Category: Travel

Road Trip – DRAGO CENTRO

PART THREE – KICKIN’ IT NEW/OLD SCHOOL

The thing that struck us about Drago Centro — Celestino Drago’s new, northern Italian eatery smack in the middle of downtown Los Angeles — besides the other-worldly pastas, the spot-on food and wine pairings of sommelier Michael Shearin, the packed house, cool design, and the smart move of having Matteo Ferdinandi (formerly of Spago Las Vegas) as Owner/Manager — was how inexpensive it was.

Appetizers ran $12-$20, pastas about the same, i.e., less than $20 a serving, mains were almost all well under $30, and the porter house for two (a steak that Las Vegans get routinely gouged for in excess of a hundred buckeroonies) was $75. And did we mention the place is on the ground floor of a fancy office building in downtown L.A.?

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Road Trip – WALLY’S DESERT TURTLE

PART TWO – KICKIN’ IT OLD SCHOOL

Once upon a time in the 1970’s there was a chain of California steakhouses called the Velvet Turtle. Wally’s Desert Turtle, in Rancho Mirage, fifteen minutes up the road from downtown Palm Springs, was the flagship of those restaurants. That chain has faded, but Wally’s is as bright and vivid as it was back in its heyday, right down to its mirrored ceilings, chandeliers and gleaming brass.

This place is such an institution that ELV, hungry for memories of his heyday, was compelled to take a long left turn on his way to L.A. to stop in for a bite.

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Road Trip – THE MAD GREEK

PART ONE – KICKIN’ IT OLD SCHOOL

Heading to SoCal for a weekend in LaLa Land is pretty much a tradition in the ELV household. It’s fun to escape either the heat or cold of Vegas for more moderate climes, get a nice dose of real freeway congestion, and enjoy some pretty tasty eats in a culture that values something other that over-sized, celebrity-chef food factories. And since, as you know, ELV seeks nothing but the best when it comes to shoving things in his piehole, he and his staff always make their first stop at The Mad Greek in Baker.

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