N is for: North End Caffe {Manhattan Beach Restaurant Review}

As you know, I was in Los Angeles last week. When my cousin and I weren’t busy decorating melted snowmen sugar cookies, we managed to check out a couple of great restaurants. Osteria Mozza was fabulous, but I also really enjoyed the North End Caffe, which we walked to for lunch on my last day in SoCal.

If it looks familiar to you, that’s because it’s been featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Portions are HUGE, and the food is excellent. It was a beautiful day and we lucked out with an outdoor table.

One of the stars of the menu are these Kahlua Pig Monte Cristo Egg Rolls. We got an order of three, but we could’ve easily split one between the three of us…they are gigantic. The pork was tender, and the outside was perfectly crispy and not too greasy. They came with a duo of dipping sauces…some sort of spicy aioli and a hoisin-style sauce. I would definitely recommend these.

This is a SMALL order of fries. There was nothing small about it. Along with your mountain of fries, you get a choice of dipping sauces. The one pictured was a creole mojo recommended by the guy who took my order and it was perfect. The fries were piping hot and fresh and delicious.

We ordered two sandwiches to share between the three of us. This is the Uptown Cubano, which had pulled pork, prosciutto, swiss, creole mojo, mustard and pickle and came with a side salad. It was melty and crunchy, a tad spicy and extremely delicious. We also ordered the Hot Mama, which had turkey, bacon, cheddar, swiss, habanero salsa, creole mustard, tomato and onion. It definitely had a little kick to it. I called it a “sneaky spicy” at lunch because it was one of those things that increasingly became hotter as you ate more. But I love spicy, so I loved it and would totally order again.

If you saw the episode of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives…they also featured the Trio of Dawgs, which included one each of their famous bacon-wrapped hotdogs, and the pasta carbonera (offered at dinner and the weekends). We didn’t try either, but it’s a good reason to go back! The only thing we didn’t like was the tomato basil soup, which was on special. It was WAY too salty, and I’m a salt freak. But aside from that, it was a very tasty and extremely filling lunch.