The West Coast Adventure Chronicles:

Recently, I took a trip to Los Angeles and to Las Vegas. While in these scenic locales, I decided to try out some of the local Kosher food. And yes, Vegas has scenery. It just so happens that the scene is usually a bellhop fighting a hooker over who gets the bigger cut of the money they just blackmailed out of a married businessman from Iowa (answer: the stripper, unless the bellhop is Swedish). To be fair, I don't have a ton of experience to call upon with any of these restaurants, so I'll just give little mini-reviews for each, based on my impressions. So here they are, in no particular order other than the order in which I visited them.


1) The Fish Grill

The Fish Grill is a chain of Kosher fish-based restaurants spread over the LA area. They manage to accomplish something that I've honestly never seen before: excellence. The food is very good, the service is fantastic, the prices are reasonable (for kosher food), and they offer a good deal of variety within their fishy framework. Whether you're looking for a heavily fried Fish 'n Chips, or a healthier option of grilled Salmon or Fish Tacos or whatnot, they seem up to the challenge. And they even have soups, including Miso and various Chowder! Although, the fact that they pretty much only offer fish-based food can make it a bit daunting. I mean, nobody can eat nothing but fish and not get sick of it. Still, fantastic restaurant. I'm giving them a 4.5/5

2) Jerusalem Grill

Jerusalem Grill is located in Las Vegas, on Flamingo Blvd, and is about a 15 minute drive from the strip. I found them online, saw their cheerful claim to deliver to any Vegas hotel, and decided to see what the in-person experience was like. And it was shockingly good. It was, without a doubt, the best middle-eastern restaurant I've been to in America. The service was excellent, the schwarma may have been the best I've ever had, and thanks to their lunch special, the price was beyond reasonable. For my personal experience, I had no complaints whatsoever, however I did notice that the food was a bit pricey if you didn't stick to the lunch special. Having no frame of reference for how often these specials appear, or whether they're always as good as the one I got, I'm going to call it in the blind, and give Jerusalem Grill a 4.5/5

3) Na-Na Cafe

Located in the Pico-Robertson area of Los Angeles, Na-Na Cafe offers....well, I'm not exactly sure what. Let's go with eclectic. An eclectic menu. Because I'm not sure what, if any, sort of niche their menu was supposed to have. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've heard alot of good things about the place, and a lot of people seemed to enjoy it. So it may just be that I ordered the wrong things, but I was seriously underwhelmed here.

Me and a friend split the Pizza and an order of Mozzarella sticks. Both of those were...I don't want to say bad, but I need a nicer way of saying it. It was like when a child draws a picture of an elephant and you fawn over it, despite the fact that it is clearly closer to the scribblings of a one-armed dyslexic madman than anything resembling an elephant. You act like it's great because it's the best that the child, given their very limited experience and skills, could accomplish. And it's the same with Na-Na Cafe'. They're Israeli, living in LA, and they're trying to make Pizza and Mozzarella sticks. So who am I to complain when there's no actual cheese in the Mozzarella sticks, or when the Pizza is some sort of unholy amalgamation of thin crust and thick crust that embodies the worst qualities of both and the best qualities of neither? I mean, who was I trying to kid? I knew it wasn't going to be great.

That being said, people seem to enjoy it there, so my advice is go, and get something that you'd expect an Israeli or west-coaster to do well. But for me, I'm giving it a 2.5/5


So that's it for my west-coast adventure. Now I'll get back to some local Chicago Kosher for a bit. Although, I'm gonna be heading out to NY in a couple months for a friend's wedding, so an east-coast-edition may be soon on its way. Keep an eye out. It will be the one that explicitly mentions that it's an east-coast-post.