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California Favorites Orange County
We haven't been back to Orange County, California since leaving two years ago, the sort of temporal distance that tends to create "perspective" - that special, rare ability to separate yourself from your previous conceptions and biases, helping you to better understand your surroundings more objectively. The Orange County of our memories, we have been told, is different now, chastened by the state's 12%+ unemployment, higher taxes, and all but stunning business closures that have been documented in newspapers and on web sites we continue to read from outside the area. An international credit crunch brought an end - perhaps only temporarily - to the never-ending cavalcade of house-flipping, strip mall-building, and wasteful cash-burning that typified the famed suburban and coastal Southern California cities, its glamour suddenly seeming not just excessive, but stupidly so. Amazingly, impossibly even, home sales in Western New York were up and ones in Irvine, corporate seat of more huge companies than you'd imagine, were sinking. In moving back to WNY, we either led or typified the exodus. But that doesn't mean we don't still love the place. Especially the food.
So this week, we're heading back to Cali, and we're hungry - hungry to rediscover some of our old favorite restaurants and share them with you, and starved to find new favorites that we and you will find worthy of expanding our palates with. They are here. Despite the economic turmoil, great places have survived. California's famous burger joints, the best of which is the subject of much debate between our editors, continue to thrive in the troubled economy. And new trends have picked up where the old ones have left off. The homes, the strip malls, and the money are still here; they're just... different.
We have arrived with an agenda. The fruits of that agenda will begin to appear on Buffalo Chow as soon as we can share them with you, but we can foreshadow a couple of our "easy" topics right now: Mexican food, in light of the many reader comments and inquiries we have received on the topic of "what really is good Mexican food," and the glories of chicken, specifically a special type of chicken wings that have achieved nearly as much global prominence as Buffalo's, plus a nationally famous chicken restaurant chain that hasn't yet come to Western New York. There will be much, much more, as well, as we always have Asian cuisines in mind. Our hope is that this trip, like our prior recent visits to Chicago, New York City, Washington D.C., and Seattle, will help stir up your brain and your stomach, helping you - and us - to gain perspective about what Western New York really does have to offer, and what it is importantly missing. Get ready to salivate along with us.
