Where to Eat Now: New to the List

Stuffed SandwichAt the Stuffed Sandwich, owned by Sam Samaniego and his wife, Marlene, Sam's word is Scripture. If you ask for a lager, Sam will tell you that you're wimpy. If you ask for a triple-strength ale, he will make sure that somebody else is driving. If you head toward the beer taps before ordering food, he will insist that his restaurant is not a bar, tapping his pencil under the Reagan busts on top of the coolers until you finally order a liverwurst sandwich. If you want a proper glass for your ale, you will have to bring one yourself (as many regulars do) or drink from a miniature Dixie cup. Eventually, you will get around to the food, which runs toward tomato-paste-intensive spaghetti, overstuffed submarine sandwiches and the last Freedom Fries available in the Greater Los Angeles area. He makes the Polish sausages himself, and they must be about 50 percent superhot pepper by weight. The beer menu is a fizzing, breathing encyclopedia of hops: monastery ales beyond counting and Moza Bock from Guatemala, smoky rauchbier from Germany and sour Fantome from Belgium, Fat Dog Stout, Old Speckled Hen and Bud Light: probably 700 beers in all, plus an equal number that Sam may pull from the back if he thinks you are worthy of the honor. God help you if you ask for a Heineken. 1145 E. Las Tunas Dr., San Gabriel, (626) 285-9161. Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Beer and wine. Lot parking. MC, V. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $10-$18. Deli.

Top Island "The discovery of a new dish," said Brillat-Savarin, "does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a star." And with apologies to our fine neighbors at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the discovery of a new dim sum parlor should make mankind happier still. Carved from the corpus of the late and unmourned Sea Star, Top Island is pretty much your standard megalithic Hong Kong-style banquet restaurant during the evenings, with a Chiu Chow-tinged menu of shark's fin, crab balls and flash-fried goose intestines, but in the mornings it reverts to a by-the-book dim sum joint, priced on the cheap end of the spectrum, with bao and fritters, dumplings stuffed with shrimp and dumplings stuffed with scallops, slippery broad rice noodles, rice steamed in lotus leaves and boiled Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, hot tofu sluiced with syrup and chilled mango pudding moistened with condensed milk straight from the can. What's that, you say? Top Island sounds no different from any of the other old-line dim sum parlors in town? True enough. But it is always pleasant, on occasion, to gaze on a different succession of carts. 740 E. Valley Blvd., Alhambra, (626) 300-9898. Open daily 7:30 a.m.-1 a.m. No alcohol. Street parking. MC, V. Chinese.

Location Info

Map

Orochon Ramen

123 S. Onizuka St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Category: Restaurant > Japanese

Region: Downtown

Photos

0 user reviews	Write A Review

Pitfire Pizza Company

108 W. Second St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Category: Restaurant > Pizza

Region: Downtown

Photos

Related Content

• 100 Favorite Dishes: The Whole Menu
  December 13, 2012
• The Taco Madness Tournament Returns to L.A. Taco
  March 22, 2013
• Five Dance Shows to See in L.A. This Week, Including an Offshoot of Cirque du Soleil
  April 25, 2013
• Top 10 Miracle Mile Bars
  April 4, 2013
• Eastside vs. Westside: 5 Ways of Looking At It
  April 30, 2013

More About

• Culver City
• Christiano Bollini
• Santa Monica
• Thai Food and Cooking
• Meat

Vietnam RestaurantMichael Le, son of the Golden Deli owners and formerly of Vietnam House, holds court behind the cash register, once again back in the noodle business, back with his delicious barbecued squid fragrant bowls of pho, and, best of all, the magnificent seven-beef dinner, a procession of sweet beef salad, beef wrapped in charred la lot leaves, ground beef baked with vermicelli into a crumbly meat loaf and grilled beef filets twisted into chewy cylinders, beef daubed with sweet ­satay sauce, and slices of beef that you simmer in a tabletop cauldron seething with boiling vinegar. The seven-beef extravaganza ends with big bowls of beef-laced porridge, which oddly enough is spiced like a Christmas cookie. This $12.95 feast is enough to feed two, for less than the price of a house salad at Mastro's. 340 W. Las Tunas Dr., San Gabriel, (626) 281-5577. Open Sun. 10 a.m.-9:30 p.m., Mon.-Wed. 10 a.m.-9 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 10 a.m.-10 p.m. (Closed Thursdays.) No alcohol. Lot parking. MC, V.

Pasadena and vicinity

Neo Meze Square bowls? Square spoons? Square layout? A cubical log cabin constructed from girders of herbed feta and olive-oil-slicked watermelon? That's Neo Meze, a dimly lit new small-plates restaurant whose design is as rigorously gridded as any midperiod Mondrian, and whose neoclubber clientele could be cast in a remake of A Night at the Roxbury. As is the custom at the moment, the dishes at Neo Meze are rarely content to reflect the virtues of one cuisine when three or four would do, so that an assortment of dips to use with toasted flatbread includes Indian chutney as well as a Greek tzatziki and a Lebanese-ish red-pepper chutney, and the slider plate includes a tiny beefburger, a kebab-seasoned chicken burger and a shredded-carrot thing that could have come off a Sri Lankan buffet table, with Spanish romesco sauce and a blue-cheese aioli on the side. And then there's the Kobe kibbe. The short wine list, I am sorry to say, is as square as the lounge music. 20 E. Colorado Blvd., Suite 102, Pasadena, (626) 793-3010. Dinner Sun.-Wed. 5 p.m.-mid., Thurs.-Sat. 5 p.m.-2 a.m. Full bar. Parking lot. AE, MC, V. Fusion, small plates.

Porta Via Italian Foods Less a restaurant than a sleekly upscale deli, a source for fashionable cured meats, exotic truffled cheeses from the Veneto, impeccable meatball sandwiches, "Kobe-beef" pastrami, and a pistachio cookie than which there is no other, Porta Via — along with the brand-new NapaStyle on Lake — is the newest exhibit in the Italianization of Pasadena's food culture, and not incidentally a really good place to get lunch or takeout osso buco for a Hollywood Bowl basket. It's Pasadena's answer to Lemon Moon, except you can get a BLT made with fried pancetta. Glass cases burst with various Italian deli standards, but also with prepared entrées, and with things like sautéed chard with garlic, insalata caprese made with the tiniest marbles of fresh mozzarella, and herb-roasted carrots, all sold by weight. There are pressed panini filled with things like fresh mozzarella and basil or Italian cold cuts in the style of the Autogrill, the beloved fast-service restaurant chain perched above the gasoline pumps on Italy's Autostrada. 1 W. California Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 793-9000. Mon.-Fri. 7 a.m.-8 p.m., Sat. 8 a.m.-7 p.m., Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. No alcohol. Lot parking Italian.