Tuesday, July 10th | Dino’s Chicken and Burgers | 770 E. Arrow Hwy, Pomona, CA 91767
You can forget the burgers.
So … full disclosure, we’ve been to Dino’s before. Our first time was something like ten years ago, when we were just barely learning the brilliance of Jonathan Gold (who has described Dino’s as “a sulfurous, smoke-belching landscape of fire and ashes, sputtering gouts of orange flame, and stacks of chickens, dyed red as the pelt of Old Nick with chile and spices, neatly bisected at the backbone and ready to be flipped into the blaze like so many unrepentant sinners,” both an amazing description and, geez, lol JG). One mid-day we set out on a city-wide search for Dino’s. We drove and drove (PSA: according to AAA, the worst traffic is not weekday rush hour but 2pm on Saturdays) … until finally we made it to the west-ish side, Pico and Vermont, and there, at Dino’s original, we tucked into the unbelievable chicken and fries, staining our fingers a guilty orange for three days.
The next day, we finally made it back to our neck of the county. We turned up Towne, hit Arrow, and … well, shit: there was a Dino’s there all the while. We didn’t feel bad – it was more funny than anything, and besides, there’s something to embarking on a quest that makes food just plain tastier.
Effort + payoff > just simple payoff, right? Maybe? Yes.
Anyway, feel free to skip straight to the payoff: go to Dino’s on Arrow and Towne. Get the chicken and fries ($7.49). We also got a carne asada burrito, just for kicks ($7.19), but unless you really like grilled onions on your burrito, we recommend taking a pass.
Anyway: by ‘chicken and fries’? We really mean the fries.
The fries are the star; the chicken is the headliner who doesn’t deserve top-billing, your basic Ben Affleck to a lot of actors in Ben Affleck movies: sure, it’s a looker, but even with all that nuclear orange sauce slathered on, and even with the hellfire charcoal smoke … it’s just chicken (Ben Affleck: tastes like chicken?). But the essence of the chicken, the grease, and the sauce, all that redness which drips … and drips .. and drips … down and down into the bed of what are otherwise ordinary fries … soaking them through and through until they become a singular sogged mess of tang and spice and smoke and salt?
That’s it – that’s the blood-spattered Rosamond Pike you’ve been looking for.