Restaurant Review - M Cafe de Chaya w/ WeeMo

Last night I had dinner with the famous weezermonkey at M Cafe de Chaya, a contemporary macrobiotic cafe featuring "balanced, nutritious, creative cooking which can be enjoyed daily by everyone, not just vegetarians or people with dietary restrictions... Our chefs prepare each item fresh daily, using only the finest ingredients without any refined sugars, eggs, dairy, red meat or poultry."

It took me about 20 minutes to find a parking place, 1o of those minutes were spent trying to figure out what the following parking signs meant: "No Parking 10-12 Tuesday. 2 Hour Parking 8am - 8pm, Permit. No Parking Nights." I mean, WTF? I was about to drag LSAT taking Weezer to my car and make her do some sort of diagram to help me.

Next to the macrobiotic cafe is Pink's Hot Dog stand. For those of you who don't live in Los Angeles, it is legendary for the throngs of customers queued up at all hours of the day.

I figured if the marcobiotic dining didn't go well, we could get some chili dogs.

Anyhow - the food. I got a California Club Sandwich, which consisted of savory tempeh “bacon,” lettuce, tomato, avocado, carrots, sprouts, and soy-mayo on house-baked multi-grain & seed bread. I was craving tomatoes - tell me I can't have something, and I want it even more. The sandwich was really tasty, although a bit unwieldy. After two bites, most of it had spilled out of the dainty club triangles. Bitch! So my plate ended up looking like a mess, while WM's was neat and clean. She got a Grilled Tuna Burger: seared ahi glazed with teriyaki sauce, dressed with sliced avocado, pickled red onions, daikon sprouts, spicy yuzu mayo, and fresh shiso leaf served on a house-baked whole wheat bun. It looked really good.

Here's WeezerMonkey's review - she took all kinds of fancy pictures. Pretend I said what she said. And pretend I took those pictures too.

Now my review of WeezerMonkey lol:

I relished the opportunity to see the behind the scenes version of More Fun Than A Barrel. I've always been impressed by the pictures weezer takes - she really captures the feel of where ever she is. And her food pics are especially great. Maybe I could get some tips for my own humble blog. So I sat back and observed closely.

For some reason, I assumed that she took pictures with her iphone. Not so! She pulled out a digital camera from somewhere (I guess her purse) and started snapping away - even going so far as to artfully arrange the food on her plate, prying open her tuna burger, rotating the plate to get the best angle, etc. All of this took about 3 seconds. I made her do my dish too. Then after we left, she whipped around and clicked off a couple of shots of the interior, the exterior, et voila! Elle est finie.

WeezerMonkey is pretty much exactly how you would expect her to be if you read her blog. She's incredibly funny, game for anything, expressive, bright, considerate, and has a great laugh. I enjoyed myself immensely.

When I got home, I showed Mr. Insomniac her blog and he was all, "Wow - that's a nice blog. See? I told you you needed a logo. Where's that plant picture I showed you? Yeah, her blog looks good. Where'd she get that barrel?" Always something with that guy.