(A "hodad" is a 50's term for surfer groupie.)

It started, as it has for so many since, with Guy Fieri’s show on The Food Network.  The show, plus the appeal of seeing something on TV one Saturday morning, liking it, and driving 3 hours to go and see it for myself. It also starts with a literal starvation for a decent burger while living in London (a matter not addressed by English restauranteurs until relatively recently).

A good burger shouldn’t be hard to make. I’m not for over-seasoned beef, over-cooked or processed into perfect looking, 12 cm diameter patties. Good bread, good meat, good salad and good ketchup should be all that is required.  And, generally speaking, the number of napkins used to eat a burger with any kind of social etiquette is directly proportional to the excellence of the flavour. My order of 1 hamburger, 1 side of onions and 1 strawberry milkshake took approximately 11 napkins to consume gracefully, scoring Hodad’s an 11 on a normal scale of 1 to 10. Good job, guys!

The inside of the restaurant is laid back and the walls are plastered with license plates from around the country as well as a sign that accurately reads “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem” (hardly any of the men in there had shirts on). I liked it on my first visit because it was sunny outside and there were plenty of surfers who had just popped in for a bite to eat before heading back out to the waves. The second time, the day wasn’t so clear and I noticed that either it was a lot more popular due to reruns of Guy Fieri’s ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives’ and his raving review on the show, or I’d been kind of blind to the neighbourhood the first time. This burger joint is a brilliant novelty stop on your route through SoCal. So by all means, stop by, chow down on their deliciously grotesque looking burgers, and then try something else if you find yourself back in the area.

On my second visit to Hodad’s, there were so many customers the queue went out the building and down the street for the whole block. Although the line moves relatively quickly, Newport Avenue is not the nicest street in San Diego to wait around on: although there are a number of cute souvenir shops, there are also an inordinate number of the homeless (and inebriated, and foul tempered). Nothing of note particularly happened, but as I said, it’s just not the nicest street to hang out on. Instead, I’d suggest passing the whole line and walking straight in to order food to go. They’re pretty quick and you can hop back in your car and head for a quieter beach, or wherever you like.

Hodad’s is located in Ocean Beach and open from 10AM to 10PM alllll summer long.

5010 Newport Ave.
Ocean Beach, CA 92107
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My new fiance and I have been setting up our own business, which has taken off quite well. But as new pilots of our independent business, we’re in no place to be spending large amounts of cash on a trip, however special the occasion. Hooked on finding the cheapest hotel available, we scoured all the AAA and United Mileage deals we could, and settled on Best Western Pea Soup Andersen’s.

The room itself is just fine. Clean, roomy, comfortable. The bathrooms were kind of strange and only had those tiny soaps and an assortment of oddly sized towels. What’s to complain about when you’re staying in Buellton for less than $100? Most of the other hotels we passed along the way looked like prime locations for a Psycho shot-for-shot remake, and quite frankly, I didn’t want to die.

After a night at The Hitching Post II, we decided to check out this self-proclaimed World Famous Split Pea Soup. Who was this Andersen, and why should he think his Split Pea Soup is the best? Compared to whom? From the hotel, you can literally roll your way over to the restaurant for breakfast, which is kind of what we did, still being full from the night before. Totally deserted on this sunny, bright, Sunday morning in May, we appeared to be the only guests until I noticed a troupe of leather-clad motorcyclists wandering in a similar state of wonder and disbelief. You know, the way the kids look when they arrive at Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory?

As we walked in the door, I flashed my fiance* a melon-sized grin. This place can only be described as a House of Extreme Tat: Wall to wall tacky souvenirs and pea soup memorabilia (is that the right word? I hadn’t experienced it yet, but now I really, really wanted to.) There is a Christmas gift shop, a jewelry gift shop, a sweet shop, and tinned goods piled on every shelf, all over the place. Postcards, t-shirts, magnets, pens, pencils, little boxes of crayons, all emblazoned with the bold alpine font, “Pea Soup Andersen’s Split Pea Soup World Famous Since 1924″. There was even a display reading “Try our famous Cheddar Cheese and Crackers”, but as I had no clue how long it had been sitting there, I backed away slowly.

In the restaurant, I ordered the Travelers’ Breakfast which consisted of a bowl of split pea soup, and a plate of bottomless pancakes (of course), eggs and a choice of breakfast meat. And whaddaya know – it wasn’t half bad. In fact, it was pretty good for a soup I don’t care for and still won’t order anywhere else. How’s that for a review?

Leaving what I thought was the dining room of the restaurant, I noticed a series of other rooms and seating areas, all decorated differently. Presumably they use different rooms for different occasions. And clearly myself, my fiance and our fellow diners who were on a Harley Davidson tour of Central Coast did not qualify as reason enough to be seated in the Room of Chintz. (My own title applied there, at Andersen’s they call it the Pavilion Room.) Everything in this building and in the decor of the hotel next door bears a remarkable resemblance to the colours of a breakfast danish. Which is why I think the Danes are to blame for this cultural sediment.

All in all, I was not shocked in the least to find that Buellton is the setting for the final sequence of Death Proof. The Pea Soup Andersen’s website says it “remains a slice of Americana”, but I would tack a word on to that sentence to ensure its accuracy: “Congealed”.

* The gratuitous use of the term “fiance” is entirely intentional and justified because I am extremely excited about our new state of affairs. If you don’t like it, you’re a Scrooge.

Think I made this up? See for yourself!:

http://www.peasoupandersens.net/

An old video I found with a Split Pea Andersen’s Commercial: See 1 minute 22 seconds to about 2 minutes 22 seconds