Food, Wine and Travel ... With Recipes: TableConversation.com

Chow Down at Chai Toong

The eye-popping red and yellow sign outside announces that Chai Toong  serves E-San (northeastern Thai) food. The regular menu shows little of that but sounds pretty much like what you get at Yai, a long-established Thai restaurant in Hollywood. 

This isn’t a coincidence. Yai’s head chef left to take over Chai Toong, which is on Vermont Avenue just north of Los Angeles City College. What they still share is location:  Yai has a second branch farther north on the same street.

Chai Toong now serves Yai‘s lard na (meat and Chinese broccoli over rice noodles), which Thais say is one of the best in town, its crispy catfish salad and produces a better version of roast pork and Chinese broccoli than I had at Yai on Hollywood Boulevard.

The combination of fatty pork belly cubes and crisp vegetable was unpleasantly greasy there. At Chai Toong it is crisp, dry and almost fat-free.

Not everything is the same.  One friend got up and left when a dish that he dotes on at Yai wasn’t on the menu.  I’m sure he’ll be back once he hears that Chai Toong puts out excellent food.

Just one example:  crisp, fried fish, pla lui saun, handled in an innovative way that made a Thai chef friend sit up and take notice. After the backbone is removed, the fish is turned inside out, fried and covered with sliced lemon grass, red onion and spicy sauce.

The sweetened red curry sauce for deep-fried catfish slices is based on curry paste made at the restaurant, not taken from a can.

The eggplant salad is the best I’ve had—smoky, fire-roasted eggplant covered with ground pork and decorated with shrimp.

A wall menu in Thai offers jungle curry,  a standard but very good version of papaya salad and delicious, glistening dark pork ribs that are sour and slightly fermented. 

Or you can stick to popular standards such as pad Thai, red curry, chicken-coconut soup and beef salad. Or try a $4.95 lunch combination.

The restaurant name is spelled two ways—Chai Thung and Chai Toong, the latter closer to the Thai spelling.  Oddly, it opens into Betsy’s Filipino bakery next door so that the aroma of freshly baked bread occasionally adds a new note to the intricate seasonings that make Thai food so compelling.

Chai Toong Thai restaurant, 1001 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027. Tel: (323) 667-3432. Open daily 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Lunch special 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.

High Fashion Frozen Yogurt

Sleek, stylish, cool, green--these are words that come to mind when I think of Tutto Tutti, a new Korean-owned frozen yogurt place on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.

It adds so much class to an undistinguished mall at the corner of Melrose and Mansfield Avenues that it almost seems out of place.

An interior designer and art team from Korea collaborated on the look. (Too bad they couldn’t have done something for the market plastered with trashy liquor ads next door.)

The owners, husband and wife team Seung and Soo Kim, worked for months to perfect yogurts as elegant and subtle as their shop. Soo, a chef, has an Italian Korean restaurant in Seoul. She became enchanted with gelato while in culinary school in Italy.

The initial flavors--the shop opened in January--aren’t so much Italian as Korean.

Super Bee blends honey with finely ground pure Korean ginseng root. Freckle Snow White isn’t freckled at all, although made with black sesame seeds. It’s so delicately colored that you have to look closely to distinguish it from other flavors. Double Wonder (sea salt and caramel) is just as subtle.

The base for all of them is organic fat-free yogurt, as verified by a tub of empty Horizon yogurt containers at the door.

The creamiest flavors are White Velvet (vanilla), Seven Grains and T, which combines Ceylon tea, fat-free milk and honey. New flavors contemplated for summer include mimosa, sangria and perhaps one that combines ginger and mint.

The toppings are as fresh and healthy as the yogurts—a puree of blackberries and strawberries; balsamic marinated fruit, fresh blueberries, strawberries and balsamic raspberry puree. The closest the shop gets to candy toppings is caramelized walnuts.

Tutto Tutti opens at 7 a.m. The ideal yogurt to have at that hour would be Seven Grains, because it offers a jolt of protein and fiber. The grains include black beans, black rice, black sesame, oatmeal and wheat, with a bonus dash of seaweed.

The real reason for opening so early is coffee, based on espresso made with organic beans. There’s iced coffee too, produced by an elaborate glass contraption that swirls about like high fashion lab equipment. In 10 to 15 hours it transforms cold water into coffee that is acid free and low in caffeine, yet richly flavored--healthy coffee to drink with healthy yogurt.

Flavored yogurts are $4.50; Virgin (plain) yogurt is $4; toppings are $1 to $2, depending upon the number of layers desired.  Tutto Tutti is located at 6803 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90038. Tel: (323) 939-9424. Open daily from 7 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

Lunch at the Samosa House

Whenever I’m in West Los Angeles, I try to get to the Samosa House for lunch.  The food set out each day is irresistible. It’s always different, always interesting. And all of it is vegetarian.

In a corner at the back of this large and well-stocked Indian market (when I first went there, it was called the Bharat Bazaar) is a hot foods counter and a case of sweets and snacks.  People come in for food to go or to eat at tables scattered through the market and outside.

A combination plate is just $6.99 and includes a choice of any three main dishes, rice, raita and freshly made chapatis. The other day, I couldn’t stop at three dishes because there were so many tempting things to try, like a vegetable combination (peas, carrots, tomatoes and potatoes) mixed with paneer (Indian cheese), cashews and here and there a raisin for a surprising burst of sweetness.

What looked like a meaty Chinese stir-fry with bell peppers, ginger and onion simulated meat with soy nuggets. Chinese food is immensely popular in India, so it wasn't unusual to find it at the Samosa House.

A crunchy slice of lotus root embedded with seasonings was delicious, and I fcouldn't pass up spicy lobhia (black eyed peas), okra cooked with onions, potato, tomatoes and ginger and  soft, yellow cake-like dhokla, all of this accompanied by cilantro and tamarind chutneys and chapatis.

Drinks, which are extra, include sweet and salty lassis, mango lassi and chai. When you are finished, it’s time to shop, for anything from Indian tea, basmati rice, garam masala and fresh curry leaves to recipe books, incense  and beguiling figures of Indian gods to watch over you as you cook.

The Samosa House is located at 11510 W. Washington Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90066. Tel: (310) 398-6766. Open daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Surati Farsan's Fig Sweets

My fig tree is sprouting its first touch of green, but I’ve been eating figs all year—dried fig sweets from Surati Farsan Mart in Artesia’s Little India.

This shop specializes in Gujarati sweets and snacks. Among them is kaju anjir barfi, a delicious cashew and fig confection that would be at home in a health foods store. It satisfies that compelling urge for candy with natural goodness instead of a sugar high.

The shop has other fig sweets too, among them sugar-free dry fruit barfi made with pistachios and raisins as well as cashews and figs.

Apart from these, the counter is loaded with intensely sugary traditional Indian sweets, some of them in fanciful shapes and colors; salty snacks, and wonderful cardamom-flavored plain cookies.

Surati Farsan Mart serves meals and drinks too. Daily specials, all vegetarian, include vegetable curries, chole puri (spiced garbanzo beans with a puffy whole wheat bread), samosas, pav vada (potato patties and garlic chutney in a bun), vegetable sandwiches with cilantro chutney and south Indian snacks such as idlis and dosas.

The shop provides tables for customers who want to eat there. It’s usually crowded on weekends, because that is prime shopping time for the Indian community. I usually drop in loaded with sacks of groceries and retaining just enough carrying power for a box of fig sweets, and perhaps some of those cardamom cookies too.

Kaju Anjir Barfi (cashew and fig sweet) is $7 a pound; sugar-free dry fruit barfi is $9 a pound at Surati Farsan Mart, 11814  E. 186th  Street, Artesia, CA 90701. Tel: (562) 860- 2310.  Open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.

A San Diego branch is located at 9494 Black Mountain Road, San Diego CA 92126. Tel: (858) 549-7280.

A Place to Sing for Your Supper

It’s hard to figure out just where I am. Is it a village in France or a karaoke bar? Actually it’s both, because I am in La Defence, a new Euro-Asian restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard in Koreatown.

The dining room is an imaginary village plaza. The large room is lined with fake buildings and windows behind which are the karaoke rooms. Fortunately, the twain don’t meet. No off-key singing assaults your ears as you eat.

Instead, you can gaze through the front windows at dramatic splashing fountains.  La Defence hides at the back of a large business complex built around a spacious courtyard. The restaurant caters to a business-entertainment crowd, and so the karaoke rooms double as conference rooms. .

The chef is Los Angeles-born Yuji Iwasa who has cooked at such restaurants as Koi and L’Orangerie.

Iwasa likes to create personalized tasting dinners, bringing together flavors that sometimes startle, as in an espresso-chocolate sauce for lamb chops. I thought the combination worked, but it bothered some of my friends.

We were eating our way through a 10-dish menu that gave us a chance to taste both Kobe beef from Japan (wrapped around jumbo asparagus) and American raised Kobe beef (a flat iron steak with jalapeno beurre fondu). I can’t say that one was better than the other, because they were prepared in such different ways.

Seafood dishes were very good, among them ahi tuna tartare “yu-ke” style, meaning seasoned like Korean raw beef  with such things as  soy sauce, sesame oil, green onions and pine nuts.

There were interesting tournedos fashioned from sea scallops and beef, delicious miso-bronzed black cod, and crab cakes modeled on Japanese croquettes, soft and creamy inside, crisp with panko outside and sauced with a grapefruit emulsion.

  The one dish that needed rethinking was seared foie gras “pina colada.” The foie gras was wonderful, silky and light. But artificial coconut flavoring overpowered the scoop of sherbet alongside.

After all this, it was hard to appreciate dessert, a busy platter of chocolate bread pudding with white chocolate-orange sauce, chocolate sorbet, raspberries and little dollops of whipped cream.

I’d like to go back to try the daily “plats du jour,” which include coq au vin with ginger-red wine sauce on Monday, steamed mussels in coconut curry broth on Tuesday, and grilled kurobuta pork chops with gorgonzola miso apple sauce on Thursday. Miso risotto sounds interesting, and I can't imagine what toasted Caesar salad would be.

La Defence is new and still getting settled, but worth a visit just to experience the unusual setting—to me, it felt like being on vacation somewhere—as well as Iwasa’s innovative food.   

La Defence Restaurant and Karaoke, 3701 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90010. Tel: (213) 384-9500.

As of May, 2008, the above review is history. The promising menu and chef are gone and the food at La Defence is no longer recommendable, according to my informant.

Welcome to the Warung Cafe

Warung is the Indonesian word for a small shop or food stall. I’ve eaten at such stalls in Bali and Java--simple places, open air, often a bit rickety, nothing like the Warung Café in downtown Los Angeles.

Dark, with a spare Japanese look, bamboo pole dividers inside and leafy bamboo outside, Warung Café is a smart new addition to the blossoming restaurant scene in downtown Los Angeles.

What it doesn’t have is Indonesian food. The name Warung was inherited from a previous place so inconspicuous that I never saw it, even though I worked nearby.

What it does have is small plates of Asian fusion food, wine, sake and soju drinks, including an espresso martini so powerfully flavored that the restaurant is likely to be mobbed by java addicts. It’s new, not on the printed menu yet.

The mojito, which is on the menu, isn’t bad either. It’s made with soju, a lemon-flavored  aloe vera drink from Korea, and fresh mint.

Warung’s food borrows from Thai, Indian, Japanese and Chinese cuisines. There’s a wonderful plate of crispy tofu bites, made with tofu imported from Japan.  Airy and dry rather than soft and moist, these addictive little nibbles are embedded with shichimi (a Japanese spice blend) and sesame seeds. They come with peanut sauce for dipping and sweet and sour cucumbers.

A pretty salad combines shredded baked tofu, green and orange papaya, red  bell pepper and cucumber with a spicy lime dressing.

Sometimes fusion food seems like a weak relative of the cuisines from which it borrows. Not so Warung’s Indian chicken salad.  It’s a fresh concept, hardly Indian at all, although it includes a hint of Madras curry powder and basmati rice along with greens, vegetables, crisp wonton pieces and a sesame dressing.

Warung could have resorted to the usual miso-glazed black cod  but opted instead for cod with curry sauce and Chinese five spice on a bed of coconut basmati rice. Tuna tartare with wasabi mayonnaise and avocado is delicious. And there’s a good tuna tataki salad.

Even premium meat comes in small plates. Warung’s grilled filet mignon is as good as it gets, a tender, thick cut of steak with a green apple teriyaki sauce. Instead of mashed potatoes, it is paired with fluffy mashed taro root, rich with cream and butter. 

Baby lamb chops are notable too. The three tiny chops are marinated with an Asian pesto (ginger, basil, mint, jalapeno). served with baby arugula and drizzled with yogurt-cumin sauce.

Can’t decide what to order? Three set combinations make it easy. But individual dishes are so reasonably priced, from $3 (baby vegetable crudités)  to $10 (the steak), that creating your own combination is affordable.

Then you’ll want to have dessert, perhaps a wonton-wrapped banana eggroll with vanilla ice cream and caramel walnuts or a luscious crème brulee that incorporates coconut strands so that it can pass as Asian fusion food.

Warung Café, 118 West 4th Street (between Spring and Main Streets), Los Angeles, CA 90013. Tel: (213)  626-0662. Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Dinner 5 to 10 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, 5 p.m. to midnight Thursday through Saturday. Closed Sunday.

All the Meat You Can Barbecue

I think of all-you-can-eat restaurants as places where the food is mediocre enough not to cost very much.

This is certainly not the case with Choi Family Restaurant  in Koreatown, where you can barbecue unlimited amounts of meat  for just $14.99  a person.

The quality of the meat is good, better than at some pricier Korean barbecue restaurants in Los Angeles.  The downside is, you may have to wait a long time for a table at peak hours. Those already seated ignore the impatient queue as they leisurely demolish platter after platter of rosy, appetizing meats.

The choices are brisket, pork belly, beef ribs, tripe and beef tongue. The meats are not marinated. If you think the natural flavor needs embellishing, you can dip them after grilling in a mixture of sesame oil, salt and pepper or a tangy combination of soy sauce, vinegar and a jalapeno slice.

Another option is to wrap the cooked meats in soft squares of rice paper along with lettuce and such condiments as red pepper paste, seasoned bean paste, sliced garlic and jalapenos.

The six of us who gathered there one Sunday finished off four and a half platters piled high with meat. We grilled thin slices of beef tongue, pork slices as thin as bacon but not cured, beef rib meat, and a cut that was new to me, chadol bagi.

Chadol means quartz, a Korean friend explained, and bagi means inserted, a picturesque way of describing beef with white fat, cut from the middle of a beef brisket.  Sliced very thin along with the fat, chadol bagi cooks up crisp like bacon and is just as addictive.

We set our cooked meats on a bowl of salad greens--the restaurant didn’t provide  rice--and snacked on side dishes such as marinated broccoli with hot dog slices (better than it sounds), kimchi with oysters, glossy seaweed and a soft egg custard served in a stone bowl.

Korean sweet potato sticks, crisp like apple, were delicious to eat raw, even better grilled.

Bubbling away on top of the grill was a pot of doenjang jjigae, a fermented bean paste stew that included crab, mussels, clams, squid, zucchini and tofu along with onion and garlic. Rich and filling, the stew was replenished as needed.

The last course, included in the price of the dinner, was the cold noodle soup naengmyeon. Strips of cucumber and daikon floated in the broth, along with chewy fine potato starch noodles. We perked up the flavor by stirring in mustard and vinegar.

The only dessert was chewing gum. But after so much food, even that was more than I could handle.

Choi Family Restaurant, Korean B.B.Q., 3916 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90010. Tel: (213) 382-8988. (Except for “Korean B.B.Q.,” the  name is only in Korean.) The $14.99 barbecue price requires two or more orders.

Elite Restaurant: Dim Sum in Monterey Park

It took half an hour to get a table at Elite Restaurant, the new Chinese place in Monterey Park, and that was for lunch on a weekday.

Does this mean the food is great? Not necessarily. Elite replaces the short-lived but well-publicized New Concept, so Chinese food groupies are flocking there to check it out.

The word from those who really know food, though, is that the cooking is a bit rough-edged. Some dishes are good, some not what they should be. That certainly was the case with the dim sum my chef friend and I ordered for lunch.

We liked several things, criticized a couple more, and left one uneaten. The reject, sweet oatmeal bun, looked nice enough, but the sweet black sesame mixture inside had a weird cheesy flavor, as if it had gone off.

We gasped when fried shrimp balls coated with toasty sliced almonds arrived, because they were so spectacular. Large, dense and somewhat dry, they desperately needed a dipping sauce, something sweet and acidic. Then they would have been fine.

Baked scallops and turnip cake rated another gasp. These beautiful, golden, shell-shaped pastries were as flaky as could be, although a tad greasy. Inside were strands of daikon (often called turnip) and bits of scallop.

The open-faced steamed dumplings shui mai are basic to dim sum restaurants, and a good indication of the skills of the kitchen.  Elite’s shui mai are fine, if rather solidly packed.  Tiny orange roe sprinkled on top is a newish concept that makes the dumplings look pretty, but isn’t really necessary. In addition to minced pork, mine had a scallop on top and a whole shrimp inside. A nice presentation.

My chef friend, who dotes on chicken feet, says that Elite cooks them perfectly, although the sauce was not as flavorful as he would have liked. We both liked home style pancake, a sticky crepe embedded with sliced green onions, bits of Chinese sausage and dried shrimp. Lots of good, savory flavor.

Translucent white chiu chow dumplings put up a deceptively plain front. “There’s a whole little stir fry going on in there,” observed my friend, as we bit into the delicious mixture of pork, shrimp, green onions, carrot, daikon, peanuts and cilantro. 

For dessert, we chose Elite cookies, which turned out to be chewy Cantonese pork cookies—fine, if you’re not worried about cholesterol. Otherwise beware.

There are no rolling dim sum carts at Elite, although waitresses appear occasionally, carrying trays of the same things you can order by placing checks on the paper menu supplied to each table.

The noise level is high. Waiters replace plates as needed, and there is plenty of hot jasmine tea in attractive bamboo-patterned pots.

Elite Restaurant, 700 S. Atlantic Blvd., Monterey Park, CA  91754. Tel: (626) 282-9998. Open Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 5 to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 5 to 10 p.m. 

The Great Wall of Soju

The new Japanese restaurant Zu Robata in West Los Angeles plays up the Korean liquor soju in a big way.  By big, I mean the huge, dramatically lighted wall that holds 40 jumbo glass jars of soju. This is not mere decoration. Each jar contains soju undergoing maceration with a flavor component such as fresh fruit, vanilla bean or green tea. When the flavor is extracted, the soju is drained off, transferred to a glass receptacle and placed on the bar, ready to serve.

The cocktail list includes such pretty drinks as lemon drop (pineapple-infused soju, fresh lemon juice and simple syrup in a salt-crusted glass), pom tea (pomegranate soju) and a blueberry mojito in which the soju replaces rum.

Flavored soju is far from a trendy bar fad. It’s a traditional drink in Korea, often made at home.  My Korean friend’s mother infused soju with fruits from her garden, including plums, jujubes, Concord grapes and a native fruit called aengdu, which is similar to a cherry, but small as a cranberry.

Drinking straight soju is a guy thing, from what I’ve seen. When I was in Seoul, I stopped by a street stall to eat tempting noodles and vegetable pancakes. The men around me were enthusiastically drinking clear liquid from little tumblers. Water, I thought, but no, it was fiery soju. One customer handed me a slice of kim bap (Korean style sushi) and gallantly offered a taste of his soju. If it had been as deliciously fruit-flavored as the soju cocktails at Zu Robata, I might have accepted.

Zu Robata, 12217 Wilshire Blvd.,  Los Angeles. CA. 90025. Tel: (310) 571-1920

Dangling Feet Noodles

The noodle soup in front of me looks innocent enough, but I hear otherwise from my Thai friend across the table. “It’s the Thai noodle equivalent of crack,” he warns. “The first time you have it, you get a real rush. It’s never as good as the first time, but it’s always so great.”

Thais crowd into Ord Noodle in Hollywood to get this rush. And if they can’t go in person, they beg friends to bring them an order.

The soup is No.1 on the menu, as is fitting. It’s the restaurant’s signature dish, and Ord Noodle is named for it. But you have to read Thai to know that the real name is not Ord Noodle but Auut (as in auto) Kwayteow Hoi Ka.

The famous noodle dish is kwayteow hoi ka Phitsanulok, which means dangling feet rice noodles in the style of Phitsanulok province in northern Thailand. That may not sound appetizing, but check the walls. You’ll see photos of people at the original Ord in a village near Phitsanulok, bare feet dangling below the counter. Here, customers sit on normal chairs, their feet firmly on the floor.

Most of them are eating the famous soup, which is based on rice noodles, called kwayteow in Thai. These are the backdrop for more things than any ordinary soup bowl could ever hold, such as fish cake slices, a pale fish ball, tiny clumps of ground pork, pink-edged slices of Chinese barbecued pork, thin slices of pork liver, tender dried shrimp, fried garlic, crushed peanuts, bits of green bean, tiny flakes of hot red chile, bean sprouts, green onion and cilantro. All this in a delicious spicy, sweet and sour broth. The sour is vinegar, not lime juice, and the flavor is subtle compared to heady tom yam soups.

Part of the rush comes from the exertion of sorting out so many flavors. The rest comes from sheer enjoyment. Even if you ask for “mild” the noodles are very spicy, because Ord Noodle doesn’t know the meaning of mild.

You can choose between wide or thin rice noodles and have them dry or with broth, which is the better choice, because the broth is so enchanting.

After calming down from the rush, you may want to try another dish or two, which is feasible because they are so cheap--only $5 for a large bowl of noodles, $3 for a small portion, and nothing on the menu over $6.50

A light, fresh dish to balance kwayteow hoi ka is No.5, kwayteow lukchin doodoo tom yam, which means rice noodles with fish balls in aromatic soup. This one is composed of fish balls, sliced fish cake, crushed peanuts, a lot of fried garlic and a dash of red chile flakes. A lettuce leaf in the bowl looks pretty, but its real purpose is to cut the richness of the ingredients.

Good as it is, nothing can rival dangling feet noodles, which have made Ord Noodle the hottest restaurant in Thai Town right now.

Ord Noodle, 5401 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA. Tel: (323) 468-9302. Open daily from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Cash only.