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KARCHER, CARL Founder of Anaheim-based hamburger chain Carl's Jr. Every outlet in the country has a picture of the ultraconservative Karcher—either a portrait of him with his wife in their golden years or a grainy black-and-white shot of a young Carl manning a hot dog cart in the early 1950s.

KASENMild, soft, simple, it's usually what you give someone trying sushi for the first time. It was the best yellowtail I've ever had. More than fresh, it was lean, melting, absolutely surrendering in my mouth. Mr. Ninomiya made a tangy pair and instructed me to take each of them in one bite. Wonderful! Hearty but not chewy. He made not just shrimp and salmon but a shrimp flour ball bobbing in a sweet sauce. Then came sweet chunks of cooked Toro. Pure Japanese cuisine with the simple elegance of sushi. No mayonnaise. No rolls with silly names. 9039 Garfield Ave., Fountain Valley, (714) 963-8769. KATELLA DELIThis is one of those places with lots of food, all of it good and some of it great. The portions are big, the sandwiches are stacked, the pickles are on the table, and the chocolate shakes are made with chocolate ice cream. You can get cream soda and even celery soda there, and the bakery is worth a trip all its own, crammed as it is with sweets and fresh-baked bagels and breads and little chocolate things that make you want to slap yourself. 4470 Katella Ave., Los Alamitos, (562) 594-8611. KEYHOLE LIMPETSFrom the corner of PCH and Laguna Canyon Road in Laguna Beach, hike north on the beach to the tidepools. Naked Asian men not included. (949) 497-0706. Study questions: 1. Does your keyhole limpet? 2. If so, stress and/or pressure at the office may be to blame. 3. Why do the tidepools have a phone number? KMXN-FM 94.3What was once a bland pop station (and a bland country station before that) has become OC's less-pandering alternative to the lowest-common-denominator soullessness of KROQ, especially during the five hours of local music the frequency devotes itself to each week with the Live N Local and Go Loco shows, something no Clear Channel-owned station would dare to do. Commercial radio in OC that'll play your crappy punk band, even just once? Oh, yeah. . . . KNOWLWOOD That's right, a burger what got no meat! How exactly a restaurant that considers removing three of its six slices of bacon as eating light came to offer a vegetarian burger is beyond us—as is, frustratingly, how Knowlwood manages to make this veggie burger so good. Of course, Knowlwood offers more than just veggie burgers. The bill of fare has become billboardian, gradually growing enough to necessitate a four-foot-by-eight-foot menu from which patrons decide between burgers, Philly cheesesteaks and Irish nachos. (Detect a pattern?) There's the exquisite bacon cheeseburger with grilled onions, a hunka-hunka burning meat with smoky slices of swine and a three-napkin minimum. There's the fried zucchini and mushrooms, hand-battered and dunked daily so that the freshness explodes in every bite. 150 S. Harbor Blvd., Fullerton, (714) 879-7552; other locations in Anaheim Hills, Mission Viejo, Irvine and Santa Ana. KOLL, DON Right-wing developer and Newport Beach resident who wants to build more than a thousand really ugly homes atop the so-far-unspoiled Bolsa Chica Mesa in Huntington Beach. KOLTNOW, BARRY The venerable writer of The Orange County Register's “Barrywood” (hotel room junket interviews with John Travolta and Ron Howard) and “After Dark” columns. Writes about clubs and is quite old. KUCI-FM 88.9The last bastion of free speech on the airwaves in OC, if by free speech you mean middle-aged guys lumbering through sub-Monty-Python-style improv at 6 a.m. on a Saturday—which, we believe, is something Thomas Jefferson cogitated upon extensively. Programming during the hours when people—well, South County people and anyone with web access to www.kuci.org—might actually be listening thankfully skews toward the entertaining-if-outr, with mildly edgy alternative and turgid drive-time talk neutralized by ferociously specific niche shows on everything from bizarre experimental music to brain-dissolving techno to smokin'-hot lesbos. KUCI is the karmic counterweight to the Trinity Broadcasting Network (even if TBN still has a bigger audience share among unemployed insomniac stoners): tune in and figure out what the other fringe is doing.

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