 Burger-mobiles, gorging on seafood and Prohibition-era restrictions on beer lead today's roundup of food news.
-- Elina Shatkin
Photo: Padma Lakshmi eats a burger in a Carl's Jr. ad. Credit: Doria Anselmo / Business Wire
If you like your beer to be hoppier than a pogo stick competition, here's some hoppy (er, happy) news for you: Lucky Baldwin's is throwing its 11th annual IPA festival June 13-21.
More than 50 of the 62 taps at each of its two locations will be devoted to IPAs, including such cult beers as Dogfish Head's 90 Minute and the rarer 120 Minute IPA, Russian River's Blind Pig and double Pliny the Elder (that scholarly libation was already on tap Thursday but wasn't yet on the menu -- consider it a festival preview) and Victory's Herkules IPA. ("That's a rare keg," Lucky Baldwin's owner David Farnworth says. "I only have one.")
Celebrants get a glass for $8, which includes the first pour. Standard IPAs will be $3, doubles $4 and Belgians $6 (they have to get through customs, y'know).
"The interesting thing is that when we first started the IPA festival, we used to have to drive up to San Francisco to find IPAs," says Farnworth, noting that now Southern California has become renowned for its IPAs. Indeed, the two IPAs usually available at Lucky Baldwin's are from Escondido (Stone) and Pasadena (Craftsman).
Lucky Baldwin's' Pasadena location is at 17 South Raymond Ave. The Sierra Madre pub is at 21 Kersting Court.
-- Blake Hennon
Photo by Blake Hennon / Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Kentisbeare, England -- Money woes brought on by regulations, taxes and competition force many beloved taverns in the countryside to close their doors. But locals in a few spots have managed to keep the ale flowing. Read more here.
Photo: Bridget Jones / Associated Press
Nobu West Hollywood has revamped its happy hour menu for the summer, and it's now available seven days a week in the bar and lounge, from 6 to 9 p.m. Most tapas are under $10 and mixed drinks are $6, with wines by the glass for $7. Nobu's tapas include panko-encrusted scallops, foie gras on crispy soba and miso-marinated grilled Pacific white shrimp. 903 N. La Cienega Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 657-5711.
Locanda del Lago in Santa Monica also has expanded its happy hour to seven days a week (4 to 7 p.m.) and all evening on Tuesdays ($3 beers and $4 house wines). They’re also taking advantage of their location near the Santa Monica Farmers' Market to mix drinks using market produce, including a “Market Margarita” with oro blanco grapefruit, tangelo and lime. (Lago’s “recession relief” offers also include no corkage fees on Mondays and “Stimulus Package” menus with three courses for $29 for dinner, and two for $15 for lunch.) 231 Arizona Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 451-3525.
Wilshire Restaurant has also extended its weekend happy hour. It's now Monday to Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. Wines by the glass are $6, well drinks are $7 and beers are $5. Happy hour menu items include pizza burrata and green curry shrimp skewers for $8. In addition, Monday is half-price wine night for every bottle on the wine list. 2454 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 586-1707.
-- Betty Hallock and Mary MacVean
Photo of Nobu by Christine House / For The Times
Click here for more Recession Busters and Delicious Deals
Your next meal could be walking around your garden gathering nuts as you read this — at least if you're British.
- Map of the best beers in America. (California wins with 474!) Strange Maps
- "The most successful interrogation of an Al Qaeda operative by U.S. officials required no sleep deprivation, no slapping or "walling" and no waterboarding. All it took to soften up Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured, was a handful of sugar-free cookies." Time
- Just in time for National Doughnut Day (June 5), the 99 Cent Chef takes you from Krispy Kreme to his kitchen for a step-by-step glazed doughnut recipe.
- Frank Bruni decries the "predictability" of the Obamas' date night restaurant of choice: Blue Hill. Diner's Journal
- Hot new British food trend: squirrel pie. BBC
- From the Department of Mixed Messages: After her big People cover story about losing 42 pounds, Melissa Joan Hart opens Sweetharts, a candy store in Sherman Oaks. (Who says our culture has schizophrenic expectations about food, dieting and women's bodies? Hush, hush.) LAist
— Elina Shatkin
Photo: Being fattened for the kill? This comely squirrel could land on your dinner plate if Americans fall for squirrel pie the way the Brits have. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times.
Mike Simms looks around his compact, 47-seat new Manhattan Beach pub and says, "We had two options -- beer or food. You can see which one kind of won out. We have more beer selection than food selection." Not that anyone in the packed Simmzy's Saturday lunch crowd was complaining. The limited menu, from Anne Conness (who has had stints at Napa Valley Grille, EM Bistro, Campanile and Saddle Peak Lodge), is varied enough to keep things interesting. Offerings include two gourmet burger styles, a chateau steak, pulled pork panino, market greens and more. The menu expresses a dedication to seasonal, local, responsibly grown ingredients, with one caveat -- "OK, well, the beef is from the Midwest, but let's face it, that's where a lot of cows live." Granted, there are a lot of cows near Coalinga too, but Simmzy's goes with Niman Ranch, which includes Midwest farms. And some of that meat goes into "Simmzy's Awesome Chili," a concoction involving beef and pork, Fritos, cheddar, sour cream and Boont Amber Ale, which brings us back to the beer.
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 Ah, Memorial Day: a long weekend perfect for hanging out in the backyard and catching up with old friends.
And who wants to miss a minute of the action by going back and forth to that pesky cooler? Urban Outfitters literally puts the hip in hipster with this balancing act of a solution: the Beer Belt. The plastic holders mean you can strap in and sling back a six-pack while slinging burgers at the grill.
Aside from the serious repercussions of too much alcohol intake, we also have to point out that there's no cooler. In this climate, you'd have to drink fast in order to keep your PBR nice and chilled.
Want to belly up to this belt? It's yours for $18 at UrbanOutfitters.com. Don't want to get on the belt-wagon? The Image section has a list of much tamer barbecue attire essentials.
-- Whitney Friedlander
The Food section's Beer of the Month: Sierra Nevada Summerfest Lager
Weekly obsessions: Memorial Day clothing essentials
Join us on Twitter @LATimesFood
Photo credit: Urban Outfitters
If you were in a beer bar last week, you may have encountered a fervent revolutionary by the name of Chris Spradley. He was the guy riding in with a 4- by 5-foot poster of the pro-craft-beer Declaration of Beer Independence and asking you (sometimes via megaphone) to sign it.
 Spradley, founder of the Los Angeles Ale Club, was immediately taken with the document when the Brewers Assn. announced it and decided to blow it up and gather signatures. One night at Blue Palms Brewhouse, he asked owner Brian Lenzo if he might bring it by during his signing drive. Lenzo offered to help pay for it. Spradley got a high-resolution copy of the document from the Brewers Assn. and had his mega copy made.
Over the course of American Craft Beer Week (May 11-17), he spent hours at spots around the megalopolis: May 12 at Blue Palms; May 13 at both Lucky Baldwins and the Stuffed Sandwich; May 14 at Red Carpet Wine, Verdugo Bar and Blue Palms; May 15 at the Library Alehouse and the Daily Pint; May 16 at the Bruery's first anniversary party and back at Blue Palms.
Why go to all that trouble? "I believe in what the declaration stands for," Spradley said.
"I wanted to really do it in L.A.," he said. "We have a craft beer scene that goes unnoticed."
He talks of putting Los Angeles on the national map as a craft beer destination. And he's putting time, gas money and horsepower behind making that happen.
The Los Angeles Ale Club, which counts more than 200 members and plans such outings as an upcoming bus tour to and around San Francisco's beer spots (no firm date yet), is on Facebook and Meetup.
-- Blake Hennon
Photo courtesy of Chris Spradley
On Thursday night, Verdugo Bar will feature craft brews from the nautically inclined Ballast Point Brewing Co. of San Diego.
 Mike Mellow, Ballast Point's vice president of sales, will be on hand with the company's mainstays (such as Yellowtail Pale Ale), plus some rarer "awesomely crazy beers," including barrel-aged limited releases not typically available to the general public. As crazy as the design and language on the brewery's Tongue Buckler Imperial Red? Only the taste will tell.
"Ballast Point is one of the most exciting breweries in Southern California, brewing some of the most sought-after special releases in beer today," said Ryan Sweeney, owner of Verdugo.
Prices will be $5 to $7, and all drafts will be $1 off between 6 and 7:30 p.m.
Verdugo Bar is at 3408 Verdugo Road in Los Angeles. (323) 257-3408.
-- Blake Hennon Image courtesy of BeerNews.org
One thousand signatures. That was the goal that Blue Palms Brewhouse owner Brian Lenzo set for his oversized copy of the Declaration of Beer Independence when American Craft Beer Week began on May 11. On Sunday night, as the week officially drew to a close, Lenzo (above) estimated that the document, which visited other L.A. area beer-centric bars and the Bruery's first anniversary party during the week, had around 500 John Hancocks. If his copy carries even 500, that's still 444 more signatories than the actual Hancock and Co. on Mr. Jefferson's Declaration of 1776.
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