Quest for Fire: Out of the Flames

The Right Flank

Charles Perry, the well-known arbiter of both medieval Arab cuisine and Summer of Love Haight-Ashbury, likes to talk about the diet of his 1960s roommate Owsley, who was well known as an LSD millionaire. Owsley, who ate nothing but flank steak, had come to believe that all vegetables were poison. If you had access to as much high-quality windowpane as Owsley, you might harbor sinister thoughts about broccoli too. Argentineans may eat more vegetables than Owsley, but not much: In The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin marveled that “the Gaucho in the Pampas, for months together, touches nothing but beef.” At the Buenos Aires–style Carlitos Gardel’s, the idea of an appropriate salad runs to matambre, the classic Argentine roulade of cold flank steak rolled around roasted red peppers and chopped boiled eggs. As with almost any Argentine restaurant, the menu revolves around its parrillada, a cavalcade of charcoal-grilled meats — sweetbreads, blood sausage, skirt steak, short ribs, Italian sausage — served on a smoking iron grill, accompanied only by a small bowl of well-garlicked chimichurri and a large plate of mashed potatoes. Don’t miss the garlic fries. 7963 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 655-0891.

Plank slate: Loup de mer on cedar over the grill at Campanile

Rotisserie big league: Pollo Inka’s chicken inferno

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Alcazar

17239 Ventura Blvd.
Encino, CA 91316

Category: Restaurant > Lebanese

Region: San Fernando Valley

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Antica Pizzeria

13455 Maxella Ave.
Marina del Rey, CA 90292

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Out of Town

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More About

• Hiro Urasawa
• Gardena
• Foster Phillips
• Main Dish Recipes
• Bread

Old Flame

If you spend much time watching period Asian movies, you will remember scenes of dark inns, a scrim of pale steam, a crew of women tending an ancient grill, prodding battered cookpots licked with yellow flame. The classic Koreatown tavern Dansungsa is nothing like a relic of the 19th century. In fact, its ambiance is supposed to recall a Seoul movie palace of the 1940s. But the guttering flames, the strong Korean spirits, the big, smoky plates of baby octopus and barbecued pork ribs and eel, the charred skewers of grilled garlic cloves, shrimp or hot dogs, the crudely delicious kimchi, all seem as if they came from another time and place. The spicy cabbage soup, which comes along with your first soju or beer, is served in a bowl so battered that the only possible explanation is 15 rounds with a chimpanzee. 3317 W. Sixth St., Koreatown, (213) 487-9100.

Tacos al Carbon

If you’re into tacos, at one time or another you’ve probably noticed the conflagration outside El Gran Burrito, a stand tucked away near LACC. Like most great Los Angeles taco places, El Gran Burrito is less notable for the food served inside the restaurant than for the food served out back on evenings and on weekends, when the big grill is set up under an awning, and the aroma of charred beef permeates the air for blocks. El Gran Burrito is Hollywood’s entrepôt of carne asada, grilled beef, snatched from the fire, hacked into gristly nubs, and made into tacos in less time than it takes you to fish a couple of dollars from your jeans. They are grand tacos, sizzling hot, oily, glowing with citrus and black pepper. In the world of food, a truly fine taco may be as close as you can get to nirvana. 4716 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 665-8720.

The Other Red Meat

I have been going to El Parian for many years now, grabbing a table in the long, stark dining room, settling in to a cold bottle of Bohemia, and preparing to devote myself to a sloshing bowl of birria, the roast goat served with amplified pan-drippings that is the café’s great Guadalajara specialty. I went on record in 1990 claiming that El Parian’s birria was the single best Mexican dish in Los Angeles, and nothing in the thousand L.A. Mexican meals I have eaten since then has done anything to sway me from that belief. In the last few months, people whom I have cause to trust have been telling me that El Parian also has the best carne-asada tacos in Los Angeles, that the kitchen succeeds better than anybody else in town at drawing a sweet, meaty, garlicky taste out of thin, charbroiled steak. (The corn tortillas, of course, have always been homemade.) I hadn’t been aware that El Parian actually served carne asada — I hadn’t been aware that the restaurant actually had a menu — so I drove to the Pico-Union district to put the theory to the test. And it did serve carne-asada tacos, although given the choice between an unknown quantity and El Parian’s birria, I naturally ordered the birria instead. It’s a good thing I brought a friend along, because otherwise I never would have gotten to taste what did turn out to be probably the best carne asada in town, well-blackened, beautifully marinated, peppered with delicious pockets of liquified fat that exploded under my teeth. Will I order the carne-asada taco the next time around? Of course not. But I’ll at least think about it. 1528 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 386-7361.

Peruvian Flake

The window of the original El Pollo Inka opens onto a log-heaped fire pit, flames leaping three feet into the air, and a barnyard’s worth of chickens riding through the inferno on a sort of diabolical Ferris wheel — skewered and spinning, crisping over the hardwood heat in a haze of garlic and smoke. To a passing motorist who has never noted the phenomenon of El Pollo Inka and its notorious Peruvian chickens, it looks very much as if the restaurant is on fire. El Pollo Inka is a big-city Peruvian restaurant, its menu filled with ceviches and fish chowders, sophisticated stews and vaguely Chinese-influenced stir-fries. All this is irrelevant: You will certainly order spit-roasted chicken when you come to El Pollo Inka, and probably another whole bird to go. 15400 Hawthorne Blvd., Lawndale, (310) 676-6665. Also in Gardena, Torrance and Hermosa Beach.