The Art of Dining

I ended with a strong shot of espresso before heading out. The SuperHappyBunny people (now superhappy themselves after a few drinks) were rearranging the umbrellas on the patio, which was getting increasingly rowdy, and a new friend at the bar rushed over, urging us to swing by his studio for a look. 620 Moulton Ave., Suite 110, downtown; (323) 221-9204.(DP)

The Golden Spur Café at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage

We set out, three friends and I, to the Autry Museum for breakfast. With eight separate galleries in the building, the Autry is dedicated to presenting both real and reel versions of the American West through paintings and sculpture, films and artifacts such as authentic Western tools and saddles. Predictably, The Golden Spur Café looks as if Disney’s Wild West division made over your high school cafeteria. By the time we reached the register with our trays, having ordered off a menu sporting categories like “In the Saddlebag” for side dishes and “High Noon” for lunch, we were struck by an adolescent urge to stand on the table and yell “food fight!”

That urge passed, however, once we sat down. Though the museum’s brochure boasts it’s the single most popular field-trip destination among teachers at L.A. Unified, it was exceptionally quiet this morning. But for a colorful mural of children on the back wall painted by a third-grade class, the place was devoid of little ones. So we set about fixing our coffees from the “Watering Hole” ($1 each) and, as it was still early, gathered quietly at the table.

About 98 percent of the food at the Golden Spur is made in-house, we were told, and it’s surprisingly inexpensive. Twenty dollars fed four people, and this included a hefty slice of creamy apple pie to split ($2.75). The oatmeal with raisins, honey and brown sugar ($2) and “The Cowboy” meal ($3.50), which included two eggs, bacon, toast and potatoes, were just a step above what you’d get at, say, House of Pies at 2 in the morning. But the generous portion of flap jacks ($3) was light and chewy, and I enjoyed the single best breakfast burrito I’ve yet to taste ($3.25). It was filled with loosely scrambled eggs, crispy strips of bacon, garlic-and-rosemary-roasted potatoes, and a mess of all the regular ingredients: Cheddar cheese, sour cream, guacamole and freshly made pico de gallo, laced with bits of fresh cilantro.

After, we walked off our meal outdoors on the Autry’s mini “Western trail,” which, save for the shiny pay phones and neatly paved walkways (and the fact that it leads you around and around in the same circle), replicates the natural landscape of the Wild West, stagecoach and all. It was pleasant. But next time I come back — and I will — it will be for that burrito. 4700 Western Heritage Way, L.A.; (323) 667-2000. (DP)

Patinette at the Museum of Contemporary Art

Gabriel Orozco, the Mexican artist whose work is on exhibit at MOCA, likes to invent variations on games. One of his works on display is a kind of two-way Ping-Pong table, in a cross-shape, with a small lily pond at its center, rather than a net. There are no fish in the pond, which is disappointing, as the ball ends up in the drink with annoying frequency. (It takes a while to get the hang of playing the game over a pond instead of a net, particularly when two other people are playing at the same time.) I meant to look at various exhibitions at MOCA, but when someone sticks a Ping-Pong table in a museum, my instinct is to play Ping-Pong, even on a table that is not quite satisfactory as a work of art, and not quite satisfactory as a Ping-Pong table either. And so that’s what my wife and I did: We played for about half an hour, after which, suddenly exhausted, we went and had a late lunch in the sunken courtyard immediately outside the front entrance. “Grub first, then ethics,” Brecht said, but in this case it was sports first, grub second, and art . . . maybe later. As for ethics, I’m sorry, Bertolt, but that category appears to have been dropped altogether.

Situated below street level in the Arco Courtyard (you can eat indoors or out), Patinette, the museum’s restaurant, has an elegant corporate ambiance, if that’s not an oxymoron, that makes it work both as a restaurant and as a café. You don’t have to eat a proper meal here, but you can. I began with the gazpacho ($4.25), which came with a small island of bay shrimp and avocado at its center. It was thick, and a little too heavy on the tomato as well: The other flavors didn’t come through. Still, I’d order it again. My wife had a rotisserie-chicken-salad sandwich ($8.25), which turned out to be disappointingly bland (she’d wanted the salmon burger, but they were fresh out of that, along with several other things, including, it seemed, teaspoons), but my meatloaf sandwich ($8.25) was juicy and tasty without being too massive. For dessert, we shared a fresh-fruit tart with berries ($4.50) that was light and not too sweet, and I finished off with a cappuccino that was good but heavily speckled with coffee grains, perhaps because the espresso machine needed cleaning. 250 S. Grand Ave., downtown; (213) 626-1178.(BB)