Las Fuentes

Uf! Just realized that I haven’t updated in a few days, I just feel like I’m getting lazier and lazier–like I’ll eat at all these amazing places, but get too lazy to post about it.  But fret no longer! I am back!!

SO, let me introduce you to a Mexican restaurant I ate at a few weeks ago…Las Fuentes!

Walk inside the Reseda restaurant, and you are greeted with bright bursts of color. If you want me to describe the decor in one word, I’d say BOLD.  In two words maybe FIESTA FIESTA! Ok on to the real deal.

So when you first enter, you walk up to a cashier where you order your food and pay for it, then you pick it up at a different window and seat yourself at one of the colorful tables (with hand-painted chairs too!) The menu includes a number of your usual Mexican dishes like burritos, tacos, quesdillas and tortas for a pretty inexpensive prices – $6 for burritos and around $10 for dinner plates that come with rices and meat.

Carnitas Burrito - inside and out!

I ordered a burrito with carnitas and it came covered in a pool of cheese (which just made it so much better).  The burrito was pretty good, not too spectacular and the carnitas was a bit too salty.  Later on I found out that Las Fuentes is known for their amazing carne asada and that I totally ordered the wrong dish.  Hmm, well I guess I need to go back and try it again.

Address: 18401 Vanowen Street, Reseda

King’s Burger

When I tell friends that I’m making a blog introducing restaurants in the Valley, they starting listing off their favorite restaurants. And a large number of them start with “Well, of course, King’s Burger…” So, I brought a camera, a friend and an empty stomach to check out this unassuming restaurant on Reseda Blvd.

Inside, the restaurant looks like any other burger joint, but one glance at the menu and you’ll see something a little bit different.  More than just having the usual fare of cheeseburgers and pastrami sandwiches, the menu includes quesadillas, teriyaki bowls, and sushi.  It’s perfect if you’re in a group of friends who can’t agree on a type of food to eat, King’s Burger pretty much covers it all.

The reason for the Asian foods that you usually don’t find at your usual burger place is because a Korean couple bought the restaurant 15 years ago.  They asked their son, Young Cha, to help them run the restaurant.  Cha had previously worked at a number of high-end sushi restaurants and after he started working at King’s Burger, he found some free time to make sushi.  Cha’s sushi menu is filled with different rolls that he had made for high end restaurants, but the only difference is the price.  The sushi here is around the $7-$11 range as opposed to the more expensive fish found in his previous restaurants.

King's Special Roll

I tried one of Cha’s creations, the King’s Special Roll.  It consisted of a imitation crab and avocado roll, fried, covered with fried lobster and fish roe, drizzled with sauce.  Oh my goodness.  The quality of the sushi here was top-notch.  If I closed my eyes, I could imagine myself in at an expensive sushi restaurant on Sunset Blvd with dim lighting and minimalistic furniture and, of course, an eye-popping bill to top it off.  But instead, I was at a burger joint surrounded by families and everyday people on their lunch breaks and best of all, I just spent around $9 for this roll that completely filled me.

King's Burger

To prove that King’s Burger does have its namesake, this is a King’s Burger.  It’s HUGE with a generous portions of beef patty and pastrami.   My friend found the burger really tasty and extremely filling.  If you get this one, good luck opening your mouth wide enough to fit that in your mouth.

Cha admits that working at King’s Burger is a really different atmosphere from working in Hollywood, but he likes seeing regular customers coming back time and time again because they really like the food.  On the particular afternoon I visited the restaurant, Cha said that he pretty much recognized everyone at the restaurant and because of this familiarity, he plans to continue making amazing sushi affordable in the Valley.

Rating: 9.5 for quality + price

Location: 9345 Reseda Blvd, Northridge

Big Mama’s and Papa’s Pizzeria,

This place is in Valencia, but at work, we ordered at 36 inch pizza. OH my GOODNESS it was huge. And tasty!

It wouldn’t fit through the door, so they had to turn it sideways, which crushed part of the pizza. Also, there was no more room on the table so we had to eat over the pizza box. CRAZY!

Location: 26570 Bouquet Canyon Rd, Santa Clarita