Recently in Restaurants: Chino Hills Category

Pho N Mor, 3233 Grand Ave. (at Peyton), Chino Hills

The Albertsons center in Chino Hills reflects the city's growing Asian population: There are Japanese, Chinese and Korean restaurants and a foot massage business, and now there's Pho N Mor, which has Vietnamese food and opened in late 2011. I haven't done a comprehensive survey, but there may be only one other Vietnamese restaurant in Chino Hills.

I had lunch at Pho N Mor recently with a friend. It's decorated in modern style, making the most of a small space, and surrounded by windows on two sides, letting in plenty of natural light. Service was friendly and many tables were occupied.

It was a hot day and I wasn't in the mood for a bowl of pho, the popular Vietnamese soup, so I opted for broken rice with barbecued pork ($6.75, pictured), plus a mango smoothie ($3.25). My friend opted for pad Thai with chicken ($8).

I liked my dish, but they used regular rice, not the variety known as broken rice. The mango smoothie was a mango freeze, made with crushed ice, not milk. The pad Thai looked good, but of course, that's Thai, not Vietnamese.

So, a mixed verdict: As a sort of entry-level Vietnamese experience, this was fine, but aficionados would probably want to head to Diamond Bar, Chino or Pomona.

The Boiling Point, 13089 Peyton Drive (at Beverly Glen), Chino Hills

Chino Hills has a variety of superior Chinese and Japanese restaurants that are more authentic than the norm for this area. One of the latest is The Boiling Point, open since July 2011 in the Crossroads Marketplace complex, which has locations in seven other Asian neighborhoods in the U.S. and Canada.

It specializes in soup and boba tea. On a recent Saturday at luncthime, there was a signup sheet and a line out the door. Once seated, my friends and I were the only non-Asians in the place, usually a good sign.

The servers were rushed, but their English was very good. I ordered the seafood and tofu soup (pictured below) and my friends had the beef soup and the Taiwanese spicy soup. Each was $10 and included a bowl of rice or noodles and a tea. The soup arrived in a serving bowl atop a butane flame.

Candidly, we weren't wowed, but I think it was more a case of cultural differences than the food itself. It wasn't soup as we would expect it but rather various ingredients in boiling water, which the staff would cheerfully offer to refill from a pot much as a waitress might refill a cup of coffee.

One friend said the flavors were simply hot rather than complex while the other felt silly blowing on hot soup that was sitting atop a flame. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to eat out of the bowl or transfer the soup, or maybe just the ingredients, to the rice bowl. White people out of their depth is always a charming sight.

So, let me recommend Boiling Point for the adventurous and for those to whom this sort of thing is second nature. I'm honestly curious to hear others' reactions.

Dripp, 13855 City Center Drive (at Grand), Shoppes at Chino Hills

Dripp, a new coffeehouse at the Shoppes center in Chino Hills that opened in November 2011, took the place of a Peets on a busy corner. In a surprise to me, this is a one-off coffeehouse, not a chain, although it certainly could become one. A lot of money was poured into the space to revamp it and install some complex drip coffee equipment.

The beans are roasted by high-end LA coffeehouse Intelligentsia. You'll have to find someone else to explain or critique this aspect (the website uses such terms as "ambrosial coffees," "flavor-enhancing methods" and "Japanese drip bar") because I don't drink coffee. But I visited recently with three friends and they were impressed.

What I can tell you about is the ice cream. Dripp has eight flavors of ice cream and eight types of cookies. The sandwiches ($4) are made to order and you can choose two different cookie types if you like.

I had peanut butter ice cream between two peanut butter chip chocolate cookies. As you can see, they put a spoon in it and that's recommended for getting started. The cookies and the ice cream both were amazing. You can also get ice cream solo in one, two or three scoops, or the cookies by themselves.

The coffeehouse looks like hipster central: exposed piping, menus attached to pieces of distressed wood, ropes hanging from the ceiling, antiques, a loft upstairs with sofas and chairs. An annoying notice on the door reads "No Photography," which is roundly ignored. There's a shady patio outside.

But, wait: Dripp? At the Shoppes? As my local friend told me: "It's Chino Hills. We can afford some extra letters."

Nara Japanese Restaurant, 3277 Grand Ave. (at Peyton), Chino Hills

Chino Hills has a fair number of sushi bars. Nara is the oldest, opening in 1996, which in Chino Hills terms is practically the dawn of time (cityhood was in 1991). Like everything else in Chino Hills, Nara is in a shopping center, this one across Peyton from the Shoppes. The sign reads, generically, Japanese Restaurant, a hint that the sign was a way to introduce the pioneering restaurant to a skittish city.

Inside, the feel is much more promising: small, intimate, quiet on a Tuesday evening despite the presence of several diners. It's arranged such that you could have a semi-private meal here even though the space is about the size of your living room.

I sat at the sushi bar and had a nice meal with sushi off the regular menu and off the specials board. Live scallops ($7.50) came from a shell pried open in front of me; black cod ($8.50, pictured top right) and Oregon albacore tuna ($7.50) were both tasty; and the salmon skin cut roll ($4.95, pictured below right), one of my standard orders, arrived in larger rolls than I've usually seen it. It was intricately prepared, the skin crisped in an oven.

Ojiya and Rokuan are other above-average Japanese restaurants in Chino Hills that I've tried. It would take a more expert diner than me to rank them, but Nara wouldn't seem out of place in their company.

Wood Ranch BBQ and Grill, 3335 Grand Ave. (at Peyton), Chino Hills

Wood Ranch is a chain, and while I rarely spotlight chains here, I do so on occasion when one has only a few Inland Valley locations. Such is the case with Wood Ranch, which has a spot in the Shoppes at Chino Hills and otherwise nothing closer to us than Corona.

There's an outdoor patio, covered, a bar with copious seating and a spacious dining room with a beam ceiling, lots of wood and ample, comfortable booths. It's not overly light and not overly loud. Upscale and tranquil for a barbecue restaurant -- which will be either a turn-on or a turn-off, depending on your tastes. At least it's not hoked up.

The menu has beef ribs, tri-tip, chicken, burgers and salads. I got the immodestly named America's Best BBQ Tri-Tip Sandwich ($12) and a side of smashed sweet potatoes. Those could be America's Best Smashed Sweet Potatoes (they were excellent) but the sandwich was more like America's Most Adequate BBQ Tri-Tip (it was fine but didn't wow me, and the sauce was sweeter than I'd like).

My lunch companion, who eats there all the time, had the pulled pork sandwich (price forgotten), also with potatoes, and enjoyed it.

Later a foodie friend told me she loves the salmon. Well, maybe another visit. I'd give the edge to Lucille's (which also has a Chino Hills location, as well as one in Rancho Cucamonga) for chain barbecue, but I've got no beef with Wood Ranch.

Seoul Garden, 4200 Chino Hills Parkway No. 130 (at Pipeline), Chino Hills

Seoul Garden is in a sort of casual-restaurant row near Indian, Mexican and other ethnic eateries clustered in an outlying building in the Chino Hills Marketplace center. It's small but makes good use of the limited space, with cheerful yellow walls, a few partitions and exotic decor.

A couple of us had lunch there recently. Seoul Garden has various lunch deals, some depending on the day of the week. I had the Korean BBQ lunch box ($8.45 on Mondays) and my lunch companion had beef bulgogi ($5.45). A Korean food first-timer, he found the bulgogi (chopped, marinated beef) tender and very tasty. "I'm going to drag some people here," he vowed. My short rib lunch was also pretty good. Service was friendly.

As Korean food goes, not outstanding like Young Dong Tofu House elsewhere in town, but pleasant.

Mes Amis, 14720 Pipeline Ave. (at Chino Hills Parkway), Chino HIlls

Mes Amis opened in January in half of a contemporary glass and steel building just north of a busy intersection. My Chino Hills friends found it on Yelp (where Mes Amis currently gets 4 1/2 stars) and that night four of us had dinner before watching "Lost."

The interior is sleek, with plenty of natural light, tables and no booths, a gold and rust color scheme, tasteful decor and a TV silently playing in one corner. Most of the cooking can be seen from the dining room.

The novelty, as outlined in Friday's column, is that Mes Amis has two locations: London and Chino Hills. (Perhaps Paris was too crowded.) The owners are brothers, a continent apart, and although the menus are similar, each owns his own location.

The menu is Lebanese, but with a modern take, and the food shows a high level of care. We had a "journey," one of four appetizer plates that cost $9.95 (for now). It had four items, like a bento box, and divided among four people, it was almost a meal.

Our entrees included mixed kabobs with lamb and chicken (pictured) and the Double Treasure, which is lamb patties with two sauces. The entrees were around $15. After the "journey," we probably could have ordered two or three entrees instead of four. The meat was tender, the grilled vegetables delicious, the presentation thoughtful. We all liked our food quite a bit.

Service is non-intrusive and leisurely, by design. We certainly weren't rushed; indeed, our server took our "journey" order and didn't return to take our entree order until we had finished the appetizer. Owner Sammy Elias later told me that was slower than even he'd like, but that the idea is to slow down to eat as the Lebanese do.

Our suggestion would be a note to this effect on the menu, or an explanation from the server that could begin: "Have you dined with us before? Our philosophy is..." Many diners will embrace the policy, but it may be counterproductive (see the criticism on Yelp about the service) not to tell us what it is.

That quibble aside, we liked Mes Amis very much and are anticipating our next visit, and our next "journey." The only local Lebanese restaurant at this level that I'm aware of is Casablanca in Claremont, and Mes Amis may be even better.

Young Dong Tofu, 3233 Grand Ave. (at Peyton), Chino Hills

Yes, it's a name that could launch a thousand off-color jokes, but forget the name and concentrate on the food. Young Dong has locations in Arcadia and San Gabriel besides this one in a neighborhood shopping center with an Albertsons. The Young Dong exterior is floor to ceiling glass, exposing the food hall atmosphere inside: rows of tables, bright lighting, minimal decor and lots of customers.

First they bring out the Korean side dishes: a half-dozen small plates with kimchi, fried pancake, seaweed, etc.

Our table of four ordered multiple dishes. Seafood and beef tofu soup, dumpling tofu soup and mushroom tofu soup ($8.83 each) come in bubbling pots, with a stone pot of rice on the side. Once they stopped bubbling, they were quite good, spiced to order (two of us went with medium, one with extra spicy). Spicy pork and BBQ beef ($13.95 each) were plates heaped with the meat in question, sweet and tender.

I've had Korean food only a few times, so I'm still a neophyte, but we all liked our meals very much and would go back. People on Yelp are excited too.

Rokuan, 14230 Chino Hills Parkway (at Grand), Chino Hills.

Chino Hills is home to Ojiya, a Japanese restaurant well above the norm for the 909. Yelp led me to Rokuan, another Chino Hills Japanese restaurant that, like Ojiya, gets great ratings. I tried Rokuan out Tuesday evening with three friends before "Lost."

Located in a small shopping center with a Stater Brothers market, Rokuan's sign says only "Sushi" ("Rokuan" appears on the door.) The interior is less generic. It's small, dimly lit, with five dark wooden booths, without padding, that would each seat eight; there's also one standard table and a nine-seat sushi bar. A sign warns the parents of noisy children.

Most of the crowd that night was Asian, likely a good sign. Our table got teriyaki salmon with spicy tuna rolls ($20.95), a chirashi bowl ($16.95), a beef teriyaki bowl ($10.50), and assorted sushi: white tuna ($5), scallops ($5.25), squid ($4) and salmon skin cut roll ($5.95).

All four of us were impressed by the quality of the ingredients, their freshness and their taste. Rokuan doesn't skimp on the fish, either: The cuts were generous. Service was attentive, if perhaps too eager to remove plates as they emptied.

Chino Hills isn't easy to get to from my home in Claremont or my office in Ontario, but it's now my favorite city for sushi.

The Boiler, 4665 Chino Hills Parkway (at Ramona), Chino Hills.

Reader Charles Bentley once asked us in vain about the presence of any New Orleans-style restaurants in the Inland Valley, after the demise of New Orleans Express/Crescent City Cafe. Well, we now have one, albeit with an untraditional take on the cuisine.

The Boiler, a restaurant offering "steam kettle cooking," opened at the start of June in The Commons at Chino Hills. I had dinner there a couple of weeks ago with my Chino Hills friends. (Everyone should have Chino Hills friends.)

The interior is dominated by a U-shaped bar at which most customers sit. The menu is short and almost entirely seafood. They have gumbo, jambalaya, oysters and pan roasts, plus some pastas.

The sauces are made in advance from scratch and once you choose your item and the degree of spiciness from 1 to 10, they quickly steam it in a small kettle in front of you, put it in a big bowl and hand it over.

I had the pan roast house ($18.95) with shrimp, crab, lobster, clams and trinity in a tomato cream-based sauce. My friends had pan roast crab ($17.95) and pan roast clam ($13.95).

We liked the food and took home the extra. One remarked lyrically on the "layers of flavor." We weren't convinced of the accuracy of the spice levels, with my "4" and another's "7" tasting about the same, but that's fine. I never know what the deal is with the sauces they mix at your table at P.F. Chang either. You just accept the gimmick and move on.

The service was friendly, and the person who explained the concept to us and answered our questions turned out to be the owner. Surprisingly, this is a single-location business, although he hopes to expand. He developed the recipes at the Oyster Bar in Las Vegas.

Our group's only quibble is that the prices (entrees $12.95 to $21.95) might be a couple of bucks high given the fast-casual setting.

You can view the menu online here.

And what is The Commons at Chino Hills? Just off the 71, it's the latest happening spot in suburbia. There's a Pei Wei (the 909's sole survivor after the Rancho Cucamonga one shut down last year), a wine bar with live jazz named Wine Down, a Lucille's BBQ, Corner Bakery, Wahoo's and BJ's, not to mention a Lowe's and a Toys R Us, with more stuff coming, in theory at least (what with the economy and the developer's bankruptcy).

Masala Bowl, 4200 Chino Hills Parkway, Chino Hills.

Indian food is still a mystery to most of America, unlike many other ethnic cuisines. Masala Bowl is a small chain -- locations in Irvine, Tustin, Chino Hills and Plano, Texas, with more coming -- that attempts to remedy that by offering a simplified menu and walk-up service.

The Chino Hills location is in the Chino Hills Marketplace, a sprawling shopping center just off the 71 Freeway. Inside there's a flat screen TV with Indian music videos and a few decorative touches, but mostly it's the standard exposed-pipe, no-frills interior.

The woman at the counter (who was Indian) explained the menu. They have tandoori-cooked dishes and wraps, but the primary entree is curry. There are seven curries, from mild to spicy, and eight meats or vegetables, meaning 56 possible combinations.

I got lamb tikka masala ($7.49 on its own), which is chunks of lamb in a creamy tomato sauce. It arrived at my table in a plastic bowl with basmati rice. Pretty good stuff. I got the meal as a combo ($9.48) with a soda and samosa bites ($1.19 on its own), crispy pockets filled with potatoes. I also ordered garlic naan ($2.49) and bhel ($3.79), a puffed rice mixture with chopped onions and tomatoes.

The bhel was interesting, a sort of dry, crispy salad, but perhaps an acquired taste. The samosa bites were just okay. I couldn't finish all this, so lids were brought for the two bowls, which were easily portable.

Well, Masala Bowl is no Haandi, but it's not meant to be. As a low-priced, casual introduction to Indian food, it's worth a visit. I noticed another couple of restaurants in the Marketplace I hadn't tried and another one across the street when I exited the parking lot onto Pipeline, which means I'm already looking forward to my next excuse to head to Chino Hills.

Pacific Fish Grill, 13865 City Center Drive (at Peyton), Chino Hills.

Pacific Fish Grill is at the Shoppes at Chino Hills and, from what I can gather, is a single-location restaurant, although it could be a chain in the making. It's located between a Panera and a Johnny Rockets near Barnes & Noble.

Like Louie's Chicken and Fish Grill in Upland, featured here last week, Pacific Fish is a rarity, a seafood-based fast-casual restaurant. Grilled fish plates run $8 to $15 and come with rice, salad and pita bread. They also have salads, fried fish, sandwiches, wraps and tacos. View the menu here.

I ate here in February after the library dedication when I bumped into friends and we decided to have lunch. That meal I ordered the tilapia plate ($8.95) with lemon-oregano seasoning. Not bad.

I returned recently (this time with my camera) and ordered a salmon caesar salad with Cajun seasoning ($10.95). I liked it. Not an outstanding piece of fish or anything, but it was fine, and there was enough salmon for each bite of salad.

There's an open kitchen, high ceilings with visible piping and slowly revolving ceiling fans.

A place like this (or Louie's) seems like a fairly inexpensive, no-fuss way to get more seafood in your diet. People on Yelp say the fish tacos are good; on Tuesdays they're 99 cents.

City Broiler, 12959 Peyton Drive (at Rock Springs), Chino Hills.

In a standalone building in a shopping center on the north end of Chino Hills, City Broiler is reminiscent of New York Grill at Ontario Mills. Both are white tablecloth restaurants, lightly swank, with a Big Apple theme. City Broiler took over in 2007 from Peppino's, a short-lived Italian eatery.

The interior is brick with wood trim, brass and etched glass. There are some stylish B&W NYC photos dotting the walls. The restaurant feels urban, certainly more urban than Chino Hills, even if it is across the parking lot from a Wendy's.

I ate there Wednesday night with a couple of friends who live nearby and like the place. We sat in the bar area, which I would recommend for a casual experience. We ordered the mini-pizza with mushrooms ($6) and the crab cake sandwich ($8) off the bar menu and the fish and chips ($12.50) off the regular menu. The latter two came with a side dish; we got fruit and mixed vegetables, respectively.

We traded food and none of us were disappointed. I wasn't blown away, but I would eat there again. Service was attentive and the atmosphere is appealing. It's nice to see a family-owned sit-down restaurant.

The specialties are steak and seafood, by the way, although they also have sandwiches, salads and pizzas. You can view the menu and photos here.

Ojiya, 4183 Chino Hills Parkway, Suite J (at Pipeline), Chino Hills

I ate at Ojiya last week but saved the review for this week. It's yet another of the sit-down restaurants in Chino Hills that the masses seem unfamiliar with. But it got good reviews on Yelp, so I met up with a couple of CHills friends for dinner.

Ojiya is in a strip mall -- it's a couple of doors from Peking Deli, a Chinese restaurant reviewed favorably here a while back -- and once you're inside you forget you're in a strip mall. It's a cozy interior with touches of bamboo and with a serious-looking sushi bar. I felt like I was in Little Tokyo.

I ordered various nigiri sushi items, especially ones I rarely see elsewhere: Spanish mackerel, seared salmon, fatty albacore and large scallop, plus my baseline dish, the salmon skin cut roll. (I don't remember the individual prices but they added up to about $24.)

I'm confident in saying that Ojiya is the best sushi I've had in the 909. Then again, there's still Rokuan, another Yelp favorite in Chino Hills that is still on my list.

My friends enjoyed their food, a chicken teriyaki bowl and a salmon teriyaki/crunch roll combination plate. Our only complaint was the green salad of iceberg lettuce was boring. At least it was only $3 for me, and free for them with their meal.

We met up, by the way, at 6:30 p.m. on a weekday, and the place was mostly empty. It quickly began filling up. By 7:45, when we left, the dining room was full.

Swasdee Thai Cuisine, 14720 Pipeline Ave., Suite B, Chino Hills.

One reason I kept going to events concerning development of The Shoppes (ground breaking, media tour, second media tour) is that each one was in the late morning, perfect timing to eat lunch afterward in Chino Hills. (The developers provided food each time but I skipped it.) Not that Chino Hills is a culinary mecca -- the city is just so far from our Ontario office that it's a rare treat to be there.

And the city does have some good places to eat. Residents there are always complaining about the lack of sitdown restaurants, but their city has more than they think. It's just that most are ethnic eateries, non-chains, and maybe for that reason they're not quite what the average person is looking for.

All I know is, my list of places to investigate in Chino Hills is a half-dozen long, and that's pre-Shoppes. On Thursday I went looking for one of two sushi bars I've read about and couldn't find it -- drat those giant shopping centers and five-digit addresses -- but while exiting Chino Hills Marketplace on the Pipeline side, I looked across Pipeline and saw a sign for Swasdee Thai. Well, any port in a storm. I drove directly across the street and into the business park.

Swasdee (the word is said to be a greeting in the Thai language) is a brand-new restaurant in a brand-new building, open "one month and one week," the server told me. The interior has a sleek, mod design with comfortable booths and a small bar. The lighting is dim, the glasses are fluted. Definitely a swankier environment than Mix Bowl.

The menu is upscale too, as are the prices. Appetizers are $6.95 to $15.95; entrees range from $7.95 to $13.95. I had Drunken Noodle ($8.95) and a Thai iced tea ($2.25). Important note: With some of the noodle dishes, the price is without meat; adding chicken, pork, beef or shrimp is $2 more, and seafood is $3 more. So my noodles with chicken actually cost $10.95.

A little pricy. Still, I have to say, my food was a cut above. Drunken Noodle was a bowl of broad, flat noodles with generous cuts of carrots, onions, tomatoes and chunks of chicken, all mildly spicy. The serving was large enough to take home half.

Across from the entrance just feet from the door was a second building with Roscoe's Famous Deli, and based on the names on the door it's owned and operated by the people formerly behind Heroes in Claremont.

So there's yet another Chino Hills restaurant to try, not to mention two sushi bars, two more authentic Chinese eateries and who knows what else. As we left The Shoppes Thursday morning, the city's spokeswoman suggested a tour sometime of the under-construction City Hall and I'm certainly amenable to that.

As long as we schedule it for around 10:30 a.m.

Good Time Cafe, 2923 Chino Ave., Suite H4, Chino Hills.

Attentive readers will remember the debate in this space about the lack of real Chinese food in the Inland Valley. Since then I've written about a find in Chino Hills, the Peking Deli. Well, here's a second Chino Hills Chinese place that's just as good.

Good Time Cafe occupies a wide, shallow storefront in the 99 Ranch Market center at Peyton Drive and Chino Avenue, just a bit south of Pomona. As the sign on the door promises, it serves Taiwanese-style cooking. The menu boasts 192 items, including an astonishing 47 appetizers. Granted, some of them are only for the hardy -- pig blood rice cake, anyone? -- but there's plenty for the rest of us, and dozens of soups, noodle and rice dishes, seafood and meat entrees, vegetarian items and a category called potage, a kind of porridge.

Oddly, unlike the rest of the menu, names of the menu's 22 beverages are untranslated from the Chinese. Better ask for help there.

I had Tainan's Peddler Noodle, dried rather than as soup. It had noodles, ground sausage and a tea-simmered hardboiled egg, a dish made in what I'm told is the style of street food in the Taiwanese city of Tainan. It was delicious and filling. This $4.95 entree came with a free pot of hot tea. Total outlay with tax and tip: $6. You can't beat that with a chopstick.

Service was friendly, the dining room was immaculate and a flat screen TV broadcast Chinese language news. To sum up, yes, I had a good time at the Good Time Cafe.

And I'm looking forward to my next meal here, even if it's unlikely to be No. 176, fried kidney with sesame oil.

Peking Deli, 4183 Chino Hills Parkway Suite F-G, Chino Hills

Diligent readers will recall this blog's lament about the paucity of non-Americanized Chinese restaurants in the Inland Valley. My hope was that Chino Hills, with its proximity to Diamond Bar's Asian population, might have something a bit more interesting. A friend recommended a place, and some Internet research turned up a second.

We tried the second one -- we'll go back for the first -- on Tuesday. That was Peking Deli, which is in a strip mall off the 71 Freeway at Pipeline. It's a simple storefront operation with table service. Nothing fancy, but comfortable.

The menu has 118 items, and while it includes such American staples as orange chicken and pork fried rice, there are plenty of dishes one doesn't encounter in the 909. As another friend said after scanning the takeout menu later, "This is totally Taiwanese style."

There are two dozen soups, not just hot and sour and egg flower but seafood tofu, shredded pork with preserved pickle, and salted duck. Cold appetizers don't even have English translations but include beef brisket, duck leg, tripe and pig ear. (Try ordering pig ear at Panda Express and see what happens.)

We had pork fried rice cake ($5.25), dry noodle with Peking sauce and sesame sauce ($4.50) and beef with spicy sauce ($8.75). My friend liked the latter two best; I preferred the rice cake. It's not like the diet-food rice cake but rather slices of soft, chewy rice that resemble bamboo shoots.

All the customers but us were Asian, a good sign. Peking Deli has been in business four years and survives on word of mouth, our server told us. But she was delighted to learn that the restaurant had been well-reviewed on Yelp.com.

The only downside to the place is that it closes at 8:30. They didn't kick us out, but within two minutes of our departure, the lights were out.

I hope to go back sometime -- after first sampling that other Chino Hills Chinese restaurant.

Bravo Burgers, 1215 N. White Ave. (at Orange Grove), Pomona; also 4968 Pipeline Ave. (at Chino Hills Parkway), Chino Hills.

Before Monday's Pomona council meeting, I dropped into Bravo Burgers for a bite. It's apparently a small chain operation, with an outlet in La Verne, among other cities. The one I visited is in Pomona, at Orange Grove and White avenues, next to DiCarlo Liquor and its neon champagne bubbles sign.

Nicer inside than you'd expect -- Bravo, not DiCarlo -- and my $2.85 burger was hot and satisfying, with a thick tomato slice, lettuce, pickles and onion. I like how it came not only wrapped in paper, but served on a paper plate. Made me think of a more genteel era when this newfangled item might have been called a hamburger sandwich.

Overall, I'd rank the Bravo experience up there with Golden Ox, Classic 66, K 'n F and Samo's, Pomona's other contributions to burger excellence. I say bravo.