The Staples - Best of

The Staples:

Pizza Restaurants.

Frankly I am not a fan of pizza restaurants. I hate the smell. If grates on my nerves especially if it’s a restaurant that is either old or not well kept. Also I like making pizza. Clearly not an economic decision but one of enjoyment. But which pizza do I like best? There are many. My favorite pizza restaurant of all time was one in London – the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory. Sadly no more but it introduced me to pizza. Up till that time I thought all pizza was thin and anemic with bad sausage, rancid cheese and bad tomatoes.

Best Pizza from a chain

Papa Murphy’s. I really like that you can see what it is and cook it yourself. I actually like going home and “adding” to it. Its pretty good.
Papa John’s – Also pretty good. Better than some of the others.

Specialist Pizza?

Wolf Gang Puck? No actually not. Frankly the best specialist pizza was in Rome. I don’t even remember the name but I can walk you there. East of the Colloseum. It was just awesome.

Hamburger

I am always on the hunt for a hamburger. There are not that many that are really good. Most of them are WAY too juicy because that is what people assume is wanted. The other way of course is that they are either burned to a crisp or a with the texture of leather. I have actually worked in a Macdonalds in London in the mid 70s. It was a heck of a lot of fun because the kids who worked there were mostly North Americans (Yanks and Canuks) who were earning a few pounds. What we used to do to the meat is of course a dirty secret that the Golden Arches corp would never like us to reveal. However I an tell you that I learned enough about hamburgers in the formula to make reasonable ones and how to cook them. Thus be careful what you teach! I secretly still like a Big Mac. But what I hate is the after taste and the mess. Its just pretty horrible. You think that they would have solved the problem by now. Or maybe that’s the allure. When I was growing up in England – my family once had a party. My father was a world traveler long before people did that sort of thing. His father too was a rover. He wanted to impress many of his friends who were coming by throwing a Barbeque. Unfortuantely in our little village no one had ever heard of a hamburger. The local butcher took it literally. We had a gross (12 dozen to you) HAM burgers – made of processed pork. They were really gross. We threw them all away.


So Best Hamburger?

My favorite hamburger of all time – Cassels in Los Angeles. Long gone – it was in the Mid Wilshire area near where I worked at Foote Cone and Belding/Honig. Or as we used to call it Foot Sore Bleeding and Horny. We used to go there for lunch.

Best Hamburger drive in? BurgerMeister in Seattle. A small chain of few but fun throwbacks to a bygone era. The hamburgers are actually pretty good. The fries are great, the shakes are made with real fruit. THE menu is simple. Its somewhat amusing to see boys and girls serving you and limping from snow boarding accidents they had that day!!!

Best MEAT

Best – I have always liked Smith and Wollinskys – I used to be near one in New York. That was inspiring as to what they could do with meat. However it seems somewhat weird to go to the plastic replicant version of itself in Las Vegas. Especially with that strange golden cow outside.

Best Ice Cream.

I love Ice Cream – it will be my downfall. There are so many good places. I can handle the entire range of them except for Chocolate and Coffee flavours. Best quality - Coldstone. Best flavors... so many! The French do it better than most despite what is said about Italian Gelato.

Etc etc