Last night, Jesse and I wanted to try a new, inexpensive restaurant in the area. After looking through our Not for Tourists Guide to Los Angeles and browsing some websites, I finally searched Yelp.com for restaurants within one mile and with one dollar sign. Caribbean food restaurant Cha Cha Chicken was a clear front-runner, with over 200 reviews and 4 out of 5 stars. We walked down to the ocean boardwalk, and then north a few blocks to the little, orange, beachy (read: shack-like) restaurant. It was hopping, and we were just glad to get a table. Jesse got the original cha cha chicken, and I had jerk chicken enchiladas. Both were so tasty...we ate them in almost complete silence (except for oohs and ahhs). The restaurant is BYO too, which could be fun. We saw one table had a jug of sangria. Definitely recommended.
On the way home, we stopped at the video store at the end of our street for the first time, called "Vidiots." It definitely does not have a chain store look...there's a lot of neon and painted storefront windows. I don't think I expected anything too special, but it was definitely the best video store I've ever visited, with a multitude of films and creative organization for optimal browseability (the librarian in me loves this). They had a large section of movies organized by director (English and foreign), and a wide variety of random topical sections, for example: an entire endcap devoted to Jane Austen movies (there are a surprising number), sections for 30s and 40s comedies, beach movies, "vintage" directors, silent movies, noir, Shakespeare, spy movies, etc. The store was packed and had almost as many videos as DVDs. Again, definitely recommended.
Rob and I almost went to cha cha when we were there last week-it looked very fun to me now I wish we did!! you live in santa monica?? i LOVED it there and envy you much.
ReplyDeletelove, Liz