Auntie's sodas
I spent Saturday afternoon visiting a friend in Eagle Rock, the town west of Pasadena.
We had lunch at Auntie Em's Kitchen, a funky breakfast-lunch bakery that's on Jonathan Gold's LA 99 list of notable restaurants. Getting a table required a 40-minute wait on the sidewalk, but the experience was worth the time. I had the skirt steak sandwich on foccacia and got a chocolate cupcake to go. (I'll have to return for the french toast and the meatloaf sandwich and...)
We followed up lunch with a visit to Galco's Soda Pop Stop in adjacent Highland Park, a family market that now devotes three aisles to bottled sodas and also has a large selection of candy bars. I picked up seven sodas and three candy bars. Which I haven't eaten -- the very rich cupcake took two days to finish.
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A journalist for more than two decades, David Allen has been writing a column for the Daily Bulletin since 1997 and blogging since 2007.He lives in Claremont.
E-mail David here or read columns here.
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Dave, you were smack-dab in "Reservoir Dogs" territory. The opening diner scene was shot 2 blocks North from Auntie Em's @ Pat & Lorraine's Restaurant and Mr. Pink's getaway was directly across York Blvd from Galco's.
No, that's not Joe Six-Pack, it's Dave Seven-Pack. Don't leave us in suspense -- what were the 7? And the 3 candy bars?
[Let's see...from memory, a grape (Nu Grape, I think), a peach, a ginger beer, a couple of root beers (one was Route 66 Root Beer, the other was Dog N Suds label) and a couple more I've forgotten entirely. They're all at home or I'd check the labels. Candy: Clark Bar, Fifth Avenue Bar and something called Peanut Butter Mountain. The latter provides 43 percent of my daily saturated fat allotment so I ate only half and stuck the rest in the fridge. -- DA]
Two other places in Eagle Rock you might enjoy are Casa Bianca and The Coffee Table. The latter is a little pricey, but the food is good. Casa Bianca makes probably about the best pizza I've ever tried, but be warned they're only open for dinner and it's pretty much always a half-hour to an hour wait on a weeknight, longer for Fridays and Saturdays.
[Also on my Eagle Rock list: Oinkster and Larkin's. I've been to Casa Bianca and it is very good, although I'm still a San Biagio's partisan. -- DA]
Dogs n' Suds is a Midwestern chain -- you might remember one of their old signs in Victoria Gardens;
http://drive-ins.dog-n-suds.com/page.php?3
if you go down York Bl, over The 2 @ Verdugo is tucked away the best Polish restaurant in So Cal;
http://www.yelp.com/biz/polka-polish-restaurant-los-angeles
[We had a Dog n' Suds in Olney. Actually, though, I checked the bottles when I got home and didn't buy one of those after all; I merely picked it up at the store and then put it back. -- DA]
We've been to Galco's a couple of times and love it. And if you run across the owner, he can tell you the history of any soda in the place.
[He was busy when I was rung up but helped my friend, praising one choice of candy and telling him to put another in the microwave 15 seconds to soften it up. He seemed to know his product. -- DA]