99 Things to Eat in L.A. Before You Die

Whenever Los Angeles starts to feel like the wrong sort of place — where everybody really is carrying around Eckhart Tolle paperbacks, the Bodhi Tree was the last remaining proof of civilization, and existence is circumscribed by the universe contained within Brent Bolthouse's Blackberry — it is good to remember this: In at least one part of the world, L.A. is considered to be a midsized Korean city whose culinary specialty involves a special crosswise way of cutting shortribs. Now we can all relate to the way people in Parma feel about the cheese. L.A. galbi is available pretty much anywhere, but as with so many things having to do with Korean barbecue, you may as well go to Park's. Park's BBQ, 955 S. Vermont Ave., Koreatown. (213) 380-1717.

Are we traditionalists? Perhaps we're traditionalists. Because as many advantages as there are to ordering dim sum from the little tick-off menus that have become standard at a lot of the newer Hong Kong-style seafood houses, we really prefer to get dim sum from rolling carts. I know the food tends to be slightly less long out of the kitchen, that it's the only way a non-Chinese is going to get to the chicken blood, and that you don't end up stuffing yourself with meatballs and bao while waiting for the roast duck to show up when you order from menus, but on a Saturday morning, immediacy is paramount. At Capital, you can even get steaming hot sweet almond milk off of carts, dosed with gingko nuts and topped with proud domes of golden puff pastry. Capital Seafood Restaurant, 755 W. Garvey Ave., Monterey Park. (626) 282-3318.

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Border Grill's green corn tamales

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Casa Bianca Pizza Pie

1650 Colorado Blvd.
Eagle Rock, CA 90041

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Northeast L.A.

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Fresh Japanese wasabi grated on sharkskin. Microscopically serrated cucumber. Chef-pickled ginger. Fan-cooled rice. Great sushi is in the details as much as it is in the fish. In Kiyokawa, as in so many great sushi restaurants, the creativity is at its most focused in the sashimi course, arranged carefully as a rock garden in a crystal bowl of ice: thinly sliced halibut folded into the shape of a fragile white rose; tiny lozenges of Spanish mackerel from Japan; fresh California abalone; an exquisitely fresh sardine. If you are not squeamish, there may be a Santa Barbara prawn, recently separated from its all-too-living head, whose sweet flesh pops in your mouth like segments of ripe grapefruit. Kiyokawa, 265 S. Robertson Blvd., Beverly Hills. (310) 358-1900.

This fried chicken dish is the red of silk pajamas, the red of firecrackers, the red of the Chinese flag, a knoll of crunchy dark-meat cubes dusted with Sichuan pepper and awesome quantities of salt, subsumed under a blizzard of fried chiles. If you wanted to represent pure dynamite in the form of a plate of food, it probably would look a lot like Chung King's chicken. Even children who have never experienced anything spicier than a bowl of Apple Jacks, instinctively know to stay away from this dish. My daughter took one look at the chicken and burst into tears. I rather like Chung King. She calls it the Worst Restaurant in the World. Chung King, 1000 S. San Gabriel Blvd., San Gabriel. (626) 286-0298.

The first thing you notice about Pollo a la Brasa is the wood-smoke, great billowing draughts that perfume downwind noodle shops and coffee bars, and then the towers of split logs that make the wood-smoke possible. This cannot be the favorite restaurant of the Air Quality Management District. And the chicken, flavored with garlic and black oregano and roasted on a vast, flame-licked apparatus, is remarkable, well-garlicked, slightly spicy, marked with pungent smoke, caramelized and crisp, clearly the marriage of a chicken and a bunch of logs. Pollo a la Brasa, 764 S. Western Ave., Koreatown. (213) 382-4090.

What do Jamaicans eat when they think nobody's looking? Sprats, which is to say whole little herring, bristling with bones, that have been marinated briefly in vinegar, fried to the brittle-chewy consistency of beef jerky, and garnished with a few slivers of onion and crimson shreds of fresh scotch bonnet, a pepper whose pungent, fruity heat punches through the limits of human tolerance. The fried sprats are tasty if you are not averse to the idea of strong-tasting fish, and the tiny bones go down easily enough. It is easy to see how sprats may not have the universal appeal of jerk chicken. It is also easy to see how some people (me, for example) like to toss the things down like potato chips. Natraliart, 3426 W. Washington Blvd., L.A. (323) 732-8865.

If you prize your sanity, try not to bring up the subject of lobster rolls with a New England native. Before you manage to edge away, you will be apprised as to how long the lobster must be boiled, how coarsely it must be chopped, and the exact brand of mayonnaise essential to the end result. You will also probably hear a dissertation on the top-loading hot-dog bun that will turn your knees to water. But when you taste the lobster roll at Hungry Cat, a first-class seafood restaurant near the corner of Sunset and Vine, a buttery, abstracted rendition of the New England beach-shack standard transformed into a split, crisp, rectangular object about the size of a Twinkie, you may be persuaded that the lobster roll is worth the fuss. In Maine, the $20-plus it costs would buy you a lobster the size of a small pony. But we are in Hollywood, where the next acceptable lobster roll may be 2,800 miles away. Hungry Cat, 1535 N. Vine St., Hlywd. (323) 462-2155.