What’s Cookin’ Behind the Curtain – Dinner and, um, Dancing at Caspian

(Originally posted on LAist on July 27)

So last week, I was trying to be a good older brother and took out my fresh-out-of-college-not-making-any-money-yet little sister out to dinner to spend some quality family time together. I IMed her and said “hey, what do you think about Persian food” and she replied “yeah, that would be cool, I hardly ever go eat Persian.” I figured a nice classy dinner at Caspian Restaurant in Irvine, good food, good brother-sister conversation would make a good night.

We did get that. We also got some additional entertainment.

First, the food. I had the soltani, recommended by our server, which was a long skewer of filet mignon and long skewer of ground beef served with basmati rice. Despite my normal non-red meat tendencies, I found the filet succulent, marinated nicely with a ton of flavor, and plenty tender and juicy even after it had been sitting out for awhile. The ground beef was comparatively bland, but eaten with grilled tomato helped offset some of the savoriness of the filet.

My sister opted for fesenjon, a chicken stew with a pomegranate and walnut sauce on a bed of crispy and basmati rice. The sauce was very thick and a bit on the tart side; I barely even noticed the chicken. And though I know it’s supposed to be that way, it was a bit of a put off – I guess I prefer a sauce with a hint of sourness to be lighter so it doesn’t totally dominate the palate. Still, the portions were good-sized and the service was spot-on.

Then there was the entertainment. It started out with a band, which played an eclectic mix of jazz, traditional Persian songs, and remade American covers. Caspian has a big dance floor and stage in the middle of the restaurant (it’s ideally set up for big wedding receptions) and, in classic OC fashion, a soccer mom and her four blond kids got into the beats and were gyrating up a storm, much to the amusement of the lead singer. I was most amused by the curious cover of Lionel Richie’s “Stuck on You” mixed with a cover of “I Will Survive”.

But the highlight, or lowlight depending on your perspective, was when the band cleared the stage and the belly dancers came up. There are a number of Middle Eastern/North African places throughout LA that have belly dancing. Some are more G-rated than others, and the attractiveness of the dancers can certainly vary widely as well. At Caspian, the three women were young, slim, and toned, and showed off their exquisite, um, skill (see the blond in the cover picture). The on-stage routines, set to both traditional folk songs and urban techno beats, were great. When the dancers went out table to table for tips, the intensity got raised up a notch.

During the next fifteen minutes, the dancers worked the room, eliciting the evil eye of girlfriends and wives as they shook provocatively in front of boyfriends and husbands who tried to not grab anything inappropriate while tucking their ones and fives in the dancers’ belts, hips swaying about two feet in front of their faces. My sister and I laughed at the disgusted looks. A group of older Middle Eastern women wearing hijab got up and left after being seated for five minutes. My sister pondered the similarity between these belly dancers and strip club dancers. I said nothing.

In actuality, Caspian is an elegant, classy establishment, decorated with beautiful statues and paintings in the foyer, big columns and arches as you enter the dining room, and high ceilings with lots of open space inside. The food is of good quality, though a bit pricey compared to the less festive restaurants in Little Gaza off Brookhurst in Anaheim. But be forewarned of what you’re getting yourself into (at least on Wednesday through Saturday when they have the live entertainment) so you don’t have to walk home alone after dinner.

I’m just glad I was with my sister and not my mom.

Caspian Restaurant
14100 Culver Dr.
Irvine, CA 92604

Life Imitating Art Imitating Life

(Originally posted on LAist on July 25)



When I was in elementary school, we had this art program called Meet the Masters in which our “docent” would educate us about a famous artist and allow us to employ the artist’s signature techniques. As an eight-year old, it was an enjoyable way to not only about art history, but appreciate the creativity and skill of the masters, whether it was the pointillism of Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, the Post-Impressionist swirls in Van Gogh’s Starry Night, or the cubist style of Picasso’s Guernica. For a kid who was not artistically-inclined (Open House was always a bit of an embarrassment for me to show my parents how hideous my work was compared to the other kids), it helped bring art to life.

Down in Laguna Beach, art has been part of the local culture since its days in the early 1900s as an artist colony (long before it was known for bimbos in beemers). For the last 75 years, the city has been literally bringing art to life through its annual summer showcase, Pageant of the Masters. One of the crown jewels of Orange County, POM is a mind-blowing celebration of artistic work using a technique called tableaux vivants, or living pictures. In a nutshell, famous paintings and sculptures are recreated using actual people in costume and makeup, with intricately designed backgrounds to make it look like the original work of art.

If the concept sounds hard to grasp, imagine looking at a three-dimensional version of a painting, except for the fact that the sets and lighting are done in such a way to make it look like you’re looking at a two-dimensional piece of art. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes (which are admittedly a bit faulty). But I found myself constantly squinting and rubbing throughout the show because it sure as heck looked like something painted on a canvas, rather than live-bodied people in costume.

Put on by a dedicated staff and hundreds of volunteers, this year’s Pageant is themed “Young at Heart” to capture both the essence of youth and the celebration of life. The show features a mix of mediums and time periods, from old French marble statues to 20th century British watercolors. The first act contains depictions of oil paintings and sculptures from favorite fairy tales such as Cinderella and Snow White. For the bronze sculpture depicting Peter Pan, they added a fun twist with a ‘Tinkerbell’ flying above the crowd. One of my favorites was the more modern magazine art, which recreated magazine covers from the 1950s with scenes like Working on the Jalopy and Crying on Santa’s Lap. While the second act seems to wander from the theme a bit, it also offers a mix of visuals, opening with a traditional Chinese lion and dragon dance. Some notables include Hopper’s New York Movie and a gilt silver chess set of Henry VIII. The final act is Da Vinci’s incomparable fresco, The Last Supper, minus the “So Dark the Con of Man” scrawling.

This year, the Pageant showed how they accomplish the living picture technique through Thompson’s Apple Gathering. The stage hands have a huge frame, set at a certain distance to apply the proper perspective. In the foreground, they roll in a set, which has physical props and has been painted with the appropriate shadows and colors to give the right effect, and may have the actors in place, set at a certain height to give the illusion of depth. Then, they roll in a painted background which fills in the rest of the picture. It seems more like a live diorama until they shut off the stage lights to blacken the area around the frame, then turn the lights back on to create the tableaux vivant effect. At this point, you hear the gasp through the audience as they see the transformation from random things on stage to 2D but 3D masterpiece. It’s just a ‘Wow!’ moment.

Among the many amazing aspects of the production is the fact that each “performance” not only captures the scenes depicted in the original works, but captures the nuances of the texture and colors of the art. For example, the recreation of Impressionist paintings like Monet’s Women in the Garden feature dimmer lighting, costumes with more broken colors, and a hazy background to capture the brush stroke effect, whereas the portrayal of N.C. Wyeth’s mural The Giant is brightly lit, with sharper colored outfits to delineate greater depth and definition. Makeup isn’t just applied to capture the color of a bronze, marble, or porcelain statue, but also the physical qualities of those elements.

The other great thing about the Pageant is the venue. Carved into the side of a hill in Laguna Canyon just up the road from main beach, the outdoor theater is OC’s answer to the Greek. With the mountains in the background and the brisk air of a cool summer evening, it is a refreshing escape from the hustle and bustle of reality. POM is part of the larger Festival of Arts, which showcases the works of more than a hundred local artists in the courtyard outside the theater, and features live demonstrations and music acts as well.

The only negative? Getting a ticket. The tickets typically sell out immediately after they go on sale in late winter, so unless you are willing to pay absurd amounts through a reseller or on eBay, you’re SOL.

Festival of Arts/Pageant of the Masters
650 Laguna Canyon Rd.
Laguna Beach, CA 92651

Shows nightly from July 7-August 31.

What’s Cookin’ Behind the Curtain – Jonesing for Cheap Eats

(Originally posted on LAist on July 20)



When I was a UCLA student many moons ago, one of my favorite places to eat was Buck-Fitty (also known as Roll Inn Sandwich). I am somewhat dating myself in that I remember when the good-but-not-really-that-good sammiches actually cost $1.50, instead of the $3 or whatever they charge now. Point being, as a poor starving college student, I could get an awesome meal for under $3 (after you threw in the incomparable $1 Diddy Riese ice-cream sandwich, before they raised prices to pay for the fancy signage) and spend less than $6 for a Friday night date.

These days, though I am not quite as poor and not starving as often, I still have an affinity for reliable restaurants with cheap meals (and thus cheap dates) that are wholly satisfying, if not somewhat tasty and surprisingly good for being not “gourmet fine dining”. Doria’s Haus of Pizza in Costa Mesa is one of the spots in suburbia that meets this need for me.

Owned and operated by the Doria family since 1974 (at its current location since 1981), Haus of Pizza is a simple, no-frills restaurant with a straightforward menu of pizzas, pastas, and sandwiches. The dishes are comprised of simple recipes that Mom would make, that is, if my mom was Italian and I was named Luigi. Pastas are served with marinara or meat sauce, and with an add-on option for meatballs or sausages. What’s great is that everything but the most “exotic” pasta dishes (i.e., fettucini alfredo and tortellini) is between $5 and $7, which includes soup or salad and some super-buttery garlic bread reminiscent of the fried cheese toast they serve over at the Sizz-lah (yum!). Pizzas start at $6 for a 10” pie. In other words, you can feed a family of four for less than $30 with tax and tip.

The namesake product, the pizza, is made New-York style, with doughy crust, greasy mozzarella cheese, and enough chili pepper in the tomato sauce to give it that extra kick. I really love the fact that the pizza is served straight out of the oven with the cheese browning and bubbling over, burning the top of your mouth like a good pizza should. They also have a cool plastic pizza cutter/spatula contraption that I’ve decided is the second-best kitchen utensil after the spork.

Another one of the popular dishes is the panzerotti (essentially a deep-fried calzone, filled with meat and oozing with mozzarella cheese and served with meat sauce on the outside), which is only served on Wednesdays and Thursdays. It just may be the perfect food, covering all four food groups, and it’s fried, but not super heavy or greasy (or at least as light as fried dough, meat, and cheese can be).

The pastas are just as you’d expect, hearty and consistent. The lasagna leans more on the mozzarella than the ricotta and doesn’t contain a ton of meat, but is a lot more saucy than you’d find in a nicer Italian restaurant. And the spaghetti (which costs $3.90 on Monday nights as part of Haus of Pizza’s daily pasta specials) is, well, spaghetti. It’s pretty hard to eff that up.

Because of its reasonable prices, as well as its prime location by three schools (Orange Coast College, Vanguard University, and a Paul Mitchell school next door), Haus of Pizza attracts more than its fair share of Velcro-walleted college kids that thrive off of the cheap-eats. However, the restaurant really brings in a diverse crowd, from single old white men to middle-aged Filipino couples to young Latino families. It’s got the classic red and white checkerboard tablecloths, with walls adorned with Crayola drawings from its younger clientele, just like Mom’s refrigerator door back home. No one is going to mistake this place for Valentino’s. But it’s a lot more fun and personal than going to the great-breadsticks-but-sterile-atmosphere Pat & Oscar’s or the lackluster-food-but-we-still-try-to-pretend-to-be-classy Olive Garden. And it’s a hell of a lot better than me boiling up water and opening a jar of Ragu. I mean, why would I burn an hour on prep, cook, and clean when I can get a heaping portion of spaghetti and meat sauce with salad and garlic bread for less than $5 in fifteen minutes? (Yes, I speak as a single guy)

Bottom line, you don’t go to Haus of Pizza to have your taste buds wowed. You go to have your stomach filled, because you know it will be at the end of the meal. You go because you can, because it feels obscene to get a good meal for that cheap and you want to keep taking advantage of it before the Doria’s wake up and raise their prices. You go because while the world around us changes, and people shell out $3 for a friggin’ cupcake or $6 for yogurt-flavored fake frozen yogurt, some things stay the same.

Doria’s Haus of Pizza
1500 Adams Ave. #108
Costa Mesa, CA 92626