Money Saver’s Meats, Inc. ~ 3233 W. Florence Avenue ~ Los Angeles, CA 90043

Welcome and thanks for visiting the “home of the best chicken sausage” in Los Angeles. For more than 17 years, Money Saver’s Meats, Inc. has been supplying families, restaurants, hotels, caterers and institutions with premiere chicken and turkey sausage products.

Murals by Joseph Giri

The Crab Pit ~ 1220 N La Brea Ave. Inglewood, CA 90302 ~ (310) 673-1677

Driving to an assignment up one of my favorite alternate north-south routes through the megaopolis, I spotted The Crab Pit and its banner promising “tacos with a lot of soul!” At that moment, I knew I would have to cover it for LA Taco. With so much in the news about Hispanic v. Black tension in our beloved Southland, could it be that food might be something that we could agree upon? To paraphrase and extend the logic of a well-known angeleno, “Can’t we all just sit down together, eat some tacos, and get along?” Maybe it would be too much to ask of The Crab Pit to unite working class interests equipped with only its Mexican/Cajun/Sea Food/Soul Food fusion menu items. While a turkey “Killer Taco” alone might not enable us to overcome our differences, I had all the faith in the world that it would allow me to overcome the hunger in my belly.

Walking up to the counter, I asked which were the most popular menu items and was told that the gumbo and the turkey tacos were perrenial favorites, though our amiable cashier was partial to the shrimp tacos. My dining partner on this particular excursion was the Honourable CBro, who ordered two crab tacos with a cob of corn. I ordered a turkey taco and a shrimp taco with the garlic herb rice. We also decided to splurge in the beverage department, both ordering a concotion called “La Faja Honey Punch”, which was described as a mix of six fruit juices, leaning heavily towards the grapefruit flavors, and sweetened with real honey.

Though we ordered and paid at the counter, the food was brought to us along with real metal forks, establishing The Crab Pit firmly in that blurry gray area between fast-food pit stop and casual dining establishment. In another sign of cultural and ethnic fusion, this Cajun/Soul Food restaurant served up its tacos on the kind of affordable, boat-shaped Japanese ceramic dish that you might find at one of the Marukai 98 Cents Only stores. We appreciated dining on some affordable eats without the aid of polystyrene, for a change. Could cloth napkins be far behind?

Let’s turn our attention from the accoutrement to the food itself. These tacos are not your standard apparently-authentic taco truck fare. They are what I might call “second-generation American tacos“, the kind of tacos that Mexican-Americans who were born here and have assimilated might make. Fried corn tortillas, not too crisp, with all-American fillings like ground beef, iceburg lettuce, tomato, and cheddar/jack/colby cheese processed with love and a box-grater. I grew up eating these tacos, three or more at a setting, with every member of my family making liberal use of Crystal Louisiana Style Hot Sauce, passing the bottle to each other from hand to greasy hand.

Though Louisiana style hot sauce was provided at the table, the meat in our turkey tacos was finely ground and already well salted, making the prospect of adding hot sauce on top of that seem like overkill. Actually, I found myself wondering if backing off on the salt in the kitchen would have made the flavorful turkey flesh come through to my palate a little more clearly. The yellow and white cheese was fresh and plentiful and topped off a beautiful presentation. When my mamma used to make it, she would put the cheese directly on top of the meat so that it would melt and soften and mix a bit with the meat – something to think about. The shrimp was meaty and perfectly cooked and seasoned – what you can and should expect from a food service that so clearly touts its cajun roots.

I looked over at CBro’s plate and saw a few drops of greasy, orange-red crab flavor beginning to pool at the bottom of his cermamic boat-dish. If these cajun crab cookers were worth their cayanne, they probably cooked the crab with my beloved mixture of seasonings and flavors know as crab boil. If you caught my review of the crawfish joint in the OC, you might have an idea of my adoration of this taste sensation. While I was content with my choice of rice over corn, I was beginning to regret not getting the crab. How was your taco and corn, CBro?:

Mmmmmm… tasty tacos. These tacos were a fat package of mixings with a cajun flavor all their own. The sturdy tortilla held up as I continually doused the taco with house hot sauce to keep the seafood salty juices flowing. The buttered and seasoned corn cob was juicy and crunchy, not like the soft and squishy kernals of corn which has been left floating in a pot all day. This is hearty fair to test your tacao pallette.

So maybe this makes sense, these “Killer Tacos with a lot of Soul”. Ethnic specialties come to America and are often improved in the process. Pizza I ate in Italy was good, but the plenitude of cheese, multiplicity of toppings, and variety of crusts in the US brings pizza to a whole new level. I won’t even start about how poorly the sweet-and-sour you can find in the Middle Kingdom compares with the candy-apple-red, pineapple enhanced version you can find here. True, the American versions of foreign food tends to be a little more greasy, a little less healthy. But, my experience has shown that fat-content and flavor-content often go hand and hand. Like in all things, just exercise caution, excersize moderation, and get off the couch and exersize your big American butt once in awhile.

In addition to being the home of the “Killer Taco”, the Crab Pit is also the home of a “World Famous” lemon ice box pie, and you can ask for a free sample which comes in a little plastic cup about the same size as the ones that come with NyQuil or Pepto-Bismol. It was pretty good and the taste provided by the sample alone provided a nice finish to a satisfying meal. Cold and straight from the “ice box”, the pie tasted like a lemony tart, sweet, and creamy-soft version of cheesecake. In my research, I found that lemon ice box pie is frequently compared to a key lime pie with lemon substituted for the key lime.

The Crab Pit is a unique product of the Los Angeles area. We very well might have taken advantage of the patio dining if it weren’t a day of such uncharacteristicly LA drizzle and overcast skies. Inside though, the decor was pleasing and appropriate enough, with the fishing nets and fake crabs hanging from the ceiling, the nod to the USC sports program, and the now almost obligatory wall of personalized photos from local celebrities and regulars. Where hasn’t the KTLA news team eaten? Those people seem to be as ravenous and omnipresent as locusts. Maybe we’re just jealous, as they seem to beat us to every well-hidden neighborhood gem. At the same time, we can’t talk too much smack about being ravenous: as you can see by the shot of the table nearly licked clean, we thoroughly enjoyed The Crab Pit.

9211 Bolsa Avenue ~Westminster, CA 92684 ~ (714) 894-4536 (TACO Guide)

I lived in New Orleans for a while and, loving all things shellfish, found myself jonesing for a crawfish fix. I went on the web to do a little investigating, and I found that there was actually more than one place in Westminster’s Little Saigon to encounter crawfish boiled up, cajun style.

So, I went there with my dining partner, Lady Kvisto, to initiate her into the ways of the craw. There were some quite auspicious signs from the beginning. We were ushered to a wall-adjacent table below and aside a vintage beer can collection, our particular table being next to a empty container from the now defunct “New Orleans Original” JAX Beer Company. Then, I find out crawfish is running $7 a pound (I think back in NOLA they charged more like $3-4), but being happy hour, we were offered ‘buy two pounds, get one free!’ They typically offer blue crab or dungeness crab at a few bucks more per pound, but on the downside they were out that day. Also, I would have loved to wash the spicy mudbugs down with cold beer, but our waitress told us they were still waiting on their liquor licence and it would be another month.

They have three flavors of crawfish: Garlic Butter, Lemon Pepper, and a Rockin’ Combo. Each flavor has three different heat steps: mild, spicy, and super spicy. They told us that they used to get complaints that it wasn’t spicy enough, and that they consequently kicked their flavors up a notch, so she advised us not to go any spicier than “spicy”. That turned out to be very good advice. We ordered one pound in each flavor and each spice level.

They offer some sides as well, including corn on the cob, cross-cut french fries (also in three levels of spicy), and sausage. The corn is a must, for several cobs are typically thrown into a batch of boiling crawfish, and is therefore a traditional companion to the starring crustacean. I figured I’d try the sausage and french fries as well.

Within ten minutes, our first bag of crawfish arrived. Hmmm…this was different. These bags were piping hot and — wait, isn’t hot plastic supposed to leach out endocrine disruptors and other crazy chemicals into your food? Ok, it’s not like I eat here all the time, right? I look around and realize that everything on the table, from the paper tablecloth on up, is disposable and going to be tossed after we leave; easy on the clean-up, hard on the environment. After stewing in self-induced eco-guilt during the few minutes these crawfish required to cool off enough to handle, I started eating.

It was hard not to make comparisons to the boiled crawfish I’d had in New Orleans. Down there, they didn’t have all the flavor and spice level options; they just boiled the crawfish, corn on the cobs, and sometimes potatoes in a huge pot of water flavored heavily with crawfish boil, a crazy mix of different flavors consisting of spices like cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper, mustard seeds, coriander seeds, allspice, dill seeds, cloves, bay leaves, and probably a few “secret ingredients” closely guarded by the chef. After boiling the crawfish for a while, the kitchen staff would just fish out the crawfish and the corn, weigh it into a basket and go on to cook another batch.

My guess is that Rockin’ Crawfish had to take a different approach to address the varying needs of the OC consumer. I think that the crawfish were still cooked together, but the flavorings were added later. Also, the flavoring sauces here are oil based; my dining companion suggested that this might help the flavors stick to the crawfish since they are applied post-boiling; also, I found the added fat content resulted in my feeling much more full after two pound of crawfish than I might be otherwise. The garlic butter sauce and the “rockin’ combo” were WAY garlicky, with a multitude of small chunks of garlic that lent a sweetness to the hot sauce. I prefer my corn a little undercooked and my sausages a little more firm and textured, but we can report the cross-cut fries are AWESOME!! They are perfect for mopping up the spicy grease flavorings that puddled under the crawfish corpses.

OK, yeah, this food is a little bit gross and messy, but that is part of the beauty of it: you become one with the eating process, because it is about literally becoming one with the food. The food becomes you. We saw this one sissy in there wearing latex gloves while he was eating his crawfish! What a tool! We wanted to take his picture to post and shame him in front of the whole blogosphere, but we thought better of it. We heard somewhere that latex tastes bad in your mouth, but then, that might just be the lubricant or spermicide with which said products are often coated. One word to the wise: wear dark colors, don’t wear white, and definitely take advantage of the bibs the waitress offers.

We also recommend taking advantage of the bakery and Asian supermarket in the complex after your meal. You might end up craving something sweet after your mass consumption of crawfish flesh. Or, you just might enjoy cruising around the Asian supermarket checking out all of the crazy stuff they have for sale, like the “vegetarian lobster” or “vegetarian roast baby pig” we found in the freezer section.

All in all, Rockin’ Crawfish is a big recommend for us. We just wish it was a little closer to home. If you find and/or try any other boiled crawfish establishments, be sure to let us know what you think. Until then, Rockin’ Crawfish is likely to remain the go to place for when we need our crawfish fix.