Everyone Loves Lines, The Gold Standard Proves

Posted on March 9, 2009

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A plate of Ethiopian food from Meals By Genet It’s been said that Brits love to line up whenever they see a queue. If that’s true, then there must’ve been several hundred (or more) Brits at an event called The Gold Standard yesterday. Sponsored by the Wine House in West Los Angeles, the event featured food stands from 30 of the favorite restaurants of somewhat legendary restaurant critic Jonathan Gold of the LA Weekly.

Now, I guarantee you there’s no way my wife and I could sample 30 restaurants without finding a vomitorium a la the Romans, so we had to settle for a handful of tastes. How did we choose? By the same of the line, lenngth indicating popularity, popularity indicating good eats (thanks, Alton Brown).

Actually, we picked by looking at the food and then getting in line if it looked good, but several people did ask, while we were at the back of a long line, "Why’s this line so long? Is it that good?"

"Dunno," I replied. "Everyone just loves lines.."

As it turns out, this particular line led to the greatest taste discovery of the afternoon, a plate (pictured) of Ethiopian food, which I can no longer describe except for the collard greens (in dark green). However, it was all quite delicious and plentiful compared to most restaurant samples. The name of the restaurant, Meals By Genet, didn’t betray what the food was. We only discovered when we finally arrived at the head of the line what seemed like hours later.

Of the stuff I sampled, Genet was by far the best, but a place called La Casita Mexicana wasn’t far behind. I’ll be visiting both as soon as I get a chance.

The Sunday afternoon event, held on March 8, was ill planned and executed, however, to say nothing of being horribly located. It was held at something called Smashbox Studio in West Hollywood. The location boasted many problems, the first being the utter lack of parking. We circled the neighborhood for a half hour before finding a street spot a few blocks away. To make matters more maddening, the staff had no clue about anything. It took another half hour after we got to the building before someone finally opened a will call table. By the time that confusion ended and the three-block long line had finally entered the unspacious studio, everything was elbow to elbow. I’m sure the fire marshall would’ve shut things down in a second had he got word of this.

Anyway, the food and wine flowed endlessly, but as we were leaving, some booths were already shutting down with two hours to go.

If they hold one of these next year, here’s some advance: Go an hour early for decent parking. And don’t be fooled by the 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. operating hours. Food was sparse halfway through, and there were no supply trucks or kitchens in the neighborhood. I won’t be back. It was just too, well, legendarily British with all those long lines and standing-up eating sessions.

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