The wonders of Magic Wok’s Filipino food for the L.A. Times:
PHOTO by FRANCINE ORR / L.A. TIMES
Magic Wok is a porcine palace, a restaurant where the pillars of Filipino cooking are fortified by all things pork. Kids chomp on shards of pig skin as crisp as potato chips, grandparents leisurely ladle hunks of pork from sour tamarind soups — the homey restaurant went whole hog long before quivering cubes of pork belly cropped up on happy-hour menus and bacon became an almost de rigueur dessert.
Perhaps even more than most, Filipino cooking is a tradition that you’ll be told time and again is best experienced in the home. Restaurants, it’s often said, simply can’t replicate the custardy feel of an aunt’s cassava cake or the loving, peanut butter-rich base of a mother’s kare kare. But out on the periphery of Artesia’s Little India, Magic Wok has been making this familial food for decades.
The restaurant has never been one to be bothered by timeworn trappings — its drop ceiling, wood paneling and even its name (a holdover from when the space once housed a Chinese fast-food chain) all came with the place. Nor is it now concerned with visibility, as after a recent strip-mall remodel, Magic Wok is without a sign. Those searching out this hog heaven for the first time need only look for the constant crowds to find it.
Need (anti-)Valentine’s Day plans? Powerhouse Placentia beermaker the Bruery has you covered with a pair of events. First, get in the mood with the release of the latest in the Bruery’s Melange series of beers:
The next beer is the latest in our Melange series that’s been brewed especially for Valentine’s Day; this is number six – or No. Sechs as we’ve dubbed it. Melange no. Sechs is primarily made up of an experimental beer brewed with beets for a festive red color before cocoa nibs and rose petals are added. It’s then blended with White Oak Sap (our bourbon barrel aged wheat wine) & bourbon barrel aged Rugbrød The resulting beer is 9% ABV and has an earthy flavor with a pleasant chocolate & vanilla nose and a subtle floral hint all wrapped in an incredibly smooth package. Sound Sechsy? It is!
Then drop by on Valentine’s Day proper for a special beer-and-chocolate tasting with the always excellent Xuan Patisserie:
On Valentine’s Day, stop by the Tasting Room before your V-Day dinner plans for a little Sechs & Chocolate. We’re working with local chocolatier Xuan Patisserie of Fullerton and have developed a flight of craft beer and artisan chocolate so you can treat your sweetie. We think a Caramel Vanilla Fleur de Sel chocolate heart paired with Melange No. Sechs is a great way to spend V-Day. This is just one of the 3 beer and chocolate pairings that will be served on the flight. It should be a fun and unique way to spend your holiday.
Huaraches, quesadillas and weekend-only migas: Antojitos Carmen finds a permanent home in Boyle Heights. For the L.A. Times:
PHOTO by GARY FRIEDMAN / L.A. TIMES
The way it used to be, on almost any given evening an irrepressible assemblage of Mexican food vendors would flood a Boyle Heights parking lot in what seemed like seconds. Empty tables suddenly were covered with tubs of masa and astringent salsas, and griddles glowed with immediate heat. Before you knew it, diners would be perched on plastic chairs and crumbling curbs, their fingers stained an inky, huitlacoche-rich black. Couples quickly huddled around cups of goat consommé as kids eyed the cinnamon-dusted ridges of freshly fried churros. It was a mesmerizing sight, one that transformed a patch of otherwise-empty asphalt.
When authorities shut down the not-quite-nightly Breed Street food fair some months ago, vendors were forced to accept a more itinerant existence. Where there was once an unrivaled concentration of street-food specialists is now a diaspora of barbacoa masters and pozole purveyors dispersed across several Eastside blocks. Veteran vendor Antojitos Carmen, meanwhile, found a permanent place for its movable feast.
It’s still sparse — not much more than a half-dozen brick-red booths staring out onto César Chávez Avenue — but Antojitos Carmen the restaurant is home nevertheless. After two decades spent hunched over sidewalk fryers, the Ortega family was recently able to move its operation indoors. The month-old restaurant already feels lived-in: Photos of Carmen Ortega’s hometown of Yurécuaro, Michoacán, adorn the walls; regulars pick up orders with mere nods of the head.
It’s a quintessential Southern California story: a Cambodian couple takes over a donut shop, learns the tamale trade from an employee and eventually works those neat, polenta-like packets of masa into a menu of crullers and coffee.
Garden Grove’s Sak Donuts, hidden in a Harbor Blvd. strip mall on the periphery of Little Saigon, is as exemplary of the American eating experience as any hamburger or rack of ribs.
Crisp, impossibly airy cookies served straight from the freezer, their centers stuffed with slick buttercream, seem almost Space Age. They’re somehow both sturdy and weightless. They dissolve the second they touch your tongue. These otherworldly treats are silvanas, colorful and classic Filipino cookies that could easily be mistaken for oversized French macarons.
They’re the namesake of House of Silvanas, a months-old sweets shop at the confluence of Silver Lake and Little Armenia. You won’t find the place without some confusion — it’s but one of many stalls located inside Kusina, a surprisingly spacious cafeteria-style turo-turo joint where buffet trays are loaded with ruddy links of longganisa sausage and steaming cups of sinigang, a sour tamarind soup, serve as makeshift palate cleansers.
Never mind its humble surroundings — House of Silvanas has a long, multi-generational history. Its cream-filled tradition began a world away in the Philippines, where Trining Teves-Sagarbarria’s pastries were so popular that a business bloomed to satisfy demand. Those renowned recipes became heirlooms, passed down to daughter-in-law Mary Ann, who has now bestowed them upon her daughter Kathryn.
Pomegranate seeds spill from the sandwich after each bite, brilliant and glistening like freshly polished rubies. Peanuts tumble out too, speckled with flecks of cumin, cinnamon and ground chiles. They land with a percussive patter that completes the sensory experience that is the Indian snack dabeli, a White Castle-sized, potato-based slider that’s a staple on the streets of Mumbai. At Artesia’s Mumbai Ki Galliyon Se, dabeli is just one of Sailesh and Shruti Shah’s edible odes to their former home.
The husband and wife brought the pulse of Mumbai’s cosmopolitan streets with them to the United States a decade ago. Sailesh spent most of his years here as a software engineer, all the while accumulating the knowledge and resources required to launch a restaurant. A year and a half ago, he put programming in the past and opened Mumbai Ki Galliyon Se with Shruti.
Much about the Little India restaurant is familiar: Its tableware is disposable (plates are Styrofoam, cutlery is plastic) and its ambience depends on whichever choreographed bit of Bollywood happens to be dancing across the TV. But Mumbai Ki Galliyon Se (literally “from the streets of Mumbai”) is unique to the neighborhood. While Gujarati chaat shops offer an increasingly familiar cast of snacks, Mumbai Ki Galliyon Se is the only eatery to focus on the flavors of India’s largest city.
December 1 marked the release of Eat: Los Angeles 2010, the second edition of the increasingly indispensable guide to all things edible. This year’s new-and-improved book has over 200+ new listings and some 50 additional pages, including contributions by yours truly. Visit eat-la.com or your local independent bookseller to grab a copy in time for your last-minute holiday needs.
KFI’s notorious open-mawed radio commentators John and Ken spent 15 minutes on Monday attacking everything about the recently opened Gold Line extension, a light rail line that runs from Little Tokyo to East LA. In the process, the pair slammed the L.A.Times for sending four writers (including me) to round up the best restaurants at each of the extension’s stops. (That story, including my contributions at the Soto St. and Indiana St. stops can be found here.) Predictably, John and Ken sink to race-baiting depths, calling East LA a “disgusting illegal alien slum” and wondering why they’ve never seen goat at the “authentic Mexican restaurants” they supposedly frequent.
Comforting Vietnamese classics for the L.A. Times:
PHOTO by ALLEN J. SCHABEN / L.A. TIMES
There’s an unquestionable comfort in Hoang Yen’s chao. The Vietnamese congee is a homey, hearty meal of rice boiled down until it takes on a consistency somewhere between that of oatmeal and Cream of Wheat. Even for those whose childhood memories revolve around grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, the porridge possesses an innate familiarity.
All of Hoang Yen’s dishes share that fundamental comfort. Simple pleasures define the year-old restaurant, which replaced a Mexican eatery that was awkwardly grafted onto the backside of late-night standby Luc Dinh Ky. Hoang Yen’s succinct menu of Vietnamese family classics better occupies the narrow space.
The Westminster restaurant is decidedly modern: deep blue tiles climb one wall as if to draw a high-water mark; a flat-screen TV recedes elegantly into the back of the dining room. It’s a clean style cultivated by the Chau family, which runs Hoang Yen with a welcoming air. The result is an open and inclusive space where uniformed electricians lunch alongside young mothers, and businessmen pop in for takeout as they pass through Little Saigon.
Finding halal highlights of Burmese and Malaysian cooking in Inglewood for the L.A. Times:
PHOTO by ANNE CUSACK / L.A. TIMES
The Koranic art at Mutiara Food & Market is rattling against the wall, its filigreed details shaken by the groans of a jet passing overhead. When the plane travels out of sight, Mutiara fills with a consuming quiet. The Inglewood restaurant and market is a subdued place, but its unassuming setting belies its rich and varied Burmese and Malaysian cooking.
Mutiara concentrates mostly on the halal highlights of Islamic Burmese cuisine, a hearty cast of curries and kebabs more closely resembling those of India and Pakistan than Myanmar. They’re the dishes of owner Myo Aung’s personal history. His recipes re-create his Myanmar, paeans to the Islamic traditions of both his family and home. (Outside the kitchen, Aung performs a similar service as an imam, leading prayers and instructing the teachings of the Koran.)
Mutiara isn’t his first restaurant venture. Aung used to own Jasmine Market in Culver City but sold it about two years ago and opened Mutiara. Similarities to the former restaurant remain, but Mutiara has a deeper, more complex menu.
