Reviews

Sometimes change is good.  On my last day in Los Angeles I was looking for a quick meal before I hit the freeway.  I remembered a Campos burrito shop on Lincoln Boulevard in Venice.  Except it wasn’t there any more.  Instead, I found Benny’s Tacos and Rotisserie, which I learned has been there since June.  What a delightful improvement!

I love rotisserie chicken, and Benny’s is no exception.  It’s tender and juicy.  And if it lacks the citrus zing of El Pollo Loco, different is not necessarily bad.

The chicken is served with home-made tortillas and lettuce on the side – perfect for making tacos.  And they have a salsa bar that’s more than adequate.

Also on the menu are the usual favorites: quesadillas, tacos, and burritos.  And all at very reasonable prices.

Here’s another plus: although it looks and feels like a fast-food restaurant, Benny’s serves their food on real plates and offers real utensils for eating.  So not only is their food tasty, but they offer a reduced-guilt alternative to the massive waste of most fast food offerings!

Address: 427 Lincoln Blvd., Venice, CA  90291

Rating: B+

I’ve seen their signs along the freeway, but until today I had never eaten at the One Man Band Diner.  Now I’ve eaten there twice.

The diner differentiates itself from the rest of the restaurants at Exit 225 off the I-15: Wendy’s, Arby’s, Quiznos, Taco Time.  Still, I was skeptical.  When a restaurant calls itself a diner, you never know what you’ll get.  But I’d eaten more than enough fast food on this trip, so I gave it a try.

It’s an interesting concept.  You seat yourself, review the menu, then pick up the red phone and place your order.  The cook answers the phone, then cooks your order on the grill in plain sight of the dining room.  When your food is ready, a pager at the table let’s you know.  You go to the counter, pay, and pick up your food.  You have to get your own glasses, drinks, flatware, and condiments.  It’s a little less personal than some diners, but it’s set up so that one person can do it all – take the orders, cook  the food, and ring up the checks – hence the “One Man Band” Diner.  (Presumably there’s someone washing dishes in back.)

And the food is good!  It’s freshly made from mostly fresh ingredients.  My lunch, the Hobo’s Delight, was a plate of hash browns topped with fresh green peppers, onions, and good-quality smoked ham, with a layer of melted cheese on top of that.  Two scrambled eggs on the side, plus toast.  Yes, they serve breakfast anytime.  The price: $5.99 – hard to beat for a decent meal and a generous portion.

I went back for dinner and tried their special of the day: blackened shrimp, served over mushrooms, tomatoes, and penne pasta sauteed and tossed with Alfredo sauce.  Also very tasty, and priced at $9.95 for a very filling plateful.

Nephi is one of the few towns along I-15 through central Utah that has anything more than a gas station and fast food.  If you find yourself here at meal time, The One Man Band Diner is an excellent choice.

Last week, while visiting my friends at Front Page Jamaican Grill, I noticed a new restaurant across the parking lot: Veg-It-Up Grill.  As a former vegetarian, I was intrigued, and tried it the next night.

Veg-It-Up offers meatless burgers, tacos, chili, and other menu items.  Their special offers a burger and fries, along with Cranberry-Julep Lemonade and Mint Julep Lemonade.  Either dairy or non-dairy cheese is available.  They grill your order while you wait.

I ordered the special.  Many non-veg restaurants throw a Gardenburger on the grill, resulting in a veggie burger with the texture of cardboard.  But this burger was excellent, with great taste and texture, topped with pickles, tomato, and a nice slivce of red onion, served on a whole wheat bun.  It was accompanied by the best sweet potato fries I’ve ever had.  (Good Stuff Burgers on Olympic was formerly the holder of that title.)  I skipped the lemonade because sugar is not on my menu.

Veg-It-Up also sells canned veggie protein, from faux-chicken to patties to hot dogs.  Those maintaining a food reserve, take note!

Veg-It-Up is open from 11 to 7 Monday through Thursday, 11 to 4 Frday, and 10 to 3 on Sunday.  They’re closed Saturday, so it’s no surprise that their Facebook page lists “Adventist World” as one of their interests.  But don’t let that scare you: the management is friendly and helpful, and the food is great.  They’ve been open just 2-1/2 months, and I wish them much success.

Rating: A

I first tried Quicken about 1992, and I was not impressed.  It was too simple and didn’t do enough to make switching worthwhile.  Around 1997, I tried it again, and it quickly became indispensable.  The 1999 version was, in my estimate, just about perfect.

That was then.  By 2004, the program had started to become bigger and clumsier.  The 2007 version made dealing with investing accounts– formerly one of Quicken’s best features– real drudgery.  I do a lot of investment accounting for my clients, and Quicken is (or at least used to be) the best program to use.  When I complained to Intuit, I was told that the company’s research had shown that giving customers direct access to the ledgers caused them to make mistakes.  In other words, they were protecting me from myself.

There aren’t a lot of options if you’re unhappy with Quicken, and I’m sure Intuit knows this.  Says one reviwer:

The sad state of affairs is that as far as the personal finance software world is concerned Intuit is the only game in town for a comprehensive package of expense tracking, investment tracking, budgeting and planning.

In May, Intuit sunsetted their 2007 version, forcing users to upgrade to 2010.  I hoped to see improvements over the 2007 version, but was sadly disappointed.  Instead, Intuit has continued its quest for needless complexity.  From a streamlined, responsive program, they have created what I can only describe as a real mess.

For starters, there are now seven menu areas on the screen.  Yes, seven.  Layered from the top are the menu bar, the button bar, the page tabs, the page view buttons, and the action buttons.  At the bottom are additional screen buttons and, in the lower left corner, the account buttons.  What possible use could a program have for so many menus?  The result is visually complex and annoying.

Add to this that some buttons referred to in the Help database, such as the “Investment Action” button, don’t seem to exist at all, though with all those menus on the screen, who can know for sure?

Then there’s the speed of the program, or lack of it.  It takes twice as long to load as the 2007 version, which was in turn slower than the 2004 version.  When working across a network and entering transactions, this version pauses at the Payee field for about 10-15 seconds– even if you don’t enter any data in the field.  Downloading transactions from a financial institution takes longer, and unlike the 2007 version, which allowed a user to enter data while it downloaded in the background, in 2010 you’re locked out of the program until it finishes.

Perhaps the ultimate insult is that I can’t figure out how to reconcile the cash in an investment account, and the help database says,

Reconciling your Quicken account to your broker’s statement is one way to make sure that your Quicken records are in agreement with those of your broker. But is it worth the effort?

Excuse me?  Do you trust your banker or broker to accurately report every single transaction?  You shouldn’t!  Banks and brokerages make reporting errors all the time, and though a typical customer may only see one or two errors a year, those errors can be significant to an individual’s cash flow.  Recently I’ve seen more than one instance of a big bank clearing the same check twice, and without reconciling you would never know why you’re a thousand dollars short!

But don’t try setting up a “checking account” for your brokerage account.  I tried that, figuring it might let me reconcile.  The program took 15 minutes to make the change, then crashed.  And the result was, my brokerage account no longer shows a balance, and the associated checking account doesn’t show the source of its transactions– and I still can’t reconcile.  As far as I can tell, there’s no way to undo this disaster.

The bottom line: Intuit has taken a great program and made it unusable.  And it’s not the first time Intuit has done this: I gave up its Lacerte tax preparation package four years ago, and would love to find an alternative to its formerly-stellar Quickbooks.  But for now, they’ve got a monopoly, and that means we’re stuck with what they give us.

Rating: F

The Los Angeles Times has great things to say about my friends at Front Page Jamaican Grille:

“People having their first bite of Front Page’s jerk chicken typically fall silent, in a sort of reverent awe at the char and spice. The chicken is marinated in house-made jerk seasoning for a day, then grilled to a dense, juicy, blackened perfection. In every dish here — whether jerk chicken or goat curry or oxtails — the amped-up seasoning embraces the meat but never trounces the flavor…

“Everything that rolls out of the kitchen seems pretty much perfect, from the still-crisp, subtly spiced vegetables to the coconut-flavored rice and beans.”

And be sure to try Valdo’s homemade hot sauce, perhaps the best I’ve ever tasted!

On our way through Hurricane, Utah one day, we stopped for lunch at the Main Street Cafe.  Located at 138 S. Main Street, it’s a small place that looks like a bit like a diner from the street.

It’s not a diner.  It’s a lovely sandwich shop with selections ranging from “Lox & Bagel” and “Ham & Swiss” to “Veggie & Pepperjack” and “Boca Burger.”  The latter is one of the best soy burgers on the market, but rarely seen in restaurants.

We split a “Cafe Choice,” a turkey sandwich with cream cheese, sprouts, red onion, tomato, lettuce, and (our choice) jalapeno.  It was served on delicious wheat bread, fresh and sliced thick.  It came with chips and a [very mild] salsa, and a huge wedge of crunchy dill pickle.  Fabulous!

The veggies in the sandwich were particularly tasty, and afterward I asked the owner if they were local veggies.  I wasn’t surprised to learn that they were.  Restaurateurs take note: the quality of your produce makes a big difference, and nothing is tastier than produce grown close by!

Main Street Cafe also serves breakfast.  Their hours are Tuesday – Friday, 7am – 3pm, and Saturday 8am – 3pm.  Give them a try!

Rating: A

There are some great hotel deals in Las Vegas these days.  The combination of the recession and the summer heat has dropped prices all over town.  But beware: a low price isn’t necessarily a low price.

But if you’re diligent about finding hotels that don’t charge extra fees– and offer free internet– you can find some really nice deals in Vegas.

(Image source.)

A new twist on Disney and their recurring theme of dead mothers and traumatized babies — this time its dead babies and traumatized mothers.

On Sunday, Bob and I saw (part of) the new Disney movie, “Earth.”

Typical Disney set-up of moms and babies in danger, you just know somebody’s gonna get killed because the music tells you so.

We walked out just as the baby elephant was being chewed up by a pack of lions. Lion hanging off the baby’s anus. Baby elephant screaming. Horrified young children crying in the audience. (It wasn’t the first miserable death on screen.  More than one mother hauled her terrified child out of the theater.)

Yes, I know, animals have to eat.  Yes, I know, nature is savage and wild. But does nature have a deep-voiced male voice-over and blatant emotional manipulation?  No.  Also, the wilderness isn’t touted as child-friendly entertainment.  Someone was asleep at the ratings board, giving this movie a “G”!

When it comes around your way, save your money and your children’s sanity and rent Winged Migration.

(Yahoo photo.)

First, the good news: the Super 8 on Koval Lane in Las Vegas offers free internet.  Which is very good news indeed, because it’ll give you something to do while you’re not sleeping.

Enough said.  I won’t be back.

Rating: F.

(Photo source.)

Last weekend was a tough one in which to find a cheap room in Las Vegas.  All my regular venues were either booked up or charging far more than I cared to pay.  So I ended up at the Microtel.  I’d never heard of it before, and was skeptical but desperate.

On the whole, a great place to stay.  Which is good, because I’m booked here again next weekend.

Rating: B+