I Ate At The Vanderpump Restaurant For GQ

'Vanderpump Rules,' a reality show ostensibly about a restaurant, is almost comically NOT about the food. Which naturally made me wonder, "but how IS the food? Any good?"

Picture credit: Matt Lieb

TL:DR version: I’ve got a new story about going to the Vanderpump restaurant that I wrote for GQ! Please go check it out! Every click makes me look a smidge more important.

Since I got laid off by Uproxx (a company I helped build, where I was the second employee, not that I’m bitter), I’ve been working as a contract editor at GQ. And thank God for that, there aren’t many things worse than sitting around wondering what you’re going to do with your life in between polishing up your resume. Luv too absolutely slave over a custom resume and cover letter for a job that I’m wildly overqualified for and then get zero response. Maaan does that shit suck. At this point I think I’d rather get five root canals than write another cover letter. The rejections hurt even worse when you didn’t really want the job in the first place, which is often.

Anyway, I’ve been editing part time at GQ, which has been great. Much like at Uproxx, we do a lot of hanging out on Slack and sending funny/silly/interesting links to each other for potential coverage. I’m the new guy now, so I’m trying to send those good links, knowing that, on some level, I’m being judged on the quality of my link sendage. Knowing that half of my fellow washed middle aged friends are all obsessed with Vanderpump Rules, I scrolled by a link about Lisa Vanderpump (I still have a hard time believing that her birth name is actually “Vanderpump”) having to close her restaurant, Pump, the other day. Immediately I thought, “this seems like a good room share.”

So I dropped it in there. Almost instantly the site director Nick piped up: “What do you think about going and eating there before it closes and reviewing it??”

Now, at this point I knew full well that Nick lives in New York and isn’t versed enough in California geography to understand that Fresno, where I live, is not a quick little jaunt away from West Hollywood, where Pump is. In fact it’s about a three-and-a-half hour drive, not including traffic delays.

And yet… I couldn’t say no. Of course I couldn’t. This was what my mindless room share had wrought. Moreover, I didn’t want to say no. It was the perfect, wouldn’t-that-be-kind-of-stupid idea upon which I’ve built my entire career, plus combining trash television and food criticism in a way that’s precisely my wheelhouse. So of course I didn’t say no. I’ve made that drive plenty of times in the middle of the week before for movie premieres anyway, and this sounded way better. Plus Matt lives there, so we I figured we could squeeze in a podcast recording (doing it LIVE, TOGETHER just like in the olden days) and make it day.

And so… I pretended like West Hollywood was just on the other side of town and I said yes. This despite a few other complicating factors, such as… at this point I hadn’t actually watched much Vanderpump Rules. I’d seen it a few times in passing, and am vaguely familiar with the term “Scandoval,” but not knowing all of the various backstories, I was always too lost to attempt catching up. Also, I learned soon after, Pump isn’t even the restaurant in Vanderpump Rules. It’s Lisa Vanderpump’s other restaurant, the one where the cast of the show don’t work (they work at SUR).

But hey, minor quibbles. I had a Slack share to honor and god dammit, I was going to honor it, come hell or high water.

I knew it was going to be a good piece almost instantly, from the moment the hostess directed me to my seat, right beneath the “Wine makes my clothes fall off” sign you see above. I didn’t even choose that seat! It was like the universe giving its blessing to this ridiculous idea.

Anyway, I had a great time eating mediocre, wildly overpriced food with sober Matt and his 5-year-old’s “yum, cheeseburgers!” palate. So, please click that link like your life depends on it. I love you.

The shiny-tiled bathroom.

Scoot scoot.

Hot date.

Honestly kind of impressed by how unevenly grilled this bread was.

This baby kale salad with dates, asparagus, and cucumbers was straight up delicious tho

Matt’s four dollar coke

The “pinky pump burger”

The slightly bland but not terrible ravioli.

Food Hack Tested Of The Week

I don’t know where I first saw this, I think it might’ve been on Cooks Illustrated, but now I’m seeing it on “Southern Living.” Anyway, the point is that I saw somewhere that you could poach eggs in a muffin tin. I love poached eggs but they’re kind of a pain in the ass and you can’t do many at a time (I certainly can’t) so I figured I’d give that a go.

I preheated the oven to 350 degrees F as directed, and while that was heating up buttered the muffin tin holes so that nothing would stick (I didn’t see this in the directions, but it seemed like a good idea just to be safe). Then I added about a tablespoon of water in each well (I actually just eyeballed it), and cracked some eggs in. 12-ish minutes later they looked like this:

Looking… pretty damned perfect, actually. Why have I been fiddling around with a pot of vinegar water my whole life?

The next test: would they come out easily? I grabbed a slotted spoon and…

Yep, still pretty easy. Eggs fully intact and not much egg waste. Probably a little less than the pot method. I put the eggs over a bowl of leftover polenta (one of my favorite leftovers to repurpose) and cut some scallions and ramps from the garden (yeah, that’s right) over them.

The whites were cooked and the yolks were runny. I don’t know what else you could ask from a poached egg. All in all, I think I have to give this food hack 10/10.