LOTS OF LEFTOVERS : 1986: Year of the Search for Divine Heavenly Grits

Every weekday morning for the last three months, I have been adding 15 minutes to my morning commute by detouring to Il Fornaio on Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills to pick up a bran muffin. It’s gotten so that the woman at the counter puts a fresh-baked bran muffin in a bag the minute she sees me come through the doorway. This is no namby-pamby light and fluffy bran muffin, but a serious, sturdy brown thing, big and heavy as a baseball, with the texture of moist sawdust. But delicious sawdust it is, just sweet enough, just chewy enough, studded with too many raisins, dates, walnuts, and sesame seeds. Monster muffins, a woman at work calls them.

My other food obsession this year has been the roasted chicken at a midtown Cuban restaurant called Versailles. Like my somewhat mechanical devotion to the Il Fornaio bran muffin, I could eat this chicken every night and not get tired of it, but my friends have grown weary of the place, of the aggravating wait for a table, the slow service, the (at times) irritating Latin pop music on the radio, the occasional greasiness of the food. The latter is the fault, however, of anyone who orders the roast pork or the fish or anything besides the chicken which is, quite simply, the best roast chicken in town. Crisp-skinned and with the delicious flavor of a vinegary, garlicky marinade, this half chicken is garnished with thin-sliced raw onions and accompanied by a a giant mound of black beans and slices of fried plantain. The meal, with a beer and a cup of good, strong cafe latte for dessert can be had for less than $10.

When I’m feeling civilized, I go to Celestino’s on Beverly Drive for a classic, leisurely Italian lunch; to Musso and Frank because I like the scene and, most happily, to La Toque, because the food’s the finest anywhere.