Chichén Itzá’s habanero salsa is a mind-altering substance, a thin golden liquid with a presence that travels the way a sizzling fuse might along a narrow sector of your tongue until — ka-BOOM! — it detonates somewhere in your upper middle palate. And this isn’t even the hottest salsa Chichén Itzá has to offer. That honor belongs to the chunky purée of pure, grilled habanero chiles loosened with a little citrus, a condiment that has the punch of uncut heroin. Across the street from the Park Plaza Hotel and down the block from the Mexican Consulate, the new Chichén Itzá is a sleekly rustic dining room devoted to the cooking of the Yucatán: panuchos, vaporcitos, long-cooked cochinito pibil and all. Tikin-xic, seared sole fillets coated with a reddish achiote paste, are especially good, as is the Lebanese-Yucatecan staple kibi. I liked the restaurant’s original location, the still-packed stand in the Mercado La Paloma complex, so much that I actually booked an air ticket to Mérida after my first couple of meals there. The newer, more elegant restaurant is even better. 2501 W. Sixth St., L.A., (213) 380-0051. Sun.–Thurs. 11:30 a.m.–9 p.m., Fri.–Sat., 11:30 a.m.–11 p.m. Beer and wine. Takeout. Validated parking. AE, MC, V. Also in Mercado La Paloma, 3655 S. Grand Ave., dwntwn., (213) 741-1075. Open daily 8 a.m.–6:30 p.m. MC, V. Yucatecan.$
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Apple Pan
10801 Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90064
Category: Restaurant > American
Region: West L.A.
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With the demise of the Beijing duck restaurant Quanjude and the Taiwanese makeover of the Islamic-Chinese restaurant Tung Lai Shun, the Sichuan restaurant Chung King may be the premier San Gabriel Valley destination for traveling food people at the moment, a restaurant of a sort you just can’t find in Chicago, San Francisco or New York. The Western Chinese cooking, sizzling with four or five different kinds of chiles, vibrating with the flavors of extreme fermentation and smacked with the cooling, numbing sensation of Sichuan peppercorns, lies halfway between dentist’s-chair Novocain and the last time you could afford a lot of blow. It never fails to leave visitors exhausted, narcotized and happy, drenched in foul, garlic-laced sweat. The deli case filled with chile-marinated pigs’ ears and blisteringly hot tripe is worth a drive alone. If Chuck Jones had ever decided to draw something spicy for the coyote to injure himself with, it probably would have looked a lot like Chung King’s fried chicken with hot peppers, a knoll of crunchy dark-meat cubes subsumed under a blizzard of dried chiles that are the red of silk pajamas, the red of firecrackers, the red of the Chinese flag. Make sure you end up at the San Gabriel restaurant, which is vastly superior to the Monterey Park imposter of the same name. 1000 S. San Gabriel Blvd., San Gabriel, (626) 286-0298. Open daily 11 a.m.–9:30 p.m. Beer. Takeout. Lot parking. Cash only. Chinese/Szechuan.$
Ciudad
Glistening oysters at happy hour. Fatally strong mojitos. Peruvian-style ceviches and Bolivian-style tamales, Caribbean paella and a classic pescado Veracruzana, Bahia-style moqueqas and a fritanga that would knock them silly in Managua. Ciudad, the Pan-Latin outpost of Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, may be all things to all people, but especially to all people whose pleasures include bending an elbow every now and then. Daytime is for office workers; at night, two-thirds of the customers are dressed in black. 445 S. Figueroa St., dwntwn., (213) 486-5171. Mon.–Tues. 11:30 a.m.–9 p.m., Wed.–Thurs. 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m., Fri. 11:30 a.m.–11 p.m., Sat. 5–11 p.m., Sun. 5–9 p.m. Full bar. Takeout. Valet parking. AE, D, MC, V. Pan-Latino. $$
Cora’s Coffee Shoppe
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A credible case can be made for the monkish austerity of the ramen at the various Santouka restaurants and for the bounciness of the noodles at Shin Sen Gumi. Still, all ramen lovers end up at Daikokuya sooner or later; a loud, steamy noodle shop, decorated to resemble an artifact of 1960s Tokyo, just a few blocks east of the Music Center. At Daikokuya, the choice is taken out of the equation — you will have the thin, curly noodles in pork broth, or you will have them stamina style, in even stronger pork broth: a formidable liquid, opaque and calcium intensive, almost as rich as milk. Floating with the noodles are plump slabs of simmered pork, slices of seasoned bamboo shoots and a dusky, soy-simmered egg. When you’re in the mood — we always seem to be — you can improve on the kitchen’s excesses by spooning in pure minced garlic from a tabletop jar. 327 E. First St., dwntwn., (213) 626-1680. Mon.–Thurs. 11 a.m.–mid., Fri.–Sat. 11 a.m.–1 a.m., Sun. noon–8 p.m. Beer and wine. Takeout. Street parking. AE, MC, V. Japanese. $
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