El Monte lunch
When dropped CFI extraordinaire Andy Hoover off at El Monte (EMT) last week, I noticed a restaurant open on the field. I love an excuse to fly anywhere, so I filed El Monte away.
Now, it’s not far to EMT, so I set out to do some stalls and steep turns before heading into El Monte for lunch. This had mixed results. There were Santa Ana conditions today, so it was clear and gorgeous (EMT was reporting 50 miles of visibility), but there was enough turbulence that maneuvering at low power settings was laborious. I was hoping to do a series of stall recoveries tp work on some finer points. Conditions were variable enough that such fine-tuning was difficult. I did do a few stalls and some slow flight to get the feel of doing them in the turbulence and mountain waves, but didn’t get to my tinkering.
Then, off to EMT. It was bumpy, but fortunately there weren’t a lot of folks out because of it, which was nice. I flew a wide pattern into EMT, and actually made a nice enough landing.
Annia’s Kitchen is the restaurant on the field, and I was impressed by the service and the food, even though I don’t think I ordered the best thing on the menu. I had a chicken sandwich with a chile on it – the Santa Fe melt – and it was really quite good. Offering either fires or onion rings with the sandwich is a good call. (The onion rings were crisp and not over-breaded, just right). But from the size and looks of the various breakfast dishes that went by, that was the way to go. The ham slices on the ham and eggs were enormous and the pancakes thick and tasty looking. Next time I go I’ll aim for one of those; a ham and pancakes dish would be optimal.
The staff was very pleasant and attentive. The restaurant has a large patio – a veranda almost – overlooking the runway, and a half-hour watching airplanes while munching onion rings without my iced tea running dry would be worth it even if they didn’t serve any food. There’s nothing too fancy here, but excellent quality for an airport diner.
Thus fortified, I headed over to Brackett Field to put in a few landings, and then back to SMO.