Kenji is Japanese-American, but I think he had an Italian stepfather. That's his story.

I don't go up to L.A. much either except when I visit my brother in Pomona. Don't really go to Temecula either. Didn't think they had much going on there except a lot of new development that went underwater after the housing crisis hit. Temecula and Murrieta are places people would move to get lower cost housing when they were priced out of Orange County, but now it has a lot of foreclosures and short sales.

I may have eaten at Cortina's once and I think I heard of De Luca's in Whittier. I remember there was a really good Italian place in Whittier and I tried it out a long time ago. Another really good one, but upscale, is Antonello Ristorante in the South Coast Plaza Hotel. I took a date there years ago. What an experience.

Don't know if you're into Chicago-style pizza or not, but the best one in OC is Rance's in Costa Mesa. Those are some serious pies. One slice can fill you up, and the ingredients are fresh and locally grown.

One other place worth mentioning was Lotsa Pasta in San Diego. Despite the cheezy name, it had really good food. A friend and I drove down there for Timpano, a labor-intensive Neapolitan dish that when made correctly that is so good it makes people cry because it's like your tongue has gone to heaven. At least that's the way it was in the 1996 move "The Big Night." The timpano was really good, but it didn't make me cry. Sadly, the restaurant closed down in 2012.