A certain nursery rhyme hints that Mary and her lamb were inseparable to a fault; the cuddly li'l fleeceball proved as much by flipping off authority the day he tagged along for that infamous trek to school. But there's another side to this story—namely that at their core, lambs are mangy, freeloading, empty-headed little sacks of drool. They eat, sleep and poop for a living, running away at the slightest provocation and with no regard for where they're going. As companions, they make excellent tire irons, and it's safe to assume that a smart little girl like Mary figured that out early on.
The only good lamb's a dead lamb, see. Especially if it's dead at a cool restaurant, like the Gaslamp Quarter's Bare Back Grill. Those peeps understand my ire over the lamb's overrated place in the order of things; they keep the price fairly low ($10.90 for the spectacularly delish Bare Li'l Lamb burger, $2 more for an extra-thick patty) and the revenge sweet (for the full effect, suck down this baby with a slathering of bleu cheese and beetroot). Before you do anything, though, you have to get to the place, located at 624 E St. and open 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily (the number's 619- 237-9990; for more info, see barebackgrill.com). There's a location in Pacific Beach, too.
That story about Mary, by the way, is true. Mary was Mary Sawyer, of Sterling, Mass., and her odious little pet did follow her to school one day, inspiring the poem around 1830. If I'd known Mary then, that little ditty would never have been written. To Mary's presumed relief, I'd have made short work of that pest, hoisting him and his chicken-shit pals on the community spit just in time for breakfast, lunch and dinny. Sterling would've hosted the nation's first block party and mass execution, all on the same day. Now, that's efficiency in the kitchen!