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Dan dan mian

Dan dan mian, of course, is on the menu of any restaurant with even vague pretensions toward Sichuan cuisine — a simple, intensely flavored dish of noodles with dried chile, pickled mustard, fried peanuts and a bit of vinegar. There is almost always a handful of crumbled pork in the bowl, but if you happen to be vegan, most places, even the hard-core ones, will leave it out if you ask them to. Sesame paste? Optional. Dan dan mian is at its best dialed up to 11, reddened with tons of oily chile sludge and zapped with enough fresh Sichuan peppercorns to leave your gums numb for a week. Until it closed abruptly, the best in the San Gabriel Valley was at the Alhambra noodle shop Chuan Yu. And when Chuan Yu was reincarnated a few miles east as Lucky Noodle King, the dan dan mian was even better, because it was made with what seemed to be fresh noodles instead of dried, a bowl whose slippery, living texture was as intriguing as its 220-volt taste. 534 E. Valley Blvd., San Gabriel. (626) 573-5668.

Red Medicine's chef Jordan Kahn
PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN
Red Medicine's chef Jordan Kahn

Location Info

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The Spice Table

114 S. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Category: Restaurant > Singaporean

Region: Downtown

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Soban

4001 W. Olympic Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90230

Category: Restaurant > Korean

Region: Culver City

Lukshon

3239 Helms Ave.
Culver City, CA 90232

Category: Restaurant > Asian Fusion

Region: Culver City

Baco Mercat

408 S. Main St.
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Category: Restaurant > Contemporary

Region: Downtown

Tsujita LA

2057 Sawtelle Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025

Category: Restaurant > Japanese

Region: West L.A.

Red Medicine

8400 Wilshire Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA 90211

Category: Restaurant > Vietnamese

Region: Beverly Hills

Chuan Yu Noodle Town

525 W. Valley Blvd.
Alhambra, CA 91803

Category: Restaurant > Chinese

Region: Monterey Park/ Alhambra/ S. Gabriel

Playa

7360 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Category: Restaurant > Latin American

Region: Melrose/ Beverly/ Fairfax

Robata Jinya

8050 W. 3rd St.
Los Angeles, CA 90048

Category: Restaurant > Japanese

Region: Melrose/ Beverly/ Fairfax

Manhattan Beach Post

1142 Manhattan Ave.
Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Category: Restaurant > New American

Region: South Bay

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Maize cake Bombay Taj

A "maize cake" is John Sedlar's new unit of consumption at Playa: a thickish, palm-size patty of nixtamal, passed across a griddle just long enough to crisp the surface. It tastes a little like the thick, handmade tortillas you sometimes get at Central American restaurants. The surface of the Bombay Taj is smeared with a kind of masala paste, both tart and hot, and dotted with bits of chewy, pungent mango pickle and a bit of seasoned yogurt. The spicy maize cake supports three or four cubes of pork belly, cooked sous vide with duck fat to a melting softness and crisped a moment before serving. It's basically a luxury-class carnitas taco but twisted 90 degrees, made new by the new platform, the sharpness of the pickle and the mephitic breath of turmeric. 7360 Beverly Blvd., L.A. (323) 933-5300, playarivera.com.

Tofu

Are you fond of meditation? If you are, you may enjoy Robata Jinya's dish of warm tofu freshly made at table: a beautifully weathered bowl, a few drops of nigari, a stream of soy milk from a pitcher. Don't stir, the waiter insists. Patience. Five minutes later, the tofu is ready, soft as a sigh, ready to season with planings of dried bonito, grated ginger and a syrupy drizzle of ponzu. For once, patience is rewarded. 8050 W. Third St., Mid-City. (323) 653-8877, jinya-la.com.

Bacon-buttermilk biscuit

Whatever impression you take away from M.B. Post, whether you are there for the grilled lamb's tongue salad with pickled strawberries or a glass of Crémant de Bourgogne, what you are going to dream about tonight are the bacon-cheddar-buttermilk biscuits, palm-size creatures that have the gravitational pull of the sun. You may be a biscuit purist with a carefully maintained stash of White Lily flour, but it is hard to deny these things: crackling crispness yielding to elastic striations of dough; an appealing saltiness that welcomes but does not require the sweetness of soft maple butter; and the smoky, animal pungency of bacon, lots of bacon, achieved without the slightest sensation of smokiness. I am not in favor of the new trend of charging for bread, but it is impossible to visit M.B. Post without wolfing down at least one order of these, and maybe getting another for the road. 1142 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach. (310) 545-5405, eatMBPost.com.

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My Voice Nation Help
12 comments
beach vacations
beach vacations

Restaurants often specialize in certain types of food or present a certain unifying, and often entertaining, theme. For example, there are seafood restaurants, vegetarian restaurants or ethnic restaurants. Generally speaking, restaurants selling food characteristic of the local culture are simply called restaurants, while restaurants selling food of foreign cultural origin are called ethnic restaurants.

Greenpond888
Greenpond888

I agree of some of the food on this list but porridge at Red Medicine is completely off. I can clearly say Red Medicine food was the worst food experience I had in last 5 years. Really bad... and the porridge was only tolerable out of all the dishes.

MattK89
MattK89

Jonathan Gold is the laughingstock of Koreatown. Not sure why he insists he knows anything substantial about Korean food because it's obvious from all his writings that he doesn't even know the basics about it.

Young John Yellowcake
Young John Yellowcake

No wonder all the great old places are going or gone. We need at least some appreciation of good food, much less emphasis on being there, LA Weekly style. I have spoken.

Jane Grenier
Jane Grenier

Came looking for "funky" and found "mephitic"--oh, for a reason to visit the left coast!!

guest
guest

if you are going to write about food, you should probably get the names correct. what is "ganjang goreng". if this Jonathan Gold idiot has spent anytime in KoreaTown, he would know it is Ganjang Gejang. Dont you have proofreaders or fact checkers?

Sean
Sean

The people who are idiots are the ones who think Jonathan Gold actually knows anything about Korean cuisine. He's the laughingstock of everyone in Koreatown. We don't get swayed like his fellow ignoramuses just because he won a Pulitizer Prize. We know our food. Every article he writes about it has at last one glaring error that reveals how much of a know-nothing he is. Stick to what you know. Don't pretend you know anything about our food because we will just laugh our asses out.

Amanda
Amanda

Before you start calling people idiots, you might want to take a good look in the mirror. Or at least try reading the article itself before you post next time. If you had done so, you would've noticed that Mr. Gold used the correct name of the dish in the article. It's only the heading that's wrong -- most likely put there by someone on the LA Weekly staff, not Mr. Gold. So remember: read before you post :)

Matters Little
Matters Little

Seriously.

This "Gold" guy will never make it in this town. ;)

 
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