The other day in the Hollywood Farmer’s Market I was having my regular moment of pure bliss (spinach and corn tamale from that amazing tamale stand) for lunch after a nice bit of shopping when I found myself sitting at a big outdoor table with a number of other people. Two of them were headed to the convention center for the afternoon and were wondering whether they might be able to find anything good to eat down that way. Of course, as a public-spirited person I had to tell them a bit about the options that popped into my head at that point (starting with La Taquiza of course), and ended up patiently explaining how to squint your eyes to look past all the fast food places to the culinary bliss that lurks just below the surface of the city. We had a delightful conversation and then they moved on, leaving me soaking up the sun for a while longer.
A woman who’d been sitting on her own (also enjoying a tamale) spoke up and said that she’d been interested to hear that I thought there was a lot of good food in LA since she could not really find much of it (and she’d been here for four years). Happily I’d finished my tamale and so did not choke or splutter at this revelation, in equal parts horrifying and deeply sad, and spent a few more moments listing some recommendations at her request. Unfortunately, the conversation turned (as it so often does) to one where I find myself defending LA against someone’s expectations of it based upon their own city, and their own requirements (instead of them learning how to navigate and understand the place they’ve chosen to live). Usually it is New Yorkers I have this sort of conversation with, but this time it was someone from Chicago. Her thesis was that good food is hard to find in LA and you’re just falling over it in Chicago. Two other diners arrived (also with tamales that they loved, I’ll point out) and guess where they’re from? Chicago. And so on it went… next they were bonding with each other about their favourite places in Chicago, which was fine, but… I wanted to get back to this nonsense about good food being rare in LA. I hate that myth almost as much as the “no public transport” one (but not quite since it is not as dangerous and destructive)…and particularly despise that habit people have of worshiping the thing they love about their home city by dragging down LA. Can’t people learn to just like what they like without having to enhance it by trying to dislike something else, as though Nature has a conservation law about the total amount of “liking” that can go on? (Above, Anne Fishbein photo from an article to be discussed below.)
I find it a cheap and lazy practice, in general – although to be fair to the woman of this conversation, she was not quite as bad as some I’ve encountered, and was actually listening (I think) to my many counter-examples – and I was beginning to get annoyed with myself for not remembering as many places as I’d like to have for some regions of the city: I’ve been here for a mere four years and was listing off great places to eat pretty well, but I could have done with an ally at that point.
If only Jonathan Gold was happening by at that moment (wow, I finally made the link to what I actually intended to do a 5 minute blog post about). Well, he was not (well, he might have been, but since I’ve no idea of what he looks like, it would not have helped), so I had to make do with urging the woman to keep an open mind and be a bit more adventurous (this turned out to be the root of her problem, she admitted).
What I really should have had to hand was Gold’s recent article in the LA Weekly paper listing 99 of LA’s “essential restaurants”. His definition of “essential” for the 2006 list that he did:
An essential restaurant is a restaurant that reflects Los Angeles in a startling and unusual way, that uses fresh local ingredients in a fashion that respects the land in which they were grown, that showcases cooking echoing both foreign-trained chefs’ region of origin and the hypercharged mosaic of the Los Angeles dining scene. An essential restaurant moves people, inspires them to think about food in a new way, inspires them to think about Southern California as a great agricultural region, a great port, a builder of the shiny symbolism that is a large factor in how the rest of the world thinks of itself. And it’s also a damned good place to eat.
It’s excellent for two main reasons. The list itself is great (although not everyone agrees with it, I’m sure). There’s a Google map too! I’m happy to see that a ton of my favourites -most of which I did remember in my conversation above- are on it, and I’ve learned about a ton more. The other excellent feature? He writes so well, it is fun to just read about the places, whether or not you agree with his opinion. (This probably explains why he’s the first food critic to get a Pulitzer Prize (2007), I suppose.)
I think I’ll print out a few copies of this to have to hand for when I’m in a culinarily-unfamiliar part of town. If you’re visiting, consider bringing this list along with you, remembering (of course) that it is not meant to be an exclusive list, but just one of many entry points into the splendid landscape of food you can find in LA. And if you’re a local and don’t know about his regular “Counter Intelligence” column in LA Weekly… I recommend reading it from now on.
Bon Appétit!
-cvj
(Spotted at LA Observed. Then saw it discussed gushingly and amusingly at The Delicious Life.)
Clifford, Samantha and Brunsli – I look forward to going to some of your restaurant choices when I am over later this year. cmj
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Amara: Russian piroshki are sometimes fried, but they are mostly baked (my Mom bakes great piroshki, they are alway a hit when she visits us here)… there are also another version of Russian pancakes, that are more like American silver-dollar-pancakes (but sweater) called olad’i — maybe it is similar to Estonian panclaes you are refering to, I never tried them…
Clifford: please do share your experience once you visit that Uzbek restaurant — lamb chops, plov (eaten with hands) and lavash (kinda like big pita bread) are the most famous Uzbek dishes — would be great to hear…
I find that maps between the cuisines of the world always contain several fixed points. Pancake-like structures are among the most universal, I’d say. Blood sausages (or black pudding, and various other names…basically some sort of bladder filled with tasty spiced stuff glued together with some animal’s blood) are another, etc. I’m surprised there’s no book about it – perhaps I should write one (after spending a year or so traveling for research purposes).
-cvj
Clifford: No battles here, I was joking. Now that you point out where the recipe came from: I would never have thought of Uzbek culture as Russian (but then my own background is particular as a child of a Latvian refugee). I assume that there’s some shared food, but all of those cultures are culturally distinct. For example, in food, many of the slavic regions have something that looks like piroshki, but the Russian version is fried (boiled?) and the Latvian version (pirogi) is baked, plus their fillings are different. For pancakes, I suspect that one could know only by seeing with one’s own eyes and tasting. Blini and Latvian pancakes look similar, but Latvian pancakes are sweeter. Estonian pancakes are smaller, and sweet like the Latvian pancakes. and so on..
BTW, I really like Uzbek music.. maybe that restaurant will play that while you’re dining…
From page 18 of the list, next to the photo, we find:
And the caption for the picture is: “International house of blini: Uzbekistan’s cakes with caviar and sour cream”.
So you guys can battle it out a bit more if you like…. I’m sure a strain of cooking stretches from the south at Uzbekistan, up through Russia and across to Latvia… so a truce is probably in order.
But best of all? Uzbekistan (the restaurant, not the country) is only a short distance (in appropriate units) from where I live! I’m going to try this place (having passed it so many times) sometime really soon!
-cvj
I don’t know Alexey. Those Blini look more like Latvian pancakes to me… 😉
Ah. Blini (thin pancakes), sour cream and caviar… the quintessential Russian breakfast of champions. Nice picture! 🙂
OK that’s a little better, but still! I am with Brunsli, the New York food scene is all very nice if you have money, the amazing thing here is that you can eat so well for so (relatively) little.
Clifford: Yes, I learned from Captain Bligh (I was a hair away from mutiny) on that trip how to collect and clean sea urchins. A useful life skill, no? No??? Ok,, well the process _did_ help me to formulate my life philosophy (heh). I would dive for sea urchins in the glorious Greek Sea again in a second, although I would choose different company. :-/
Amara…. you actually do the egg gathering you describe? Wow!
-cvj
Samantha.. to be fair, she did know about a number of good ones… her point (still wrong) was that it was hard to find good ones. I pointed out that it was probably because she drives around instead of getting out and looking (people miss a huge amount in LA by not getting off the highway and walking (or biking) around a nieghbourhood). But no, she does not drive and walks and uses public transport (yay!). So I was kind of flummoxed.
-cvj
Brunsli,
Sorry about the misdirect… it was not intentional. See other posts in the “food and drink” section for tasty food items made here in the kitchen…. and more to come.
Cheers,
-cvj
P.S. Actually, LA largely has a surprising (and annoying) early closing habit too. Although there are several late opening (and 24 hour) places here and there, as I’m sure there are in Boston.
I have to say, it is a really bizarre charge against LA that it doesn’t have good food. I can’t get my mind around it. Yeah, the traffic isn’t so great, but that the food is bad? LIving in LA for four years without finding a good restaurant? That is well… just plain odd.
Shocking indeed!
Since I left LA in 2000, I have always been trying to find restaurants as good as the ones in LA. Okay, Boston isn’t exactly a haven for foodies, and the town closes early, so it’s not quite fair to compare. The Bay Area was better, but LA is the best food town I know. (NYC doens’t factor in — I was too young/poor to be a restaurant foodie when I had NYC access.) Plus, LA has good high end and low end. I was introduced to a new type of plump snow pea at one of the 6000 Chinese restaurants in San Gabriel this weekend, yumm!! The only bad part is that the Chinese Islamic restaurant I was looking for was gone. Oh, I digress.
I must say, I was slightly disappointed by your post though. I thought you made those crepes yourself. 😉
Thanks for the list.
In the bowl in the picture, it looks like Sea Urchin roe ?
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Here is my recipe for life, thought up … oh, so deeply (heh), during a 2005 boat trip through the Greek islands with Captain Bligh.
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RECIPE FOR LIFE: Stay tough on the outside, soft on the inside, enjoy with a touch a garlic and a glass of wine…
Sea Urchins for lunch. Want the females, which are non-black, usually a reddish color. They tend to hide deeper into the cracks and cover themselves with other shells and junk. Reef-dive with a mask, no snorkel. Take a deep breath and DIVE! With one gloved hand and a knife in the other hand, lift the urchin from its place, and put it in a net bag keeping the spines away from you (!). Collect about 25, then Clean. Cleaning means to cut out the inside, gutting the urchin (isn’t it bizarre to see the spines still moving?) then with a spoon, scoop out the elongated orange portion. Those are the egg sacks (five of them). To cook these ~100 egg-sack pieces, first heat a pan with garlic rubbed onto the bottom. Then *lightly* sautee them with more garlic cloves (peeled) and olive oil. After the spaghetti pasta is cooked (al dente), mix about 2/3 of the urchin eggs into the pasta. Pour the rest of the urchin mixture on top. Serve with wine. :-).
Ciao,
Amara