Good morning!
I thought we could feature a new mini-series as an appendix to Sunday Gravy. I recently stumbled across a true unicorn. Something I thought was dead and buried a LONG time ago. This series will probably mean more to the folks on the west coast who grew up with this stuff but I think you’ll all find something worthwhile just for the nostalgia factor alone.
Figured we could visit and inform about previous forgotten restaurants that were legitimate big deals in their day and possibly, with some luck, stumble across a few that are still in existence.
Turns out our first venture is off the 710 freeway north of Long Beach so let’s take a ride.
That’s the Harbor BLVD ramp to the Vincent Thomas bridge here in Pedro. Thought we could take the short cut now because they’re going to close this insanely busy bridge for at least a year to make repairs.
I mean, the surface is getting pretty shitty.
Once you cross the Vincent Thomas towards Long Beach you come to the Long Beach International Gateway Bridge. A fancy ass name for the new gigantic bridge that replaced the old Gerald Desmond bridge back in 2020.
Here she is.
Cross this shit and you are in Downtown Long Beach.
But our ass ain’t going to Long Beach so we jump on the 710 Freeway north.
Past the 405 transition. Hell past the 105 transition up to Florence BLVD. Exit and head east.
We arrive at retro nirvana.
Fuck. Right. Off! Both of these are extremely rare to find and we have them in the same strip mall!
Let me at ’em!
Holy Shit! It’s real! But that’s not first on the agenda. No sir.
Oh boy oh boy. Engaging saliva glands. Follow me.
It’s real. NOT a mirage. Look it’s open and people are inside.
Pioneer Chicken back in the day was a nose-to- nose rival with Kentucky Fried Chicken. That’s right! We had time to pronounce full syllables and didn’t need to shorten shit to just initials.
Pioneer had it’s fans and many thought it was superior to it’s hillbilly cousin.
Truthfully, self included. There was no Popeyes, no Churches, no Bojangles. None of that shit.
Just the big 2.
I sincerely thought they were long closed but fate was with me today.
Let’s check this motherfucker out.
All of these choices!
Got to start “classic” right?
That’s how you know this shit is real! Pioneer Chicken is home to the yellow gravy! The other side you see there is Spicy Rice and it is wonderful with big chunks of chicken in it and a really nifty kick of heat at the end.
This wasn’t ALL we ordered. Fuck no, we’re gonna try everything they got!
Chicken strips with barbecue beans (canned by the taste) and the mac salad. Perfect for this who want ZERO crunchy veggie bits in their macaroni salad.
Not done ordering yet. Pioneer has always been known to fry up a pretty killer piece of fish too.
Gonna need some of that shit!
Now we’re talking.
Dive into that shit like it owes you money!
Get in their soldier. You’ve got work to do!
Know what I had to drink? A fountain Dr Pepper. It’s been at least 25 years since I had one of those and it was just fine.
How much did this luxurious repast set us back?
Why that’s not too shabby at all!
Alright, time to head back home. Let’s head back to the car.
I mean, it’s right fucking there right?
Aw fuck it.
Just look!
Ultimately a glazed old fashioned for TAJ.
For me? At the place that invented the apple fritter?
Of course I did.
Winchells used to be a powerhouse in the donut world and literally spanned the globe.
Now there are only a handful left after Winchells failed to adapt to changing tastes and perceptions and failed to keep up with the Dunkins and their like. A truly fallen idol.
Turns out there are 2 remaining Pioneer chicken locations in the greater LA area and I can only hope they expand again. Their chicken is juicy, crispy with an almost tempura type batter and it’s always been less salty than its rival. It fully delivers on the nostalgia in a big way.
This was a great day trip and there are still a couple of more ideas in the works for this short mini series.
Have you got any forgotten gems in your neck of the woods?
Tell us about them.
And now for something completely different
Work it, Kermie!
Goatse Kermit
Miss Piggy’s a Pegger
Probably the best depiction of Patty Mahomes’ relationship to his in-laws that I’ve ever seen.
When you posted the Winchell’s pic the other day, I was driving past the exact Winchell’s you went to. I play golf at a course near that magic intersection. The other Pioneer Chicken is, I believe, on Soto in Boyle Heights near Roosevelt HS.
If you want to know how Winchell’s really lost market share in CA, watch The Donut King documentary.
So I was going to go swim laps and gave the Dr. Mrs. a ride to the mall with the intention of picking her up when I was done. Two problems: 1.) she forgot her phone so I had no way of communicating with her, which wouldn’t be that huge of a deal because it’s not *that* long of a walk to the pool (and it’s downhill) except that b.) the pool was closed for annual maintenance. So I drove around the mall area for a little bit looking for her (it’s too spread out for there to be a central PA system where I could have her paged), then drove up and down the walking routes to the pool. Couldn’t find her, so I came home so that she wouldn’t be locked out when she walks all the way back (or takes the bus, but that’s unlikely because she doesn’t know the pool is closed and it’s about halfway home so at that point she’d probably just finish walking).
I did the best I could, right?
lol you’re so busted
She was actually very chill about it when she got home.
Fun story about Pioneer. One of my dearest friends was born with a pretty pronounced underbite which used to drive her crazy. Ultimately when she was at the age the doctor deemed safe, she had surgery where her jaw bone was cut on each side, a section was removed from each side and it was put back together.
Point is, she had her jaw wired shut for something like 3 months. She could tell you where all of the best mashed potato and gravy places were in town because that and soup was about all she could eat.
She loved Pioneer’s mashed potatoes and gravy the most.
Before the surgery her, her boyfriend, my still best friend, and I used to go out to dinner bi-weekly at this great little family owned Italian place. She always ordered the rigatoni and meat sauce.
During the time when her jaw was wired shut she got so desperate that we picked her up some rigatoni with meat sauce and brought it home.
She put it in a blender so she could get it in her mouth.
It was hilariously awful to be a part of that.
I just read that OJ Simpson and Chick Hearn used to do ads for them.
I choose to believe they did the ads together.
“So make a fast break to Pioneers! Sound good, OJ?”
“You bet, Chick. You can get extra napkins in case you still have blood on your knife.”
“Yes, OJ, that Pioneers is so good it’s like Magic!”
“Right, Chick. And I’mma kill a waiter.”
Not familiar with either place, west coast only I guess? Still interested though, I love historical stuff and the everyday type history tends to disappear.
There’s a group called Forgotten Chicago that actually does some walks and tours pointing out historical remnants, especially architecture and industrial history. There is a TON in Chicago since it doesn’t seem to get redeveloped as quickly as the coastal cities
My dad used to bring home Pioneer when I was kid, haven’t had it since then. Might have to do the drive one of these weekends.
I am so, so grateful to our neighbors for loaning us this carpet cleaner that produces more noise than a jet airplane taking off. It’s really awesome, makes for such a lovely morning.
How fast did Mrs RTD order two of them?
They offered it to us to KEEP and fortunately the Dr. Mrs. was not present because she’d have snapped that thing up faster than Luka Donçić snaps up beer-battered doughnuts.
Just wait until it crashes into another carpet cleaner that sounds like a jet airplane taking off, because of woke.
My parents weren’t perfect. But they gave me a fucking shot for a killer disease that it’s pretty fucking embarrassing if you let your kid get/die from it.
Come to think of it, the shot was probably presented as a form of punishment
But muh freedum,
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/02/26/nx-s1-5309800/texas-measles-child-death-vaccination
He then made a wanking motion, however it was not clear (and his office did not respond to press inquiries) whether he meant that they simply did not care, or that members of HHS were actively masturbating while watching video footage of the child expiring.
Fuck these people. This is what they voted for, this is what they get.
I had the measles when I was very small, the vaccine didn’t come out until I was 3. My sister brought it home from school. But I had to get the MMR vaccine before we moved to Scotland, so I’m double protected, I guess?
Back in August I listed a bunch of old-school retro Los Anguleez restaurants for potential
drug dealssummit meetings. This was done on Slack but I might have mentioned them here as well.There was Cole’s (DTLA), Fu’s Palace (Pico Blvd S of Beverly Hills), Chris & Pitts (Downey), Phillipe’s (Chinatown), Versailles (Culver City), Canter’s (Fairfax), Woody’s BBQ (Inglewood); Grand Central Market has several places (DTLA).
Anyway, that’s just a smattering.
I definitely return to L.A. this Saturday (which I’ve said several times). I came back east for a two week stay over Christmas and I’ve been here ever since, so we’ll see. I hear the city burned down while I was gone so that’ll be interesting. I arrive at LAX at 5:22PM in my Delta pod seat from ATL, so if you all want to form a welcoming party at the airport with flowers and sweets that would be cool. You could hold up signs that say “BRICK” or better yet each of you hold up signs with the individual letters but just make sure you stand in the right order.
Now I’m going out to buy some azalea bushes.
“I’ll bring the ‘B’!” [brings a ‘P’ instead]
-Me
Woody’s has multiple locations. The shack on Florence is pretty cool.
That chicken was pretty tasty.
The donut I am certain had heroin in it because I keep getting these mad cravings. Evil pastry bastards!
Like crack man…
Probably wasn’t the donut, may have been the post-donut heroin.
Probably not, heroin is an appetite killer.
Glazed old fashioned was an excellent choice
It captures both Andy and Britt Reid’s attentions…
This was a gem. Bonus Gravey Y’all!
There used to be a third Pioneer Chicken, on Olympic, right down from where I lived when I first moved to Los Angeles. They were cool enough to agree to cook a bunch of vegetables in the fryer as a birthday gift to my girlfriend at the time, who was a vegetarian but had mentioned she really missed Pioneer.
A bit of background history:
There’s a Winchells in Palm Springs that is calling to me right now! Do I have any legitimate reason to go to PS today? No, but give me a minute, I’m sure I can invent one
Why wait?
I need to have a (very minor) surgical procedure. Getting a cyst removed. I’ve had two others removed over the years. Both times I walked in, shook hands with the doctor, got a shot of novocaine, cyst removed, couple of stitches, shake hands again, walk out.
I thought it was getting done yesterday, same sort of deal, but in the 15 years since I last had this done things seemed to have changed. A week or so ago I saw my PCP to schedule this. He referred me to this surgeon, they scheduled me for yesterday. I walk in expecting handshake-slice-pop-stitches-handshake. Nope. This was just a meet-and-greet, (for which I will be billed, naturally), and I had my weight taken, blood pressure, pulse, medical history. Then advised I’ll have to be sedated, which I pushed back on but was told the cyst is “too big” and the doctor might have to “really dig into the skull” and then the word “cauterize” was used and then I said, “OK, I’ll take a nap” but still, this seems a bit much.
Today they call to schedule, but not the surgery! Nope, this is for the pre-admission physical the doctor, (who just yesterday took down my weight, blood pressure, pulse, listened to my lungs, and took down my medical history, technically for the second time since I had filled the latter out ahead of that visit anyway) had ordered. AND they’re very booked so I have to drive to a different hospital a half-hour away and they only have two dates and if it’s not too much trouble can I blow off work a second day and cancel some combination of five depositions to do this completely unnecessary thing?
At that point I said no and I’d just cancel the removal entirely, because it’s not like I’m that guy from Mars in ‘Total Recall’ to begin with. So they then call my PCP and his office calls me back and gets me in much earlier to do this completely unnecessary thing, and the long and the short of it is I’m probably just going to have my wife, (who used to be a medical assistant in a dermatology practice), slice into my head and pop it out and then go to the ER for the now-inevitable stitches and probable need for antibiotics not because it’s safer, (because holy shit it is not) but because if I get one more phone call about this today I am going to straight up murder someone.
Thanks Joe Biden!!
Draft idea: people we would like Horatio to murder after he inevitably gets a phone call about this today.
Oh I have a list.
Geez, good luck with all that. Sounds like a cool-ass trip through US healthcare.
On the plus side, if your wife does end up doing the procedure, Lowratio can help, and his title will be Little Cyster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGRqnNEOpe0&pp=ygUlcXVlZW5zIG9mIHRoZSBzdG9uZSBhZ2UgbGl0dGxlIHNpc3Rlcg%3D%3D
DOUBLE SHOT!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_nesH9k3qo
Save it for The Request Line, fun boys.
We’ve done that topic. We’ve done every topic.
(I’d completely forgotten about this one, it’s actually one of my better write-ups if you don’t mind me jerking myself off so hard I have to have an arm amputated)
https://doorfliesopen.com/2018/05/18/request-line-family-business/
Make sure you get a pre-amputation physical, and schedule a meet-and-greet before the pre-op physical, and see your PCP before you do either of the other two.
What is “advice given to Giancarlo for his ‘tendinitis’?”
I had to do that pre-surgery thing for my TURP. Doctor was a comedian for me, but I hope he turns it down for people getting procedures that were going to leave them affected for life. “Yay stoma!” *honks clown horn*
Sounds like they got you pole vaulting over a mouse turd. Have a crulex pad ready for the ER trip and you should be good. I’m sure your wife has the rest of the procedure sterilization stuff down.
(Mrs Cornblower pours Everclear over a scimitar, dresses Lowratio in nurse outfit)
Now we’ll need film of that
No one needs film of that.
Oh, I see you’re familiar with her approach to medicine.
It’s going this way everywhere, they schedule loads of unnecessary expensive crap but then cheap out on all the preventitive stuff. I had the least thorough ‘annual wellness exam’ this year, they didn’t even weigh me, just asked me my height and weight.
In “Carmelita,” Warren Zevon wrote about going to meet his drug dealer who “hangs out down on El Dorado Street, by the Pioneer Chicken stand.”
Great song. Here’s a fun version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2p7mpJKzkQ