Two Guys Walk Into a Bar . . .

Photo by Anne Fishbein

My friend Robert Sietsema, co-founder of the Organ Meat Society and editor of the food zine Down the Hatch, is well known for his insistence that the best food in New York City is always at least 20 minutes and two bus transfers past the point you are willing to go. Did you have a good Afghan meal on Ninth Avenue? Too bad you missed the really good stuff out on Horace Harding Parkway, in a part of Queens where the subways have long since dribbled into nothingness and the car services fear to roam. Do you like the Uzbeki grill on 48th Street? You should have gone to Forest Hills. Have a good Italian lunch in the Village? You should taste, just taste, the spleen sandwiches out on Avenue U. In his column in The Village Voice, Sietsema has insisted that his readers schlep out to Canarsie for the Bajan food, to distant New Jersey for vaguely Oaxacan cooking, and to Ridgewood for an ancient German restaurant smacked down in the middle of a Lutheran cemetery. He probably spends as much time eating Senegalese lamb dishes in Harlem as The New York Timescritic does eating French food in Midtown.

So on the infrequent occasions Sietsema makes it out to Los Angeles, I am often at a loss: Do I take him to the dynamite Isaan Thai place in Bellflower or to my favorite burrito stand in East L.A.? To Watts for the terrific braised short ribs at the original M&M or to Koreatown for black-goat soup? To the freelance taco chefs on East Olympic, or to one of the painfully authentic Sichuan restaurants that have popped up in Monterey Park? To Thai Town, Little Armenia, Little India, or Little Phnom Penh? Is it possible to find a restaurant inconvenient enough for him, or will he flee, as he did a few years ago, to chase down some cockamamie theory about hash browns in the vicinity of Thousand Oaks?

A couple of weeks ago, I gave Sietsema the grand tour. We went to Mission 261 for dim sum — far superior to anything available in the five boroughs — and we went to Golden Deli for the spring rolls. I took him to Mr. Baguette in Rosemead for the Vietnamese pâtĂ© sandwiches on freshly baked baguettes, and to Chalio in East L.A. to eat birria, goat stew, amid a clientele that seemed to be made up mostly of mariachis on lunch break. I even took him to the Border Grill in Pasadena so that he could experience the sort of Mexican food that can be purchased with an American Express card.

But as happy as Sietsema seemed to be, as appreciative as he was of tiny suckling pigs and steaming tureens of Cantonese eel-ball soup, I could tell that something was wrong. Sure, Rosemead and Boyle Heights may be a little out of the way to an easily impressed Brentwood resident, but it was obvious: To him, it wasn’t quite inconvenient enough.

Which is why, the next afternoon, we found ourselves at the Pyrenees bar in East Bakersfield, knocking back our second Picon punch and watching the old Basque guys roughhousing down at the other end of the bar.

If you’ve never had a Picon punch, which is more or less the official tipple of Basque Bakersfield, it can seem a little like a girlie drink, a cocktail of brandy, maraschino syrup, and a healthy slug of a bitter Algerian liqueur called Amer Picon. If you get the right bartender, it even comes with a cherry in it. But if you linger at the Pyrenees long enough, rest assured: You will see a burly oil worker thrust out his gut, snarling, “Gimme Pi-cahhhn.” Picon punch goes down smoothly, but gnaws at your brain for hours. Sietsema was slammed hard by the drink, and woozily asked the bartender, who could have passed for a young Betty Page by the third Picon punch, if she’d consider taking him home with her.

She sneered at the lameness of Sietsema’s come-on, a world-class sneer, a sneer that would have served her well behind any bar in Silver Lake or on the Lower East Side, and the two of us were as smitten as any two drunk, married guys could ever be at 3 in the afternoon.

“You two are from out of town,” she said delicately. “Tourists.” She flicked the hair out of her eyes.

“You brought a wrapped loaf in with you, so I know you’ve already been to the Pyrenees Bakery. You probably stopped in at Luigi’s — for what? A plate of beans? Spaghetti with sauce? — but you had your main lunch at one of the Basque restaurants. My guess is Wool Grower’s, because you two are too pathetic to have gotten up in time for noon lunch at one of the better places. You have a bagful of Dewar’s peanut chews in the car. After this, you’re going over to the Alley Cat, because the place is for losers, because you think the neon and the Hirschfeld mural are ‘cool.’ Tonight for dinner, you’re going to . . . not here, because otherwise you wouldn’t be here now . . . to the Noriega. Definitely the Noriega. And I don’t blame you for going there: Tuesday is prime-rib night.”