Best of L.A.: Food and Drink

—Jedd Birkner

BEST-PROTECTED TACOS

Star Foreman

Star Foreman

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El Pollo Inka

15400 Hawthorne Blvd.
Lawndale, CA 90260

Category: Restaurant > Fast Food

Region: South Bay

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More About

• Nicolas Taborek
• Noah Galuten
• Liz Ohanesian
• North-American Food and Cooking
• Meat

Here’s the general rule about food that’s bad for you: The rattier the place looks, the better the food. If the proprietors haven’t made it a practice to paint, or to relettering their signs, and yet they have a lot of business, you know the food is really good. Such a place is Taco Pete. Some might also be unfamiliar with the neightborhood: the corner of 120th Street and Central Avenue, on the edge of Watts. Its employees are protected by security glass and metal bars to discourage robbers and thwart drive-by shooters, making the place look more like a check-cashing outfit. But since we once owned and lived in a duplex within walking distance of Taco Pete, we consider it old stomping grounds. At one time, we even wrongly judged Taco Pete by its appearance — a scary look that provokes an initial reaction like “why would I want to eat there?” Then we actually ate their tacos and saw the error of our ways. Hardshell or soft, beef, pork, chicken, turkey (that’s right) or fish, these are yummy, juicy and incredibly cheap. Sure you can get many of the usual items you’d see at the corner hamburger stand, but you come here for the tacos ($1.89 each). 12007 South Central Ave., L.A. (323) 569-5164.

—Juliette Akinyi Ochieng

BEST TAIWANESE STREET FOOD

The bright yellow walls and Hello Kitty décor at Pa Pa Walk might make you think for a moment that you’d wandered off-course and stumbled into yet another mini-mall trinket shop. In fact, you’ve just entered one of Southern California’s foremost bastions of Taiwanese street food. The top sellers here are dishes like the cold cuts platter of marinated pig’s ears, seaweed, bean curd and boiled egg, and the oyster omelet, apparently classics in Taiwan. The restaurant’s young, well-dressed clientele also drops in for less exotic hits, like popcorn chicken ($4.50), Taiwanese sausage and egg fried rice ($6.75), and especially the cream soup in fried toast ($6.75), which is served in a “bread coffin.” Dessert may be Pa Pa’s biggest draw: Make sure to save room for the mango shaved ice, which is basically an enormous snow cone doused with condensed milk and smothered in deliciously ripe cubes of fruit. Simple and especially satisfying on a sweltering San Gabriel Valley day, the large version, which goes for $10, is big enough for four and comes with a scoop of homemade mango ice cream on top. 227 W. Valley Blvd., Suite 148-B, San Gabriel. (626) 281-3889.

—Nicolas Taborek

BEST VIEW WITH A RESTAURANT

From the stone terrace of the Top of the Notch Restaurant, munch on a burger in the clean, crisp mountain air and gaze down between the mountains on the clouds covering the L.A. Basin. Yes, we said gaze down on the clouds. At 7,800 feet you are higher than anything east of the Pecos, and higher than 36 of our 50 states. The fare is simple grill food, but things seem to taste better in the clear, mountain air. During the non-ski season the restaurant is only open on weekends and holidays, which is, not coincidentally, when the chair lift to get you there is running — unless you would prefer to hike up and really build up an appetite. End of Mt. Baldy Road, Mt. Baldy. (909) 982-0800.

—Jedd Birkner

BEST HAITIAN COFFEE

To say that George Laguerre makes the best cup of Haitian coffee in L.A. should not be qualified by the fact that he may very well make the only Haitian cup of coffee in L.A. I don’t know if there are others to be had, but I do know that the thick shot of espresso Laguerre pulls from the Pasquini espresso machine at his downtown restaurant TiGeorges’ Chicken, and tops off with steamed milk that has first been steeped with bay leaves and key lime, is better than anyone else’s, be they real or imaginary. Laguerre sources, imports and roasts his coffee himself: The organic beans come from his own backyard in Port-de-Paix, Haiti, where his father was a coffee grower; the beans are then pan-roasted in the back of the restaurant, caramelized with a bit of brown sugar, and ground in the burr grinder right next to the Pasquini. It can get a little crowded at Laguerre’s coffee bar, seeing as it’s right next to the enormous medieval-looking custom-built spit on which the chickens (which gave the restaurant its name) are roasted, and which barely clears the chairs pushed into the family-style dining room table, usually filled with the musicians who play and eat here. But Laguerre will see that you fit, and that you are given a perfect cup, and perhaps that you stay for music and a plate of conch or fricasseed goat as well. TiGeorges’ Chicken, 309 Glendale Blvd., L.A. (213) 944-1515, tigeorgeschicken.com.

—Amy Scattergood

BEST TORTILLAS ON PICO

Perhaps there’s no food staple that points to the core of the Mexican psyche like the tortilla. Strikingly simple and rustic, the flat discs of corn, water and limewater inspired the late Chicano singer Lalo Guerrero’s pouty “There’s No Tortillas.” Unfortunately, bad corn tortillas — thin, dry pucks from the grocery store — recall cardboard more than the spongy, doughy pillows of Mexican cuisine. But in the last 10 years, L.A. has awakened to a fresh wave of Latin American immigrants, which has revitalized the food scene. On a stretch of Pico Boulevard in Mid-City a small Oaxacan tortillaria, Tortilleria Expresion Oaxaquena took root four years ago. It offers a Qaxacan speciality: steamy packages of 12-inch tortillas that are about a millimeter thick and always soft and moist. They make them from corn, on the spot, throughout the day (and often late into the night), and they keep them in a cooler (a warmer, really) that was once a refrigerator. The prices usually beat the dull stuff at Ralphs. A dozen of the big tortillas costs $2. 3301 W. Pico Blvd. (323) 766-0575.