The 99 cent chef

Last weekend Eating L.A. went to a Hollywood art gallery premiere of The 99 Cent Chef, starring and created by Billy Vasquez. You too can watch Billy shopping for his gourmet excursions on Youtube. But you won't be able to taste the 99 Cent store masterpieces he created for the opening, like Cup O'Noodles with coconut milk and asparagus or banana pudding mini-tarts (on generic vanilla wafers.)
Who knew the 99 Cent store had fresh asparagus? Good job, Billy, but next time we come for dinner, we'll bring the main course, and you can provide the Mexican spreading cheese/smoked oyster hors d'oeuvres.

Yes, we have a mission

It's getting very bloggy out there...Eater LA launches today, brought to you from the Eater NY blogglomerate, and we already told you about Variety's The Knife. So Eating L.A. is taking this opportunity to reaffirm what we're all about, just so y'all don't get too confused.

• Eating L.A., basically, is mostly about eating. We like a good news item as much as anyone (keep 'em coming!) but our main mandate is the discovery of deliciousness, not gossip, which we save for the office.
• To that end, it's not about celebs or rich folks. Well, we did see Ron Livingston at Alegria one time, and Chloe Sevigny at the Edendale Grill, but we mostly send our sightings to Defamer, where they rightly belong.
• Eating L.A. tries to cover the map both geographically and price-wise, but we're especially devoted to ferreting out good food in neighborhoods including, but not limited to the greater Silver Lake area, Hollywood, Downtown and the San Gabriel Valley. As far as price and cuisines, affordable is our middle name, and well, cheap is our other middle name. Cuisines: gourmet hamburgers are great, excellent pizza even better. But we could eat Asian food several times a week and never get tired, so you'll find lots of reviews of Chinese, Thai, Japanese and many other ethnic flavors here too.

So, not that you asked, but there you go. Oh, and we (well, really just me and the occasional guest blogger) are L.A. natives who have spent years combing the local food scene.

A very Chinese Thanksgiving

quack, quack, I'm waiting for my steamed buns

We decided to try a different kind of Thanksgiving this year and tagged along with friends to Triumphal Palace in Alhambra for a Chinese banquet. Menu planning was a bit of a challenge, as we had vegetarians, kids, non-pork eaters and a few omnivores. So we didn't get to partake in the restaurant's signature suckling pig, but there were plenty of good dishes to choose from. I'm not even a huge lamb lover, but I liked the glazed honey lamb chops quite a bit. French-style beef (like Vietnamese shaking beef) was also a crowd-pleaser. The manager kindly saved us a whole rock cod (pictured at left), which was delicate and tender if a bit hard to disembowel. There were Szechwan shrimp, a savory vegetarian tofu-mushroom hotpot, vegetable fried rice, spinach noodles in broth, roast chicken and a Peking Duck complete with head which terrified the young 'uns.
Verdict: Triumphal Palace is a nice place for a larger group, and everything is fresh and well-prepared. We'll probably return to turkey next year, but in the meantime we'll return to Triumphal for dimsum or gather a group to try the pig.
Triumphal Palace
500 W. Main St.
Alhambra
(626) 308-3222

Macau Street is a Chinese gem

I love it when I get to try Chinese food in a large group so we can order lots of different dishes, so it was great that John gathered 11 people to try Macau Street in Monterey Park. The island of Macau off the coast of Hong Kong was formerly a Portuguese territory, and the restaurant is said to have some specialties from the area. I didn't detect anything particularly Portuguese (there's certainly no chorizo hotpot), but we had a great time sampling the island's deeply-flavored dishes. The house specialities page on the menu is where you'll find the signature dish, crab fried with garlic (pictured at left). It's a nicely-fried crab covered in drifts of lightly browned garlic, and if you don't mind doing considerable cracking and prying, you'll be rewarded with some tender crab that has picked up some of the garlic flavor. Matt tried to dissuade me from picking at the little hidden piles of garlic left on the plate -- I'm sure it looked quite unseemly -- but I'm powerless in the face of piles of fried garlic, and they were so good mixed into the noodles with XO sauce and eggplant. So in addition to the crab and noodles, we had clams with leeks and black beans (below left). I don't think I've had too many dishes like this in Chinese restaurants -- instead of the usual clams in shells in a pool of black bean sauce, it was a rather dry stir-fry of chopped clams mingling with the leeks and bursting with flavor. Frog with tea leaves was another local specialty. The frog was tasty, but the chopped pieces resembled the chicken knees at Sea Harbour just a bit too much, and I've barely recovered from those. Pig neck sounds scary, but it was a plate of very tender and nicely flavored sliced barbecue pork, absolutely nothing scary there. Chicken and ginger hot pot had a wonderfully fragrant dark broth, but the chicken was very bony, and after the frog, I was like, enough with the bones. Bean curd with enoki mushrooms was different than what I had expected, but very tasty in a mild way. There were also pan-fried lamb ribs, pea leaves with garlic and chicken with scallops and asparagus, one of the few saucy and more typically Chinese dishes.
For dessert, the incredibly flaky and delicate egg tarts were a big hit, not so much the cookies made with pork fat or the harsmar (frog ovary fat!) with Chinese dates. Apparently Tara (trying the harsmar, below) and I are both going to be extremely fertile now after eating all that ovary fat.
Verdict: Macau Street is a winner. All those interesting dishes came out to $15 each, and no corkage! Everything was unusual and delicious. It's not a spicy cuisine, more salty, smoky and pungent. The menu is huge with lots of hot pots, soups, noodles, etc. in addition to the Macau specialties. And the space, especially the large tables for groups, is a cut above the usual dive. Service was also very nice, with frequent plate changes, in contrast to the brush-off I felt we got at New Concept last time.
Macau Street
429 W. Garvey Ave.
Monterey Park
(626) 288-3568.

The inevitable Mozza review

You've all heard enough already about Mozza -- Mario Batali helped with the menu, but hasn't been there since it opened; Nancy Silverton from Campanile is the other partner bringing her bread and pastry expertise; etc., etc. But now, the food. The doors to Mozza were still closed when we arrived for an early lunch reservation on the dot of 12, but in just a few minutes nearly every table was full, including all the stools at the wine bar and pizza bar. The room was decorated in a sort of restrained bistro motif with earthy vari-colored walls, immediately banishing all thoughts of the nasty tiff I had there with a boyfriend circa 1986 or so. The menu is short; mostly salads, paninis, a few sides, and Monday's main dish is chicken cacciatore -- all serving mainly to fill out the ambitious pizza menu with wonderful-sounding toppings of lardo, fennel sausage, salami picante and long-cooked broccoli.
First came our fried squash blossoms with ricotta, perfectly crispy and hot and stuffed with mild, creamy cheese. Next up was the white bean bruschetta with radicchio on grilled toasts -- nicely savory, but I tend to think the combination of beans and bread is a bit too starchy. Our pizza arrived while we were still working on the first courses, with a touch of char on the crust for authenticity. I'm not sure I can recommend the wild mushroom pizza -- it's a tomato-less pizza, and the taleggio and fontina cheeses were a bit dry. The overall impression was heavy on the well-calibrated crust, but a little light on satisfying gooeyness, although the wild mushrooms were tasty.
I barely had room for dessert, but when I remembered the buzz over the butterscotch pudding, I decided to give it a try. The pudding was a revelation -- covered with a layer of caramel studded with fleur de sel, the silky pudding isn't overly sweet or heavy. I devoured the entire pot before I had time to contemplate the lovely little rosemary-studded pine nut butter cookies on the side. That's just a first impression, but surely I'll be back again soon to delve deeper into the pizza menu and try some of the main dishes.

Matsuhisa not closing after all!

(a lovely shot of Nobu's black cod from their website)
Reader Andrea King writes in to let us know that Matsuhisa is not closing after all when Nobu opens in the former L'Orangerie space sometime next year. Apparently the faithful Matsuhisa clients wouldn't hear of losing the plain-wrap papasan to the flashy Nobu palaces. Eating L.A. called Matsuhisa to verify and the manager confirmed that the venerable sushi spot is indeed staying open.

Thursday tidbits

Check out Dana Harris' new blog for Variety, the Knife, which looks at the intersection of Hollywood and Food.

The L.A. Times bi-annual "Eagle Rock is hip" article runs a nice photo of Auntie Em's and says that Larkin's, the new soul food restaurant, is due to open "soon," whenever that is.

This week's L.A. foodie attention has been strictly on Mozza... reports are overwhelmingly positive at the moment, but Eating L.A. is going to wait a few more days to let the crush die down.

Is anyone doing anything interesting for Thanksgiving? We're breaking with tradition this year to go out for Chinese food, most likely at Triumphal Palace. I'll save the turkey for my traditional Chrismukkah dinner...or is it Winterval we celebrate these days?

The much-loved Shanghai-style restaurant Green Village has returned to San Gabriel, and Jonathan Gold says its as good as ever. The Chowhounds, always a cantankerous bunch, are not so sure. In pre-Eating L.A. days, our Chinese dining group had an amazing meal there, so I guess we'll have to see for ourselves soon.

Cube meets the cheesemakers

Eating L.A. had a lovely time meeting several artisan cheesemakers at Cube Thursday night. My notes are at the office, so I'll embellish later, but here were a few highlights:

We started with a sampler platter of all the evening's cheeses including Dante and Mena from the Wisconsin Sheep Co-op, Toussaint and Ouray from New York's Sprout Creek Farm, artfully served on a slate with the names written next to the cheeses.
We moved on to a platter of pates from Fatted Calf; proscuitto pizza with Mouco Colorouge cheese:

rich squash ravioli; wonderful fegatelli sausage on a bed of ancient chickpeas from Italy and then meltingly tender lamb shank with cheese-infused polenta.

Desserts were Valrhona chocolate pudding with goat cheese and poached pears with blue cheese and mascarpone, both with cheeses from Massachusetts' Westfield Farm.

The evening benefitted Slow Food in Schools, and we enjoyed hearing about Slow Food as well as talking to each of the cheesemakers. Cube is really committed to highlighting the best artisan products, and will likely repeat the cheesemaker dinners as well as adding other types like a charcuterie maker dinner.
Cube is at 615 N. La Brea, and is open for lunch, dinner and cheese shopping from 11 to 10 daily, and until 11 on weekends. BYOB, no corkage.

Cube cheesemakers night, anon!

Cube restaurant is hosting a cheesemaker dinner Thursday and Friday night, and the menu sounds very tempting. There's Fatted Calf pates, lamb shanks with Wisconsin sheep cheese, pears filled with Westfield Farm classic blue and mascarpone cheese and much more -- eight courses in all for $75. Call Cube at 323-939-1148 for reservations.

Point your browser to EatingLA.com!

If you've already bookmarked us at our current address, by all means keep it there. But EatingLA is now also available at an easier-to-remember eatingla.com for your quick typing pleasure. Much thanks to Jess from LAFoodCrazy who let me have the address when it expired...check out his blog too!

Best of the press

Armenian restaurants in Glendale are mad because they aren't allowed to grill kebabs outdoors according to the L.A. Times article Passions Flame over Kebabs. I'm sure that if the authorities allowed this, there would be a sudden outbreak of juicy, charred meats being grilled all over the city -- Why is this a bad thing exactly, other than the amount of salivating people it would attract? There's got to be a way to keep air pollution at bay while allowing people their rightful native kebabs.

By now you probably know that Beadle's Cafeteria in Pasadena has closed ... certainly sad, in an end-of-an-era way, although it's kind of easy to see why people don't really have a taste for steam table pot roast and multi-colored jello anymore. My mom used to be fond of the Clifton's in Century City, although I can't remember one thing I ever ate there. I was more impressed when Century City opened up something called a "food court" which amazingly featured food from several different countries, all in the same place! It seemed pretty cosmopolitan at the time, especially with the giant mod supergraphics on each stand. I know, though, I'm dating myself again...

For all you food science lovers, or those who are interested in all the conflicting nutritional claims attributed to certain foods, author Harold McGee has a blog. I was interested to find out, for example, that grass fed beef doesn't really have that much healthy Omega 3 fat after all. Well, healthy beef did kind of seem like an oxymoron.

Canele spices up Atwater

My review of Canelé in Atwater came out today in the Los Feliz Ledger, with a hefty three out of four stars (scroll down on the page for the review). Here's an excerpt from the review:

I’m immediately cheered when I take the first taste of my clams in broth. A nice-sized bowl of Little Neck clams are swimming in a rich broth studded with an unusual combo of black-eyed peas, Christmas lima beans and Dixie butter beans. My friends are equally pleased; one with sliced leg of lamb on a bed of pearly Israeli cous cous and one with the shrimp paella which resembles a loose, smoky risotto... only one month in, Canelé is already off to a very appealing start in a neighborhood starved for places that get it right.

Mozza to go

Reader Josiah was kind enough to send in Eating L.A.'s first Mozza report, of the lunch that his office had catered. Maybe Variety do this for one of our Wednesday night dinners!
"The pizza was very good, but getting 45 minute-old personal sized-pizzas is no way to review a place. As you might imagine, the pizzas were cold and greasy. Even so, they were much better than typical good-for-LA delivery pizza. The chopped Italian salad (sorry, no picture) with lemon fennel dressing was fantastic. The eggplant salad was also darn tasty, with no bitterness at all. My coworkers unanimously preferred the margherita pizza, with the salami and red pepper pizza a distant second." --Josiah
Here's some of Josiah's photos.