Man vs. Food: Los Angeles

The travel channel as a show called "Man vs. Food" where host Adam Richman travels around the U.S. tackling notorious food spots looking for food challenges.  Tonight I saw the L.A. episode and it got my mouth watering.  Here is where he went in town.

His 1st stop was L.A.'s oldest restaurant Phillippe's near Union Station.  Apparently it is the birth place of the french-dip sandwich.  huh, go figure!  It's not French after all.  It was created on accident when cop ordered a roast beef sandwich and Phillipe accidentally dropped the bread in the beef broth.  The cop then told him not worry about it, ate it anyway and I guess it caught on.  It's called the french dip because at that time the area Phillipe's is in was a French neighborhood.  But I have eaten there several times and even have childhood memories of the sawdust sprinkled floor.  Worth checking out if you've got the time, but it gets crowded, so bring your patience.

His 2nd stop was El Tepeyac Cafe in Boyle Heights.  According to Adam, the burritos served here are the standard to which all other burritos in L.A. are compared.  The line outside the restaurant seemed comparable to Pink's and a shot of tequila is rumored to welcome most guests upon entry.  The quintessential order here is known as the "manuel special", a chile-verde burrito so big it takes TWO tortillas end to end to contain its innards and it weighs in at a whopping 5 lbs.  Don't want to order that, but I think I could handle their normal 2.5 lb burrito and boy did their original chile-verde recipe sound good (it's red and not green!)

His final stop was at Orochon Ramen in Little Tokyo.  I wonder if this is the ramen place I always hear about?  Well it looks deelish and Adam took the #2 challenge which is so spicy that the cook won't even try it because he is, in his own words, "not crazy".  Adam devours and slurps it in less than 30 minutes and is thus immortalized in polaroid form on the wall.  Apparently more than 20,000 people have attempted to conquer "the dragon" but only a few hundred have succeeded.  Adam, a self proclaimed master of cuisine was sweating bullets and crying by the end of the bowl.

Well, I thought my fellow Angelinos might be interested.  I have only been to Phillipe's but those other two places sound amazing.