Win Denise Hamilton's "Savage Garden," signed!

If you like mysteries that explore the dark side of L.A., as well as the tasty side, you can win a signed hardcover of Denise Hamilton's "Savage Garden." Just name two other mystery writers who often feature good food in their stories, email us your answer, and we'll choose a winner. Thanks for playing!

Eating across L.A.with hungry detective Eve Diamond

Hamilton at Bahooka Family Restaurant in Rosemead

Mystery novelist Denise Hamilton spent years eating around the city as an L.A. Times reporter, honing a taste for ethnic delicacies from North Hollywood to Rosemead. I met Hamilton at a reading for L.A. Noir, the short story compilation she edited, and when she proposed touring some of the places where her reporter/detective character Eve Diamond eats at in her novels, we leaped at the idea. She's our kind of detective -- while she's usually frantically crossing the city investigating dangerous crimes in various ethnic enclaves, she always finds time to grab a lahmajune on the way.

The author packed her two boys off to school and we took off on a citywide food adventure, with Hamilton expertly piloting her small manual shift sedan around the most desolate stretches of Rosemead Blvd. When Hamilton was an L.A. Times reporter, she lived in Silver Lake, and her detective character often races her car up and down the steepest hills while fleeing the bad guys before eating at Millie's or the long-gone Greek restaurant on Glendale Blvd.

Chenar's deli case

In her latest book, Prisoner of Memory, Diamond gets mixed up with the criminal elements of the Russian immigrant community. One of the detective's first stops while investigating the case of a teenage boy who was murdered in Griffith Park is a Russian deli somewhere near Studio City.

"She slid open the door of the refrigerated glass display case, pulled out a large bowl filled with a reddish-brown dip, and scooped generous spoonfuls onto a plate. Then she added a grape leaf, a knish and a stuffed cabbage roll," writes Hamilton.

So our first stop was Chenar Deli in North Hollywood. A round-cheeked young Russian woman helped us select the wonderfully smoky eggplant and red pepper dip; cabbage salad perfumed with dill; cherry-cheese pirogi, like a hearty strudel, and syrniki, hockey puck-shaped disc made of sweetened farmer's cheese, which make a perfect breakfast treat.

eggplant/red pepper spread

The deli, which is strictly takeout, also stocks many varieties of sausage, bacon, smoked fish, cheeses, three types of mushroom salad, three types of eggplant salad and several preparations of stuffed cabbage.
In Hamilton's Last Lullaby, Diamond has to drive all over the city trying to penetrate Cambodian adoption scams and Korean cybercafes, so she stops to grab a snack at Sasoun Bakery.

Sasoun's spicy cheese boreg

"I grabbed some takeout from Sassoon Bakery, a tiny storefront in East Hollywood where a sweating Lebanese-Armenian baker slid cheese and spinach boregs and lahmahjuns in and out of pizza ovens with a wooden paddle. As I drove, I bit into the flat Armenian pizzas smeared with tomato paste, herbs and seasoned beef....Reporters are the original dashboard diners."

Sasoun's counterwoman with fresh lahmajune

Hamilton's first book, The Jasmine Trade, is set among the fascinating world of the parachute kids of the San Gabriel Valley, where Hamilton worked as a reporter for several years.

"At San Gabriel Village Square, you could gorge on Islamic Chinese food...heaps of lamb and seafood and fresh-baked bread studded with scallions and encrusted with a layer of toasted sesame seeds."

Hamilton's favorite Islamic restaurant, Tung Lai Shun, is no longer there, so instead we tried Dong Ting Spring, a new Hunan place in San Gabriel Village Square.

tofu with sun-dried vegetables at Dong Ting Spring

We also dropped by the hallucinogenic Tiki fantasy Bahooka, where Eve meets up with a friend in The Jasmine Trade and indulges in a few too many Bahooka Bazookas. "We can get huge pink frothy drinks in hairy coconut shells," she tells her friend, before the tropical fantasy leads to making out in the secluded booths.
It was a great day of multi-culti feasting, and like Diamond in Prisoner of Memory, I went home with bags and bags of treats to feast on for the next few days. Hamilton's books, which are full of the L.A. native's actutely detailed observations and fictionalized real events like the armed robbery of a Chinese seafood palace, are a great way to get to know the underbelly of the city -- and the actual belly, as well. And what other detectives pack a bento box of noodles for lunch every day?

New chef at Malo, plus organic margaritas!

Malo's Matthew Dickson updated Eating L.A. on a few recent developments...a new chef, Eric Ritter, has arrived although the menu won't be changing, "just the quality," says Dickson who promises that Ritter, lately of San Francisco's Ponzu, learned Mexican cooking at his mother's knee and speaks fluent Spanish.
Also new at Malo is a 100% organic margarita, because if you're going to get trashed, it might as well be healthy, right? It combines 4 Copas Blanco tequila, agave nectar and organic lime juice. I usually order my margaritas sugar-free anyway at Malo, but these sound even better.

New Zagat ratings - Congrats to Canele, Babita

I know I'm a day late with the Zagat news, I was off on a citywide eating tour yesterday -- it's a hard job, but someone's got to do it. Here's a few interesting tidbits from the new 2008 Guide:
Canele is the second-highest rated newcomer after Pizzeria Mozza...way to go! Other highly rated newcomers are Celadon, Blue Velvet and Mike and Anne's. Top-rated Chinese is still inexplicably Yujean Kang -- does anyone still go there? But I'd agree with top dim sum being Sea Harbour. And congratulations also to Babita for scoring a whopping 27 rating alongside places like Providence and Spago.
The folks who responded to L.A.'s survey claim to eat out more often (3.8 times per week) than diners in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Paris...probably because it's much more affordable! Although the people in Houston eat out a whopping 4.2 times a week -- what's up with that? Here's one more interesting tidbit...while only 3% of respondents would like to see smoking allowed in restaurants (don't hold your breath), a fairly substantial 15% would like to be able to smoke in bars.

Sad times at Pazzo

Eating L.A. would like to extend our condolences to the family and friends of Mark D. Geldman, partner and head gelato maker at Silver Lake's Pazzo Gelato. Geldman died of a sudden relapse of cancer Sept. 18; he was 51. His sons Max and Asher also worked at Pazzo. A real family business, Pazzo's owners Mike Buch and Lisa Buch-Weiss are Geldman's nephew and niece. Geldman developed the recipes and "pushed it over the edge," said Mike Buch. "We come from a family of good cooks, and he opened our minds to try anything." Geldman was a screenwriter, artist and poet before opening Pazzo in May 2006, and attended Fairfax High and Cal Arts. Pazzo plans to carry on his work developing new flavors, supplying more restaurant accounts, and looking into a possible new location.

A little news, lotsa links

Tiger Lily on Vermont Ave. is cleaving in two, with the bar area remaining as Tiger Lily and the restaurant becoming French bistro Mes Amis, to be managed by former Figaro Bistro manager Chip Garamella. Figaro recently acquired new owners, and it looks like it will be getting some Gallic competition right across the street.

Silver Lake's Zanzabelle is also bringing in a new partner...Zanzabelle will continue selling cute vintage toys and such while starting in October, Lunchbox Fine Foods will supply sandwiches, paninis, salads and schmancy prepacked kids' lunches, because Silver Lake moms are way too cool to go the Lunchables route. Zanzabelle is now open at breakfast for pastries, bagels and coffee...a good idea, since Blair's is no longer open for breakfast.

Malo is applying to open up the upstairs area for live entertainment and events...I'm not sure if the NIMBYs are as vociferous on Sunset as on Hillhurst, but we'll soon find out.

EaterLA has some news on the restaurants planned for Glendale's Americana center...another branch of the rapidly expanding Katsuya empire, as well as of course, The Cheesecake Factory. You can never have too many of them, right?

And from CurbedLA, a rendering of the proposed Desert Rose restaurant at Propect and Hillhurst, which is likely to face a lot of resistance from the neighborhood, which apparently thinks there's already enough liquor licenses on that street.

Taste test: Doughboys Hollywood, pros and cons

With the original Third Street Doughboys finally re-opened after some remodeling, I finally got around to trying the newer Hollywood outlet. The first thing I noticed is that the lunch crowd in Hollywood is a lot different than the staid workers on Wilshire or even the actress/slackers on Third. Girls in hotpants and towering red platforms! Guys with mohawks and expensively ripped "punk" pants! Mare Winningham! LA Weekly staffers! Russian models! I used to like Doughboys quite a bit, but recent reports haven't been too good, so I wanted to see if there was still a reason to go.
First the Pros:
The menu is maybe even bigger than the Third St. branch, breakfast is served all day, and unlike a lot of places in town, it's easy to find something that sounds good.
When the food arrives, it comes in enormous portions with no surprise, lots of extra bread, even on the salads. My pan bagnat (tuna sandwich) didn't come on round bread as promised, but it was a nice change from mayonaisey tuna salad, with plenty of capers and olives. Amy was happy with her Doughboys salad (pictured above) which seemed to have nearly everything in it. And there was enough to take home for dinner.
I was happy to see items like whole grain pancakes and malted cornmeal cakes on the breakfast menu which are nearly impossible to find elsewhere.
And prices are pretty reasonable, especially as compared to the rather precious Ammo across the street.
Now the Cons:
If you go to the Hollywood location, you simply must wait for a table inside. Highland Ave. is as deafening as Manhattan. And don't be fooled by the seemingly quieter side street tables; they face a semi truck customizing operation or motorcyle noise testing ground or something.
The service, at least outside, is pretty slow and most of the parking meters in the area are one hour, so you're going to have a hard time getting in and out in a timely way.
And there's the griminess factor: this place is nearly brand new, so why do the menus and the tables seem as sticky as the old place? Maybe it's time to rethink some of the surfaces.
If you're looking to eat very light or low carb, it's probably going to be hard to find something here, as the emphasis is on comfort food, bread, and the wonderful red velvet cake.
Verdict: I would definitely return, especially for breakfast -- but sit inside this time.

Wednesday links: L.A. Times goes Thai

Linda Burum always does a great job with ethnic eating articles and today's L.A. Times Thai opus is no exception...no shoutout to Eating L.A., but twice in two weeks might be a lot. It's got a lot about Jitlada, but also a place in Northridge I'll have to try , Lum Ka Nad, that has both northern and southern Thai styles.

Chow, parent of Chowhound, has created new places pages. So far, the LA Places hub has Google maps and Best of Chowhound areas, with more new features to come soon.

The New York Times has lunch with Alice Waters, and it's a multimedia affair, with video and Alice's first blog post ever. Alice is pretty old school, though, so she dictated her post to the Times rather than actually blogging herself.

Taste test: Hunan Mao Jia

Kathy and Matt were kind enough to take one for the team this weekend at Hunan Mao Jia in San Gabriel. It's a newish Hunan restaurant which came with almost no reports from other diners and a "C" in the window. We gamely tried a pleasantly gingery and mild pork soup along with three dishes which seemed to share the same characteristics: oily and chock-full of sliced red peppers. The fish filets below, recommended by the waiter, were the best of the lot -- nicely spiced with the omnipresent mixture of peppers and green onions. Pork with green beans, above, was too finely ground to pick up properly with chopsticks, and the small pickled bits of green bean didn't provide a good foil to the incendiary ground pork. This was very similar to one of my favorite Thai dishes, gai sup nok, but I much prefer the Thai version. Cauliflower in pork oil was showered in pieces of pork fat, which provided a decadent contrast to the lightly-cooked cauliflower, but the combo effect wasn't all that pleasing. The servers were swamped dealing with a busload of sleepy Chinese tourists and pretty much ignored us, leaving us to pour our beer in teacups. If you've exhausted the other Hunan restaurants in the area and love incredibly hot food swimming in pork oil, give this place a try. Otherwise...maybe not.
Hunan Mao Jia
535 W. Valley Blvd. (at New)
San Gabriel
(626) 289-6416

Ludovic is looking good at Breadbar

Eating L.A. can't wait to try Ludobites, a series of small plates that chef Ludovic Lefebvre is doing Tuesday through Friday evenings at Breadbar on Third St. When we stopped in for a gravlax sandwich on a fleur de sel baguette today, the tattooed titan of the kitchen was hunkered down at a corner table working on the menu, which changes every day. It's sponsored by the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, so there's nearly a dozen cheese selections ($6 per plate) like Moliterno truffle and Fourme d'ambert with all kinds of condiments like June Taylor's spiced pear butter and homemade harissa. Vegetable dishes like red beet gazpacho are $6, while meats and fishes like tarama, lomo and proscuitto are $8 a plate. Dessert sounds promising, too, with red jalapeno chocolate mousse and milk risotto with vanilla. There's one entree dish of the day at $15 -- yesterday it was lamb moussaka with citrus and carrot. Oh, and bring your own wine!

Opus goes Oaxacan

Thanks to Chowhound poster Andrew S for alerting us that Opus will be retiring its tasting menu in a few weeks. When it first started, it was certainly one of the best values in town, but clearly it couldn't last forever. Chef Josef Centeno is adding some Oaxacan dishes to the regular menu, which is very good in its own right, and bringing in the popular bacos for every day with someone making them at the front of the restaurant, not just on Baco Tuesday. It's kind of a tricky location to fill every night, so I hope this switch works out for Centeno and appeals to the Wiltern concertgoers as well as the regular diners.

Taste test: 101 Noodle Express

Bear with me while I catch up on some of the more popular joints in the San Gabriel Valley...I'm doing some reviews for another outlet and thought I'd preview them here. 101 Noodle Express, a modest Alhambra minimall storefront, is so popular, in fact, that it's where the Blood and Dumplings tour I mentioned earlier will be stopping for sustenance. And there's plenty of sustenance there, mostly of the starchy variety. Their famous beef roll, pictured at left, is like a bastard child of a burrito and a bahn mi, or what a wrap could be if it had any ambition. While it looks really heavy, the fried pancake encloses fairly delicate slices of beef and a refreshing sprinkle of cilantro along with some hoisin sauce, so it's actually possible to power through at least half of the order without your stomach exploding. Matt says I hogged four pieces out of the six, but I think I was in a beef roll coma, as I have no memory of that. The sweet and sour soup, which you can glimpse above the beef roll, is an excellent variation on hot and sour soup that mellows and deepens in flavor after a day in the fridge, where it will sit while you finish digesting the beef roll. The next time I get sick, I will require a vat of it delivered to my house, please. We also tried the pumpkin dumplings with shrimp and pork -- a hearty serving of thick-skinned sinkers full of pork with just enough chopped pumpkin to seduce you into thinking there was a vegetable in the meal. Can anyone describe the wheat/grain dry noodles or mixed grains dry noodles on their menu? What about lamb sticks? And how are the eggplant hot noodles? There's plenty to explore on the menu.
101 Noodle Express
1408 E. Valley Blvd.
Alhambra
(626) 300-8654

Food critics unmasked

I was a little surprised to find myself -- or my mouth anyway -- pictured in the L.A. Times food section Wednesday, but the article does raise an interesting point. Most of the restaurants I go to couldn't care less who I am, and surprisingly, no one has ever asked why I'm taking pictures in three years of blogging. (Well, except those picky people at Joan's on Third, but they're a whole other story.) It's a fact that the restaurant reviewing game has changed with the advent of bloggers, but that's no reason we can't strive for ethical behavior. It is a different story when you pay for most of your meals yourself than when you have an expense account, however, as LAFoodblogging points out in its response to the story.

Boule Atelier preview

The new Boule Atelier held a preview last night, and it's much bigger and more fabulous than the old Boule, which apparently suffered from trying to turn out baked goods in a microscopic-sized kitchen. The new one, which will open in a few days or whenever they get a sink in the bathroom, has several huge stainless steel-shrouded workspaces with windows open to the front bakery. Boule's excellent macaroons were on display in all their finest colors, although one stylish mom of a chocolate-munching toddler mused that the lavender macaroon has become almost startingly purple of late. The viennnoiserie are back, with almond croissants, pain au chocolat, etc. joining the beautiful cigar-shaped eclairs and a selection of bread including a new Earl Grey loaf. Everything in the store is like a precious jewel, with faceted chocolates sparkling with gold dust and chocolate pastries at approximately the price of rubies. Down the line, Boule Atelier may offer cooking classes in the enlarged kitchen. Things are buzzing along for David and Michelle Myers, with the new Beverly Hills Boule opening soon as well as Comme Ca on Melrose which will offer traditional French bistro fare but in a modern setting. Here's EaterLA's report on all the upcoming openings.

Taste test: Hong Yei

Szechwan restaurants seem to come and go fairly quickly in the San Fernando Valley, so when I heard about the new Hong Yei in San Gabriel, I figured I had better act fast before it changed management. In a brand-new office building, it's bright and clean, a big step up from dive level, but still informal. Hong Yei's menu says it's Mandarin-style, but the main attraction is the good selection of Szechwan dishes served at perhaps more reasonable spice levels than, say, Chung King just down the street. When we first ordered the Szechwan style fish fillet with hot sauce, pictured above, the English-speaking waiter chuckled ominously, pointing to the three peppers next to each dish. So we requested medium heat, and although it looks like a seething cauldron of lava, it's really not -- the soft fish filets and nappa cabbage are heavily perfumed with Szechwan peppercorns but there's only enough red chiles to flavor the dish, not to overwhelm it. The peppercorns have the curious effect of making you sweat like a horse but without actually making your mouth burn the way chiles do, so it's actually rather cooling to eat. We also tried dan dan noodles, which were a bit gummy but a treat to find in the refrigerator the next day, and a cold appetizer plate of tender seaweed and refreshing pickled cabbage and other vegetables. While the fish filets were startlingly flavorful, our favorite dish was cumin lamb (left), sort of a dry curry which in which layers of flavors reminiscent of Thai food permeate tender, garlicky, mildly spicy bits of lamb. There's also quite a selection of dumplings and pancakes -- most all the other tables had ordered the beef roll, but I knew we were going to 101 Noodle the next day, so we saved our appetite. Next time: duck and konjac jelly with beer sauce, for sure! The price for all these intense flavors: a super-reasonable $30 for three entrees and two appetizers, rice and tea.
Hong Yei
288 S. San Gabriel Blvd.
San Gabriel
(626) 614-8188

Drinks report: The Griffin

An obscure restaurant across from the Tam O'Shanter that I never heard of anyone eating at has been transformed into a gothy nightspot called The Griffin. It's a big place with two gas fireplace-equipped seating pits, numerous nooks, an outdoor patio and a whole other pub room that opens on weekends for the overflow crowd. Sorry, not a great photo, but you can see the clever cage-like patio that allows patrons to drink alongside the sidewalk of Los Feliz Blvd. while keeping them safely fenced off from riffraff, teenagers, etc. There's the requisite thrift shop art, plenty of air conditioning, and an arched ceiling that makes you think you could be in the basement of an old cathedral, if you weren't in a formerly cheesy restaurant in Atwater. They make a mean Manhattan, and I don't know why some blogger said it was $12, because we paid $12 for a pint of Newcastle and a Manhattan. Beer on tap selection is so-so -- what's the point of having Italy's Peroni on tap, does anyone like that stuff? The jukebox is pretty solid, if a little heavy on the alt-hits du jour (do we really need to hear the Arcade Fire once again?) -- still, hard to complain about Wire, the Pixies, the Sweet, the Jam. P.J. Harvey and plenty of other choices. Nice to see the kids have yet another place to hang, but I hope the Roost also survives for a while.
The Griffin
3000 Los Feliz Blvd.

Strange and wonderful products of the week

Charles Perry writes on the L.A. Times food blog about West Hollywood's new Healthy Bean coffee shop...their coffee is apparently chock full of anti-oxidants and also, protein! They add some sort of whey to give it five grams of protein a cup...add some milk, and you've got breakfast on the run. I'm kind a sucker for added benefits , so perhaps I'll give it a try, although parking in West Hollywood -- not my favorite activity.
***
Not strange, just wonderful...I'm in the midst of a major popcorn binge these days, so I had to order a four lb. bottle of Savanna Gold from Fireworks Popcorn. There doesn't seem to be anyplace in all of L.A. that carries really good popping corn. Current favorite topping: butter, soy sauce, seaweed and sesame sprinkle.
***

My recent trip to Marukai market yielded some furikake seaweed for my new popcorn craze as well as a box of green tea/red bean popsicles. Nicely sized for Japanese appetites, they're not very sweet and pack several interesting flavors onto one little stick. Also, whilst googling, here's the contents of some guy's freezer in Japan...a nice tour of Japanese frozen treats.
***

Last but not least, we come to Quorn. I know, you say, fake meat, meh. Or perhaps you say, mycoprotein, what the hell is that? Yes, Quorn is British fake chicken made from some mutant strain of fungus, but I don't care -- I get really tired of having chicken all the time, it's pretty healthy stuff, and I think it tastes ok. And I've heard all that propaganda that the Center for Science in the Public Interest dished out when Quorn appeared in America, and I'm not really buying it. I don't trust those folks, and look at all those healthy Brits with their good teeth and such.

Rant 'o the day: why no good movies plus food?

Today's Chowhound post about movie theater food got me thinking about why so many other cities have cool independent theater venues that serve full meals and microbrews to boot. The Chowhound poster described a theater in Maitland, Florida with sandwiches, pasta, dessert, beer and couches... There's also the Alamo Drafthouse chain in Texas, McMenamin's in Portland, and no doubt numerous others. What is it about L.A. that is so inhospitable to moviehouses serving real food and drink?

I recently went to the new Landmark at the Westside Pavilion; despite an amazing array of gourmet chocolate bars and some cursory parmesan-garlic sprinkle for the popcorn, the selection of real food amounted to warmed-over "Pizza Rustica" and hotdogs. Like at the Arclight, beer and wine are only available in certain theaters at certain times and no kids at all are allowed in those theaters...so so tedious. I know about Cinespace, but their programming is pretty much whatever came out on DVD this month...it just doesn't excite me (especially "Georgia Rule"!) If you're going to show old films, at least choose classics like "L'Avventura" and combine them with good food and a romantic patio like at San Francisco's Foreign Cinema.

So what's the problem? Real estate prices? Lack of interest in beer? Too many entertainment options? Restrictive alcohol laws? L.A., get it together, and get us some good food in the theaters.

Best name for a tour: Blood & Dumplings

The other sites can have Bastide, over at Eating L.A. we're all about Blood & Dumplings, a
"criminal and gastronomical excursion into the San Gabriel Valley" on Sat. Sept. 29 from the folks at Esotouric. Here's how they describe it:
Blood & Dumplings rolls through Alhambra, Temple City, Monterey Park, Rosemead and El Monte, revealing dozens of weird, forgotten crimes and oddities from the valley's past. Highlights include the lesbian couple whose bickering over spending cash resulted in one pumping the other full of downers until she died, the young bride who spent her wedding day buried under her parents' house, the battling neo-Nazis of El Monte, Phil Spector's spooky castle and the little bar where James Ellroy's murdered mother Jean had her last drink. The tour includes a selection of dumplings from one of the San Gabriel Valley's best Chinese restaurants.
Also coming up soon is the Bukowski tour on Oct. 27 with a stop at Musso & Frank, natch, and of course, the Black Dahlia tour we mentioned last year with the special Black Dahlia-flavored gelato from Scoops.

New around town...

Aaaah...it's too hot to try all those Chinese places in the San Gabriel Valley I can't wait to try when it cools down a bit. All I've been able to try lately were cold soba noodles at the Mitsuwa Food Court in West L.A. on the way back from the beach...the tofu aisle is nice and chilly!

So trawling Craig's List is about as much energy as I can summon. Oh, and if you missed the Santa Monica trip below, Monsieur Marcel is opening an outpost on the Santa Monica Promenade, in one of those middle spaces that house juice bars and batik pareo boutiques.

Salades de Provence is open in the former Empanada's Place location at 1040 N. La Cienega in West Hollywood, with organic salads, quiches, crepes, desserts and "other little pleasures from France" Bread is imported from Poilane in France, $15.95 for salads, mon dieu!

Now here's a cool job...Lou on Vine is looking for a full-time cook to work with their house-cured bacon and hand-fabricated sausage and pate.

And Westwood is taking a cue from cereal bars like the Cereality chain and The Cereal Bowl with its own cereal bar, a fairly inscrutable craze that hit a few other college towns a few years ago. Juju Cereal Bar will be at 1248 Westwood Blvd.