Christmas treats

Did you get any good food-related gifts this year? I got the Gourmet cookbook and the Cooking Light cookbook -- guess I'll still be ordering the Zuni Cafe cookbook myself.
Matt got me a cool little book called Everything I Ate: A Year in the Life of My Mouth by Tucker Shaw, a New York writer who took a picture of every single thing he ate, from beef jerky to sushi, for an entire year. After I looked through it, I was wondering, what's with the cold cereal every night at midnight? Fortunately I found an interview on Gothamist that answered this and other important questions. It's really interesting to see the pattern that emerges when you can see what someone ate every single day. And Shaw, like me, is clearly someone who wants every single thing he puts in his mouth to be really good. I don't think there's any fast food, and no frozen food either, which is more than I can say. Damn, I need a New York pizza after reading this.

Eating L.A's best of 2005

It's been a good, long year of eating around L.A. Here's a few of the highlights:
1) Discovering some new Thai dishes at Red Corner Asia.
2) Returning to Sea Harbour for great dim sum.
3) Learning a lot more about cheese thanks to Barrie Lynn, Chris and Norbert.
4) Great Chinese at Crown Cafe and Newport Seafood, among others.
5) Cupcake mania and my guest appearance on KCRW -- I never want to see one again.
6) Finally, somewhere healthy to eat at M Cafe de Chaya.
7) A small plates odyssey that ended up with a great meal at Orris.
8) Ethnic ice creams all over the city.
9) Three cheers for Musha, Haru Ulala and all the izakaya places
10) Cozy Italian at La Buca.

Merry Blogmas...

and a happy blog year from Eating L.A. Haven't been out much this week, and goodies at work had us on overload...Wednesday: sour cream coffee cake, tons of homemade cookies, chocolate truffles...Thursday: smoked almonds, sugared cashews and pecans, pistachios, and stuffed dates...Friday: Justin brought in homemade spam musubi made with Tabasco spam...I was leary at first but now I'm hooked. Great stuff.

Sunday in the park with pie: The Trails

trail from the snack stand to the observatory
I'm sure there's something to be said for the soggy fries and pallid popcorn sold at Griffith Park's food stands -- mainly the fact that they exist at all when your two-year old is having a pony ride-induced tantrum, for example. But if you'd like something a little better to look forward to after a Griffith Park hike, the Trails has thankfully taken over one of the park's lackluster food stands. It's the one on Fern Dell Drive, which is at the very end of Los Feliz where it turns into Western.

The Trails snack stand
We tried an avocado sprouts sandwich, a tri-tip meat pie and some berry pie. Matt reported that the meat pie was very tasty. The sandwich would have been great if they hadn't used American cheese, and the pie was more like "hey, there's some frozen blueberries and granola in the kitchen, let's bake it up and see what happens" than an actual pie. But it doesn't really matter -- it's certainly better than what was there before, and the Trails also appears to offer a decent cup of coffee as well as Fosselman's ice cream. Plus, it's a good motivator for hiking -- "honey, if you make it to Mt. Hollywood, there's pie a la mode on the way down."
Now if you could just get an understandable park trail map there, it would be perfect.

Red Corner redux

spicy herb shrimp

We returned to Red Corner Asia to make sure our first positive experience wasn't a fluke, and because, well, we just wanted some more tasty Thai food. I had to try the spicy herb shrimp, which was the winner dish, with several butterflied shrimp wading in a little tamarind pool. The shrimp were covered in crispy brown slices of garlic and cashews which were in turn blanketed in a blizzard of deep-fried basil leaves. It's a pretty nice little combo of sour, crunchy, fruity and garlicky, and not really like any Thai preparation I've had before. We also ordered a competently-made red curry with chicken, and kung pao pasta, another fusion attempt which grafted the peanuts and peppers of a kung pao dish onto regular spaghetti, in our case with beef. It was satisfying, but not a dish for Thai purists.
Verdict: After two visits, I think I see what they're doing. The sauces are bright and lively, as spicy as you wish, with tons of flavor. But there's a certain sweetness, which combined with a lack of funky fish sauce and bamboo shoot flavors sort of adds up to a Thai Gingergrass, but with more Thai customers. I like the menu though, because even the more unusual dishes don't involve quite as much pig uterus et al as they do in the super-authentic places. In short, this is a place you can take your less adventurous friends, and still find something spicy and different for yourself.

Cornering the market on Thai food: Red Corner Asia

tom yum fried rice
I've only been once so far, but I'm already feeling pretty optimistic about Red Corner Asia, the new Thai restaurant in the Ruen Pair/Ban Khanom dessert shop minimall at Hobart and Hollywood. The shiny new space was opened by the owners of the sweet shop, and thus the menu features a much larger dessert selection than usual. Red Corner Asia is clearly aspiring to be more than the average Thai restaurant, with ambitious dishes and a touch of actual decor. It's always a good sign when you wish you had brought several more people so that you could try more things on the endless menu, but we managed to try three dishes, all seafood.
We started with the fish cakes on sticks, an excellent rendition of the traditionally flat fried fishcakes. They were golden brown and uniquely formed around green onions, making a nice change of pace from the round pucks. Then we had grilled squid salad, with tender pieces of squid on a bed of iceberg lettuce with a spicy, sour dressing. We also tried the Tom Yum fried rice, which transposes the flavors of a tom yum soup to fried rice. The rice was moist and saucy rather than dry and fluffy in the Chinese style, but deliciously full of lemongrass, garlic and plump shrimps.
Red Corner has an extensive barbecue menu, including Volcano chicken -- a whole marinated chicken with fire shooting out the top. I'm also interested in Eggs in Disguise with Holy Basil Leaf, seafood dishes like bacon-wrapped scallops and some other variations like crab pad thai, salmon with spicy basil and herb & spicy shrimp.
Verdict: This place looks like a keeper, but I'm going back tomorrow night to try some more dishes. Prices for some of the more elaborate seafood dishes are higher than the typical Thai spot, but other dishes are in the normal $5.95 and $6.95 range. There's no beer or wine -- perhaps you can bring your own. Open for lunch and dinner.
More dishes on this update review.
Red Corner Asia
5267 Hollywood Blvd.
(323) 466-6722

This little piggy went to Norman's

piggy in his caja china
...and cried oink, oink, oink all the way home. Norman's on the Sunset Strip has decided to extend the Friday night Pig 'n Paella nights into the winter, even though it's too cold to eat outside on the patio. That's ok, because then you won't be able to get to know the nice little piggy too well before you dig in. Vegetarians, time to stop reading.
So anyway, we were invited to taste the pig 'n paella, and we took Billy and Amy along to try it out. We started with mojitos for the others and a Pisco sour for me, all very refreshing. The pig plate threatened to be a lot of food, so we just got two appetizers for the table -- the shrimp ceviche and the amazing conch chowder. The chowder was served with a pile of conch meat, corn and other chopped items in a bowl, and the server then poured a decadent mixture of slightly sweet cream and coconut milk into the bowl. It was wonderfully seasoned with star anise, but so rich that one bowl was plenty for four people.
Peter, the wonderful sommelier, whose descriptions of wine are like comforting bedtime stories, brought us a carafe of Pasanau, a Spanish red made predominantly from cabernet with some garnacha. The wine's smoky character stood up well to the succulent roast pork. The pork is roasted in a caja china, the traditional wooden roasting box, right outside the restaurant. I don't want to know what happens after that, but soon we were presented with plates brimming with roast pork, crispy pork skin, paella, coleslaw and fufu (mashed plantains and sweet potatoes).

roast pork with crisy skin in foreground, paella in background
The pork was incredibly moist and I'm afraid I devored every bit of the crunchy skin as well. The horseradish-flavored coleslaw also helped cut the richness of the pork, but the fufu was too starchy and filling for me to explore with so many other flavors. We were glad we opted for the paella pairing, since an entire plate of roast pork would have been a lot. We finished with a cheese plate and their small complimentary plate of cookies. Our server Andrew was extremely attentive and friendly, and we all gave the place pretty much our highest compliment: "We would return here on our own dime," especially since the pig 'n paella is only $19.

The Crepe Life: Pasadena's Crepevine

Old Town Pasadena seems to be full of places that are either chains or might as well be chains, filled with groups of partiers with seemingly little concern for what they are eating. People looking for a quieter, more grown-up spot in the area now have an alternative with the CrepeVine Bistro and Wine Bar, a homey spot across from the Equator coffeehouse on Mills Alley. Husband and wife owners Josh and Kate Evans fell in love with crepes on trips to France and bravely decided to throw themselves into the restaurant business after getting their feet wet by making crepes at parties. But the CrepeVine isn't just crepes -- it has a full menu of bistro dishes, and Josh is aiming to offer L.A.'s biggest selection of wines by the glass. I went to a press dinner where we tried a selection of appetizers, crepes, mains and wines. My favorite was the moules frites, with nicely seasoned mussel broth and a massive pile of thin garlicky fries. We also tried seafood and beef stroganoff crepes, good renditions of coq au vin and a buttery polenta with mushrooms. The savory crepes are authentically made with buckwheat, although I find I prefer simpler crepes of just cheese, ham or eggs to ones filled with creamy sauces. Dessert crepes are filled with Nutella, bananas and rum, brown sugar and pineapple and more.
The CrepeVine
36 W. Colorado Blvd. #1
Pasadena
(626)796-7250

Il Grano brings Bollito Misto to L.A.

bollito misto plate with various meats and sauces

West L.A.'s Il Grano is known for its crudo (raw fish dishes) and a devotion to seafood and unusual pastas such as chestnut pappardelle with pheasant ragu. After a summertime tomato tasting menu, Il Grano chef Salvatore Marino decided to try something completely different, with bollito misto, a comforting wintertime meal. I was invited to try out the tasting menu at a press preview. Bollito misto (literally, mixed boil) is similar to a French pot au feu, or like a New England boiled dinner that went to Italy and came back all gussied up.
We started with a wonderful plate of contadino (cold cuts or charcuterie) -- a tiny, intense salami, speck, duck proscuitto, regular proscuitto and bresaola. The meats were all excellent, but even better were the two crostini -- one with sauteed truffles and one with a slice of fresh lard. I never thought I'd say that about a slice of fresh lard, but it was pure rich goodness on the tongue.
The next course was a bowl of the rich broth the bollito misto meats were cooked in, with capon tortellini floating in the soup.
Then the bollito misto cart arrived, a large serving cart full of various meats -- the server carved off portions of capon, brisket, sausage and tongue and arrayed them on the plate with carrots and onions cooked in the broth. We had a choice of six sauces with which to adorn the meats, ranging from pesto-ish to aioli-ish to horseradishy to a rich mushroom sauce, which went nicely with the brisket.
We had some lovely wines with the dinner -- the favorite was probably the Rodeo Barbera from Colli Tortonesi. There were chestnut beignets for dessert, and even better, the chef roasted some chestnuts sent directly from Italy and helped us peel them. They were much tastier than the Korean ones we get in L.A. supermarkets.
"We wanted to try things that are eaten in Italy that have not come across to America," said Salvatore. Bollito misto is a real switch from most Angeleno's typical meals of raw tuna, salad, steak, pasta or chicken, but it's an Italian tradition perfect for cool wintry days.
Il Grano's Bollito Misto will be served Wednesday nights for $49 per person. Since Bollito Misto is ideal for a large group of diners, magnums of wine are 20% off during the dinners.
Il Grano
11359 Santa Monica Blvd.
West L.A.
(310)477-7886

Chowhound's 2005 Ultimate L.A. restaurant poll

Hardworking Chowhound Mr. Grub has finished compiling his 2005 Ultimate L.A. restaurant poll. For some reason, I didn't vote, I guess because I rarely get to eat in the nicer places unless I'm invited for a press dinner, so it somehow doesn't seem fair. But I think the rest of the Chowhounds did a pretty good job. The top five choices are:
1) AOC
2) Spago
3) Providence
4) Sona
5) Angelina Osteria
The best part is that places like La Buca, Zankou and Langer's edge out many of L.A.'s most pricey and trendy places, so there's a nice balance.
Of my current favorites of the places I've actually been to, I might go with:
AOC
La Buca
Sea Harbour
Grace
Lucques
This list seems a lot more accurate than the Zagat list, although not without its own quirks...what do you think?

Sea Harbour sets sail with chicken knees and more...

eggplant stuffed with shrimp
Before the dawn of Eating L.A., I had dim sum on my birthday two years ago at Sea Harbour. I returned today with Tara and John and their friend Peter, the sommelier at Norman's. Of course he had brought two interesting bottles of white wine, which at first I couldn't imagine drinking on the dot of noon. But as soon as our first course arrived, I changed my mind and happily tried the Zidarich from the Friuli region of Italy...it was dry and crispy, perfectly complementing our first courses of shrimp dumplings with chives and tofu with scallops. We went a little crazy at that point and the plates started arriving furiously...pork buns with a savory ground pork mixture inside, different from the usual barbecue pork; shrimp dumplings with peas, (below)

eggplant stuffed with a sort of seafood mousse, and chicken knees! I thought the little deep-fried piles of chicken on many of the tables looked good, but I nearly hesitated when I saw on the menu that they were chicken knees. Still, they were tasty little morsels with a distinctively chickeny flavor and just a small knob of cartilage to remove in each one...the knee joint, perhaps? Peter unveiled a German reisling from the 2001 vintage which he said was an excellent year for this slightly sweet wine which was completely different from the Italian wine, but equally nice with all the seafood. Obviously a true gourmand, Peter commandeered a plate of duck feet, but I'm afraid they looked just a bit too gelatinous for me, and besides, I was full of knees at that point. Still, the plates kept coming...the wonderful shark fin dumplings with scallops and shrimp, my first taste of sea cucumbers (tripe of the sea?), and durian rolls, which were not on the dessert menu but resembled a cross between an eggroll and an eclair. We finished with the light coconut/taro jello hearts, too full for their flaky egg tarts.

The verdict: With good service and a calmer feel than the usual dim sum free for all, Sea Harbour is my favorite spot for dim sum. Most of the dishes are lighter and more imaginative, too. I know some people are obsessed with the whole pointing-at-carts thing, but personally I've had enough cold, greasy taro dumplings off those carts to last the rest of my life.
Sea Harbour
3939 Rosemead Blvd.
Rosemead
(626) 288-3939

Bread Bar, otherwise known as the last thing I need

Godzilla helps display bread samples and shrimp salad from Bread Bar

I didn't rush over to Bread Bar when it opened, because I try not to go out of my way to stuff myself with dough. But after a trip to get glasses in Beverly Hills, it was right on the way back to work, and miraculously, there was a parking place in front. Bread Bar has a modern, bamboo-and-glass look, about as far from a baroque Parisian-style bakery as it's possible to get.With several tables on the sidewalk and inside, it's a good spot for lunch. I ordered a shrimp salad to go ($9.95), since the sandwiches didn't look that imaginative. It comes with a slice or two of bread, so I figured I'd get to try the bread anyway. It took 10 or 15 minutes for them to make the salad and I was hungry, so I managed to down a mini raisin croissant while I waited --good, but I prefer the croissant-type pastries at Boule. Imagine my surprise when my salad was finally ready and the counter girl presented me with an entire bag full of bread slices to try! Now that's service, because all the flavors, especially the nut, the buckwheat and the country bread were really good, and I would go back to buy bread based on all the samples I tried. The shrimp were kind of flavorless, but I liked the combination of arugula, tabbouli, avocado and shrimp, and the chicken and tofu salads sounded good too.
Verdict: Bring lots of dough to buy your dough -- it's pricey, and perhaps slightly pretentious, but the bread is really flavorful and I was sure happy with my big bag o' samples. There's some parking in back, but otherwise, it's pretty gruesome on that stretch of Third.
Bread Bar
8718 W. Third St.
(310) 205-0124