New Thing #1: Lucky's DTLA

To kick off 500 New Things for my 50th, I decided to try out the new steakhouse in DTLA - Lucky’s. Lucky’s is a bit of a chain with six locations and it was… fine.

I got the New York Strip with peppercorn sauce, which was a bit of a surprise because I ordered the NY Strip w/ Rocquefort which was one of Lucky’s “Special” steaks. The steak was fine. Nothing interesting about it. The peppercorn sauce was equally OK. The mashed potatoes were solid but nothing all that memorable. It’ll be interesting to see how long Lucky’s survives since it’s in a not-so-great area of DTLA. There are a few restaurants in the vicinity but I just don’t know if an semi-upscale steakhouse is really the best option for that area. It really needs to be a destination and, for me, Lucky’s is not that. I might go back to try out the Romanian steak - I overheard a waiter recommending it to the couple next to me - but odds are I probably won’t. Not with 499 new things still needing to be done!

As a reminder, The 500 New Things Challenge is something I do to get my butt out of the house and get me to be active. I need to try 500 new restaurants, shows, events, films, etc. In honor of me turning 50, though, I’m wiping my slate clean so everything is new! This will make the 500 a lot easier to get to but also, with so many places struggling nowadays, it lets me visit my favorite haunts at least once. The thing with LA is that there are so many options that you often can love a place and then never make it back. With the clean slate, there’s an added drive to revisit spots like Amigo Amore, a restaurant I really enjoyed but just never made time for a return trip.

The Launch of Old Man Mendo

Well, I hit 50 years old today so it seems like a good time for a fresh start. I have a lot that I want to do so I need to just admit from the jump that the blog isn’t going to be my top priority but I’m going to try to keep with it this time around. Yes, I’ve tried keeping up with a blog at least once or twice a year for the last three decades but, again, this is a fresh start and rule #1 for Old Man Mendo is stay committed and get things done. No more procrastination.

On the fresh start front, I’m also going to re-relaunch my 500 New Things Challenge but with a clean slate so everything is new! I also want to rework my Menu de Mendo (my favorite dishes in LA) and The Lists (Lists of my favorite spots, events, etc.) The end of 2026 is also going to be a chance to put to bed the scripts I’ve been toying with for the last couple decades so I can start 2027 working on new ideas. I also should just put some projects to bed as I’ll never get to them. Another blog post I want to do.. no, that I’m GOING to do is TIGS - Things I Gotta Stop. My initial TIGS is going to be a habit I broke once but have fallen back into - I Gotta Stop… drinking soda before noon.

Anyway, it’s a new decade of Mendo. Old Man Mendo doesn’t mean that I’m just going to sit around being decrepit - because I pretty much did that in my 40s - but it’ll be about making the most of the home stretch of my life. Maybe not the home stretch per se but the waning years of vitality. I think back to my aunt talking about how she went to Greece recently and she wished that she had gone earlier in her life because there were a bunch of things she couldn’t do because the walks were too hard or it was just too difficult for her to access at her age.