red, where we met up with our friend Mike, and none other than Perez Hilton. Lulz.

We grabbed a few drinks, I had a classic margarita, and the boys drank some sort of juice and vodka thing.


We weren't at Red long, and skipped down the street to Motherlode. (Great name right?)

I 'hagged it up and made lots of friends who called me faboosh and fabulous and fierce and ferosh and all those great words that only gay men will ever call you.

I danced, walked the room to RuPaul and hung off the end of the bar.

By 2:00 I was ready to call it a night. I'm just not made out for all this stuff. But it was a lot of fun!

Lisa turns 40, and feeds us all night!

So one of my clients, Lisa, turned 40 this past weekend. She had a fabulous party down in Venice Beach at Big Red Sun, a totally awesome and adorable landscaping and plant arrangement studio, with a big beautiful backyard perfect for a celebration.


The crowd was an awesomely amazing and eclectic mix of artists, foodies, hippies, and friends. The conversation was never dull, and the laughs were constant and hearty. I am amazed at how many people came to show Lisa how much she was loved, my hope is that, at 40, I'll have at least half the crowd she did.


Venice Wines provided an amazing wine bar, with everything you could imagine, including lemonade and sparkling cider for a non-alcoholic option. My favorite was the Argentinian Sparkling Chardonnay, and the sparkling rose.


Adam accompanied me as my date, and we just had the most fabulous of times.


Baby Blues BBQ took care of the grub, and boy was there a lot of grub.


Living in Atlanta for over a year, I got used to amazing BBQ. In fact, some of the best BBQ I've ever had was at Fat Matt's Rib Shack in downtown Atlanta. But I can tell all you Angelenos, that if you want some GOOD 'Q, Baby Blues is about as close as I've ever come in the West. When asking for sutible BBQ substitutes after I had moved back, a few people had mentioned, "I hear Baby Blues in Venice is pretty good." If I had known how close it came, I would have tried it YEARS ago.


Their Corn Cakes are, most simply put, the most amazing cornmeal based bread I've ever had in my life. Sweet, moist, with just the perfect amount of wow. Their ribs, come second to Fat Matt's, but are still fall right off the bone tender.


We had Baby Back and Kansas City ribs, as well as BBQ chicken, and all were just awesome. Their Mac and Cheese was also pretty much to die for. In fact, I don't really have much of anything bad to say about them. They even had collard greens with bacon, and sweet baked beans. I felt like I was back in the South.


My darling, very pregnant client Nina was also there, looking adorable with her newly trimmed bangs, so we had to have a photo op.


The cake, as amazing as I'm sure it was, I didn't get a chance to try. I was wayyyy too stuffed. BAD FOODIE! BAD BAD!


So thank you Lisa, for an amazing party, amazing wine, and amazing grub. Happy Birthday pretty lady!

Genghis Cohen

Adam decided a few weeks ago to take me out for my birthday, I'm just getting around to blogging it now. Shame on me I know, but I'm so far back logged I'll be posting things that have long past happened for the next few weeks.

A few years ago I stumbled upon Genghis Cohen with an ex-boyfriend. He was a HUGE Seinfeld fan, and rumor has it that Jerry LOVES this place, so well we had to try it. It's been a favorite ever since. I took Adam there one night and he's a convert as well.

The best thing about eating out with Adam, is that he LOVES to try everything and we usually end up ordering more than we can eat, thank goodness for take home boxes! This night was no exception.

One of the best things about Genghis Cohen is the blatant Jewish references in the restaurant. They are kinda have that New York Chinese food thing going for them, and as far as I know are one of the only places you can get those big East Coast NY egg rolls in LA. They even have silly names for things like, Krispy Kanton Knish , Cohen Slaw & Pickles and my favorite of them all, Shalom Pork.

I ordered a pot of hot tea and a glass of water I had to beg for 3 times while we waited for all the food we ordered. The waitress, as she finished our order, had to mention what fat asses we were by saying "Ooh that's a lot of food."

Hot Tea.

We started off with some crispy noodles. They have the BEST crispy noodles, seriously.

Crispy Noodles, "Duck Sauce" and Hot Mustard.

For our Pork dish we got the BBQ Pork Fried Rice. I think fried rice is pretty hard to mess up, so this compares to most fried rices I've had, but it's still really freaking good.

BBQ Pork Fried Rice.

For our Chicken dish we got the Orange Peel Chicken with Broccoli. Amazing. I've actually had the Fried Tofu version of this as well, and it's the BEST tofu I've ever had to this day.

Orange Peel Chicken with Broccoli.

We decided to be adventurous and order the Crispy Duck, which we didn't like. I'm not a huge fan of duck and I keep giving it second and third chances for some reason and it always lets me down. Their No Name Duck comes with a plum sauce and is actually a lot better than this. I'm not much of a fan of that one either, but Adam eats it up.

Crispy Duck.

For the Beef dish we got my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE THING AT GENGHIS COHEN EVER; Mabu Beef in a Basket. It's yummy thinly sliced beef, tossed with some yummy sweet sauce and then cooked til crispy AND THEN! placed in an Egg Roll wrapper BOWL! YOU CAN EAT THE FREAKING BOWL! I always get this, it's a given.

Mabu Beef in a Basket.

Being pretty close to Hollywood, on the corner of Fairfax and Melrose, lots of celebrities eat here, so we felt we had to do the only thing left to do, Pose like the last remaining heirs to the Massengill fortune. We fit right in.

"Douche Chill!" - Tobias Funke