I called ahead, and Sergio was in the house, and so we went.
And y’all thought I was joshin in that Vday thread.
meatballz
lasagne
breath mintz
it wouldn’t be valentine’s day without…
GARLICLY RECOMMEND
Stinking Rose
55 N La Cienega Blvd
Beverly Hills, CA 90211
Valet Parking ($7.95)
NO CORKAGE FEE
No steak? You missed out on the best.
My lawyer will be contacting you soon about the trademark infringement.
Because a few of you have an inside joke about Stinking Rose, I did think you were joking. I’m still not totally sure you’re not now 
.
oh man, so jealous
There was a CH poster who used the name Keith Gilabert: showed up out of nowhere and posted a bunch of…sketchy…reviews. (In that they were incredibly generic and not very houndish.) And plastered his name all over (not only using the real name in his profile, but also “signing” the posts and other things); basically, really spammy.
The operating theory was that he - or a PR/reputation management firm - was trying to “bury” information about him from the search engines, so a search on his name would pop all these CH results and (we assumed) push the negative results further down/onto the later results pages.
He might - though no one seemed certain - have been this hedge fund person charged by the SEC (and he did, at least at the time of filing, live in Valencia) (hmmm…and Google shows someone with the same name working in VC and bragging about doing a lot of humanitarian work in 2014); anyway: https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2006/lr19680. (He plead guilty.)
CH mods or admins, per normal, chose not to do anything.
Here’s the infamous “Best Steak in Los Angeles” thread, with the declaration courtesy of Mr. Gilabert:
(Reading the thread reminds me of how much I miss Servorg!) (Also, @Ns1’s final comment in the thread made me snort. [In a decidedly unladylike manner; which caused one of the cats to give me a disgusted glare and the other to look at me with great confusion.])
(And that - with apologies for the rambling - is the “inside joke” about the Stinking Rose. I have never been to the restaurant and haven’t a clue as to the quality of the food. But I do like garlic and am thus inclined to be curious about it!)
[quote=“ElsieDee, post:7, topic:5113”]
CH mods or admins, per normal, chose not to do anything.
[/quote]The other thing the mods didn’t do was stop you guys from going on a ridiculously off-topic tangent, which was a good thing (highly amusing) and one of the things I miss about CH. Some of the threads would start, stop, start back up and go on for years collecting new posters along the way… sigh. This was a great post @ElsieDee. Thanks! But who the hell is this Sergio already?
P.S. I’m a cat scaring snorter too.
I love how all the pics have a pink tinge. Nothing says high-class romance like a bordello.
The pan of roasted garlic and bread is no joke…we used to love starting a meal with that dish…and then be too stuffed to eat anything else. I
Someone entered the thread and legit said steak at The Outback was the best steak they ever had… holy shit, that tops even the Stinking Rose oddity!
If it really was a relationship management company, it is insane that they couldn’t put more effort into it. If I was paying a company to make me look amazing online I would sue them for putting that little effort in. Paying a random person to just produce real reviews signed with their name would hardly have cost anything.
The Keith Gilabert relationship management theory was just that, a theory. He could have just as easily been a bot. There were all kinds of weirdos on Chowhound. The only people that were consistently kicked off were overtly spammy or glaring trolls.
??? I guess you might have missed the other half of the running joke (two different jokes/two different restaurants/many threads between CH and here—somehow they got combined)…Sergio is the chef @ Mariscos Chente (he’s moved around various family-owned Mexican seafood restaurants)
Pan roasted garlic smeared on bread does seem delicious.
Hi @TheCookie,
Actually that statement is only partially true. Earlier it was like that (more open), but CH became a very unforgiving, militant board when they were sold and when changes started coming and they ignored feedback.
@TheCookie I think we go off-topic on fun tangents frequently enough over here…and @ipsedixit and the rest of the community rolls along with us on the ride. Being on FTC has been a lot of fun…even when we may disagree to disagree with each other. CH was increasingly less fun over time.
@TheCookie It’s really simple, but super addicting…and filling. Now that we talk about it, I may need to drop on by when I find myself in that neighborhood next.
The Stinking Rose needs to be celebrated.
It may very well have been the seed that was sowed (right in front of the Chowhound Moderators), and which ultimately germinated into FTC.
Anyone who doesn’t get the Stinking Rose probably also doesn’t understand the spirit of the community here.
I actually find it far easier to believe that theory than that someone ate at CUT and then had the filet at the Stinking Rose and actually found it far superior to anything at CUT, or anywhere else in all of LA.
Have you been to the original one in SF . I wondered how they compared . I walked past the one in the city plenty of times and never went in . Just figured it was kind of like Bucca di Beppo . Not that there is anything wrong with that . To many other restaraunts to choose from .
