Tag: Manhattan Beach

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Lately whenever I take my car in for maintenance, I end up taking the car-free morning away from home as an excuse to walk down to the Manhattan Beach Pier. The last time was right after a Halloween storm, which was gorgeous, but this time it was a gloomy morning, and I took the opportunity to explore a little more.

Modern Beach Town

Manhattan House mural.

This mural wasn’t there the last time I walked by, and may not have been there the last time I drove by either. The restaurant is new, and it seems like it would be hard to miss. I like the mix of two cities: the one I was standing in, and its namesake on the other side of the country.

Also: a pirate shipwreck. Yarr!

Believe it or not, this next photo is not a double exposure:

Traffic Sign Reflection

I don’t think I’d ever seen this type of traffic sign up close before. At first I was intrigued by the five-LED pattern used for each pixel, but as I started to line up a photo, I noticed the layered effect reflecting the street and the buildings on the far side.

Continue reading →

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Late Halloween night, the first rainstorm of the season blew through town. By morning, it had mostly passed over us, but there were enough clouds around to make things look interesting after I dropped off my car for maintenance. With a couple of hours to kill, I walked to downtown Manhattan Beach for breakfast. I kept going all the way to the pier first, and was glad I did — otherwise I would have missed this:

Rainbow over El Segundo

One straggling cloud continued to drop rain on the coast a few miles to the north. A rainbow fragment neatly arced from the cloud down to the El Segundo power plant. (I thought that was kind of ironic.) Continue reading →

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Incredible Cafe

With a name like that, it had better be!

Updates

I’ve since learned that there’s a local chain called Fantastic Cafe, which is almost certainly where they got this name. A few doors down there’s a Mediterranean restaurant run by the same family called Chicken Maison, which brings to mind another local Mediterranean chain called Chicken Dijon.

In 2011, Incredible Cafe became Four Brothers Burger Grill as Five Guys Burgers gained popularity. A few years later, with the explosion of chicken fast food, it became Top Tenders. I’m not sure it’s still run by the same people as Chicken Maison, but I wouldn’t be surprised!

As of October 2024, Chicken Dijon and Top Tenders are still around, Fantastic Cafe has expanded a bit, and Chicken Maison has expanded even more. Both Maison and Dijon were among our go-to spots for a while, though the kid prefers Dijon these days.

And we still haven’t gotten around to trying Poulet du Jour, another family-owned Mediterranean fast food spot in the area, which seems to have been around at least as long as Maison, if not as long as Dijon.