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.
114 S. Central Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Category: Restaurant > Singaporean
Region: Downtown
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3239 Helms Ave.
Culver City, CA 90232
Category: Restaurant > Asian Fusion
Region: Culver City
408 S. Main St.
Los Angeles, CA 90013
Category: Restaurant > Contemporary
Region: Downtown
2057 Sawtelle Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
Category: Restaurant > Japanese
Region: West L.A.
8400 Wilshire Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA 90211
Category: Restaurant > Vietnamese
Region: Beverly Hills
7360 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Category: Restaurant > Latin American
Region: Melrose/ Beverly/ Fairfax
8050 W. 3rd St.
Los Angeles, CA 90048
Category: Restaurant > Japanese
Region: Melrose/ Beverly/ Fairfax
1142 Manhattan Ave.
Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Category: Restaurant > New American
Region: South Bay
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Came looking for "funky" and found "mephitic"--oh, for a reason to visit the left coast!!
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?
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.
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 :)
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