Train Adventure Part Two

For my birthday last week we finally went on another train adventure. I just read my posting about our first train adventure back in November and my ambitious plans to go on the second one a week later... well two months later... better than two years I guess.

It was another beautiful day, cool and sunny and bright. This is why we love Los Angeles. Growing up my birthday usually involved ice storms and muddy puddles from snow melting off boots indoors, not than walking around outside in short sleeves and sunglasses.

We started off at the first stop of the extension, Little Tokyo/Arts District. This is the last stop before the train goes over the LA River into East LA. It is also the one neighborhood with which I am already somewhat familiar. As you might guess it is mostly as Japanese area with a great Japanese grocery store, a bunch of noodle shops and sushi joints as well as a Japanese mall. As the stop name also implies, this area also consists of a bunch of converted warehouses that serve as artist studios, performance spaces and trendy restaurants. For this adventure we kept the hipness factor at a minimum and just checked out a French café located in a strip mall on Second Street called Frances Bakery & Coffee.

There's a tiny little dining room, with a sort of Asian-French Colonial/hole in the wall feel to it. We ordered the Napoleon and a piece of cinnamon walnut coffee cake and a cup of coffee. I was worried about the coffee, because you never know in this type of place... but it was sufficiently rich and dark (although the free refill was a bit burnt).

The cakes were delicious. The napoleon was rich and creamy, and the coffee cake had a lovely and surprising hint of coconut. Even DR liked it and he usually hates coconut. I would definitley go back there if I were in the neighborhood. In reading online, it sounds like they are really known for their macaroons. So I'm going to try to keep that in mind.

We decided to walk over the First Street Bridge to the next stop, which was Pico/Aliso. This one only had one restaurant listed in the article, a hipster pizza joint, and as I said we were leaving hipster pursuits to another day, so we just jumped on the train here and road it out to Indiana, which is fourth from the end, and the next one in after we left off on Train Adventure One. Here we walked around El Mercado, which is a three story open market. There is a supermarket, all kinds of food vendors (if by all kinds you mean everything from tacos to tamales) and stalls selling a lot of crap... cheap toys, kitchy mexican clothing and tchotckes, etc. I mostly enjoyed looking at the supermarket. I'm sure some of the food is great, but we had our sites on some other places so we just looked around.

Next we went across the street to Tamales Lilianas where we had two tamales, pork & green chilis and cheese & pepper sticks.  They were both delicious. Baby J enjoyed the pork very much... the cheese and pepper was a little too much for spice for his delicate palate, but we are working on getting him into spicy food, little by little. I forgot to take a picture of the tamales, but here is the place. The guy working behind the counter was wonderfully friendly. I think he might have been the owner. They have a fancier restaurant on Cesar Chavez, I'd like to check that one out sometime.

Then we hopped back on the train heading west to Soto. The train goes underground for two stops here, and this is by far the coolest station on the whole route. It's blue, grey and white with doves flying over maps and a nest with an egg light over the center. I'll try to take some pictures next time I am there. We realized when we came out of this stop, that we should have walked from Tamales Liliana's because all the restaurants listed for Soto where really between the two stops, and about 10 blocks to the East. We decided instead of doubling back we would just walk down First Street toward the next stop and see what we came across. We ended up chatting with aguy who runs an arts community center there for a while. He said we should have walked down Cesar Chavez, parallel to the north, it has a lot more life on it, but we were running out of steam at this point, so we decided to save that for another day. Our last stop was La Placita del D.F., a teeny, tiny hole in the wall restaurant that specializes in cemitas poblanos, which is a Mexican sandwich with meat (we chose milanese - which is pounded steak, breaded and fried), white cheese, avocado, string cheese and cabbage on a buttered sesame bun. This is messy, fatty, deliciousness. We took a picture of it, but somehow it got deleted. I guess I will have to go back...

There are still dozens of places left to try along this route, so I am looking forward to Train Adventure Part Three. Hopefully it won't be months before we get to it.