Monthly Archives: August 2013

Famed locomotive to depart Pomona’s train museum

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Big Boy No. 4014, one of the world’s largest steam locomotives, will soon leave the Rain Giants Train Museum at Fairplex after 50 years, the topic of my Friday column. Above, Cub Scout Pack 650 from Claremont and parents pose with the engine after a recent tour. Below, from inside the cramped cab, Scouts peer into the firebox. At bottom, Bob Krave of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, which runs the museum, talks about the Big Boy’s finer points with one of its giant wheels behind him.

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Restaurant of the Week: Beer Belly Deli

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Beer Belly Deli, 590 W. 1st St. (in Packinghouse), Claremont

The location is less obvious than a beer belly, being tucked away in an interior corner of the Claremont Packinghouse, able to be found only through directional signage. Owned by the people previously behind the popular T Phillips Alehouse in La Verne, Beer Belly Deli is not a delicatessen, but a casual hangout spot with lots of beers — a dozen on tap and 50 in bottles — and sandwiches.

It’s a neat space, with high ceilings, a skylight, high-top and low tables, lots of wood and an attic-like space with clocks, trunks and other antique-y items visible.

I’ve eaten here twice since its opening last month and had two very different experiences.

When you walk in — and there are two entrances, incidentally — it’s not clear what you’re supposed to do. The first time, for a late dinner, we were quickly invited to sit wherever we liked. Service was prompt, professional and discreet. We split a flatbread with artichoke and roasted tomatoes ($10), tasty and the perfect amount of food for a light dinner. My friend got a Duvel beer ($9) and said it’s a hard one to find on tap. (I had an ice water and found it light and refreshing.)

I returned a few days later for lunch so I could try a sandwich. Well. It was 2 p.m. on a moderately busy Saturday, and the staff seemed overmatched, based on the poor service and shouts from the kitchen about food waiting to be delivered.

I seated myself at one of the communal tables, no employees being in sight. After five minutes, with no help forthcoming, I flagged one down to order an iced tea and request a menu. I got them, but that was the last I saw of him. Meanwhile, a family of five essentially surrounded me at the communal table — was there really nowhere else to sit? — and I volunteered to move down a few seats so they could sit together and not talk over me and my magazine.

When their order was taken, I got the server’s attention (25 minutes after my menu was delivered) and tried to order a pulled pork sandwich — which they were out of. I changed that to a reuben (misspelled “ruben” on the menu) and hoped for the best.

The stranger opposite me said he’d ordered a reuben 50 minutes earlier and still hadn’t received it. “This is going in my review!” he said. (I think he has a blog.) Ten minutes later he complained and a server said his sandwich was almost done; he canceled his order. She returned and said his two beers would be on the house and he was given a $20 gift card. He told me he hadn’t had any intention of ever coming back but that maybe now he would.

A reuben soon arrived. This was within 15 minutes of my order, an acceptable amount of time, although I’m not so sure it wasn’t the other guy’s reuben. (I didn’t notice until the bill came and it specified “no cheese” that mine hadn’t had cheese. Someone ordered it that way, but not me.) Helping salvage the meal, the sandwich ($12) was pretty good: not enormous, but generous with the corned beef, and served on a tasty marbled rye. Reubens aren’t easy to find in these parts and this might be the best I’ve had in the area.

The bill also charged me $1.50 for my side of fruit, even though the menu didn’t specify an upcharge for any sides from the list that come free. A server said that should have been explained and removed the charge.

I’d have complained about the whole experience (which is very unlike me) but it didn’t seem fair to get my bill waived and then write an honest piece here. So I paid my bill.

You have to expect some kinks when a restaurant opens; that’s the tradeoff for trying a place early. This was a perfect storm of kinks, though, even if you have to think the owners’ track record means the place will soon have its act together.

Would I return? Based on the first experience, yes; based on the second, no. So, maybe, but not right now. If you’re interested in trying it, you might enjoy it, but be prepared to assert yourself simply to be waited on.

* Update, March 2014: A going-away dinner for a colleague took place here. Service was good for a Saturday night and three tables of 26 people. I had a mushroom and goat cheese burger ($13), which was only okay, tasting like a pre-made patty and sliding around and off the outmatched potato bun. To be fair, another friend had the same thing and thought it was great. A friend who’s a veteran of these Restaurant of the Weeks had a veggie stack and wasn’t impressed. So, this place is a fun night out, comfortable, but the food is variable.

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dailybulletin.com getting update

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Look at the Daily Bulletin’s website (if your eyeballs can stand it) for one last view of the old, outdated and cluttered format. They tell us that on Thursday, the site’s redesign will debut.

The preview I’ve seen looks like a vast improvement, and the home page has about 90 percent fewer headlines/links. It should be easier to find, or stumble upon, my columns. All the papers in our chain are supposed to be getting the redesign simultaneously.

Feel free to comment here on the old and new designs and their functionality.

* Head fake! At 5:30 p.m. Wednesday they announced the launch has been postponed to next Tuesday. Plenty more time to gaze lovingly, or in horror, at our website.

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Pie judges had plenty of wedge issues

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I was a judge, one of 16, at the Claremont Pie Festival on Saturday. I describe the experience in my Wednesday column.

Above, I’m hard at work, a moment captured by impish Claremont Councilman Sam Pedroza, who wasn’t a judge (Corey Calaycay was) but kibitzed with us. Below, a typical serving, of which we generally ate half, and below that, the scene afterward in which bakers served free tastes of their entries.

piefest2piefest3And you can watch a 45-second video — my first, and it shows — of a portion of the pie-eating contest here.

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Reading Log: July 2013

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Books acquired: “Pulling a Train,” “Getting in the Wind,” Harlan Ellison; “The Incredible Double,” Owen Hill; “On Reading,” Andre Kortesz.

Books read: “Approaching Oblivion,” “Spider Kiss,” Harlan Ellison; “Phoenix Without Ashes,” Edward Bryant and Harlan Ellison; “The Book of Ellison,” Andrew Porter, ed.; “Elvis: The Illustrated Record,” Roy Carr and Mick Farren; “Much Ado About Nothing,” William Shakespeare.

Hope summertime is treating you book lovers well. My July was something of a repeat of June, although I don’t think of this as summer doldrums, but rather a surprisingly single-minded attack on some of my oldest unread books. It’s like I’m rushing my bookshelves and screaming “Tora! Tora! Tora!” or maybe “Don’t read until you see the whites of their spines!”

My six books in July, like my six books in June, were all tomes that date to my boyhood in bucolic Illinois, and somehow unread, all or in part, until now. Instead of the five Harlan Ellisons and one rock music book of June, in July I diversified by reading four Harlan Ellisons, one rock music book and one Shakespeare play. Crazy, man, crazy.

I’m trying to finish Ellison’s fiction and am making great strides, with only a half-dozen books left (er, not counting the two recently published books I acquired in July). “Approaching Oblivion” was perhaps the height, or nadir, of his “message” fiction — it was published in 1974, which says it all; “Spider Kiss” is a good, early (1961) rock novel about an Elvis/Jerry Lee Lewis figure; “Phoenix” is a fun novelization of a ’70s TV pilot that today might make a dandy “Under the Dome”-type miniseries but, as a novel, leaves you hanging; and “Book” is hagiography, not worth the reading.

The Elvis book, from 1982, discusses each LP, 45 and EP to that date, with commentary and biography; the authors’ judgments are sharp and they dismiss much of his prodigious output while praising the highlights. I learned a lot, perhaps all I really need to read about his often-sad life, and was pointed in the direction of a few albums I didn’t have, “Lovin’ You” and “From Elvis in Memphis” notably.

I saw the recent Joss Whedon movie version of “Much Ado,” done in modern dress in his LA backyard, but with the original dialogue, and it might be my favorite film of 2013 so far. (Runners-up: “Frances Ha,” “The Way, Way Back,” “Before Midnight.”) Seemed like a good time to read the play, which turns out to be awfully good too. Who knew? Beatrice is practically 21st-century modern, and her proto-feminist attitude and dialogue, and the transformation she effects on Benedick, are astonishing. Also, it’s really funny.

I read the play out of my ginormous “Riverside Shakespeare” college textbook, which has every play. I read “Richard II” a couple of years ago and said you’d be seeing this book a lot more often here, and instead this is its first appearance since then. I’ll try to pick up the pace.

It’s satisfying to have whittled down the number of really, really long-lived books in my collection, even if there’s still 50 or so left, plus most of Shakespeare’s plays.

What did you read during July, or have you been snoozing under a beach umbrella, a novel regretfully untouched by your sunscreen-streaked fingers?

Next month: A lot fewer Harlan Ellison books. (Probably.)

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Gone but (shudder) not forgotten

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Big Boy 020I don’t know what they sold in this store on Monte Vista Avenue in Montclair, probably wigs, but the name and logo always creeped me out when I’d drive by, making me think of, oh, I dunno, dolls with human hair that might come to life and strangle you in your sleep, while looking perky and innocent when found over your bruised corpse.

Now that the store is out of business, I thought I’d memorialize it before the sign is plucked.

 

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Restaurant of the Week: Thai Orchid Garden

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Thai Orchid Garden, 315 E. Foothill Blvd. (at Towne), Pomona

Like an unmarked L.A. nightclub, you have to be an insider to know Thai Orchid Garden exists. Located on an unremarkable stretch of Foothill Boulevard, somewhere west of Towne Avenue but east of Garey Avenue, there is a sign at the curb, true, but the small building is set back from the street beyond probably 100 feet of asphalt parking lot. By the time you see the building, you’ve driven past it.

I ate there once, some six years ago, and had a generally positive impression of the food, and a very positive impression of the decor, which has a lot of ornate teak, and a small shrine, plus booths that feel almost enclosed thanks to a wooden structure around each. For whatever reason, I never wrote about it. Maybe I forgot. The friend who accompanied me says: “I remember liking it and thinking I’d go back. I just never think about it. It’s set too far back.”

An acquaintance suggested recently that we meet up at Thai Orchid Garden for lunch, and I was happy for the chance to try the restaurant I now think of as Thai OG again.

The decor was still impressive, maybe moreso than in my memory. From the extensive lunch specials, 23 items in all, I had the yellow curry, pictured below, and he had the garlic and pepper pork (each $7.75). They came with soup, small salad and rice. Mine was good, and his looked really good. Asked by the server in Thai how we liked our food, he replied in that language, “Delicious! We’re so happy we could die.” He explained: “That’s an idiom.”

The menu has 112 numbered items, plus the 23 lunch specials, plus another 35 special items and desserts. I had a fried banana with coconut ice cream ($5), he had sticky rice with mango ($6). Thai Orchid Garden has been there since 1978, making it one of the oldest Thai restaurants in these parts, if not the oldest. It’s worth a visit, if you can find it. (Offering some assistance, the latitude and longitude are on the restaurant’s website.)

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