Zankou Chicken - restaurant review

I'd heard of Zankou Chicken before and knew that it was a chain of restaurants of some sort but didn't know much about it. After hearing more about it from people I knew, I decided to check out the menu, which is Mediterranean based and looked terrific, so a couple of weeks ago, I had occasion to try the Pasadena location.

The Pasadena branch is fairly unassuming and is just a storefront on busy Colorado Blvd. There is a sign that advertises the existence of a parking lot in the back, but we just found parking on a nearby side street.

The restaurant itself was a pretty good size, and it was busy on this Saturday afternoon. I looked through the menu choices, and I decided on the kebab combo plate, with the chicken and beef. And because I happen to love tabouleh, I also ordered a side of that. I think the husband ordered the shawerma plate.

On the menu in the restaurant, there's a sign that says kebab orders take a bit longer, so we took a seat to wait for our food. I'm thinking they don't cook any of what you order until you order it because it took a lot longer than I expected for our food to arrive. It was also quite busy in the restaurant, so that might have had something to do with the wait as well.

When our food was finally ready, I was surprised to see that the servings of the sides that come with the plates were *very* generous. And the side of tabouleh that I got was probably enough to serve four people, at least. I thought everything tasted good, but I ended up with about half my food left over, so I took that home and finished it for dinner on another night. The husband enjoyed his food, though I think he thought there was more grease at the bottom of the plate than he had expected.

I would definitely visit another location of Zankou Chicken again (the Pasadena location isn't particularly convenient for my everyday life, but it happened to be near another business I needed to go to that day), but I'll have to remember to go before I'm really hungry because it'll be a wait for the food to arrive, and I'll have to remember to order a smaller plate and not to order the tabouleh because the side portion is just too much.




Zankou Chicken
1296 E. Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91106
(626) 405-1502

Mets beat themselves, gift wrap win to Dodgers

So the Los Angeles Dodgers (of Los Angeles) beat the New York Mets (of New York) tonight by a score of 3-2. Other than that it took 11 innings for the game to be done, fairly uneventful score, it would seem, right? WRONG.

The Mets APPARENTLY decided that they didn't want to win this game. They had a total of 5 errors in the game, 2 of them coming in the bottom of the 11th inning while the Dodgers were up at bat. The score was tied at the top of the 11th, and a triple by the Mets brought another Mets player in to score. Or not. Turns out Mets player Ryan Church missed third base when he rounded it, so when the Dodgers tagged third base with the ball, Church was called out, making the third out of the inning and rendering the just-hit triple useless.

Then in the bottom of the 11th, the Dodgers had managed to load the bases, and the Dodgers player hit a fairly easy infield ground ball. Mets first baseman scooped it up and threw it to home plate for the easy out - which it would have been had he not thrown it away instead, allowing the Dodgers to score and win the game.

Here's a link to the really funny recap.

And courtesy of the Mets themselves, here's the video of Vin Scully's call of Church's missed bag. Once that video finishes, subsequent ones will pop up, or you can just pick which next video you want to see.

one fewer hot chick on Friday night

So this week is the "upfronts", where the networks announce their schedules for next year. Fox announced their schedule on Monday, and while rumours had swirled over the weekend, Monday morning brought confirmation that "Dollhouse" had indeed been picked up, albeit only for another 13 episodes to start with. Hopefully, the audience will build, and they'll order the rest of the season. I'm really excited about that because while some questions were answered with the season finale, there are still lots of questions that haven't been answered, and there's so much more to be learned about everyone. I wonder what they're going to do with Victor, and how Dr. Saunders is going to be now, and most important of all, will they bring November back? I sure hope so.

A friend posted this link to an interesting story about "Dollhouse".

But then there was the bad news. As had been rumoured now for quite some time, no renewal was forthcoming for "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles". I'm sad about that because I really enjoyed the show, and they really went out with a bang. I wonder if they knew they weren't coming back when they made the finale. Most of the major loose ends were tied up, and they would have embarked on a new set of stories, so at least it was a good enough place to end.


On a related note, the same friend posted this link which has a running count of the status of television shows on all the networks.

"Angels & Demons" - spoiler movie review

I had had no desire to see "The Da Vinci Code", but the trailer for "Angels & Demons" really caught my attention, so even though I've never read any of the books or had any interest otherwise, we decided to see this movie.

And I really enjoyed it. I was pretty tired going into the movie, and I knew that it was almost 2 1/2 hours long, so I was concerned that I'd have trouble staying awake, but I had no such problem. The time went by without me really noticing, and I was completely rivetted on what was going on screen. It was mostly a mystery with Tom Hanks' character having to figure out clues based on his knowledge of the Catholic Church and the Illuminati. It was all very interesting to me, especially the stuff about electing a new Pope and the Vatican archives, and it made me really want to know how much of all that was really true.

Tom Hanks did a terrific job, as did Ewan McGregor and Stellan Skarsgard, just to name the people I knew, but it was really a terrific ensemble effort.

really painful kitty alarm clock

I found out about this video of a cat who has a rather painful way of waking up its owner.

Now, Orkid likes to climb on me in the middle of the night, but she just wants to be pet. If she ever pulled a trick like the cat in the video, she would probably end up flung across the room and banished from the bedroom for quite some time.

I'm a little suspicious about the video because I'm wondering why the camera was set up there to catch this. I mean, after all, it's not impossible to teach cats to do things. And the time stamp says it's 3pm, but I suppose it's possible they didn't set the clock on the camera. But mostly, it's the non-reaction of the guy after the first bite, and then the relatively little reaction after being swat and then bitten again. I mean, after the first bite, I would have been up and mad.

80s flashback - Glenn Frey - "You Belong To The City"

I think I've previously mentioned how much I loved "Miami Vice". It was on during my college years, and since it was on Friday nights, I'd take the night off from homework, and I'd plant myself in front of the TV at 10pm to watch the show. (Yeah, I wasn't a partying kind of person in college, so TV was usually about as exciting as it got. But, I did have my own TV in my room, so I didn't have to deal with the masses in the lounge and the group vote of what to watch and having to deal with other people while I watched my show.)

I loved everything about the show - the characters, the look, the stories, the way the show was shot and edited, and especially the music.

One of the most amazing songs from the show was Glenn Frey's "You Belong to the City". Just perfect, so I present that below.

Oh, and here's a really terrific write-up about what made "Miami Vice" great.





Love that wailing sax.

"Knowing" - spoiler movie review

"Knowing" had one really big obstacle that I had to get over - Nicolas Cage. I really dislike Nicolas Cage. Not as a person since I don't know him or really know anything about him, but I really dislike him as an actor. He was fine in "Peggy Sue Got Married", but other than that, he not only doesn't do anything for me, but rather, he detracts for me. I hated him in "Leaving Las Vegas", but then, I pretty much hated the entire movie. And of course, he was rewarded with an Academy Award for his performance in that film. There have been films that I might have been interested in seeing, but once I found out he was in it, I passed. This is the first film in quite some time where my interest in the film surpassed my desire to never see Nicolas Cage in a movie again.

OK, so with that major obstacle going into the movie, I actually rather liked it. The trailers were pretty intriguing to begin with, and it was actually really tense during much of the movie when you had no idea why stuff was happening, and then you found out about the creepy girl who had written all the numbers down in the first place, and then you discovered that creepy dudes are stalking the little boy and then the little girl and talking to them and approaching them as well.

I was really surprised at how graphic some of the scenes were. The plane crash was pretty horrific, especially with the people walking around in flames. And then the subway crash, where you saw people getting mowed down by the out-of-control train. OK, so I didn't really see all of that. As soon as I suspected that it was going to show EVERYTHING, I pretty much didn't look.

I actually thought Nicolas Cage did a decent job. At no time did he irritate me or did I want him to die, like I did all through "Leaving Las Vegas".

I was, however, disappointed with the ending, with aliens being the explanation. They'd sort of set it up as a supernatural thing, so I thought the aliens totally ruined that. And Earth is destroyed, and then a bunch of kids are taken to another world to be the new Adams and Eves to populate that world. Those poor kids - did they know what they were in for?

Oh, and I enjoyed the movie even though there was an ENTIRE ROW OF STUPID PEOPLE WHO WERE TALKING REALLY LOUDLY THROUGH MUCH OF THE MOVIE, SO MUCH THAT I MOVED AFTER THE MOVIE STARTED TO GET AS FAR AWAY FROM THEM AS POSSIBLE BEHIND THEM, WHICH WASN'T VERY FAR. What the hell is wrong with people?

Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto on Saturday Night Live - safe from spoilers of new "Star Trek" movie

A friend of the husband sent this to him, and he in turn sent it to me.

On this past week's Saturday Night Live, Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto made an appearance on Weekend Update to talk about some of the backlash aimed at the new "Star Trek" movie. It's a great segment, and a surprise visitor even shows up.

There are no spoilers in the clip for the "Star Trek" movie, so it's even safe to watch for those self-proclaimed super-Trekkies who STILL HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE YET.

magical memories - J's baby shower

J is one of a group of friends that I made in college. I went to Cal (aka U.C. Berkeley), but because of the student housing shortage, I stayed at a dorm off-campus which was really a dorm building for another college that rented the space out to us Cal students. J was a couple of years younger than me, so when I graduated, she was still at Cal, though she moved to an apartment with other mutual friends.

When J was graduating from Cal, she sent me an invitation to her graduation, and since I'd been making regular visits to Cal anyway, I decided I'd go. I met her parents and her sister and her boyfriend, and she had other friends who also attended her graduation. Her parents hosted a dinner after graduation at a terrific Korean restaurant (J and her family and her boyfriend are all Korean), and I think that was my first introduction to Korean food, which I really liked and still do.

When J went back east for grad school, we stayed in touch, writing letters. Yes, pre-email, at least the home version.

Some time after that, J got engaged and then was getting married in Berkeley, in a rose garden north of campus, and I accepted the invitation she sent. I had a terrific time at the wedding - her mother was dressed in traditional Korean clothing, and the groom's best man was actually a woman - decked out in tails and everything and looking great. I ended up getting lots of great pictures and made an album for them.

Again, some time later, J announced that she was pregnant, and closer to her due date, I got an invitation to her baby shower. My first thought was that I wished I could go, but I'd come home to L.A., and while J's husband's family lived in L.A., J was from Sacramento, and J and her husband had decided to live in San Francisco.

And then I thought about it some more. Why couldn't I go? It wasn't like they were living in the North Pole or another continent or even the other side of the country. They were at most a 6 1/2 to 7 hour car ride away. She was only going to have her first baby once. I was out of college and had a decent job and had started to accumulate some spending money. So I sent word to the friend throwing the shower that I would be attending.

Before I actually made any travel plans to go, though, the friend throwing the shower called me and said the shower was postponed. J was several months away from her due date, but complications in her pregnancy were arising, and she'd been put on strict bed-rest, which she was having a hard time with anyway because she's such an active and outgoing and outdoorsy person. We obviously couldn't have the shower without her, and the extra stress and people and stuff associated with a shower would not be good for her or the baby, so the decision was made to postpone the shower until after the baby was born. That would have the added benefit that we'd actually all get to see the baby.

J suffered through her bed-rest, which required quite a bit of reprimanding from her husband as she really wasn't supposed to get out of bed AT ALL, except maybe to go to the bathroom. However, eventually, she made it through, and she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Once everyone was pronounced well and healthy, plans were made for the rescheduled shower.

The shower was set for a Saturday afternoon, but it was during a time when I really couldn't take any time off work, as I'd planned to take the Friday off to drive up there. So, I decided to splurge, since I had some disposable income anyway. I decided to fly up for the day to go to the shower, which would mean I wouldn't spend any extra money on a hotel room (just the flight itself and parking at the airport and such), and I could go to the shower and not miss any days from work.

The shower was booked for something like 3pm, and I think it was at a teahouse of sorts in San Francisco - I can't remember exactly. I know it wasn't in a home or a full-fledged restaurant. I remember having finger foods, but there were also couches, and it was very homey.

I had booked a 10:30am flight, and with the hour flight, it would get me there in plenty of time. I was flying from Ontario to San Francisco. The BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit - a subway/metro system, and I'm not even sure if it's still called BART now, since it's been so long since I've been up there) had a train that went from the airport to a couple blocks away from where I needed to go. Perfect.

Since I was only going up for a couple hours, I didn't need a change of clothes. I had on a nice blouse and skirt which were dressy enough for the shower but comfortable to travel in as well. I brought the gift, but even back then, I knew I couldn't bring something wrapped, so I brought all the fixings - gift itself, gift bag, tissue paper, card - that I could assemble once I got there. So all I had with me was a purse and a tote, all as carry-on.

I got to the airport when I needed to and waited. And the flight was delayed half an hour, now not departing until 11am. No biggie for me, I'll just keep reading my book. Others scrambled to the pay phones (pre-cel days, you know) to call people who would be picking them up at the other end to tell them the change in plans.

Then another announcement - flight was delayed another hour, so now, it wasn't going to leave until noon. More panic in the airport, more phone calls to people and being upset that people would now be missing connecting flights and such. I think I was the only person not panicking. I had all kinds of time to spare.

Our flight did finally leave at noon, and I got to the San Francisco airport at about 1pm, and then I took the BART train to the San Francisco stop that I'd mapped out. Originally, I was going to have a couple hours to get something to eat, wander around, put the gift together and kill time before the shower. Because of the flight delays, I didn't have nearly the amount of time I had thought I would. I think I grabbed something to eat once I got there, and then I looked for somewhere I'd be able to put the gift together.

I walked for a bit, and eventually, I found a laundromat with nice big tables for people to fold their clothes. It wasn't very busy at all, so I settled myself at one of the tables, wrapped the gift with the tissue that I'd brought and then put it in the gift bag, wrote out the card and then put it into the bag as well. And by then, it was pretty much time to find the location of the shower.

The tea house was maybe a couple blocks from the laundromat, and when I arrived, most of the guests were already there. I don't remember details of the shower other than that J was really happy to see me and was glad that I'd been able to make it, and I enjoyed being able to meet her daughter, and J's mother spent a lot of time holding her first grandchild, and it was a lovely picture. It would have been lovelier if any of the pictures I'd taken had actually come out, but I wasn't a very good photographer back then, so most of the pictures sucked.

During the shower, I talked to the other people in attendance, and of course, questions arose about how everyone knew J, and when I mentioned that I'd gone to Cal, I was asked if I still lived locally, and I said that no, that I'd gone home to L.A. and was just in the area for the shower. They asked when I'd arrived, and I said a couple hours ago. They asked when I was leaving, and I said later that evening. Most were surprised that I had literally just come up for the day to go to the shower, and I explained the whole "too bad I can't go/wait, why can't I go?" thought process that I'd gone through. And really, the slight expense was really worth the whole trip and being able to see J and her family and the new baby.

The shower ended probably around 6pm, and I had booked a late flight to make sure I'd have plenty of time, so I think I had something like a 9pm flight. I was one of the last people to leave, and J had eventually learned about my travelling up for the shower. She thanked me for coming, and she and her husband (and of course their little baby) ended up taking me to the BART stop so that I wouldn't have to walk.

I took the BART back down to the airport, waited a bit for my flight, and made it home just fine.


J and her husband came down for the wedding when I got married, and they have two daughters now. We keep in touch mostly at Christmas time through cards/letters.


Most of what I remember from that day is just the journey itself, how relaxing it was, even with the setbacks, how much fun I had meeting everyone and just being at the shower and seeing the joy on the faces of J and her sister and her mother and everyone there. And it probably sounds stupid, but the fact that I was actually flying up for the day to attend the shower was huge. I've subsequently driven and/or flown to other cities and states to attend weddings, but this was the first time I attended an event by flying to it, and at the time, it was a big deal to me. And all worth it because I still have the picture in my mind of J's mother smiling down lovingly at her granddaughter in her arms.

uWink - restaurant review

We were in the Hollywood and Highland area a couple of weeks ago, and we were looking for somewhere to have dinner. We'd looked at uWink previously (from the outside and through the windows), and it had looked intriguing, so we decided to give it a try. It was early evening on a Saturday night, so it was already a bit full. There's a bar area to the right of the entrance right after you walk in, and then the regular dining room is to the left. We stood at the podium waiting for someone to seat us or acknowledge us, and we waited a while. It wasn't until there were quite a number of people in line after us that someone came by to seat us.

uWink has a technology that I've actually thought for a while would be a good idea. Sure, I like having a server, and I enjoy my interaction with them most of the time, but sometimes, you're not really there for the experience, just to eat, and I've thought it would be great to have one of those things you'll see in futuristic movies where a menu or a request board can just pop up on the table, and you can tell it what you want to order, if you need a drink refill, or whatever else you might need. Someone can read that information in the back and just bring you what you've asked for, instead of having to come out and asking you and then going back to get it. Automation used to cut down on wait time.

Well, the concept is pretty much like that at uWink. At each table is a sort of monitor which has a screen on both sides, which contain the picture menu and other things as well. You have to have a credit card to basically log in and start a tab. If you don't have a credit card, you'll have to wait for the server to be able to override that requirement. You tell the computer how many different people are on the order and what their names (first only) are. Then you can tell it what each person wants to order as a drink. You can then send that order in. Because you control when an order is sent in, you can request drinks and/or appetizers first and then continue to make your entree selections. Or let's say one person is ready with their entree order and is really hungry or in a hurry. They don't have to wait for the rest of the table to order. They can just punch in their order and send it, and then when the other people are ready, they can place their orders. Or maybe after you order, you decide you want to add a side or a salad. You just put in that order. And when you're ready for dessert, you have your choice of those as well that you can submit.

There is a server who comes by to greet you and to make sure you know how the menu works. We told her it was our first time, so she went through it with us.

One thing that I wasn't crazy about is that the monitor is fairly huge and takes up the entire middle of the table, and then there's a little plateau on top, maybe to put dishes or something? We ended up sharing a dish and thought that would be a good place to put it, but it was entirely too high. I would prefer the monitor to be more of a flat-screen version, since that would take up much less space at the table. Or a pop-up screen that retracts when you don't need it would be even better.





If you click on the menus link on the website, you can get an idea of what the screen on the monitor actually looks like with the various things that are offered.

I ordered an iced tea to drink, but I was dismayed in looking around the screen some more later that they did not offer free refills on the iced tea. There's a button to ask for a refill, but the price costs the same as the initial order. I asked the server later about the refills, and she said no, the refills were free. At that point, I'd only browsed the refill screen, but after I looked at it some more, I asked her again the next time she came by and said the screen said it costs the same amount of money for a refill. She basically said not to worry about it, and she later brought me another iced tea when my drink ran low. I don't know if there was an error in the system or if she was just making a personal decision to comp me refills. I know that in bar settings and such, free refills on iced tea and soda are not offered. But in this case, it was a restaurant setting, where refills on iced tea is customary. I don't know if they offered free refills on soda since that wasn't ordered at our table.

I decided to have the chicken bruschetta. Once you make your selection, there are changes you can request to it as well, which the link on the website shows. I asked that the sauce on the spaghetti be substituted with marinara sauce, and I asked for extra of the fresh tomato bruschetta.





The husband ordered the skirt steak and shrimp skewer combo. I don't know if he asked for any changes to the entree.





We also decided to get an order of caesar salad to share.





The items were brought by a runner, and as I mentioned earlier, it wasn't very convenient to share the salad because the monitor took so much room. (They brought the salad with the entrees since we submitted the entire order at once. If we'd thought about it more, we might have submitted the salad order first, but it ended up ok with all the food arriving at once.) We ended up putting the salad plate on the table in a little space between the monitor and the wall.

The food was generally good, nothing spectacular but tasty and enjoyable. My dish did come with the substitution I asked for, but I couldn't really tell if there was extra of the tomato bruschetta.

We did run into a problem in that all the food was brought to us, but we had no utensils. I found a button on the screen (I can't remember where it was or what it looked like, but I remember thinking it wasn't that easy to find) that eventually went to a screen where you could ask for forks and knives and plates and napkins and such. I clicked on all the stuff we needed and submitted it. Our server happened to show up right after that to check on us, and we mentioned that we didn't have any utensils, so she went to get some for us. I'm not sure if that was just an error, but I hope so. I can understand having a way to request extra utensils and napkins and side plates, but I would think that getting your initial table settings would be automatic.

You may have noticed from one of the pictures above that there are giant screens all around the room. That night, they had a basketball game on a couple of the screens and then random things on a couple of other screens.

Another thing that the monitor has is games you can play and other media to occupy your time. We browsed through those and played some as we were waiting for our food. It was a nice diversion for a bit, but it makes the dining experience a really anti-social affair since everyone at the table is staring at their individual screen. They had a category for "group games", and that turned out to be something where a particular game would be announced on your screen, and if you wanted to join, you hit "join" and your screenname, and then everyone who joined would play the trivia game against each other. The husband and I were disappointed that in "group games", there wasn't an option for playing a game together. I think that's a real missed opportunity. They had a multitude of trivia games and the like, and I think it would have been great to be able to pick one of those and play against each other. It would also be fun to be able to even challenge another table to a trivia contest or some other game.

There's a button to close out your check, and it actually breaks down what each person had, based on what you told the computer each person ordered. You can have a listing of the total bill, or you can see what each person's tab cost. And if food got put in under the wrong name, or let's say someone is paying for another person's entree or dessert, you can move items from one person's list to another, and it will recalculate the bill. That part was really nice, as is the fact that you just pay at the table by swiping your credit card again once you've approved the final bill, including tax and tip, though the husband said the place to swipe your credit card isn't easy to see either. I liked being able to pay at the table, which alleviates the problem of not being able to find a server to ask for your check.

I generally liked the concept of the restaurant, and I thought the food was ok enough. I'm not sure that it's somewhere I'd go to on a regular basis, but for certain occasions, I'd definitely be up for a return visit.


On a side note and interestingly enough, the man who is CEO and founder of uWink was also the founder of Atari Corp. and Chuck E. Cheese's pizza restaurants.




uWink (at Hollywood & Highland)
6801 Hollywood Boulevard
Hollywood, CA 90028
(323) 466-1800