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.