My family just got back from our annual vacation in Los Angeles where I have both family and friends...and every other year (including 2009) a conference at UCLA.

This year traveling was marginally better because we flew into Burbank airport, which is considerably better than LAX. And flying Jet Blue meant there were no stopovers. In general I have not found Jet Blue's prices competitive, but this year they were, so we tried them out.

This time we rented a Nissan Altima hybrid. It got us about 32 mpg in the city...not as good as we once got in a Prius, but a tad better than we once got in a Honda Civic hybrid. My wife liked to drive both the Prius and the Altima...but not so much the Civic in comparison.

As usual, one of the best things for me was hanging out at UCLA, a place I have hung out around since I was a young boy when my mother had an office in Bunche Hall (which we always called "The Waffle"). Bunche Hall and the sculpture garden are part of my childhood memories. South campus and the medical center are part of my grad school memories. And the whole campus is, to me, kind of the Platonic form of a university campus. But I wrote about that last time we had a conference at UCLA.

We also spend some time at LACMA, which has always been one of my favorite places in Los Angeles since childhood. We particularly liked Your Bright Future, modern art from Korea. Most of the pieces were wonderful, including the time lapse footage of decaying kitchen appliances and the piece depicting in great detail a traditional Asian house crashing into a western style apartment building. The details of both buildings were amazing. I will say that the almost uniform sarcasm of the pieces got just a tad tiresome by the end...it seemed they were all trying to be nonconformist in exactly the same sarcastic manner. But since I like sarcasm, I liked almost all the pieces. Jacob loved the outdoor hanging tupperware piece that you can walk through, and, interestingly, the strange film piece on guns.

We also got to do things this year that we haven't gotten to do before. For the first time in my life I visited the Watts Towers. An amazing accomplishment made by an obsessed immigrant in his spare time...then moved on once he had finished. Amazingly, the site was slated for demolition before someone decided it was worth saving. Well worth seeing. There was also a nice museum next door that we wandered into because Jacob needed to use the bathroom. Some great local art and photography:

Watts Towers Arts Center
1727 East 107th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90002
213.847.4646

We also visited Exposition Park, particularly the Science Center. This was a wonderful place called the Museum of Science and Industry when I was a kid. When California conservatives decided to slash property taxes, California schools, libraries and museums were gutted and I remember the Museum of Science and Industry becoming an almost empty shell that was emblematic to me of the greed of California conservatives: sacrificing such a great museum (not to mention my schools!) for out and out greed. But since I moved away from California, things turned around and the Science Center is again a great place for kids...from my 4 year old son to my 14 year old daughter. Lots of hands-on exhibits and a play area for young kids.

And as usual, food was a large part of our trip. Now we don't go to any fancy "foodie" places (though in the past I have tried many of Los Angeles' "foodie" restaurants). We go to places where you can get a good meal for a reasonable price.

We did not make our usual regular place, Tito's tacos. We used to hit Tito's Tacos right off the plane since it was on the way from LAX to where we were staying and has some of the most habit-forming tacos I have ever had. But coming from Burbank rather than LAX meant we didn't really have a chance. But we did visit some of our other regular places. Jody Maroni's sausages are still among the best sausages I have ever had. This year I had the Cubana (with rice and plantains) and the Louisiana Boudin. I can also vouch for the Polish, Yucatan...and well, all of them. And my son loves their hot dogs (the regular ones...not the more expensive Kobe beef ones...after all, I can't really condone using Kobe beef for mere hot dogs!). I have been eating these sausages for more than 15 years. Saw the owner this year and he was starting to look quite a bit older than I remembered. But then again, so am I.

And then there is Versailles Cuban restaurant. Known for their wonderful roasted pork and roasted chicken, I tried their BBQ chicken this year. It was very good, but I do recommend staying with their specialties: the roast pork and chicken. It isn't as good a deal as it once was when for about $7 you got half a chicken, tons of onions, rice, plantains and black beans. But at about $10 for the same stuff, it still isn't bad.

And my son's favorite remains Swinger's Diner. In fact the number one thing he wanted to do in California was have pancakes at Swinger's. It is a basic diner, but better than NYC diners and it has a liberal/rocker attitude I like.

Now on to some new places we tried. We found (with the help of friends and Zagat's) some great new places.

In Little Tokyo we loved Shabu Shabu House. Shabu Shabu is a Japanese meal where you have a pot of hot water and you cook your own vegetables and meat in it as you like. At the end you are left with a pot of hot broth. I learned from my Japanese friends that at the end you can add your rice to the broth and make a kind of delicious rice gruel. They seemed surprised we knew how to do this at Shabu Shabu House and brought out some extra stuff for us to add. Shabu Shabu House isn't cheap, but it is reasonable for what you are getting. After all, as both my brother and step-daughter observed, when you simply dip meat in boiling water and have it come out tender and delicious, you know you are starting with really high quality meat. Delicious, reasonable and nice service. Likely to be added to our regular list of restaurants.

Ramayani has been on our list for 2 years to try...but it took a special recommendation from a friend to get us out for a late dinner there this year. Excellent and cheap Indonesian food. Since it was late and our son was a bit tired and cranky, we didn't really get a chance to look over the menu in detail. So we all ordered the huge tasting plate (for about $12). I had low expectations. Tasting plates like that usually disappoint. This did not. It was delicious, with Indonesian fried chicken, some chunks of tasty meat, Indonesian beef jerkey, coconut rice, etc. Very mild, but with two hot sauces they brought to our table to spice it up. We were sufficiently happy with our meal to buy some random, interesting looking items from their tiny shop. My wife wanted the durian fruit cakes (more of a gel). Durian fruit has a reputation of being the stinkiest fruit on earth and even Andrew Zimmerman of Bizarre Foods on the Food Network couldn't stomach it. Well, the "cake" we had, where durian was the first but not only ingredient, was only mildly nasty. We all tried it...the passed the rest off to a Thai friend who likes the stuff. We also bought a menthol gum drop candy which I liked alot but I am sure any kid would be horrified by. And we bought an "Instant Hot Beverage" called Serbat Wangi that I love...ginger and black pepper with sugar (and a hint of herbs) are the dominant flavors. I will have to look for it in NYC when this batch runs out.

Then there was Palms Thai in Hollywood. We stopped off here twice on the way to the Observatory. The first time was a Monday when, we discovered, the Observatory was closed...helps to look up hours before going! So we went a second time when the Observatory was open. The first time we stopped at Palms Thai was to try their Wild Foods menu. This was a bit pricier: about $12-15 for an entree. I ordered wild boar curry. My wife had fried frog legs in a similar curry. The curry was amazing. The frog tasted like chicken (I kid you not) and the boar was way too tough. My step-daughter had frog with massive amounts of garlic, which she liked. (My son had plain rice). But it was clear to me that ordering the exotic stuff not only drove up the price, but also may have sacrificed quality for novelty. So we went back again and ordered from their normal menu. My brother had basic pad thai...which was great. I had a spicy chili and cashew dish with chicken, rice and a couple of fried wontons for about $6. My wife ordered a very spicy chicken laarb. All was good, cheap and we plan on coming back in future years. I had read that service was bad even though the food is great. We found the service (for lunch, anyway) was excellent and they were very kid friendly. The customers are quite a mix of Thai and anglo. Also likely to be added to our regular list of restaurants.

Noodle Rocket in Westwood has become if not a favorite, at least a comfortable place we all can find something. It is pan-Asian noodles: Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai. They also serve Bo-ba (Bubble tea) in all sorts of flavors. Not inspired, it is still good and cheap and will satisfy your noodle craving. Nothing is bad from our experience. I even liked the salty red plum soda, though my wife didn't. Many patrons are young Asian kids from UCLA. We like it. They are also friendly and good with kids. They also serve several spicy sauces at the table, so I like that aspect. I'd say we wouldn't go out of our way to eat there, but we actually did, making a trip from where we were staying in the Hollywood Hills just to eat there. So we did make a special trip!

Then there was Sabina's European Restaurant on Vine and Fountain. We went there with a Hungarian friend who had heard about it from another Hungarian friend. This is, from what I hear, what grandma cooks back in Romania and Hungary. The breaded pork chop was kind of like something MY grandmother would have cooked. HUGE portions of great comfort food served dirt cheap. For $6 you can get two large pork chops and a large amount of mashed potatoes. Served as a meal for two people. I had beef paprika with dumplings. Almost nothing on the menu is more than $6. The stuffed cabbage comes highly recommended. All served with that Eastern European attitude that can best be called "gruff." As far as I could tell one woman (presumably Sabina herself?) ran the whole show with little or no help. I hear their desserts are great, but we were too full to even contemplate them. I am not sure this will become a regular place for us. The food is not quite good enough. But it IS an amazing deal and our Hungarian friend is likely to convince us to go back...and I am sure I won't regret it!

Kung Pao Bistro in West Hollywood is a place I'd never try myself...somehow calling any place a Bistro sounds pretentious to me...particularly if it is a Chinese restaurant. The same people who introduced us to Sabina's this year introduced us to Kung Pao Bistro last year. Very good Chinese food at very reasonable prices. Black pepper chicken is good. The lamb dishes (unusual in a Chinese restaurant) are good. House specialty Firecracker Chicken is good. Not necessarily the best Chinese food I have had, but it is up there.

A few other places we tried were okay, but not really worth adding to our list. Malibu Seafood was good, but not really special. Though we stopped at a park just across from Pepperdine University that was REALLY cool with a great ocean view. That could well make a trip to Malibu Seafood (just a tad beyond Pepperdine) worth it. Ngoma African food was overpriced for what you got, though the Sambusas were excellent. And we still like the Gumbo Pot at the Farmer's Market, though maybe we are a bit tired of it. Didn't seem as great as in the past. Still, it is a Los Angeles institution that gets consistently high ratings...and is certainly the best thing in the Farmer's Market.

Always tough to come back...Los Angeles remains home for me no matter how long I live in New York. But there is always next year.