Best of L.A.: Food and Drink

—Noah Galuten

BEST KOREAN RESTAURANT THAT FEELS LIKE KOREA

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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

Some restaurants, the moment you walk in, have a way of transporting you to another world. So if you want to experience what it might be like to get drunk with friends and eat bar food in Seoul, Dansungsa is the choice. It’s not just that the vast majority of the clientele are Korean that makes it feel so exotic. It’s not just the central kitchen billowing steam straight into the air, the painted mural of Kim Jong-il that rests atop the storefront, the Korean papers plastered on the walls or even the wooden, dimly lit interior. It’s the complete package. Go with a large crew, since the portions are enormous and family-style. Drink beer, drink soju, eat big, scallion pancakes and crispy, juicy fried chicken wings. Suck down rice cakes simmering in fiery broth, sit back, relax and enjoy an exotic vacation without leaving the city. The only problem with Dansungsa is that they’ve added English menus, but I guess there are places in real Korea that could have those, too. 3317 W. 6th St., L.A.; (213) 487-9100.

—Noah Galuten

BEST SOBA STORY

Sometimes you grow up liking a particular food, and couldn’t be happier with life as you know it. Then you go somewhere different, try that same dish you’ve always loved, and suddenly find yourself saying, “Oh. So that’s what it’s supposed to taste like.” Such is the case for most people who show up to their first meal at Ichimiann (sometimes called Bamboo Garden) in Torrance. The soba (Japanese buckwheat noodles) are handmade each day and offer a textural revelation, suddenly causing you to regret your consumption of its previous incarnations. The noodles have a bite to them you’ve never experienced, like tasting fresh, homemade pasta for the first time. Ichimiann is a small, sparse shop with just a few tables and barstools, and a criminally low price tag (bowls start around five bucks), considering how hard it is to find a better offering of the stuff anywhere in Southern California. You can order your soba thin or thick, hot or cold and with a wide array of flavor options, like mentaiko (spicy fish roe) or tororo (grated Japanese yam). The single best varietal may well be the thin noodles, cold, with their house-pickled Japanese plums (ume), slurped alongside their complimentary hot or cold barley tea. 1618 Cravens Ave., Torrance. (310) 328-1323.

—Noah Galuten

BEST GOAT EARLY, GOAT OFTEN

You can order any kind of food you want at Birrieria Jalisco in Boyle Heights, as long as it’s a plate of richly spiced goat. This makes ordering easy for the Spanish-impaired, since all your monolingual waitress needs to know is which goat you want: numeros uno through seis. And what of BJ’s sole main ingredient? The meat is lean, rich in flavor, but hardly spicy hot. Bones are easily avoided, while the broth begs to be soaked up by the layers of steamy tortillas on the side. The flavor and speedy delivery suggests that the goat has been stewing for hours, meat softening and soaking in spices, just waiting for you to arrive. Add chopped onion, a squeeze of lime, and you’re good to goat. Dessert, somewhat surprisingly, consists of four non-goat options: arroz con leche, flan, and jericalla, which tastes like flan’s refrigerated, cinnamony cousin, a blue-collar crème brulée. Six flavors of raspados are also available for slurping. The main dishes cost $5 to $12, which should leave you with enough change to fire up a norteño tune on the I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-too-loud jukebox. On your way out, be sure to tip your sombrero to the melancholy black-and-white photo of the restaurant’s late founder Don Bonifacio Gonzàles and his wife, Doña Petra. 1845 E. 1st St., L.A. (323) 262-4552.

—Todd Krainin

BEST PLACE TO SUCK A SHRIMP HEAD

What’s not to love about a nautical-themed Cajun seafood peel-it-yourself Vietnamese-owned restaurant in the heart of Little Saigon? The clientele is mostly Asian, as are the servers, who bring you copious quantities of crawfish, shrimp, blue crab, and catfish that you order by the pound. The food comes out steaming-hot in plastic bags, spiced with lemon pepper, garlic butter and a savory, red Cajun sauce. No fuss, plenty of muss. The hip-hop music blares as the shrimp heads and mudbug carcasses pile high on the table (no tablecloth, just waxed butcher paper) and you work your way through a roll of paper towels (also provided). You can get fries on the side, or corn on the cob, or raw oysters, or steamed rice to tame the heat. At the Garden Grove location, in fact, the sign on the front door that reads “No outside rice allowed” was recently changed to the more democratic “No outside food allowed.” This is just slightly more genteel than the Boiling Crab’s totally spot-on official slogans: “You gonna suck what?” and “The best tail in town.” 13892 Brookhurst St., Garden Grove. (714) 636-4885; 742 W. Valley Blvd., Alhambra. (626) 576-9368, boilingcrab.com.