My Meal Cost: $18.55 plus trip. Health Rating A. Yelp 4.5 stars
It's been a while, but with the Lovely Mrs. C on her annual family camping trip I ventured off on my own to one of the Pomona restaurants that's been on my list of "must visits" for some time now.
Day Day's BBQ & Wafflehouse is a place that a lot of folks have recommended to me. I've had some of their catering at the Library Trivia Bee and the city Holiday Party so was somewhat familiar with their food but what you get from catering is usually not exactly the same as going to the restaurant.
Day Day's is located in a building on Holt just east of Reservoir at the corner of Loranne. They are nestled between the liquor store on the corner, and a Pupusa place. Parking is in front of the building on the street and is somewhat limited. As you can see from the image above, their sign is quite small and is overpowered by the liquor store next door so you might drive past it without really seeing it. You will want to make the effort to find it though.
The interior is very homey and comfortable with brown upholstered booths which would seat four and a couple of larger booths. They are a dine-in restaurant but also do take out if you'd like.
I arrived for lunch at about 11:30 am and it appeared that I was their first customer of the day but over the course of my lunch the place quickly filled up. I was greeted cordially and told to "sit anywhere." The waitress came over with menus right away and asked for my beverage order (unsweetened ice tea) and was back with it in short order.
Looking over the menu I decided that I really didn't want to choose from their "available all day" breakfast menu, which certainly looked good and included their signature chicken & waffles, but would prefer more of a mid-day meal. Their lunch menu included a number of sandwich options, including an interesting looking Po Boy, lunch chicken, hot wings, 'Nique's links, which all sounded good, but I was still interested in making this my "meal for the day" and looked at the dinner side of the menu.
While the full dinners included ribs, combos, gumbo, and seafood among others, I decided that I really wanted to try some of their fried chicken with a couple of sides, so I ordered Grandma Pang's Southern Fried Chicken. For my sides I ordered their greens (which I loved at the catered events) and, a personal favorite, red beans & rice.
The chicken had very crispy skin and moist, tender meat. My meal came with a breast, thigh, and leg. On the breast was a large piece of "extra" skin (probably from the back which wasn't on the breast) which was crispy and crunchy and tasted a lot like chicharones. The only problem for me with the chicken was that it was a bit on the salty side. This is probably good when you have it with waffles and add in the sweet maple syrup, but bordered on overpowering on its own.
The greens were as good as I had recalled, and were devoured. Unfortunately, for me, the red beans and rice were a little disappointing. When I was in college I worked in the French Market restaurant at Disneyland, and while they didn't serve red beans & rice, I knew about it from our daytime house band, The Delta Ramblers, which featured dixieland jazz legendary clarinetist Joe Darensbourg as the leader. He ended each set with his theme, which he had written called L-O-U-I-S-I-A-N-I-A. The final line in the song was "Eatin' red beans & rice in Paradise, Lou-easy-an-i-a."
Since in my youth I don't recall anywhere that served that dish it wasn't until I went to New Orleans for the 2000 Mardi Gras, that I was finally introduced to it. Now it is my go-to side at Popeye's and whenever I'm in a creole/cajun restaurant, and I make it at home as well. The best part of red beans & rice is the flavor of the ham hocks or other pork. This was missing in the version at Day Day's which, without it was somewhat bland. I did add some Louisiana hot sauce to it which made it good, but I was disappointed that my favorite was less than hoped for.
Having said all that, the experience was good, the food was overall excellent, and I'm sure I'll be back to try some of their other specialties soon.
