Nowhere to go from the heat and opressive boredom of a kid’s park school event and craving something fresh and cold, possibly a salad and a draught of frigid sparkling water to soothe the parched membranes of our parental esophagi, we headed down Melrose to Ronan based upon one of Chef Fox’s past recommendations. This is one of the benefits of not living in dreary old Santa Monica, the lack of ocean breeze is replaced by close by, cool places to go, you just have to find them, sift through the grime and mediocrity to arrive at these little nuggets.

As of late, I’ve developed this weird method for categorizing restaurants. 1. Can’t do this at home. 2. Too lazy to buy and do it all. Ronan falls somewhere in the middle because they have outstanding wood fired pizza. Everything is fresh from the farmer’s market, and they seem to have their thumbs on the pulse of my tastes. Normally, if I’m out solo, I go to Kuya Lord, but I got denied on that end because I already went a couple days ago. The ladies (wife and sister in law) were craving salad to soothe their inner bowels, ah! A Caesar, yes! What else can provide such pleasure as a Caesar? As a self proclaimed condiment fiend, I find Caesar dressing only plays second fiddle to ranch. They’re in the same family but not the same genus as Caesar is flavored aioli and aioli is part of the whole but only plays a supporting role in the creation of ranch.

Ronan…It’s an odd name. A “Ronin” in Japanese culture is a samurai without a master. I know, I know, it’s spelled different. Ronan I’m guessing is a person? Someone’s grandad? I’ve only met one Ronan in my life, my friend’s stepfather who was the toughest son of a bitch I ever met in my life. A Vermonter who grew up on a farm lugging bales of hay at the age of four and looked it.

We sat outside away from people because my son is insane. A toddler is a ticking time bomb in a restaurant and the window is thirty to forty five minutes tops. You have to shovel it all down and shove off leaving a wake of destruction at your former table. You tip better than average out of guilt and the looks of hatred from the staff because, yes, you’ve been there before and thought the same terrible thoughts about children in restaurants.

The service was fast. The Caesar came first. A big old bowl of hearty greens topped with white anchovies and lots of cheese. I appreciate this last detail as there can never be enough cheese on anything.

Crunchy, perfectly salty, obscenely fresh.

The tomatoes and basil came next. Big slabs of tomatoes, yeah, the basic bitch of summertime salads. A crazy big potion to settle that last end of summer tomato craving before it all disappears.

I felt compelled to get one of the cocktails and ordered the Street Corn Flip made with mescal, Kin moonshine, elote, brown butter, egg, cayenne, and cotija cheese. I put it down in three measured gulps. Great savory beverage and hard to pull off but it worked.

Ah, along came the plums “112 style” whatever that means, with stracciatella (misspelled on the menu) and mint. Simple yet hitting me right in the gizzard the way I wanted. Big chunks of plums and lots of cheese. Enough to go around which is usually my beef with any sort of salad like this. Yeah, I like cheese, it’s the fat man’s candy. I devoured this one with a sort of shark like abandon, eyes rolling back in my head and everything. If I could offer one minor bit of criticism it would be that the plums were served a tad underripe, just a skosh, but very pleasurable nonetheless. Fresh, good plums are another delish vittle we won’t be seeing until next year.

The pizza dropped and I had to eat my words because when Jo ordered it I said out loud, “Who orders a margarita?” I really wanted something else like the “So Hot Right Now” with soppressata or the “B.A.B.T.” with bacon and a mayo sidecar, or the “Green Eggs and Ham” but got denied.

I have to say, the pizza was perfect and fully part of category numero uno in terms of my eating out definitions. This is something, no matter how skilled I am, that I cannot make at home. It was so good I had to eat it and when we left I still thought about it.

Speaking of forgetfulness, it had slipped my mind that I had ordered “Mr Breakfast Boy” a plate of over easy eggs with super fresh and crispy arugula alongside slabs of seared mortadella. I had to muster up the gumption to put this puppy down, not because of the way it tasted but because I was full.

But I’m a sucker for a seared meat slab. Who isn’t? At some point during this meal I decided I wanted to eat more foods with my hands and not just at Ronan, but as a general guideline in life. I guess you can’t eat noodles or soup with your hands so that all goes out the window but it’s worth a restaurant concept. The bill for napkins would be astronomical but it would be cool to tell people “no” when they asked for utensils.

At night there’s a pork chop. In fact, I thought about going back for dinner the same day. What other restaurants do that to my cynical brain? Not many. Good prices (three and a half people [one child, one hog] = $150 including tip), great food made with as local as possible ingredients with fast, friendly service a mile or so down the street. No drawbacks. You don’t find stuff like this too often. In the grim, judgmental world of yin and yang or black and white, light and dark, good and evil, etc. there’s the do and the don’t. Go back or never return. This one will be hard to stay away from.

Oh! And I forgot to say they have complimentary sparkling water.