Laughing Planet
Laughing Planet (LP) is located in between 7th and 8th avenue on Blair street in Eugene, Oregon. Not quite as notorious an area as 5th and Blair, which is known as a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes sex workers.
UPDATE: We have apparently just been robbed. If you’ll notice on the right side of the included photo there is a plastic stegasaurus. A little five year old girl just stole permanantly borrowed our little plastic dinosaur. This is part of the atmosphere of LP, which is a mixture of 70’s retro style furniture and various framed prints of protest flyers to magazine covers to comic books. Black, white and gray squared floor tile lends help to this sexy, progressive socialistic democratic eatery. We stopped at this place not only because my friend Sharky highly recommends it but because sometimes it’s a little bit of a challenge to find open restaurants on a Sunday night.
We started out with a couple of pints. We tried an Oregon Trail Witbier and a Laurelwood Free Range Red Organic beer. Both were decent. I guess if pressed for a second beer and with no other choice I would probably opt for the Laurelwood again. It was a nice smooth, medium red that had no noticable after taste. After dinner we had a Walking Man Homo Erectus double IPA. This beer was, as it’s name foreshadowed, extremely hoppy. But it retained a smoothness factor somehow and made this a very awesome beer overall. However, depending on one’s mood I would probably recommend the Laurelwood to a Pabst exhibitionist. If you’re into micro brews like I am however I would highly recommend this double IPA! On a side note the beer was $3.50 a pint. That’s reasonable but I’m more likely to drink more when the pints are .50 less.
Ok so onto one of the more important aspects of restaurants: The Food. Sharky ordered us a burrito called the che guerrera. Black beans and cubed sweet potato accompanied by various onions, peppers and spices wrapped in a flour tortilla created an excellent meal that was very filling. This burrito had good balance in food items meaning that it didn’t have too much potato or too much onion.
Sharky also ordered some black bean hummus with chips. The hummus was good also. I make a black bean hummus that I prefer due to the addition of Cayenne pepper but LP’s black bean hummus is good also.
One of my favorite things about or trip to LP was the proportions of food served to us. All to often America gets the bad wrap of being this fast food haven that caters to people that can eat 2-5 pounds of food at one sitting. This is not true. At least it’s not true for about 70% of our nation. We were served a fairly large sized burrito that we split between us, a small serving a white corn chips with what appeared to be 3 ounces of black bean hummus. Hummus is very filling so we didn’t make it though that and the chips. the burrito and the chips and hummus were a very decent sized meal for two people with a small amount of leftovers for the next day. I was very impressed that we were not gouged with a full basket of chips like some places insist on serving for free before any real food gets served.
Our bill was less than $15 dollars and we had food left to spare. I was very impressed with the overall value of LP and I would highly recommend it to anyone searching out organic, healthy fast food and a very roomy, clean atmosphere.
September 21st, 2005 at 12:05 pm
Would love to have a recipe with sweet potatoes and blck beens that you all were eating – wow – orange is the color veggie that women should go for.
Glad you are back to wriiting
Mitzy