🚀 go-pugleaf

This posting is, formally speaking, useless, because you can't have
this experience any more.  Still, I want to preserve the memory.

If you drive south on Centinela from Washington, you can still see
the big sign for Mago's Famous Hamburgers, and you'll find a modern
walk-up fast-food place if you do, right next to a sit-down Japanese
restaurant.  This boring prospect used to be the site of a truly unique
eatery.

Mago's as it used to be: a walkup with no inside seating, with nice
'50's style glass windows about one story tall.  There was one copy of
the menu: it was on poster paper, and it absolutely filled all of the
window space, except for the tiny window where you ordered, and the tiny
window where you picked up your order.  There were over 250 items on it.

Mago & Co. were (and are, I suppose) Korean.  The neighborhood is Mexican.
The original cuisine of the place was American Hamburger.  All three
cuisines were present on the menu as it finally stood, and they blended
at the edges in strange and amazing ways.  The centerpiece, the point
where they all met, was not emphasized in any way, but was obvious if
you looked for it: the Avocado Cha-Shew Burrito.  I never had the courage
to try it (I hate avocado big-time) but those who tried it assured me
that it was a) edible, b) unique, c) more or less indescribable.

This place sold everything.  Peering through the order window was like
peering through the hole in the end of one of those spun-sugar hollow
Easter eggs: a single-perspective landscape of goodies covered all the
available surfaces, and there were (home-made) price markers on everything.
They sold beer by the can or case.  They sold toothpaste.  They sold
home-made ice cream.  They sold fresh juices.

The home-made menu proved that a limited command of English could be
ignored very successfully.  They got the point across.  Under the list
of fresh home-made juices was the subscription: "Mrs. Mago squeezed
fresh daily.  We have own squeeze machine."  Somehow this always made us
feel better.

This place was so highly successful that it blew out.  They made so much
money they were able to open the sit-down restaurant next door, at which
point they converted "Mago's Famous Hamburgers" into a normal eatery
with a MacDonald's-like menu, about ten items tops.  I was heartbroken.

Anybody know where I can get "Ten Wontons and Fried Rice"?  With a homemade
peach shake?  *sigh*
--
Mike O'Brien
obrien@aero.org