[Original visit was 3 weeks ago]
After all the driving and walking we did thatday (okay, it was more driving than walking!), we were a little hungry so we headed over to a place we'd read about on several blogs. This place was the
Oinkster in
Eagle Rock, an area of Los Angeles with a sizable Filipino population.
The chef and owner of the Oinkster is
Andre Guerrero who happens to be a Filipino American. He is also chef at
Marche, a French restaurant in Los Angeles that sadly does not serve anything Filipino related despite having a Filipino chef and owner. Check out this recent article in the LA Times called "
Filipino Food - Off the Menu".
It was packed inside and outside. By the way, their bathrooms are outside the restaurant. There's only one each for men and women. That kind of sucked. I was so desperate to use A bathroom that I used the men's one. So gross looking at a urinal. Ugh!
Loved their wanna be RUN DMC type shirts which you can order off their website if you wanna pimp this place. Not that I would.
Although Oinkster is known for their Pastrami sandwiches (see mixed bag of reviews at end of this post), we didn't order that...
Luckily, we got some good seats along one of the banquettes.
Our little snack consisted of their famed Ube Shake along with their Belgian fries. I was also thinking of getting their peanut butter and jelly cupcake but we'd already had a lot of sweets earlier with the mochilatos and the PB mochi pieces from Little Tokyo. Plus I had French toast for breakfast! Did I really need more empty calories?
The answer was YES! If only for the shake and fries, which were so damn good - just enough mouth burning crispness on the outside and nice and soft innards. The fries were served with a garlic aioli, no ketchup! Regular size was $2.25.
And here is the Ube Shake I'd been dreaming about ($4.50).
Ube (pronounced "ooh beh", not "yoob") is a Vividly Violently and Violaceous purple yam and used by Filipinos in all kinds of foods. Can you tell I wanted to use "V's" in that sentence? You can find ube in desserts like
Ube Halaya which is ube cooked with sugar and milk and is one of my childhood favorites, or spoonfuls of jam in
halo halo; you can also taste ube as flavoring (and unnatural food coloring) in cakes and ice cream, as a filling for
hopia, or if you are in a Hawaiian McDonald's, their
purple Taro pie. But in this case, you'll find the starchy ube flavor in this here shake!!!
Check out some cool ube recipes here, courtesy of Marvin's blog
Burnt Lumpia (Ube marshmallows, ube pancakes! Ube gnocchi and more! Wow!).
Although the shake was not a purple as I would have wanted such as Prince's purple trenchcoat a la the Purple Rain album cover...
or as purple as the the McDonald's creepy and menacing Grimace, we enjoyed the nice and thick Ube shake and the crisp hot fries!
(image courtesy of miserena's flickr)
I liked the wooden pig on top of the display case on the counter. I was reminded of those wooden Philippine carved carabao souvenirs that you sometimes see in Filipino houses along with the giant wooden fork and spoons, Weapons of Moroland Shield, the Santo Nino figurine, and the velvet painting of the Last Supper.
After our quick snack, we headed to our hotel to relax. I nearly had a combination of a shitfit and 80's flashback when I saw this store! Holy fk! I haven't seen a
Susie's Deals store since, like FOREVER! I used to shop at the Susie's Deals store in Southland Plaza in south San Diego in high school and college. Turns out that there's only 2 locations now in San Diego, one on University Ave and in La Mesa.
Don't laugh - I once bought a brown three tiered ruffled skirt for $9.99 and high waisted acid washed Esprit jeans (it was the late 80's, so sue me!). For those of you that don't remember, Susie's Deals was kind of like the ugly and pimply bastard spawn of of Clothestime and Charlotte Russe. Their clothes were trendy but not very well made. Most of all, they were cheap.
Aren't road trips fun?
Other foodbloggers who referenced Oinkster include:
More reviews on Oinkster
here (this one has a photo of their peanut butter and jelly cupcake which I kind of wanted to try but we weren't that hungry),
here (this one mentions their pastrami sandwich), and
here, as well as the
Yelp reviews which are always a a mish mash of opinions.
