Tien NguyenIt's the middle of December, which means you might be busy roasting chestnuts and decorating trees and, somewhat less glamorously, checking nearly every supermarket in town in the annual hunt for a Broguiere's egg nog. For the uninitiated, this liquid gold would be from a family-owned dairy farm that's been operating since 1920, famous equally for its steadfast commitment to selling its milk in glass bottles and for its seasonal egg nog that Huell Howser once enthusiastically declared to be “excellent!” So popular is Broguiere's that in the brief moment that bottles are stocked at your local market, no doubt someone will get there before you do and clean out the entire inventory to sell on eBay.
And so, unless you really enjoy the thrill of the egg hunt, maybe this year you can skip all those supermarket parking lots and just go straight to the source, to Broguiere's Farm Fresh Dairy in Montebello.
There, just past the railroad tracks on a very small street, you'll find Broguiere's, a simple drive-thru dairy stand stocked full of everything from milk to chocolate milk to, right, that egg nog. The egg nog will run you about $5, which includes a small bottle deposit; you'll be pleasantly surprised to find that a few of the bottles have nifty designs to commemorate certain events, like the Los Angeles Kings winning the 2012 Stanley Cup (which, given the NHL lockout, probably will be the most hockey you'll see this season). If you're lucky, you might score a bottle that pays tribute to “Favorite Visitor” Howser, who, incidentally, is retiring this year after many, many excellent episodes of California's Gold.
Whether it's Howser's smiling mug of unrelenting optimism, or just the awful thought of not being able to open the bottle until you get back home, you probably won't be able to resist the temptation to do as many do and take a swing right then and there. It's distinctly peppered with nutmeg and other spices, slightly sweet but not overly so; good enough, in other words, to demolish memories of terrible egg nogs of holidays past. If you finish the bottle, you can wash it out, return it to the stand and receive your deposit back. Or, better, you can just keep it. And maybe not sell it on eBay.
Broguiere's Farm Fresh Dairy in Montebello; Credit: T. Nguyen
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