Maggie's Pub, Santa Fe Springs, CA

Maggie's Pub
11900 Telegraph Road, Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670
562-944-5399
http://www.maggiespub.com/
Open Monday-Friday (i.e., closed weekends)
Plenty of free parking in the lot.

Visited: Thursday, March 05, 2009, Lunch, Dine in


As soon as you walk in, you know that Maggie's is a British Pub. The smell of malt vinegar hangs in the air. But you soon get acclimated, and once you open the menu, you start to chuckle. I've been there several times in the last 6 months, so below is a description of several menu items eaten there since last fall.


Sherlock Holmes ($9.95): a very large piece of fish and a large serving of chips (er, fries). Everything is fresh and the fish is quite filling. Comes with cole slaw, tartar sauce and lemons.

Winston Churchill ($9.95): the same tasty batter fried cod with a fritters. What are fritters? Ah yes, I had the same question. Think of a very large potato that is cut into long thin slices, then coated in batter and fried. These really do make the chips seem ordinary.

John F Kennedy ($12.95): the fried seafood combo. JFK comes with fish, shrimp, oysters, scallops, fritters and cole slaw. This is quite the value at $12.95 - two people could easily share this entree.

Sweeney Todd ($9.95): aka Shepard's Pie. Okay, so the beef and gravy mixture is pretty tasty and covered with mashed potatoes (and a bit off cheese, odd). It comes in a little dish, but the veggies are on the side. I like to have the beef, gravy and veggies all together. Tasty, but a bit too dissambled for my preference.

Benny Hill ($9.95): Bangers & Mash. Two very tasty traditional bland bangers, lots of cooked onions, and the mashed potatoes with a very nice brown gravy. Very filling (as are all of the plates here, actually).

The Lodger ($9.95): Open Faced Roast Beef. The meat, the mashed potatoes, gravy and white bread just melt. A nice meal on a cold wintery day.

Dutchy ($7.95): Banger Sandwich. This also comes with two very tasty traditional bland bangers (quite a lot of meat) on a large French roll. It's rather too big to eat as a sandwich. It also comes with mustard, onions, and strangely, Cheddar cheese. The cheese just kinda melts and becomes creamy with the onions.

Abe Lincoln ($7.95): Patty Melt on Rye. So did Abe like patty melts? Anyhow, this is a great sandwich. Very nicely grilled, plenty of onions, 1000 island, and cheddar.

Note - fries or fritters with the sandwiches are $1.25 extra. Aka the Stanley & Livingstone combo option.

They also offer what they call Afternoon Tea-time Favorites. They mean it when they that they're only available tween 3pm and 6pm. I've never been able to order these at lunchtime or dinnertime. They're also not what I consider traditional afternoon tea fare, but tasty, nonetheless.

I've had the Garden Vegetable Combo ($8.95). It's a fried assortment of mushrooms, zucchini and cauliflower. It's a huge appetizer, and pretty tasty.

And the Spinach 'n Artichoke Dip ($7.95) is quite good. Again, a large portion of dip served with tortilla chips.

They have a full bar, including traditional British beverages.

Maggie's is quick at lunch, and they do quite a brisk business. This is their main clientele, as you can see, they're closed weekends.
--T

Lucio's Restaurant, Torrance, CA

Lucio's Restaurant
1605 Cabrillo Ave, Torrance, CA 90501
310-328-9810
Located on the oddly angled corner of Cabrillo and Gramercy in Old Torrance. There are entrances to the restaurant from both streets. Street parking.
Casual. Large dining room.

Visited: February 2009, Dinner, Dine-in


This is definitely a hole in the wall that's been here for decades, yet this is the first time we've been. It's a very casual restaurant, and you could tell that some of the diners had been coming here for ages.

We started off with the chips and salsa. The salsa was very mellow with a great roasted flavor. For entrees, we had:

Carne Asada Dinner ($9.50): comes with guacamole (warning if you don't like raw onions, cuz it was packed with them), rice, refritos and tortillas. This was a huge plate of meat. Everything was pretty mellow tasting, but very satisfying. Dinners come with soup or salad, and we had the albondigas.

Carnitas Dinner ($9.75): served with rice, refritos and tortillas. The meat was very tender and flavorful, and unlike many other restaurants, it wasn't greasy. A huge plus.

Chimichanga ($7.95): comes with shredded beef, rice, refritos, guac and sour cream. The chimi had a great crispy skin and the meat was very well seasoned.

I can see why it's been here for so long.
--T

Union Cattle Company, Hermosa Beach, CA

Union Cattle Company
1301 Manhattan Ave, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254, 310-798-8227
http://unioncattlecompany.com/
On the northwest corner of Pier and Manhattan. There's metered street parking and validated structure parking under the restaurant.
Casual nice. Large dining room on several levels. Full bar.

Visited: several times for Happy Hour
Most recently: September 2009


This is a great place for happy hour! All of the appetizers are half price, and there are many drink specials ranging from beer and wine to cocktails. At this time of year, there's a great view of sunset during happy hour - a little bright at times, but stunning. Happy hour lasts from 5p-7p.

Here are the treats we had:

Parmesan Spinach Dip ($4.95): comes with red and green corn tortilla chips. This was so good we ended up ordering two of 'em! We did run out of chips at one point, but they were so gracious to bring us more.

Thai Chicken Rolls ($3.95): My expectations of these rolls did not live up to the product. It was a large plate - plenty of food, but I wasn't quite sure what was Thai or chicken about it. The best parts were the fried wonton strips and soy dipping sauce that were garnish.

BBQ Chicken Lettuce Wraps ($3.95): now these little guys were good! I'm not sure what all was in the filling, but it was very tasty. The BBQ sauce was sweet and smokey; very nice. There is plenty of filling - we even got extra lettuces and were able to split the filling between them.

The service is really nice; they are very sweet. They're also accomodating to groups.