Top 5 Hamburgers

For exceptionally good Lebanese food, try Carnival Restaurant in Sherman Oaks, CA.

A friend once took a business associate to Carnival because my friend loves the restaurant and wanted to share the experience, but also because the business associate was born in Lebanon. After tasting the food, the business associate told my friend "he had eaten this food before". It turns out, the chef of Carnival Restaurant had been the cook at the business associate's grade school in Lebanon more than two decades earlier! How wild is it for someone to absolutely recognize the flavor of fairly common dishes to be able to trace it precisely to a place and time in one's childhood? That story blew me away.

...btw, Carnival Restaurant has extremely good french fries, and they have very good burgers made of mixed ground beef and lamb.

On the price of pizza...

A good college friend (w/ an MBA) opened Zeppy's Pizza a fairly successful pizza joint in Hermosa Beach on the Pier Walk. Zeppy's makes a deep dish pie that is dough intensive somewhat like a Chicago, but not as greasy/buttery (it is California, after all). He told me that it cost $0.25 per slice for him to make a large pizza even with lots of toppings.

So, I have a real problem with $15-25 "designer personal pizzas" (9") being hustled around Los Angeles these days.

03-12-10: Tvad
For exceptionally good Lebanese food, try Carnival Restaurant in Sherman Oaks, CA.

Tvad, there are a couple of Middle Eastern places I have wanted to hit in The Valley for a long time.

One of my best friends is Armenian and his dad is kind of a Lebanese/Armenian food fanatic. I suggest they check out Mantee in Studio City because of Jonathan Gold's LA Weekly review and they loved it.

Another one is The Hummus Bar & Grill in Tarazana on Ventura Blvd.

But, the one I really want to hit is Itzik Hagadol Grill on Ventura Blvd, it is supposed to be the best of all the Valley ME joints.

In Texas they are
1-Kinkaids FtWorth,TX
2-ALs-Arlington,TX
3-Yankees-Carlos TX
4-Becks-Sugarland
5-County Line BAr Grill-Richmond

Macdaddy: no worries on the rap comments. I live 10 minutes from there. My pleasure.