Where to Eat Now: New to the List

Comments (0) By Jonathan Gold Wednesday, Feb 6 2008

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Robin's Wood Fire BBQ The Central Texas towns of legend have long since been turned into prettified versions of themselves, century-old hardware stores transformed into antique shops, saloons into genteel restaurants, and old clapboard houses into bed-and-breakfast joints with lace curtains in the windows. And sad as it is to say, the good barbecue place in Texas towns these days is less likely to be that scenic dining room in the square than it is to be in a prefab industrial building out by the Wal-Mart on the highway, a building that happens to be decorated with the old license plates and cow skulls and splintered butter churns that shriek louder of eBay than they do of tradition. Robin's Wood Fire BBQ, which occupies the destination-restaurant slot in an east-Pasadena shopping center, is a Texas-style barbecue of the latter-day ilk, splattered with rusty street signs and old advertisements for feed, beer neon and sports paraphernalia, crushed peanut shells, bottles of blue cream soda and dusty chicken bones. The menu prose glad hands the local city council and the Rose Bowl committee, butters up the owner's in-laws, and describes the actual food in an overheated tone you haven't seen since the 1970s. Robin's is awfully, awfully proud of catering the tri-tip at Irwindale Speedway. Every order of barbecue comes with a giant slab of blueberry coffee cake and a bowl of coleslaw with blue cheese and pecans. The sauces are too sticky by half. But do they get the oak into the meat? They do, actually, especially into the beef ribs, a blackened, smoking order of which is the closest thing I have ever seen to that rack of brontosaurus ribs that tips over Fred Flintstone's car. Robin's, which may be more authentic than the owners even know, sets the standard for suburban barbecue. 395 N. Rosemead Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 351-8885. Tues.-Sun. 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Full bar (bar open till 11 p.m. Fri.). Street parking. AE, D, MC, V. Barbecue.

Artesia/Norwalk

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Orochon Ramen

123 S. Onizuka St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Category: Restaurant > Japanese

Region: Downtown

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Pitfire Pizza Company

108 W. Second St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Category: Restaurant > Pizza

Region: Downtown

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Tirupathi BhimasJust a few years ago, most of the Indian restaurants on this stretch of Pioneer were pretty generic, vaguely northern or southern Indian perhaps, but not especially regional. Now most of the newer restaurants represent the cooking of a specific area, and Tirupathi Bhimas is about as regional as you can get here. Tamil is spoken and dishes are assumed to be searingly spicy unless specified otherwise. The menu is small, but the kitchen here churns out all manner of South Indian marvels. The standard order at Tirupathi Bhimas is the thali, the traditional combination plate of nine or so stews, soups and grain dishes, spooned into tiny bowls. Will you know what is in the bowls? Probably not, and nobody will bother to explain them to you. Suffice it to say that the spicy Andhra thali will be spicy and the nonspicy thali will be pretty spicy too; that you will run across groovy things like a dry-fried vegetable curry or two, pickles, and spicy lentil broth, with a little tin of sweet, saffron-infused rice pudding for dessert. 18792 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia, (562) 809-3806. Open Tues.-Thurs., 11:30 a.m.-2:15 p.m. & 6-9:15 p.m.; Fri., 11 a.m.-2:15 p.m. & 6-9:45 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 11:30 a.m.-9:45 p.m. No alcohol. Lot parking. MC, V.