Simple fish from the District:
PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Somewhere between the restaurants that source their seafood from Tsukiji and those that shake loose a few filets from a cardboard box is a whole culinary gulf where the ocean isn’t even an option. This middle ground is a barren place populated by kitchens that would rather serve [...]
Koreatown’s yang rou chuan specialist from today’s L.A. Times:
PHOTO by MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ / L.A. TIMES
Tiny flecks of fire jump from Feng Mao’s tabletop grills. They’re unpredictable at first, but as the embers slowly brighten to white-hot, the flames calm down. Once the entire dining room gets cooking, the Koreatown restaurant fills with a familiar [...]
The Grand View Topless Coffee Shop in Maine is testing out whether sex still sells even during a recession. Some choice quotes from the Kennebec Journal:
The outside windows were covered with promotional posters for New England Coffee. Up the entrance ramp to the front door, another sign: “Over 18 only” — and another at the [...]
Breaking away from the brasserie pack downtown:
PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Church & State is the odd bistro out in L.A.’s recent brasserie boom – an uncomplicated place that fits downtown’s still-indelicate fringe. While Anisette, for example, pursues Old World grandeur, Church & State monopolizes modernity. It’s a methodically simple restaurant spread out on the ground floor [...]
The Santa Monica Farmers Market presents a night of food philosophy from its “Where the Good Things Are” series. The February 26 event focuses on how to deliver fresh produce from farm to fork and will be moderated by Evan Kleinman of KCRW’s Good Food. Guests are set to include a pair of farmers and [...]
Drowned sandwiches from this week’s District:
PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
These are the wet weeks of the California winter, a time in the state’s single season when morning mist gathers on your hair like dew on grass and when even the driest roads can suddenly become rain-slicked crash courses. Within this short window of weather, appetites actually [...]
In CityBeat this week:
PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
There’s a swell of sound pouring out of Wurstküche – a steady hum of conversations all rushing together into a wave. It seeps out onto downtown streets from somewhere beyond the restaurant’s skinny hallway, a concrete and brick corridor that’s as reminiscent of the Smell rock club as it [...]
Regional plates from this week’s District:
PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Like orange chicken and the California roll before it, pad Thai has been folded right into the American appetite, a dish so popular it’s now the barometer by which many measure all those Thai restaurants copied and pasted into every overbuilt strip mall. Consume enough of the [...]
After an abrupt closure back in August, Pondok Kaki Lima, Duarte’s pop-up Indonesian food fest, is back. The mini-bazaar sets up shop in the parking lot of the Duarte Inn every Saturday, an amazingly unassuming location fitting for a city where the freeways end and the mountains begin. Roughly a half-dozen vendors cook at Pondok Kaki [...]
Eating the upper-reaches of Koreatown:
PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Out on the business end of Koreatown, where Wilshire high-rises block out the sun and serious restaurants fade to fast food, So Hyang sits just out of sight. The restaurant is buried under the Equitable Trade building, a ground-level space hidden behind a concrete wall that amplifies every [...]
