Elite
As the massive Cantonese restaurants begin to stagnate, the most attractive Chinese seafood house is Elite, a former semi-experimental mainland-owned restaurant that still serves such oddities as suckling pig with foie gras, prawns with fried oatmeal flakes, and papaya salad with goose webs. There are enough unsustainable choices on the seafood menu to make a Heal the Bay member weep salty, salty tears. Yet the roast squab has skin as delicately crunchy as any Beijing duck. The Shunde-style soup of seafood with minced ham and bits of bitter melon is tautly balanced. The balls of chopped shrimp steamed in nets of shredded turnip and garnished with its own roe are the essence of the sea captured. And the morning dim sum breakfasts, ordered from menus instead of carts, are well worth the inevitable 45-minute wait. 700 S. Atlantic Blvd., Monterey Park, (626) 282-9998. Dim sum Mon.-Fri., 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m., Sat.-Sun., 10 a.m.-3 p.m.; dinner nightly 5-11 p.m. Beer, wine. Street parking. AE, MC, V.
Anne Fishbein
Drago Centro
Anne Fishbein
Church And State
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Euro Pane Bakery
Sumi Chang’s bakery is the center of civilized life in Pasadena: a place to buy excellent-to-superb scones and baguettes and pains au chocolat, of course, but also the heart of a certain sort of society, the Caltech professors, theology students and writers who worship at the twin altars of caffeine and conversation, a place where you are likely to bump into a zillion-dollar chef, a man who helped to design the Mars Rover, or the star of the play you saw last night at the Taper. On a good day, Euro Pane’s magnificent croissants could in a police lineup be mistaken for France’s best, and, the natural-starter sourdough is superb. Toss in the homemade granola, the epochal bread pudding, the puff-pastry tarts with pears and frangipane, and the gooiest egg salad sandwich in town, and it’s no wonder that Euro Pane’s regulars treat the bakery more as a permanent residence than as a café. If your visit happens to coincide with the emergence of the few chicken potpies baked each day, elbow your way to the front of the line and get as many as they’ll sell you. 950 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 577-1828. Mon.-Sat., 7 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Sun. ’til 3 p.m. No alcohol. Street parking. MC, V for orders over $10 only.
Fab Dogs
A three-table museum of American wiener culture, Joe Fabrocini and Susie Speck Mayor’s Fab Dogs is a lovingly curated shrine to the Hatch chile dogs of New Mexico, the slaw dogs of West Virginia, the northern New Jersey–style Italian hot dogs and a close facsimile of the street-cart dogs sold in New York’s Central Park, made like the rest of Fab’s offerings with artisanal, small-production franks Joe imports from New Jersey. Fab even makes a version of the cheesy, bacony Sonora dog, which is the unrequited crush object of generations of Arizona refugees. There is an interpretation of a Chicago dog that is exact but slightly too perfect, like a Vermeer rendered by a masterful art forger, a lovingly constructed version of a Detroit-style Coney, and even an approximation of our own native Oki dog. Fab’s actual specialty is a kind of deep-fried New Jersey–style monstrosity called the Ripper, a frank tossed in the deep-fryer until it literally explodes. It is awesome, really, the number of Fab customers who plow through three of them, toss down an order of homemade tater tots, then swagger up to the counter to order three more. 6747 Tampa Ave., Reseda, (818) 344-4336, fabhotdogs.com. Mon.-Sat., 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Sun., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. No alcohol. Takeout. Street parking only. AE, MC, V.
Flame
Tehrangeles, the stretch of Westwood Boulevard thick with Iranian bookstores, groceries and curio shops, is lined with Iranian kebab restaurants, each of them serving decent polo and koobideh and tah dig, hot glasses of tea, and frothing glasses of the yogurt drink dough. You may already have a favorite, and you’re probably not wrong. But even from the street, you can see the shiny clay sphere at Flame’s heart, the fiery tanor oven from which you will be served smoking, hot flatbread almost continuously throughout dinner. Much of the produce here is organic, bought at farmers markets, and the meat is sustainably sourced. You will find the usual bowls of yogurt-based white-garlic dip, the vinegary Iranian pickles called torshi, and the usual homestyle stews — the pomegranate-walnut concoction called fesenjon, the vegetable/salted-lime stew gormeh sabzi, and the tomatoey split peas called ghemeh. But as always, the kebabs are inevitable, so you may as well saddle up a rack of lamb, a shish kebab or a skewer of ground, grilled chicken, if only to have something to put on the enormous drifts of rice. Even at lunch, the customers tend to be better-dressed than they are anywhere this side of Spago and the Grill. 1442 Westwood Blvd., Westwood, (310) 470-3399. Open daily 11:30 a.m.-10:30 p.m. No alcohol. Street parking. AE, MC, V.
