Popping with freshness, soft and light as air, green corn tamales are as sure a sign of spring in Los Angeles as the traffic at Dodger Stadium. The famous green corn tamales have always been at El Cholo, but Border Grill's sleekly rustic corn-husk bundles may be even more expressive of the milky flavor of sweet corn. Border Grill, 1445 4th St., Santa Monica. (310) 451-1655.
Lupe's #2 Burrito
At the best of the old-line Los Angeles burrito stands, you will find burritos as they should be eaten: slender instead of overstuffed; ballasted with a smooth, well-oiled paste of refried beans; wrapped into a griddle-toasted tortilla; and featuring a bit of cheese or a spoonful of sauce for flavor, perhaps, or stewed chiles, or sometimes a little meat. A burrito is supposed to taste if it were made by somebody's mom. Lupe's #2 has everything you need in a burrito and nothing you do not. Lupe's #2, 4642 E. Third St., L.A. 323-266-6881.
Good Girl Dinette's Chicken PotPie
PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN
PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN
Border Grill's green corn tamales
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I have occasionally posited the existence of universal comfort food, dishes that would convey warmth and love and abundance as well to an Inuit as it would to a Jain, in Canada as well as in Kyrgyzstan. Then I start daydreaming about fermented mare's milk, and the afternoon goes downhill from there. But if you were going to compile such a roster, you could do worse than to include Good Girl Dinette's chicken potpie, a classically transcultural dish of yellow Vietnamese curry, peas and carrots and everything, baked under a dense, buttery biscuit crust. Good Girl Dinette, 110 N. Avenue 56, Highland Park. (323) 257-8980.
Harry's Seascape Strawberries
Harry's Berries, to the annoyance of its devotees, charges almost double what every other strawberry grower in the farmers market charges, and there are weeks when the pull of those others' hand-scrawled "Oxnard strawberries Super Sweet" signs eventually proves too strong. Oxnard is at the sweet spot for strawberries in California, and even the white-shouldered commercial stuff that makes it to stores from here to Maine is acceptable. Are the berries at Harry's this week awe-inspiring, or merely stunning? It's hard to tell — the stand enforces a no-tastes policy. But during the weeks of spring when the Seascape strawberries make it on the truck, juicy blots of red whose vividly dimensional taste makes other strawberries seem like Styrofoam packing peanuts in comparison — you're going to buy those berries. And stand in line for the privilege. And get to the market early because they may be all gone by 10. Sometimes that's just the way it is. At farmers markets.
Michael Cimarusti's Squid With Piquillo Peppers and Pig's Ear
One of the problems with compiling lists like these is the existence of chefs, definitely including Providence's Michael Cimarusti, who are so attuned to the rhythms of the seasons and the market that their menus are never in the same place twice. Unless you're talking about Cimarusti's chowda, which is first-rate, among the best in the world possibly, but we're talking about things you have to taste before you die — before you die! It's like saying, as a Dodgers fan, that you would die unfulfilled if you never saw Vicente Padilla start another game. But the sautéed squid with piquillo peppers and stewed pig's ear — that one I'd really like to taste again. I'd like to see Manny Ramirez hit a couple out this year, too. Providence, 5955 Melrose Ave., L.A. (323) 460-4170.
THE Grill on the Alley's Corned Beef Hash
The meat-and-potatoes concoction is punch line to a thousand Army jokes, and is most commonly served direct from a can of Dinty Moore. Corned beef hash is the wrong call at almost every diner you walk into. At Grill on the Alley, the Beverly Hills Industry restaurant better known as home to the egg-white omelet and the eight-figure negative pickup deal, the hash is a dream: edged with deep brown; speckled with crunchy, carbonized bits; crisp, ruddy and delightful to behold. As long as somebody else is picking up the tab, an order of hash and a pot of coffee is the grandest Depression meal in town. The Grill on the Alley, 9560 Dayton Way, Beverly Hills. (310) 276-0615.
Kiriko's Salmon Sashimi
Salmon is not the most obvious candidate for sushi-bar glory. It is difficult to find the best fish, and you wouldn't want to eat even the finest wild king salmon raw. Salmon flesh is very expressive of its environment, which is often something you might feel is better left unexpressed. The salmon sushi is often the last one left on the nigiri platter. But Kiriko's Ken Namba is a master of salmon. And when he smokes fresh Copper River salmon over smoldering cherrywood, and wraps thick, rich slices of it around spears of dripping-ripe mango, the sashimi is soft and luscious, salty and sweet, penetratingly smoky yet delicate — one of the most magnificent mouthfuls of food imaginable. Kiriko, 11301 W. Olympic Blvd., No. 102, W.L.A. (310) 478-7769.
Maple Bacon Donut
"Home of the Maple Bacon Donut" is a slogan inscribed both on the home page of the Nickel's Web site and in the arteries of its best customers. And it is a lovely thing, warm and round and doughnutty, paved with crushed bacon, glistening with what the unimaginative might interpret as pure evil. If you look at it in a certain light, or at least the hazy rays filtering in off Main Street on a cloudy morning in June, the doughnut even seems to glow — a soft, pulsing glow like the ones you see from jellyfish under black light, or from the undersides of flying saucers in science-fiction movies. And then the person sitting across from you bites into one, and you have seen this look of bliss before: wood smoke melting into tree essence; pig fat into cooking oil; yeast into sugar, time into the smoky void. Nickel Diner, 524 S. Main St., dwntwn. (213) 623-8301.
Bay Cities' Godmother
