Jonathan Gold

AlisaChao Nue Mention the words northern cooking at Alisa, and suddenly another restaurant -- Chao Nue -- unfolds, complete with its own menu. The ordering strategy is to come with a lot of people and essentially ask for everything on that second menu: the little bamboo baskets of sticky rice,......

Photo by Anne Fishbein La Abeja Other restaurants may be more ambitious, but La Abeja, from the green-sauced enchilada plates to the soft tacos of stewed tongue, tastes like Los Angeles. The chips are warm and oddly heavy; the oily, brick-red salsa is profound. And La Abeja’s carne adobada is......

Photo by Anne Fishbein El Amanecer Salvadoreño Consider the pupusa (generally served at Salvadoran specialty restaurants, of which there are hundreds in Central Los Angeles): a dense, griddle-baked corn thing filled with goodies, a UFO-shaped snack something like a shotgun wedding between a tortilla and a calzone. When a pupusa......

Corn chowder The Ivy is a New Yorker's perfect dream of Los Angeles, splashed with sunlight, decorated with amusing American kitsch, populated with lunching actresses, agents and New York magazine editors in town to take the pulse of the city. Corn chowder is, of course, the ultimate Midwestern dish. The......

The Best of Counter Intelligence Imports and adaptations Hollenbeck burrito Like the giant bowls of oversauced pasta devised a century ago by immigrants translating Calabrian poverty cooking into the language of American prosperity, the burrito symbolizes a cuisine of newly found abundance -- the humble taco, in which cheap tortillas......

  Chili burger Los Angeles, it goes without saying, is the world capital of stuff with chili on it: oozing chili dogs, stinking chili burgers, suppurating chili tamales, and chili fries hot enough to melt a plastic spoon. The odiferous tidal wave of chili may have originated at Ptomaine Tommy’s,......

Photo by Anna FishbeinBahooka There are fish in this Polynesian restaurant's foyer, fish tanks surrounding three sides of each booth, fish swimming inside the glass-topped bar and, on the menu, fish puffs, which go better with a Monsoon or a Jet Pilot or a Flaming Honey Bowl than you can......

Meat just is: Grilled, braised or boiled; ground, flattened or eaten whole, it remains itself. Seafood may be forced into many guises, but in the end, too, it is just fish, an animal to be consumed. Vegetables are vegetables; fruits, fruits. But pasta is something else entirely, totally mutable, different......

Charming Garden Charming Garden is a clean, bright place, spare of ornament, with fresh tablecloths and formal service. It is also the most serious Hunan-style restaurant in Southern California. And smoked pomfret, bronzed and gleaming, at this splendid Monterey Park restaurant may be the most beautiful plate of food in......

  Agung has all the stuff that would be standard if Indonesian food were as common as Thai: good, clumpy fried rice with scallions and ham; delicious bakmi noodles, a sort of spicy Indonesian chow mein, fried with dark soy, shrimp and plenty of cabbage; the chicken soup soto ayam,......