Soba-Ya: hand-cut soba Monday and Tuesday

hand cut soba with mushroom dipping sauce

Common Grains sounds like it could be an earnest hippie-owned bakery, but it's actually a cultural project. The Japanese rice company Shinmei is backing the project to showcase a diversity of grains to Americans, in partnership with Sonoko Sakai, a film producer and expert maker of handmade Japanese buckwheat noodles or soba.
The Common Grains soba and sake tasting at Silver Lake Wine today is sold out, but you can still get a hand-cut soba fix at Soba-Ya in Torrance Monday and Tuesday from 5-9 p.m. The soba is has a higher percentage of buckwheat flour than is found in commercial soba, so it's full of flavor with much less gluten and regular wheat flour than other pasta. (Buckwheat is not related to wheat but is in the same family as rhubarb and sorrel.) We tasted the hand-cut soba at the Atwater Crossing pop-up, and the noodles are full of spring and character, with a pleasantly earthy note.
Try to fit in a visit to Soba-Ya while the pop-up is going on, but if not, the new Soba-Ya restaurant will continue serving hand-made, but not hand-cut noodles after Tuesday.
Here's more on Soba-Ya's menu from Gourmet Pigs.

Soba-Ya, 1757 W. Carson Street, Suite R & S, Torrance, 310.782.7356

Pavich's charming Croatian-style pizza: Guest post

(photo LA Times)

EatingLA hasn't been able to get to San Pedro lately to check out Pavich's Brick Oven Pizzeria, but a friend did. Writer Jonathan Blum ate there with his winemaker uncle and and EuroPane's Sumi Chang and sent this nicely-observed report:
We drove down and stopped first at a nearby park in San Pedro, Angels Gate, which has a giant "peace bell" that was given as a friendship gesture by Korea to the United States on the occasion of the bicentennial. A wedding was going on. We walked around the park a bit, which overlooks the ocean as well as the Port of Los Angeles, but the wind was a little chilly so we didn't stay long. Then we found the pizzeria, a modest storefront right in the middle of a hilly middle- to lower-middle-class neighborhood of apartment houses, bungalows, and other single-family homes. A couple storefronts up from the pizzeria was a closed shop called Baltic Bakery.
A couple storefronts in the other direction was a slightly seedy laundromat. The late afternoon Pacific light was very lovely. Groups of neighborhood kids were constantly milling about along the sidewalk, and people were regularly coming and going with orders from Pavich's to go.
The shop itself is long and narrow, with the offerings handwritten brightly on a board above the head. The proprietor, an immigrant about 40, seemed to be shyly amused by the attention the LA Times article has recently brought to his business. The place offers both Croatian comfort food and Croatian-style pizza. We started with cabbage rolls, terrific stuffed cabbages with spicy ground beef, served with mashed potatoes, a mushroom gravy, and julienned roasted red peppers. (I grew up eating Ashkenazic Jewish food, and so I consider myself a tough judge of stuffed cabbage, and this was very good.) I also wrote down the names of two items we didn't get but whose names I liked so much, I assume the dishes themselves will live up to their names: chavapchichi and plyeskaritza. And then we had a vegetarian calzone and a huge (18") combination quattro gusti/Croatian pizza. On the wide sidewalk in front of the shop there is a grill for grilling sausage and a couple metal tables; we brought tablecloth, napkins, silverware, and wine, and set up on those two tables and had a great time. Some people take the food out and bring it to the park. My uncle brought a 2005 zinfandel he made; then he impressed us by knowing that the zinfandel grape is originally from Croatia. The crust on the pizza had a desirable crunch, and the toppings--it was a half and half, with smoked meats and vegetables--were yummy. There was something very charming about the whole experience. I recommend taking some friends down there sometime when you want to get away from our part of town and have a well-crafted, unpretentious, tasty meal; it's a great neighborhood place, a fine adventure.
-- Jonathan Blum

Pavich's
2311 S. Alma St.
San Pedro,
(310) 519-1200

Santouka Ramen: natto is nasty but ramen rocks

The English sign for Santouka is discreet -- it's the one with the crowd in front

The bonus of going to someplace I don't often have time to get to, like the South Bay, is the chance to hit someplace I haven't been on the way back. Of course, I've been to the Downtown and West L.A. Mitsuwa markets many times, but I had never hit the jumbo Torrance location and the Santouka Ramen stall in the market's food court. You know a place has to be good when it can get away with numerous rules: cash only, no takeouts, no pre-ordering by phone. To order, there's a series of choices to make. Do you want your broth flavored with shio (salt), shoyu (soy) or miso? The guy in front of me recommended shoyu, so I took his advice. Then, a small, medium or large bowl of ramen? Nice to have a choice. I took small. You can get just the bowl of ramen, or for just a bit more you can add two sides -- "fravored egg," which is a hardboiled egg in a nicely savory tea-flavored sauce, and rice topped with green onion, salmon roe, natto or chopped pork. Since Josh and I had just been discussing natto, or fermented soybeans, I felt that for just $2 more, I should finally try it. Nasty natto on rice at left

I tried the natto first, in case I needed to get rid of the taste with the ramen broth. I scooped up a bit of rice, stringy, rotten soybeans and green onion and popped it in my mouth. Ugh. Not the most horrifying thing ever, but way too reminiscent of the time in college I made red beans and rice and left the pot on the stove for a week, deciding instead to eat at Pinocchio's every single night. The result at the end of the week was quite similar to the bowl of natto in front of me -- funky and just very off. Wow, talk about an acquired taste. Ok, I tried it, can I get the badge for my foodblogger sash now? I cleared my palate with the egg and pushed the natto aside.
On to the ramen. The murky broth filled with al dente ramen noodles was supremely comforting, perfect for the blustery, drizzly day. There was a fatty, smoky piece of pork swimming around, and I wished I had sacrificed the natto for a medium ramen instead, with more noodles and pork.
Afterwards, I had a good time picking out black cod, rice cakes, nappa cabbage, sesame oil, plum wine, etc. at the market. With several more food stalls for curry, desserts, tea, a bakery and more, plus stationery, book and Hello Kitty stores, Mitsuwa Torrance is one of the best exotic vacation spots I can imagine -- and it's right in our backyard.
Mitsuwa Marketplace/Santouka Ramen
21515 Western Ave.
Torrance

Shade Hotel: Manhattan Beach's easy staycation

Ay carumba, birthday churros!

When I was offered a press trip to Manhattan Beach's sleek little Shade Hotel on the evening of my birthday, it seemed much better than trying to plan a party in the middle of holiday season. We heard that we would be viewing fireworks before dinner, but we had no idea that Manhattan Beach's holiday fireworks are massively attended and more extensive than most July 4 exhibitions. The streets of Manhattan Beach are closed off and the restaurants completely packed, and there's even a small snow park on the beach. We started off the evening with traditional Navy Grog and grilled artichoks at our host Michael Zislis's rollicking restaurant Rock 'n Fish near the beach. Another Rock 'n Fish opens at L.A. Live on Jan. 19.
Next up was drinks and hors d'oeuvres back at the hotel's Zinc Bar. The Shade Hotel is just a few blocks from the beach in the Metlox complex, which also houses the excellent Greek restaurant Petros and the Trilogy Spa where I had a soothing honey body wrap that put me in a relaxed mood for the rest of my stay. The hotel rooms are full of festive, romantic touches: there's an espresso maker instead of the usual coffeepot and a blender and cocktail shaker for impromptu room parties. A futuristic glass tube turns into a fireplace with the push of a button, and colored lights surrounding the spa bathtub provide chromatherapy, whatever that is, while you soak in the bath.
Zislis seems to own half of Manhattan Beach, so then we walked over to his Mexican restaurant Mucho for a chef's tasting menu that was much more ambitious than tacos and enchiladas. Our tasting ended with plates of crunchy, fresh churros with dulce de leche and chocolate sauce, which I couldn't stop nibbling on, even though we had been to three restaurants that evening!
I hardly ever get to the South Bay, and although it took only about 30 minutes to get there, it seemed like a real beach vacation. The hotel is surrounded by dozens of restaurants, lounges and boutiques, so there's no need to drive anywhere. The winter celebration was a great time to see the town, but this would make a perfect quick getaway pretty much any time of year.

Taste test: Birthday fry-up at Inaba

premium sake sampler

My mother must have sown the seeds of a fledgling foodblogger by taking me on the orange RTD bus all the way from Santa Monica, down Wilshire Blvd. to Little Tokyo, when I was a child. We would sit at a tempura bar located somewhere on First St., and the man behind the counter would place little fried morsels in front of us one after another until we couldn't eat another bite. Then we would go across the street for red bean cakes at Mitsuru made in the same metal molds they use today. tempura of seaweed-wrapped clams

I wanted to repeat the tempura bar experience on my birthday a few weeks ago, but the only tempura bar left in Little Tokyo is in the Kyoto Grand Hotel. It's rather pricey, plus it's not open on Sundays, which was the only day we had available. So it was time for a field trip to Torrance, past the oil fields and giant malls to the strip mall that houses I-naba. Kathy and I started with sake flights, and mine had three wonderfully floral sakes. The frymaster at work

Then we checked off which type of tempura we wanted on a checklist like at a sushi bar. Inaba also specializes in housemade soba, so we tried both the hot and the cold variations. We had perfectly fried shrimp, squid, asparagus, lotus root, eggplant, stuffed shitake mushrooms, chicken and seaweed stuffed with clams. The shrimp, asparagus and chicken took to the tempura technique especially well. We left the impressive-looking sea urchin tempura for another time. Inaba is a lovely, tranquil place, and the man behind the counter really knows how to fry. cold soba noodles

It wasn't quite the funky place of my childhood -- actually the quality was much better, as they use organic items like Rocky chickens. They have a variety of set menus which combine tempura, sashimi and soba, starting at $20 up to elaborate kaiseki meals.
Restaurant I-naba
20920 Hawthorne Blvd.
Torrance
(310) 371-6675