Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [245]
In the restaurant, you’ll find something on the menu for every kind of seafood fancier (and even charbroiled chicken and chicken nuggets for fishphobes), ranging from the glorious fisherman’s stew known as cioppino to fish tacos and salmon burgers (the latter advertised as low fat and low cal). When Dungeness crab is coming in fresh from the cold Pacific, that’s all we care to know about, but any other time of year, we will gladly plow into one of Buz’s umpteen different kinds of fried seafood basket, featuring prawns, oysters, catfish, and calamari (or all possible combinations thereof). In addition, there are seafood wraps, salads, sandwiches, and burritos, and a long list of fish available charbroiled with barbecue sauce, teriyaki sauce, garlic sauce, or lemon butter.
To accompany meals, Buz’s “almost famous” sourdough bread is baked in outdoor ovens throughout the day.
Café at the Bug
6979 Hwy. 140
209–966–6666
Midpines, CA 95345
BLD | $
If you are coming to Yosemite to hike, bike, swim, or otherwise savor the wilderness, but want to stay in a room or tent cabin for the evening, you won’t do better than the Yosemite Bug Mountain Resort. And if you’re looking for a nice place to eat other than around a campfire, the Café at the Bug is swell.
It’s a three-meal-a-day place with outdoor patios and a glassed-in deck for scenic dining and a menu with choices that range from carnivorous to vegan. You can start the day with a giant buckwheat pancake (available vegan or not), muesli, or eggs or tofu egg substitutes. And while you are having breakfast you can have the kitchen prepare a boxed lunch for the trail. We relished our dinner of stuffed trout with rice and seasonal vegetables and a handsome sirloin steak with potatoes. We were especially fond of the chocolate cake served for dessert; while we cleaned the last of it from our plates, we listened to neighbors rave over their cheesecake.
Service is casual, semi-cafeteria-style. Order at the counter and pick your own table. It is customary for customers to bus their own tables at the end of a meal.
Clifton’s Cafeteria
648 S. Broadway
213–627–1673
Los Angeles, CA
LD | $
Clifton’s cafeteria is an amazing place to eat. Built to represent the Golden State’s redwood forests, its interior décor includes granite cliffs and boulders, babbling brooks, walls that resemble tree trunks, and stunning (if faded) murals of forest scenes. The food line is immense, with choices that include fried chicken with buttermilk biscuits, oxtail stew, turkey and dressing, side dishes ranging from whipped or fried potatoes to “cranberry jewel gelatin,” and cheerfully corny desserts such as fruit cocktail torte and strawberry pie. For those with fond memories of school lunch, Clifton’s also offers grilled cheese sandwiches cooked crisp and pressed flat as a pancake.
We like Clifton’s plenty, but its surroundings stink. When it opened in 1935, Broadway was a fashionable thoroughfare. Today the street can be an intimidating place to walk, especially at night. Once you get to Clifton’s, though, you cannot help but love Los Angeles all over again, especially when you gaze down at the sidewalk below its marquee. Here, a magnificent tile mosaic in a sunburst pattern shows the many scenic wonders that once made southern California such an alluring place: the Rose Bowl, the Hollywood Bowl, the oil fields, the deserts, the missions, City Hall, the movie studios, and Catalina Island. To walk across this magic picture and enter the redwood forest dining room, then tuck into a tray of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and gravy, with millionaire pie for dessert (mounded with whipped cream, crushed pineapple, and pecans), is to taste an optimistic city where the world seems honest and new at every meal.
Cole’s P.E. Buffet
118 East 6th St.
213–622–4090
Los Angeles, CA
BLD | $
Cole’s P.E. Buffet claims to have invented the French dip sandwich in 1908, ten years before Philippe’s (California). The story here is that a hungry