Cleaning out a cabinet in the garage, I came upon a box labeled “Mother’s Day cards.” It shared a shelf with other boxes variously labeled “Valentine’s Day cards,” “Birthday cards” and “Holiday cards.”
Neither my wife nor I have any notion why we keep cards from celebrations past. And yet, we do. While it makes me sound like a hoarder, I still couldn’t bring myself to throw them out.
I don’t imagine that future generations will sort through the cards looking for artifacts from an era long gone by. And yet, for me, they have a curious sentimental value. They’re just cards from the drugstore, but they also carry as much meaning as finding a long-lost tomb in the Egyptian desert.
The history of the holiday card is unexpectedly recent. They date back to 1843, when Sir Henry Cole — who pushed through a bill lowering the cost of postage in Britain to a penny — commissioned artist John Callcott Horsley to create a card in order to encourage greater use of the British postal service. The advent of cards worked wonders, as they became a standard for Christmas that year.
It took a long time for cards to be used for Mother’s Day, simply because Mother’s Day didn’t exist until 1914 — not because no one had thought of it, but because our leaders at the time were largely opposed to the idea.
In 1908, Congress rejected a proposal to make Mother’s Day an official holiday. You read that right: Congress voted against motherhood. They thought the notion was a joke. (You think we’ve got an obstructionist Congress now? Given the opportunity, they probably would have voted against the flag and apple pie as well!)
But thanks to the creator of Mother’s Day, peace activist Anna Jarvis in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson sidestepped Congress with a proclamation designating the second Sunday in May as a national holiday to honor motherhood.
So, who was Anna Jarvis? She had cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the Civil War, during which she created Mother’s Day Work Clubs to deal with public health issues. And when her own mother died in 1905, she began a campaign to create a special day to honor motherhood.
She had the support of the growing women’s rights movement, including suffragette Julia Ward Howe, who made a Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870. It took 44 years for that notion to finally be adopted — but only a decade for it to be turned into one of the biggest sales days of the year for greeting cards and also boxes of candy.
For the record, that upset Jarvis. She wanted the day kept pure and non-commercial, with mothers being thanked with hand-written letters. She even objected to the selling of flowers. How she would feel about the notion of taking mothers out for nice meals can only be imagined.
Ironically, the founder of Mother’s Day never married and had no children of her own.
Back to the notion of Mother’s Day meals. A massive culinary industry has grown over the years, with restaurants gifting moms with flowers, and family groups gathering around large tables to offer more boxes of See’s candy than seems rational.
By contrast, nothing made my working-class mother happier than a mixed plate of brisket and corned beef from a local deli. My wife often opts for dim sum. My mother-in-law loves IHOP. So, my selection of restaurants below is a bit random, but they lean toward the nicer side.
I think the notion of handing mom a rose when she enters is a fine gesture. And as my mother used to say: “Every day should be Mother’s Day.” Right she is.
Din Tai Fung
Westfield Santa Anita, 400 S. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia; 626-446-8588, www.dintaifungusa.com
You’ll know you’re at Din Tai Fung as soon as you step out of Nordstrom, and confront a medium-sized mob waiting in front. They’re actually waiting to give their names to a young lady at the check-in stand, who takes your name and cell number, and sends a text to you immediately to make sure the phone works.
She’ll probably tell you the wait is about an hour — and indeed, it often is.
Eventually, your phone will buzz. And you’ll get on a second line, from which you’ll be escorted to a table somewhere in this cavern of a restaurant. On the way, of course, you’ll go past the glassed-in prep kitchen, with its army of cooks making dumplings as if the end of the world were just around the corner.
For those who are old Chinese restaurant hands, there’s a great surprise to be found at the new Din Tai Fung — the staff is about as affable as it is at a Houston’s. Rather than impatiently waiting for you to mark the two-sided checklist of dishes, they’ll chat with you about what you want. They’ll make suggestions. They’ll discuss the maddeningly complex tea selection (Taiwanese jasmine? Green milk tea? Sea salt cream black tea?). This isn’t easy.
What is easy is ordering because it’s long become obvious that pretty much everything is worth eating. There are 15 steamed dumpling options — and as long as they include the soup-filled xiao long bao, all is right with the world. The light green vegetarian dumplings come as a great and wonderful surprise!
Sautéed string beans are essential. But then, so is sautéed broccoli, bok choy, mustard greens and kale. I can’t imagine a meal here without a plate of cucumber salad – so fresh and clean.
Both the seaweed and bean curd in vinegar, and the soy noodle salad are sublime palate-cleanser; the steamed chicken soup makes me believe that the people of Taiwan are one of the 12 Lost Tribes of Israel; and the noodles with sesame sauce, and with spicy sauce, and with minced pork sauce are both good fresh from the kitchen, and the next day.
There are more noodles, more rice, even a smattering of desserts. The red bean rice cake is a lovely thing. But then, back out in the mall, there’s a Beard Papa, a Dippin’ Dots and more. There’s a Kelley’s Cookies right next door. And a Lollicup is not far away for boba. No disrespect to Eight Treasure Sticky Rice, but the Sweet Factory has hundreds of treasures, which Mom can eat as she returns to shopping.
Bistro 45
45 S. Mentor Ave., Pasadena; 626-795-2478, bistro45.com
Owner Robert Simon and his staff have long been committed to keeping our culinary life interesting — and at Bistro 45, they do it with a style of flavor. As in the Bistro’s Hawaiian yellowfin tuna with pea tendril and broccolini sautéed and fresh soba noodles, and crispy skin New Zealand king salmon — all of which is still available from week to week.
Now that the Bistro is open nightly, the menu is, I think, pretty much the same as it was in the Before Times. Or at least, close enough for government work. There are tempting starters, seafood on one side of the menu, soups, salads and more on the other, along with five pizzas, a couple of pastas, 10 large plates, and nine desserts – which emerge from the kitchen with impressive regularity.
Bring on the Meyer Lemon Trio and the Pineapple Upside Down Tart!
The food, though recognizable to anyone who eats around, is blessed with a creative streak that guarantees no edible boredom on Bistro 45’s plates. Consider the appetizer of braised Spanish octopus. Now, I like octopus as much as the next guy, though usually hidden in a ceviche. But in this case, the lobster is there with no sense of shyness — this is octopus qua octopus, cured and marinated till it tastes not quite like anything I’ve ever had before, and flavored with lemon and olive oil, topped with pickled onions and fennel, with a tasty arugula salad on the side. The restaurant is masterful with its greens. Can octopus make you happy? This one sure did.
There are clever twists and turns throughout the menu; often, I find myself wanting to order a dish, just to taste one of the unexpected ingredients. That happened with the smoked chickpea sautéed in the cast-iron Monterey calamari. And the brown Turkish figs on the prosciutto & mozzarella fresca pizza. And the Quail Farms yam “hummus” served with the roasted “colorful harvest” cauliflower.
How about the crispy artichokes in the “composed” heirloom beet salad? Or the toasted pearl pasta and charred tomatoes with the New Zealand king salmon, along with the sorrel crème? Those are ingredients I want to know about, to taste, to dwell on, before getting to the centerpiece of the dish.
There’s a compulsive need to push the edge of the envelope, though without tearing through. Bistro 45 is an eminently serious restaurant. But it’s also a Southern California-serious restaurant, which means a certain amount of fun and games, of happy culinary nuttiness.
There’s a reason Bistro 45 has been around for so long: it never disappoints, and it never bores. Not then, and not now.
Clearman’s North Woods Inn
• 540 N. Azusa Ave., Covina, 626-331-5477
• 7247 Rosemead Blvd., San Gabriel, 626-286-3579
Since 1958, this chain has attracted legions of loyal meat eaters, hungry for a taste of the fine and well-priced steaks that are the Clearman’s North Woods Inn hallmark. The motto, after all, is “Huge portions & great memories await.” And for the many seated on the patio that surrounds the restaurant, those desires are well satisfied — in the open air.
The look of Clearman’s is pure Sergeant Preston meets Robert Service in the Yukon. Even outside, it’s a great rambling place, perhaps without the signature sawdust and peanut shells on the floor, beamed walls and ceilings, and snappy piano-playing (as Robert Service wrote in “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” “A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute Saloon/The kid that handles the music box was hitting a jag-time tune...’’).
But still, the service here is crisp — the food comes flying out of the kitchen. And it comes flying out in quantity; this is a restaurant where small portions are unknown. This is a place you go, when you want to do some serious feeding.
The bar sells big schooners of draft beer, which is a fine way to ease into a feed that begins with baskets of cheese bread, thickly slathered with the signature Clearman’s cheese butter spread (several recipes for which can be found online; they all seem to boil down to butter mixed with several cheeses, tricked up with a number of other ingredients, none of which are especially notable beyond the unctuous intensity of the butter and the cheese).
Dinners include just about everything — they come with not one, but two salads (including a red cabbage salad that’s impossible to stop eating), along with two starches (both rice pilaf and a baked potato the size of a well-fed gopher, packed with more of the — what else? — cheese butter), your protein of choice, and a topping of either more butter or mushroom gravy.
There are things on the menu that are not steaks. Chicken comes both broiled and fried. There’s seafood — cod, scallops, halibut, shrimp, king crab legs and Australian rock lobster tail. There are several hamburgers and a hot dog. There’s a ham sandwich and a corned beef sandwich. There’s a French dip, a Cobb salad and a soup of the day. All of those may be good. I wouldn’t know — I go to Clearman’s for the steak.
Most folks seem to go for the Lumberjack Steak, which appears to be a sirloin, cut both large and medium, quite flavorful and no more chewy than it usually is. You want to sacrifice some flavor for tenderness, go with the filet mignon. You want to split the difference, there’s the New York and the porterhouse, which weighs in at an outlandish 25 ounces.
Contrary to the cowboy tradition of incinerating the meat, the menu makes this point: “ ‘We do not recommend cooking steaks past medium as they tend to lose their flavor.’”
Not surprisingly, this is a hotbed of surf and turf — the medium-sized Lumberjack Steak comes with a choice of jumbo shrimp, king crab legs and lobster tail. Clearman’s is an homage to the joys of supersizing that long predates Mickey D’s.
The postcard that’s been given away at the cash register for as long as I can remember speaks of “the huge logging wheels holding our sign … mounted on a slab cut from a 1,000-year-old mammoth redwood. Inside, you will find steaks, seafood and sandwiches, also of giant size and quality.”
Diets are fine in their place. But this is not a place in which to diet. It’s time for meat and more.
Porto’s Bakery & Café
• 584 S. Sunset Ave., West Covina; www.portosbakery.com
Porto’s Bakery & Café is a culinary theme park packed with gleaming, glistening cases crammed with every manner of temptation. In fact, there should be a sign over the front door that reads: “Abandon diets, all ye who enter here.”
We go to Porto’s to feast, to indulge — and to carry home bulging bags of tasty things for later. This really is The Happiest Place on Earth.
In many ways, this Cuban bakery and café is the defining pastry shop in Southern California. What Zabar’s bagels are to New York, the pastries of Porto’s are to us. It’s where we go for a taste of pure joy.
It’s impossible to spend a morning at Porto’s, without feeling unabashedly cheery. The place works better than Ativan to calm a nervous soul. In its nearly 60 years of growth, Porto’s has grown from a small business founder Rosa Porto ran out of her house to a pastry powerhouse, with branches not just in West Covina and Buena Park, but also in Glendale, Burbank and Downey.
Porto’s arrived in West Covina with enough buzz to get the lines going — and to keep them going. There are several lines, the longest for pastries, followed by sandwiches and prepared dishes, with the line for coffee and beverages not especially daunting, probably because not as many decisions are required.
There’s a line as well for pre-ordered items, mostly large boxes of many things, wrapped in the trademark butternut-colored plastic bags. There’s an army of folks leaving Porto’s with those bags.
Since the pastry line moves slowly, there’s lots of time to study the temptations. And there are so many! Look at those meringue tarts — each meringue peak just perfect, and perfectly browned! (How do they do that?) How about the phalanx of chocolate domes filled with … what? Some sort of sweet cream, I’ll bet — the sort of thing that leaves you licking your fingers clean, and scraping off the wrapping paper.
When in a Porto’s pastry frenzy, even the fussiest of folks goes a bit rogue, a tad primordial. Manners be damned — this stuff tastes so good! And how about those cakes? The Cuban Cake, sponge cake soaked in a French brandy syrup and filled with custard or pineapple, or both! The triple chocolate mousse, layers of dark, milk and white chocolate! The mango cheesecake, as heavy as a brick, but so much tastier! There’s so much, it’s crazy making.
But not the whole menu is dedicated to the serious pleasure of sugar. There are Cuban dishes as well — another line of perhaps more subtle temptations. There’s much to be said for the chorizo and cheese omelet on Cuban bread, and the guacamole and cheese omelet. But I lean toward the classic Cuban savory dishes — the papa rellena, a ball of mashed potatoes packed with spiced ground beef, then deep-fried. Also, there’s the chorizo pie — pastel de chorizo — which is an empanada from heaven.
Of course the two Cuban sandwiches — both with pork and ham and Swiss — differ in their roles, but not their rolls. You want to get more serious, there’s ropa vieja, pork lechon and more, with rice, beans and plantains.
In the midst of all this, the baby kale salad seems silly. I go to Porto’s, and happily, for pastries and Cuban cuisine and amazing coffee drinks. Kale? It seems like the punchline to a joke. I guess it’s required by law or something. But it takes up room better occupied by a slice of tiramisu cake. I mean, really!
The Benediction by Toast
• Puente Hills Mall, 17501 Colima Road, Industry; 626-225-3642; thebenedictionla.com
The Benediction by Toast, which refers to itself as a “social eatery,” sits in the sprawling Puente Hills Mall, adjacent to branches of Chipotle and Panera Bread on one side, and Asian concepts like TeaTop and Lobster Now on the other. It’s a mix that speaks volumes about the eclectic ethnic melting pot of the San Gabriel Valley, into which The Benediction fits unexpectedly well.
This is an American breakfast restaurant on steroids — a re-creation of our many breakfast-only old-timers with a very 21st century spin. It’s a crazy concept — and crazy good, too.
If you show up on a Sunday, expect a wait for a table inside or outside on the patio, for The Benediction has found an audience of locals hungry for breakfasts of Brobdingnagian proportions. This is not a restaurant where you go for a small bite, something to cut your morning hunger. The food here overflows the plate, filling every inch of space with eggs, spuds and, mostly, hollandaise sauce over English muffins.
There’s more on the menu than 13 eggs Benedict variations, but that’s the dominant dish. They must make their hollandaise by the truckload here. And they make it very well, not too unctuous or heart-stopping in its texture and taste.
Hollandaise can be a sadly abused sauce, hard to make by amateurs. But these are hollandaise pros … with a serious Benedict obsession. Eggs Benedict has been a big part of our breakfast life for a long time. And it clearly still is — especially on a Sunday morning, when it still may be consumed (unintentionally) as a hangover cure. Does it work? Darned if I know; I haven’t had a hangover in a long time. But it sure does make me happy for the whole day.
And the Benedicts at The Benediction are both perfectly made — and crazy creative. There’s a Classic, made with hickory-smoked shoulder bacon. There’s one made with corned beef hash, and another with lobster. The Santa Barbara has Norwegian smoked salmon, capers and red onions.
There are two surf-and-turf models, both with lobster and steak. There’s one where the hollandaise is replaced with Béarnaise. There are a trio of vegetarian ones, one with grilled crimini mushrooms, one with tomato and spinach, and one with broccoli and asparagus.
From there, the menu meanders into big piles of more or less standard breakfast joint chow, though the kitchen can’t seem to resist putting a twist on whatever it can. Thus, there’s a three-egg Spanish omelet, made with peppers, tomatoes, onions, Monterey Jack and Tillamook Cheddar cheeses. And a Super Spanish that’s the same — except it’s also built with six eggs (yes, a half-dozen!), bacon and portobello mushrooms. Extra jalapeños, too.
There are also Spanish omelets with filet mignon and with chicken breast. But what appealed to me even more were the four twists on avocado toast — which is kind of the healthy living version of the Benedict, for those who just don’t want the egg yolk and butter of hollandaise running around in their bloodstream.
It’s a California standard these days, usually done just one way. But at The Benediction (of course), it’s served with heirloom tomatoes and garlic salt, with three eggs and bacon crumbles, with Alaskan sockeye salmon, and with a cucumber salad and red onions. As long as there’s avocado and toast, it’s avocado toast. Though I do like the notion of bacon. Crunchy!
And should you not want breakfast, The Benediction is open for lunch, though the choices are finite — a couple of salads, and a trio of steaks. But then, I’ve always believed there’s really no reason to eat breakfast ... only for breakfast. Eggs Benedict for lunch? Why not? Sounds good for dinner, too, though sadly that’s not when they’re open.
Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.
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