In his amusing, wow-L.A.-is-a-wacky-place! diary for Slate, visiting British writer/food critic Toby Young dines at The Ivy and is totally unimpressed. What L.A. restaurant does impress him? Matsuhisa? Dantana's? Koi?

The restaurant I've been most impressed by so far is the Cheesecake Factory in Brentwood. I had a cobb salad there last week that was every bit as tasty as the cobb salad I had at the Ivy, yet it was brought to my table in half the time and it was a quarter of the price.

Those wacky foreigners just don't get it. Sure, you're going to get a decent, huge meal at the Factory, and the Ivy's overrated. But there's just about zero chance that you're going to catch two stars sucking face as an army of paparazzi snaps away at a totally fabricated, publicist-orchestrated photo op. Hey, Toby, you don't go to Disneyland for the funnel cakes, dig?

Toby Young's Diary [Slate]