dining about town

The people I work with really love Los Jarritos II (no one ever talks about LJ-I, although it's not that far from the office). As far as I'm concerned, it's perfectly fine, but nowhere as good as GuaSalMex (on Holt, between Garey and Park) or even Casa Jimenez (I or II).

But I've never had a celebrity spotting at GuaSalMex or C-Jim, as we did the other night when dining at Los Jarritos II with friends from work. Who should walk in but Xavier Alvarez? At first I thought it was just some random Latino guy with a similar 'stache, but when he started glad-handing acquaintances like a politician, I realized he had to be the mustachioed misappropriator and Torres protegé (Torregé?) himself. Wow, a celebrity right here in Pomona! I didn't hear him make any bombastic claims about military service, but he certainly had the swagger.


Another night we went to Vince's Spaghetti Shack with Admiral Seamus and Mrs. Tiki. I've passed it many times (it's on Holt just past Mountain, and there are also branches in Rancho and Torrance) and wanted to try it, and I'm glad we did.

Vince's isn't fine dining (and we are big fans of fine dining), but it's good food and good fun. If you haven't been and if you have no pretensions (or if, like us, you can compartmentalize your pretensions), you should go sometime. For $10, you get a half order of spaghetti (which would be an order and a half anywhere else), beef barley soup, a side salad, and a day's calories' worth of garlic bread. For an extra $12, you can add a liter of decent chianti.

The spaghetti is pretty good, although I would recommend getting a side of cheese -- the sauce is a bit sweet, and the cheese balances it out. But get a smaller side than you think you need; the four of us didn't use up the heaping "cup" (read: 3 c.) of cheese we got for the table.