Food, food EVERYWHERE!

November of this year will mark the 2 year anniversary of my (and my wife's) move to the Los Angeles area. While my reasons for wanting to move to LA were numerous (none of which involved Hollywood or any of that socialite crap that dominaes the news here), there is one unexpected, and much appreciated "perk" to living here that I totally overlooked on my "pros for LA" list...Food Diversity!


SoCal weather is amazing, the beaches endless, and the car culture stronger than any other place in the world. However, the thing that I appreciate the most day in and day out here in SoCal is the food and how diverse the selection is. There definitely is no shortage of great restaurants here and that can be both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because you can have just about anything your heart desires, but a curse because you can only pick one place out of the long list of greats. That long list only complicates the decision making process....especially for two indecisive people like my wife and I.

A prime example of how good we have it here in SoCal is the japanese food. In most other cities there are just "Japanese" restaurants that usually serve Sushi and some of the other more generic Japanese dishes. Here in SoCal I can go to Torrance and have a selection of different types of Japanese restaurants. There's Sushi, Yakitori, Yakiniku, Shabu Shabu, Okonomiyaki, Etc. Then there's Japanese style of other foods. Japanese style italian, Japanese style western, Japanese style Korean Barbecue, and the list goes on and on...all of which have restaurants dedicated to that specific style of food. Don't think you'll find that anywhere else in the world outside of Japan. Amazing.

Of course, being a native East Coaster I do have one major gastronomical complaint with SoCal. That would be the lack of decent East Coast eats. New York Pizza, Philly Cheesesteaks, Buffalo Wings and stuff like that are not well represented in Cali. There are places that CLAIM they make an "authentic" NY slice of pizza, or an "authentic" Philadelphia style cheesesteak, but in all honesty...they're not even close. Not sure why either. The foods seem simple enough that it shouldn't be too hard to replicate them here in Cali, but to date no one has done it successfully. Must be something in the water...