“Avoid restaurants with names that are improbable descriptions, such as the Purple Goose, the Blue Kangaroo or the Quilted Orangutan.”Calvin Trillin, New Yorker
I just can't put the genie back in the bottle now. Writing about Tommaso's yesterday seemed to break the memory block that I constructed as the centerpiece of a "don't look back" strategy for dealing with loss.
If I go ALL the way back through my food odyssey, I'd have to start with the Maryland Fried Chicken and that little donut stand in Orlando, Florida near the church. Or, the original, freshly-cut french fries at the McDonald's on Orange Blossom Trail. My sister and I would sit on the back seat of the Pontiac and hold those rectangular trays my mother brought for the meal. Because we had no other seating option apart from the cold, white tile "seats" that had been cut into the side of the building. We had a hamburger, fries, and an orange drink. The whole thing cost about $.30.
No, I thought those types of stories should be avoided for the single purpose they serve: to illustrate my advancing age. 
However, when I began investigating more near-term food memories, I quickly learned that a lot of things were older than I remembered. Some of the food and the restaurants that dispensed them are one of two things: (1) gone; (2) long gone.
That didn't deter me. Thanks to the internet, most things lost can be found, ressurrected, or reconstructed.
Today's post could provide a laundry list of places in and around Pasadena, California that were important to me, food-wise. Some of them were already out of business before I even left the state. The dearest place of all was The Antique Inn on East Colorado Boulevard. Mark and I started eating there on special occasions when he was at USC and I was still in high school.The Antique Inn was just one restaurant. The place probably closed when somebody died. I don't remember the story now about why it went away. It was typical of steakhouses in the '70's that would serve impossibly good food, largely dependent upon the proprietor or his/her chef. Mark always had beef, and I always had shrimp. They garnished every entree with several onion rings made from scratch, to order.
Long before we knew how to spell "Vidalia," this place had found the sweetest onions on the planet and cut them into one-inch wide circles. Whatever batter they dropped them into had that unmistakable, "fine restaurant" flavor. You know what I mean. It's the same way with baked potatoes. You can taste it in your mind, but you can't replicate it at home for anything.
No pictures exist on the internet, at least that I could find, of this long-gone place. I decided I should pare my list of Pasadena food memories to three categories: (1) fast food; (2) mid-priced meal, sit-down restaurant; (3) more expensive than mid-priced restaurant with "special" occasion memories.
Obviously, the winner in the fast food category is In-n-Out. But, not just any of the gazillion locations the company has opened over the past three decades. The one at 2114 E. Foothill in Pasadena is the site of my first In-n-Out taste epiphany. It's also one of the company's first locations. It holds my first images of the potato cutter at work, with the guys in white standing on rubber mats in the impossibly tiny square box of a kitchen. The place only had one "in and out" lane, so if you were traveling west on Foothill, you had to go up a few blocks and make a u-turn to get into the very long line that snaked around the bend.
We often spent more time in line than it took to eat the eventual order. The anticipation was excruciating. It was important to order all the food that we thought we could eat when we finally reached the white menu box with the red speaker. Because, we really didn't want to sit in line and burn $.65/gallon gas longer than necessary.
The last time I ate at In-n-Out, during a road trip from Denver to San Diego in June, 2006, I thought the burger was great and the french fries were terrible. Since all the stores are company-owned - not franchised (which is a key reason I can't get it in Colorado), this quality problem should be inexcusable. It was a let-down in that particular spot, but I didn't consider it a failure of memory to correctly gauge the past.
No surprise, my standing order at In-n-Out was so popular, they made it into a combo meal. It is now referred to as "#1." Double-double, fries, Coke.
The winner in the "mid-priced" category is Hamburger Hamlet. The one at 214 South Lake Avenue, adjacent from what used to be Bullock's department store. Where Mark sold children's shoes part-time while he was in college. I see by their website that they are down to three locations in southern California, and the name of the restaurant is now just "Hamlet."
I understand, but it doesn't change the fact that the best thing they did "then" was hamburgers. All the different burgers had their own names and were displayed on the menu in a long list, by number.
My favorite was #15 - the mushroom burger. It had swiss cheese, whole, sauteed mushrooms; and sour cream. All on a honey wheat bun. I always took the top bun off and ate the remainder with a knife and fork, because I had soaked it in too much Heinz ketchup to pick it up. Crunchy steak fries came alongside, but I didn't really care about them.
The menu for the Pasadena location, available on the internet, shows a different kind of mushroom burger. But, somebody wrote on a review that he had ordered the #15, and the kitchen made it for him.
In later years, we advanced beyond the hamburger mentality and budget and on to the Bar Wings (southern-fried chicken wings) with Apricot Dipping Sauce and the Zucchini Zircles. Also with Apricot Dipping Sauce. After we moved to northern California, we'd buy bottles of the Apricot Dipping Sauce to take home, since the company finally recognized the money-making opportunity.
The last time I ate at Hamburger Hamlet was the end of August, 2005 with Shannon, at the start of her freshman year at USC. I had Lobster Bisque and some other, unmemorable entree. We split an order of the Zucchini Zircles. Soccer tournament road trips to Surf Cup in San Diego over the years had taken us through Hamburger Hamlet land during her formative years, so she knew the drill.
The old, curved red leatherette banquettes still held force in the middle dining room. If we had been willing to wait, we could have scored the old, high-backed red leatherette chairs in the back dining room, set around the old, round firepit. I admit that it looked dated, but there was something oddly comforting about how it had not changed.
The winner in the "higher-than-mid-priced" category is Clearman's Northwoods Inn. It's still located at 7247 Rosemead Boulevard, at the intersection of Huntington Drive in San Gabriel. It's just outside both the Pasadena and Arcadia city limit lines. It was started by a family named "Clearman," but is now owned by some restaurant company. The menu doesn't appear to have changed much, but the setting is undergoing changes that were probably long overdue, even if I am sorry to learn about them.
It was a large complex known as "Clearman's Village," because it had the main Northwoods restaurant, a series of shops known as the "Village," and a small hamburger and sandwich quick-cook venue right on the corner, built like a ship and narrow inside like a real galley. It was called, fittingly, Clearman's Galley. We only ate there a couple of times. The real attraction was the restaurant.
The Galley was recently torn down to make room for a new, improved version of itself. That makes a lot of sense. The entire strip of Village shops has been removed, which was probably a good idea in principle. But, they have been replaced with a Kohl's department store. That is just not right.
The entire "Village" had artificial snow-coated rooflines and plastic icicles and animal heads and other stuff designed to make you think you were somewhere in Tahoe. Or, Germany. Or, just any other cold-winter place with either a snow-laden ski lodge or a remote hunting cabin-style tourist attraction in the upper Midwest.
Entering the bar first to get to the hostess, you were strongly advised to throw your peanut shells on the floor, and the sentiment carried into the dining room. I'm pretty sure I spent as much time waiting for a table there as I did actually consuming meals. Everything I ate there was either a heart attack on a plate, a heart attack waiting to happen, or half a heart attack with some seafood on the side.
My standing order was the North Woods Scallops with their enormous baked potato, slathered in whipped cheese butter. By that time, I would have already consumed mass quantities of the Cheese Bread, which was bread slathered in whipped cheese butter and broiled. Two salads also came ahead of the entree -- one of them was purple cabbage slaw, which I never ate.
But, the other one. Oh, the other one. It was just shredded lettuce and fresh-ground pepper coated in the most unctious kitchen-made blue cheese dressing in the world. Or, at least in the southern California vicinity. I often ate so much Cheese Bread and Blue Cheese Salad, I thought the entree was an annoying afterthought.
Fortunately, Clearman's -- like Hamburger Hamlet -- realized that "Spread" could be a goldmine in a plastic container. I don't live close enough to buy it.
Which, considering the march of time and necessity to limit fat intake from this day forward, is probably a very good thing.
I don't remember the last time I ate at Northwoods Inn. Trips to southern California in recent years didn't include time for the whole Pasadena pilgrimage. Just the Los Angeles pilgrimage, which is another story. For a different day.
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