Langer’s
In the course of the half-block walk from the Alvarado Blue Line station to the old-line delicatessen Langer’s, you will smell the food from a half-dozen Central American countries, pass within sight of Mexican street murals, and be offered the opportunity to buy fresh mangoes, counterfeit green cards and cut-rate cumbia compilations. Within the deli itself, you may wait for a table with customers speaking Spanish, Korean or Chiapan dialect, though probably not Yiddish. But bite into a Langer’s pastrami sandwich: thick slices of hand-sliced meat, glistening with peppery fat, as dense and as smoky as Texas barbecue; thick-cut seeded corn rye, hot, crisp-crusted and soft inside, with a slightly sour tang that helps tame the richness of the meat; a dab of yellow mustard as important to the whole as a sushi master’s wasabi. The fact is inescapable: Langer’s serves the best pastrami sandwich in America, in a location perhaps better suited to a tamale merchant.704 S. Alvarado St., L.A., (213) 483-8050. Mon.-Sat. 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Beer and wine. Curbside service (call ahead). Validated lot parking (on corner of Westlake Ave. and Seventh St.). MC, V. Jewish Deli.
Anne Fishbein
A slice of Cut
Anne Fishbein
Cooking sharp, Octavio Becrra
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Larkin’s
For a place known for great banana pudding and happy Sunday brunch, the Eagle Rock restaurant is oddly controversial, distrusted by people expecting cheap soul-food and snobs looking for haute cuisine, by big fellas looking for Roscoe’s-size portions and Southerners skeptical of the trace of fresh mint in the jelly jars of sweet tea. Chef Larkin Mackey, a shy, slender African-American man who rarely leaves the kitchen, sometimes calls his restaurant a modern juke joint. There is Fats Waller on the stereo and faded Southern commercial art on the walls, tables made of old doors in the dining room and picnic benches in the garden out back. Every dish on the menu is probably somebody’s best recipe: The tart, creamy potato salad is credited to Aunt Carolyn; the ground-beef-intensive chile verde to chef Mackey’s grandpa; the caramelly-tasting banana pudding to Mama. But one thing is beyond argument: Mackey’s fried chicken, tender-crusted and juicy, golden and singing with the taste of clean oil, is about as good as it gets in Los Angeles restaurants. 1496 Colorado Blvd., Eagle Rock, (323) 254-0934, www.larkinsjoint.com. Tues.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. & 5:30-9:30 p.m.; brunch Sun. 11 a.m.-3 p.m.; dinner Sun. 5-9 p.m. No alcohol. Limited lot parking. AE, MC, V. Southern.
La Terza
Gino Angelini comes from a specific region of Italy, a town just inland from Rimini on the Adriatic coast, and before he came to Los Angeles to be the chef at Rex in the mid-1990s, he cooked the food of his region for presidents and popes. But you will find cooking exactly like his nowhere in Italy, where the greens tend to be tougher, the rabbits plumper, the basil more pungent and the best beef leaner than it is in California. What Angelini is attempting at La Terza, the more serious of his two restaurants, may be no less than re-imagining California food through the prism of his advanced Italian technique, re-imagining California as an Italian province that happens to have a few agricultural virtues of its own: produce that translates into supple pastas, complex salads and the subtle vegetable purées with which Angelini has always enriched his sauces. And look at those meats: glistening, wood-smoke-infused slabs of pork belly; drippingly rich duck with figs; mahogany-skinned squab enveloping a rich stuffing of shiitake mushrooms and its own liver. Sometimes there is even trifolati, a traditional Italian stew of kidneys, melted down in warm olive oil and simmered in red wine. In Rimini, trifolati may just be lunch. In Los Angeles, it is a revelation. 8384 W. Third St., L.A., (323) 782-8384. Open daily for breakfast 7-11 a.m., for lunch 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m., for dinner 5:30-10:30 p.m. Full bar. Takeout. Valet parking. AE, D, MC, V. Italian.
Let’s Be Frank
It may look like a fancy taco truck, a bright-red beast parked near the entrance to the old Helms Bakery complex. But the proprietor is Sue Moore, a former Chez Panisse forager, and her dogs are made with organic, grass-fed, sustainably raised beef; her bratwurst from organic Berkshire pork; her Italian sausage, should you be lucky enough to run across it, from rare-breed Heritage pigs. None of this would matter if the hot dogs weren’t great, but they are: taut, delicious natural-skin beauties that snap like rim shots when you bite into them, mildly seasoned, tucked into griddled buns and served, if you want them that way, with grilled onions, organic sauerkraut and an occasional mystery condiment that Moore hides under the counter like the secret stash at a comic book store. Helms Ave., between Venice and Washington boulevards, Culver City. Tues.-Fri. noon-2:30 p.m., Sat.-Sun. noon-4 p.m. No alcohol. Lot parking. AE, MC, V. American.
Los Balcones del Peru
So close to the ArcLight Theater that it shares its parking lot, Los Balcones del Peru lies at the precise border of redeveloped Hollywood and its shadow, a breath of garlicky authenticity a few steps south from the velvet-rope district. Los Balcones also may be the only Peruvian restaurant in town without tapes of Andean panpipe music, which is almost a miracle, at least if you ignore the occasional charanga version of “Feelings.” It is easy to spend hours here after a movie, eating fried fish, fried-chicken “chicharrones” and scallops broiled with Parmesan cheese, drinking Peruvian beer from the Inca city of Cuzco. The standard Peruvian-Chinese dishes, the saltados and taillarines, aren’t that good here — ceviche is pretty much the specialty: shrimp ceviche; fish ceviche; shrimp, squid and octopus ceviche; and the miraculous camarones a la piedra, a spicy, sharp shrimp ceviche from the north of Peru that is properly served warm. Los Balcones is a lot cheaper than Nobu. 1360 N. Vine St., Hlywd., (323) 871-9600. Sun.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Beer and wine. Validated parking at ArcLight Cinema. AE, MC, V. Peruvian.
