Seeing Red

Texate

The most famous dishes of Oaxacan cooking are the moles, thick, rich sauces composed of as many as three dozen different roasted chiles, nuts and seeds, ground into a paste with a mortar and pestle and thinned out with a little broth, as perfect a sauce for poultry as any beurre blanc or bigarade. When you ask for mole at Texate, the waitress patiently waits until you specify which kind of mole you’d like: the mole negro, tar-black, sweet-bitter, with a specific gravity that lies somewhere near that of plutonium; the oddly herbed verde de pollo; the mole called amarillo, especially mild, with a clear chile flavor, a strong top note of cumin and the sort of slightly oily texture of gravy in a chicken-dinner restaurant; or the mole coloradito that’s the best food in the house, brick-red, sharply spicy, a little smoky, with the roundness of toasted grain, more pungent than the negro, everything you’re looking for when you order mole. 316 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica; (310) 399-1115. Open daily 8 a.m.–11:30 p.m. Dinner for two, food only, $11–$15. Full bar. Lot parking in rear. AE, CB, DC, MC, V.

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Ashoka The Great

18614 Pioneer Blvd.
Artesia, CA 90701-5630

Category: Restaurant > Indian

Region: South Bay

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Fu Shing

2960 E. Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91107

Category: Restaurant > Chinese

Region: Pasadena and vicinity

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El Texate

316 Pico Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90405

Category: Restaurant > Mexican

Region: Santa Monica

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Tofu Cabin

A bowl of the Korean bean-curd stew called soon tofu looks less like food than like a special effect from a Wes Craven movie, a heaving, bright-red mass in a superheated black cauldron that spits like a lake of volcanic lava and broadcasts a fine red mist of chile and broth. A network of bubbles on the surface occasionally opens up like a cinematic portal to doom, revealing glistening white chunks of tofu bobbing within. Tofu Cabin’s version is first-rate: Try the No. 2 combination, with briny little clams and bits of meat and fragrant strips of toasted seaweed that retain a little of their crunchiness in the heat of the broth, and soft, supple, creamy clouds of tofu, evanescent as mist. 4220 Beverly Blvd.; (213) 382-5111. Open Mon.–Sat. 10 a.m.–9:30 p.m. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $12. No alcohol. Takeout and free delivery. Lot parking. Cash only.