Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [252]
Philippe’s remains a sawdust-on-the-floor, people-watcher’s paradise. It moved from its original location in 1951 when the freeway was built, and the current quarters are reminiscent of an urban hash house from a mid-century film noir. Place your order with a carver at the counter, then carry it to a tall chairs at a chest-high communal table where your dining companions will range from racetrack touts and refugees from the nearby court house to So-Cal creative types desperately seeking a dose of old-fashioned reality.
The sliced beef is soft and tender, the roll is fresh, and the gravy is radiant with protein savor. Philippe’s also offers French-dipped lamb and ham, available with cheese on top and sided by pickles, coleslaw, and potato or macaroni salad. The one essential add-on is Philippe’s own mustard, a roaring-hot emulsion that is beef’s best friend. In addition, customers can select from a full array of such old-fashioned bar-room grub as pickled eggs and pigs’ feet. The price of coffee is a dime per cup.
Ramona Café
628 Main St.
760–789–8656
Ramona, CA
BLD | $$
Here is a menu that honors potatoes. No mere side dish, Ramona Café’s glistening chunks of home-fried potato are the underpinnings of whole breakfasts piled into ceramic skillets. Design your own, selecting four toppings from a list that includes ham, bacon, taco meat, chorizo sausage, four kinds of cheese, crushed garlic, and jalapeños. Or choose the Kitchen Sink, which is a panful of hunky home fries loaded with some of everything, including sausage gravy and a couple of eggs, and sided by an immense squared-off biscuit. If you want a meal that is less complicated, but nearly as satisfying, consider Ramona Café’s blue-ribbon cinnamon roll: a half-pound circle of hot, sweet pastry veined with cinnamon sugar and accompanied by two paper cups of butter.
Other good breakfast options include omelets of all kinds. Of special note is the Gilroy Omelet, named for the California town that has proclaimed itself the garlic capital of the world: ham, bacon, mushrooms, Cheddar and Jack cheeses, plus lots and lots of garlic.
While breakfast is the meal by which many travelers know Ramona Café, it also happens to be a fine place for hearty lunch. There are good-size cheeseburgers, hot meat loaf sandwiches, turkey potpie, and fine fried chicken that is crusted with breading made from the café’s breakfast biscuits. The list of pies is a long one, including apple and rhubarb and a chocolate peanut butter pie that we once had as dessert for breakfast before a long drive inland, where good eats grow scarce.
By the way, we were clued into this place many years ago by singing cowboy Roy Rogers, who used to stop by regularly for hamburgers and milkshakes on his way out to the desert. Roy told us how much he enjoyed dunking hot home fries into the yolks of over-easy eggs.
Rick’s Rather Rich Ice Cream
3946 Middlefield Rd.
650–493–6553
Palo Alto, CA
$
Do not for a moment believe the name of this 1958-vintage ice cream parlor. True, Rick’s sorbets may not be rich, but the ice creams are loaded! Exotic flavors rule in the congenial parlor decorated with paintings of cows, but even such “Rick-o-Mendations” as white chocolate ginger and saffron pistachio impress you foremost with their creaminess. For us, the most compelling flavor in the house is chocolate ginger, but it’s hard not to explore such oddities as kulfi (saffron and pistachios), Computer Chip (chocolate chips in chocolate-orange ice cream), and Industrial Chocolate (fudge and cookie dough).
Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles
5006 W. Pico Blvd.
323–934–4405
Los Angeles, CA
BLD | $
Waffles, which have