Honda Ya Izakaya - Los Angeles

Honda-Ya is well-hidden, tucked into a Little Tokyo mall. It takes some work to find, buried in plain sight above several random floors of stores. Not the most memorable location, and the generic grill is as boring as the mall it came in.

The skewers are strung with quality ingredients, but they are the blandest and priciest I've ever had. The Beef Tongue is a tender, juicy favorite, but this one is just okay.

And thus, a parade of lightly-salted, slightly-tender things-served-on-sticks begins. The Chicken Hearts are up next. They may have been brushed with a bit of sauce, but it made no impression whatsoever. Even my favorite guilty-pleasure Pork Belly is blah. Shishito Peppers are a break from mediocre meat, but there's not much to say about a string of peppers.

I've never see Duck served anywhere else, and I see why. It's dry enough to be jerky and had all the flavors of what I can only describe as mystery meat. I was really looking forward to the Scallops, but even that rich strip of roe isn't saving them.

The Chicken Cartilage is the blandest cut of all, tasteless scraps of white meat clinging to crunchy rib-tips. Lamb Chops are my splurge-y treat, but they fall just as flat.

Even my favorite Chicken Skin was the worst I've had. No salt and impressively dry.

DineLA heaped high praise on Honda-Ya's offal-on-a-stick, yet nothing stuck out about any of their skewers. Two thumbs DOWN for these top-dollar doldrums.

A Basq Kitchen - Redondo Beach

I am so suspicious of pier restaurants. I usually avoid those top-dollar tourist traps at all costs, but we had to eat somewhere. We had other options, but A Basq Kitchen's soft sea breeze is impossible to resist...And three Asian women dining at Oriental Breeze just feels so wrong.

Yet nothing feels wrong at A Basq Kitchen, and the Traditional Basque Sampler is very right in flavor AND in price. Three hungry ladies and we were still stacking generous leftovers into boxes at the end.

The Charcuterie & Cheese Plate covers all the bases; chorizo and jamon Serrano round out the requisite meats while manchego schmoozes with bleu and brie.

Piperada Vasca is a sippable stew, hot contrasts cold as pulpy, earthy peppers mix with a topcoat of cold-cure, chewy jamon. Break it up with plump House-Marinated Olives when the stew gets too heavy.

The Basque stew is surprisingly deep, a heavy daily special with meaty chunks. The Potatoes Bravas are an aside, home fries in a mayo-esque sauce. Just don't fill up on the potatoes of you'll neglect the triangle sandwiches of Tortilla Vasca Pintxo in the back.

So many tapas, so little time. It made sense to split the sampler that night, but we dallied over much of the menu, especially those Spanish classics like paella, pulpo, and bacon-wrapped dates. The sampler was a fair sample, but it would only be fair to sample some more.

Myung In - Torrance

Most of my dumplings are boiled from a freezer bag, but some nights, even that's too much work. Enter Myung In, a stall next to South Bay's cheapest sushi counter, serving an affordable supply of manju and mandoo.

There's been much ado about their mandoo ever since Bourdain descended upon the K-town branch. The Fried Dumpling with pork, shrimp, and vegetables are heavy potstickers, bulging with meaty chunks.

The Pork Kimchi boiled dumplings are made to order, flavor-pockets of pork with a pickled, kimchi kick.

The Red Bean steamed dumpling is a misnomer for steamed bun. The fluffy, white-bread comfort food of Asians everywhere is too perfectly round to be house-made but these soothing giants double as dinner or dessert. I like big buns and I cannot lie.

There was much ado about their dumplings, but I think it's much ado about nothing. The dumplings are fresher-than-frozen, and the steamed buns are fluffy and fine, but they don't trump a frozen bag. I'm really onto dumplings, but I just couldn't get into Myung In.

Marmalade Cafe - Malibu

Pretentious. Overrated. Overpriced. You know, typical new-money Malibu. I sat down at Marmalade Cafe and perused the menu with so many assumptions in mind.

I was in for quite a surprise with the Lobster & Shrimp Linguine. No frills, just a simple, al dente dish; a generous, heaping bowl of lobster cream-coated pasta with a hint of tomato-tang and sweet shellfish chunks. Simple and straightforward, but wow, it tasted GOOD.

The Grilled Lamb T-Bone Steaks were a lot less good. Thick cuts of lamb, doused in a salty, murky brown sauce dripped dark rivers down a sticky "pappardelle", which was just a swimming vegetable mess. The lamb itself was cooked well, but nothing else turned out well in this dish.

Couldn't get enough of the linguine, despite the lamb. The El Segundo location makes it the exact same, and I got it with a side of Pineapple Upside-Down Pancake with salted caramel butter for brunch. Fluffy, cake-like, with big pineapple chunks. More gimmick than authentic, but still tastes amazing.

I expected a lot of ego at Marmalade Cafe, along with a pretentious, overrated air of self-importance, but it turns out to have none of these qualities, and I am a jerk. They have several chains, and the food and service seem consistent. Not so innovative, but their classics are good, and they have a multi-page, multi-faceted menu so that every picky eater in your party can have something they like. With all those tasty options, they just might be SoCal's much-better Cheesecake Factory.

Poke Bar - El Segundo

Right around the launch of the viral, glitchy, well-conceived, horribly-executed Pokemon Go, Poke Bar comes to town.

The poke bowl has a lot of choices, mine a myriad of tuna, scallops, and octopus. Conceptually sound, execution about as disastrous as the constantly-crashing app. The contents of each bowl is a meat-mash that resembles an exploded poke ball... With the Pokemon still inside. The tuna is tasteless, the scallops too. The octopus is chopped into bits the size of ground meat, with the texture of something pre-chewed. Follow that with a random choice of vegetables and a hastily-poured sauce and you really can't taste anything.

There is way more rice than poke and way more salad than anyone would want. They even add seaweed and crab salad at the end, which are nice little sides, but I'd rather have more poke or more quality over quantity.

Society's newfound food allergies, real and imagined, have spawned a virulent strain of make-your-own restaurants, hell-bent on giving everyone the right to make their food as they please. It's worked out well for pizza, but at places like Poke Bar where much of the flavor relies on preparation, it doesn't end well. I wonder how many aspiring Pokemon trainers came here... Only to find that it's not much of a catch.

Alibi Room - Los Angeles

It's about time Roy Choi put up his wheels and put down some roots. Translate a food truck into bar bites, get a liquor license, and house it all in a chic lounge? Genius.

The Pacman Bowl? Not genius. A bowl full of every kind of protein sounds like a carnivore's paradise, but the meat just tastes like salt, stifled by three saltier salsas, topped with a pound of very dry shredded cheese that gives it the texture of sawdust. What a mess!

Kogi Chilaquiles? They're okay. Not genius, but definitely okay. Mole coats the chicken n' egg so you can't tell which comes first. There's more of that dreaded cheese topping tortillas with a strong salsa verde.

Not bad for bar food, not bad at all. Just stick to the tacos.

The Hart and the Hunter - Los Angeles

Southern small plates. Well if that isn't an oxymoron, I don't know what is. Southern portions are about as big as southern hearts, and although the hospitality is all about sharing, no one ever serves anything small.

Neither does The Hart and the Hunter, for that matter, and we figured that out right quick. The Avocado Toast is the size of Texas, smeared with a generous layer of green-goddess avocado in its prime. Let the soft-boiled egg sit in its rightful place atop the toast, add a spoonful of smoked olive tapenade, and you have the greatest thing since sliced bread...on a slice of bread. I never thought tapenade could go with avocado, but wow, what a smoky, salty-sour highlight! Maybe everything goes with avocado.

When a restaurant claims that they have the best of something, I can't help but roll my eyes. So I ate my "famous" Butter Biscuit smeared with skepticism, maple butter, and pimento cheese, oh my. Oh my. These really are the best biscuits I've ever had, and it must be a cold day in hell because Bojangles just took a back seat.

More southern comfort coming, a deep-dish Chopped Scallops sitting on a hominy hill. It ain't worth a hill of beans without the bacon to bring out the saline scallop. Wayy more hominy than shellfish, but it kind of comes together as a stewy soup; a hearty, hard porridge; one heck of a comfort food.

The entrees can stand alone, but the deceptively simple sides are worth a mention. The Sprouting Broccoli doesn't photograph well, but that chili pepper kick made both plates disappear before I could try for a better angle.

Same with the Grilled Carrots, down the hatch in record time. Rainbow carrots with a rainbow of colored flavor, ranging from turnip-y clean to rich and ripe like a rooted beet.

The Grilled Pork Collar is a little bit random, but it is the tenderest pork, soft and juicy like suckling veal, asleep on a soft mattress of polenta that tastes like the sweetest dream. The escargot was random, but bless their heart for daring to put all this together.

A steak is a steak is steak, and the Ribeye Cap Steak is a STEAK. The creamed corn and hominy underneath is unsurprisingly similar to the polenta, but I can always have a little more of that liquid cornbread.

Quite the hoedown up in here, and dessert is the final encore. The Butter Cake is as light as a bluegrass banjo, crumbs with a sugary twang, jamming with stewed berries and ice cream that plays percussion. The mint ice cream hits hard, a cymbal-clap of liquid leaf, fresh off the vine with the texture of silk.

I reckon it ain't a real southern meal without a piece of pie. I prefer pecan myself, but I'll settle for this Banana Cream Pie. It's a fluffy slice with a nice crust of graham and toasted cream with gooey banana in between, the kind of thing the King would eat in Graceland.

Keep on truckin', y'all; your food is pretty damn good. I've been hunting for a good southern-y meal, and this place is the hunter after my own heart.