TableConversation.com

A Food Crawl on Beverly Blvd.

Far fields are so tempting that I've neglected to explore my own neighborhood, although it includes some of the city's top restaurants. Even worse, they're so close to home that I can walk to them.

And so I did. On Sunday, I joined the Food GPS Beverly Boulevard Walking Tour organized by Josh Lurie, whose site is an excellent place to keep up with what's happening in the food world. (He's standing at the left in the photo above).

Josh had picked out four restaurants and asked each to present one dish. These added up to a walking menu that was anything but pedestrian.

The first stop was  Eva, and the dish was chef/owner Mark Gold's signature fried chicken. (He's at the right in the photo, wearing a brown apron.)

No way does Gold toss chicken into a deep-fryer and let it go at that.

He soaks the chicken pieces for 24 hours in a solution of buttermilk and Tabasco, then coats them with seasoned flour and lets them stand for another 24 hours in a walk-in with fans.

This draws out the moisture so that when the chicken is fried, the batter becomes crisp and the meat remains moist, and not a bit greasy.

Gold gave the tour group an extra, what just might be the best creamed corn in Los Angeles.

Like the chicken, it's made with lots of care. The corn is an extra supersweet variety that you'll never find in a supermarket. 

The kernels are cooked in a stock made with the cobs, then combined with bechamel sauce infused with bay leaf and tarragon. It's like corn candy--irresistible. 

Eva Restaurant, 7458 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036. Tel: (323) 634-0700. Go Tuesday nights when you can have all the fried chicken and keg beer you want for $25.

Lightning does strike twice. In the same block as Eva is Neal Fraser's BLD, and Neal was on hand to greet the foodies, bloggers, cookbook authors and others who were on the GPS tour.

The dish here was steamed Carlsbad mussels in a spicy fresh tomato broth with white wine. The slice of grilled bread at the edge of the bowl was perfect for soaking up the juices, which were so good, it would have been sinful to leave any behind.

BLD Restaurant, 7450 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036. Tel: (323) 930-9744. The steamed mussels are $13.

How do you top such excellent dishes? That's simple--with an ice cream sandwich at Milk, especially if it's filled with espresso-toffee ice cream.

Made with the restaurant's own drip coffee, the ice cream is packed with crunchy bits of toffee and sandwiched between pale, tender French macarons.

It was a good thing that Milk was so crowded with the tour group that I could hardly get to the counter.

The cookies, ice cream and other sweets that I glimpsed made me want them all, despite the millions of calories that would have been the penalty. 

The ice cream bars and cones that others were eating looked as good as the sandwich. It's a bad thing that I live so close that I can walk to Milk in less than 20 minutes.

Milk, 7290 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036. Tel: (323) 939-6455. Ice cream sandwiches are $4.50.

Perhaps Josh deliberately placed The Golden State at the end of the tour. This meant we had to walk several blocks to Fairfax Avenue, and we needed the exercise to work off Milk's rich treats. 

Here we had radlers, tall golden drinks of lager beer combined with mint-infused lemonade. This was a light and sensible end to an afternoon of eating, only some didn't want to stop.

They continued right on to Golden State's famous plump, juicy hamburgers, accompanied by the most tempting French fries you could imagine.

Not for me, I set off on a vigorous walk home, the most sensible ending of all. 

The Golden State, 426 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90036. Tel: (323) 782-8331. Burgers (beef, turkey or veggie) are $10.

 

  

 

How Cheap Can a Guy Get?

A car pulled into a parking spot on Beverly Boulevard in a stretch with some of L.A.'s trendiest restaurants. 

The driver got out with a couple of women in tow. While they headed up the street, he stayed behind to deal with the parking meter.

On Sunday, meters on Beverly operate until 8 p.m. It was 7:30, and so the driver had to pay for half an hour. Instead of putting in a few coins, he tied a light summer shirt over the meter so that it would appear to be broken.

No traffic officer would be fooled by such a well-dressed meter. Did the cheapskate driver get a ticket? I don't know. But it's not hard to guess what kind of a tip he left wherever that group ate.

A Disaster Before Dinner

The perfect time for a refrigerator to quit working is when you're expecting dinner guests three nights in a row.

On Night 1, the problem wasn't apparent until a carton of chocolate ice cream (for the kids in the group) emerged from the freezer as a super soft serve. 

On Day 2, the cause was determined to be dust (and cat hair) clogging the coils. The ancient vacuum cleaner on hand had no hose or suction tool. This meant I had to get a new one immediately to save that night's main dish. I had made a rare Thai curry in advance and put in the refrigerator to mellow. Rather than mellowing, it was slowly heating up.

An engineer guest pulled out the fridge and vacuumed fore and aft with the new tool. But this didn't help. Dinner that night relied on side dishes that didn't require refrigeration. The wine that had been chilling was off-warm. Cookies replaced the liquid ice cream.

On Day 3, a refrigerator repairman said the 10-year-old fridge wasn't worth saving. Get a new one, he advised.

But the stores I called had no models that would fit the space. They were too tall. The cupboard above would have to be cut away, and there wasn't time for that.

Instead, I  rushed to the market for bags of ice to stuff into the freezer and fridge. These couldn't stop the meltdown. But one last despairing call did. 

Richard, a can-do appliance man, dashed into the kitchen, cheerily assuring me that the refrigerator would be fine. And he was right.

The problem was a dead starter relay, a tiny box of a thing so hot that it almost burned my fingers. The freezer would be back in order that night, he said, the refrigerator by the next morning.

Now all I had to do was clean up a horrific mess and dash to the store for more food.

Night 3's dinner featured newly purchased chicken that I marinated and placed on an ice bag until it went into the oven. 

Meanwhile, chicken that had been thawing in the freezer bobbed in a furiously boiling pot. Richard had said that it was okay to cook thawed meet and refreeze it, and I trusted him. But I tossed out bag after bag of beef, shrimp, sausages and other oldies.

Now I am loaded with frozen cooked chicken. And broth. This means an endless parade of creamed chicken, chicken rice soup, pasta with chicken, curries, enchiladas, arroz con pollo--anything that disguises re-heated meat.

The kick-off dish was great, a Thai pasta salad based on the northern ground meat dish larb.

Combining sweet, sour and spicy larb seasonings with spaghetti was an inspired idea. I can't claim it though. The recipe came from a book that I had bought in Bangkok, "At the Table of Jim Thompson" (Archipelago Press).

Instead of cooking raw meat I put in the frozen chicken, tweaked a couple of things and left off the fried chiles suggested as a garnish. 

I can't say the fridge disaster was a good thing, but at least it had one decent result.

SPAGHETTI WITH SPICY CHICKEN SALAD
(Spaghetti Larb Gai)
Adapted from "At the Table of Jim Thompson")

3 1/2 ounces spaghetti
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup finely chopped cooked chicken
1/2 cup chicken stock
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon ground roasted rice
2 1/4 teaspoons sugar
Hot chili powder to taste
1/3 cup thinly sliced shallots
2 green onions, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped
2 tablespoons mint leaves, chopped

Cook the spaghetti in boiling salted water until al dente, following the manufacturer's instructions. Drain and set aside.

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the chicken and stir until heated through, about 1 minute. Add the chicken stock and cook until reduced by half. Add the lime juice, fish sauce, ground roasted rice, sugar and chili powder. Mix well.

Add the shallots, green onions and cilantro and mix. Add the cooked spaghetti and toss to combine thoroughly. Turn out onto serving plates and garnish with the mint leaves. Serve warm.

Makes 2 servings.

 

Hack Your Way to a Coconutini

Ever tried to open a young coconut? Having a machete would help, but I managed with a heavy Chinese cleaver reinforced with a hammer.

All this was to extract the tender meat for a recipe. But the bonus was delicious fresh juice, a clear liquid that is naturally sweet and delightful to drink. Some call it coconut water, but juice sounds more drinkable. Coconut milk is different. It's squeezed from the meat.

I've ordered young coconut juice at an ayurvedic spa in India, at restaurants in Thailand, and I saw a pile of fresh-cut coconuts on a street in Calcutta, ready to be hacked open for thirsty passersby. The Mercado Miguel Hidalgo in downtown Tijuana has them too. 

No need to wander so far, though. I can buy young coconuts close to home. The Bangkok Market on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles brings them fresh from Thailand in a cooler.

You can see one at the right. The heavy green outer shell has been removed. Your job is to shave off the straw-colored outer layer to reveal the top of the coconut, then hack around it and pry it open.

Really, it's easy. But after your first try you may need something stronger than straight juice. I know I did. And that's how I developed this Young Coconutini.

YOUNG COCONUTINI

2 ounces gin
1/2 teaspoon fresh lime juice
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
4 ounces young coconut juice (1/2 cup)
1 lime slice for garnish

Combine the gin, lime juice, vanilla and coconut water in a cocktail glass. Add ice. Place a lime slice on the rim.

Makes 1 serving.

Note: The average young coconut contains 1 1/2 cups juice, enough for three coconutinis. The juice will keep refrigerated for a couple of days.

Paddy Rice Offers Pho and More

Paddy Rice, which opened in June on Melrose Avenue, could be just another neighborhood pho place. But step inside, and you will see that it is not.
 
The look is sleek, minimalist and neutral except for a row of handsome chandeliers and, high on one wall, tall, spare compositions of flowers and branches. That same wall is lined with TV screens above desklike tables that could be work spaces, each with two chairs.
 
The TVs are there to add color, but they make Paddy Rice the perfect place to eat when some major sports event is on. You wouldn't miss a play if you had to visit the restroom. A strategically placed screen is in there too. 

Paddy Rice is the work of architect and interior designer Kevin Kang. Kang has designed other restaurants and retail spaces but wanted a place of his own. The chef is Bernardo Ruiz, who once worked at Nobu Malibu.
 
The menu is small and focused, just 15 dishes, not counting drinks. But it may expand, because other dishes are being tested. 

The four phos are traditional, the recipes acquired from a Vietnamese chef.  There are five appetizers, two versions of fried rice and four cold rice noodle dishes, including one that you'll order over and over during hot weather. 

It's No. 12, bun paddy shrimp, a bowlful of  good things topped off with Asian basil, mint and cilantro sprigs and a cluster of crisp fried rice noodles. It's Vietnamese, but not completely. The food at Paddy Rice shows Japanese influences as well as Mexican, French and Korean.
 
For example, if you order tap water, you get two chilled bottles (in the photo above), one containing the water, the other Korean barley tea.
 
But back to bun paddy shrimp. The rice noodles sit on a bed of lettuce. And as you poke around, you find not just the grilled shrimp, marinated beef and egg rolls promised on the menu, but fried tofu and a collection of vegetables:  cucumber and carrot strands, bits of shiitake mushroom, rehydrated dried squash, long beans, eggplant strips, canola plant and pickled onion and red bell pepper.
 
If they seem super fresh, it's because Paddy Rice has vegetables delivered daily. Perhaps those in the salad change according to what is available.
 
The sauce on the side is a departure from the usual sticky sweet Vietnamese side sauce. It's a lightly sweetened blend of soy sauce, fish sauce, cilantro and mint.
 
No. 12 is the most elaborate of the cold bun dishes--bun is the Vietnamese  word for rice vermicelli. The others include fewer toppings and one is vegetarian, with tofu-stuffed egg rolls.
 
The idea behind the restaurant is to offer good food in a great environment at affordable prices. Bun paddy shrimp is $7.75, topped only by an "ulti meat" pho at $8.
 
Paddy Rice,  6909 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90036. Tel: (323) 634-7423.

Mexico's Star Chef Cooks Dinner

It has been six years since Mexico's superstar chef, Patricia Quintana, came to Los Angeles.

That made the dinner she cooked at Rivera restaurant last week the hottest ticket in town. Very few were able to get in, because the dinner was limited to the capacity of Rivera's intimate Sangre room.

Quintana came not just to cook but to appear the next day at "East L.A. Meets Napa," an annual festival of Latino food and wine staged by AltaMed to raise funds for health care and other services it provides to people in need. The dinner was private, arranged by AltaMed for sponsors, who paid a hefty sum to attend.

Author of some 15 books on Mexico's cuisines, Quintana serves as the country's culinary ambassador. She lives in Mexico City, where she runs the restaurant Izote.

For this trip, she packed along ingredients not available in Los Angeles and tamales that she had made and frozen.

At the dinner, she paired sweet corn tamales with a creamy salsa verde and slipped huitlacoche-stuffed tamales under portions of steamed fish.

The sprinkle of ground dried chiles on the little cup of cream on the plate was no ordinary chili powder. Quintana had painstakingly prepared three types of smoked chiles--meco (chipotle), mora (jalapeno) and morita (serrano)--for the job. That's her style, to put precision and thought into the smallest detail.

A culinary archeologist, she digs deep into Mexico's past, tracing indigenous foods and customs. She may add contemporary style to old dishes, but the flavor remains genuine.

Some guests were startled when they learned that they were eating ant eggs. This earthy dish hides under the name escamoles. Collaborating with Rivera chef John Rivera Sedlar (he's with her in the photo at top), she placed the creamy ant mixture in one corner of  the restaurant's handmade corn tortillas embedded with flowers.

The salsa that went with a stuffed mulato chile, served as the  first course, required a certain tang. For that she brought along dehydrated xoconostle, which is a sour cactus fruit. The chile had been marinated with piloncillo, sherry and olive oil, then stuffed with queso fresco and Oaxaca cheese.

Quintana turned Santa Barbara spot prawns into a dish from Yucatan, seasoning them with one of her own products, an achiote sauce that she may one day market in the United States.

On that plate were typical side dishes from Yucatan: black beans spread in a thin loop and pickled red onions. This is the one dish from the dinner that she serves at Izote.

Cebiche (ceviche) turned glamorous, spooned into a small glass and then, at the table, splashed with bright red tintura de granada (pomegranate juice).

The last course was as old as it was new. The soft vanilla pudding called natilla is one of Mexico's most traditional desserts. Quintana put it beside a slim glass of mezcal, sweetened with crema de mezcal. 

The thin slab of chocolate balanced on the top of the glass held a tiny chocolate truffle, and another sat on the plate--a contemporary look at three historic Mexican products, with a strip of banana leaf underneath to link them to their roots.   

Guests were greeted with glasses of Gloria Ferrer's non-vintage sparkling blanc de noir. The wines poured with the dinner were from Gustavo Thrace, Maritas Vineyard and Quintessa, which were among the Latino-owned and/or operated wineries taking part in "East L.A. Meets Napa."  

Restaurant Izote, Presidente Masarik 513 Local 3, Polanco CP, Mexico D.F. Tel: 52-80-16-71.

Rivera Restaurant, 1050 S. Flower St., Los Angeles, CA 90015-5100. Tel: (213) 749-1460.

Good Tastes at Mo-Chica

There wasn't an empty table in the Mercado La Paloma last week when Ricardo Zarate of Mo-Chica, the Peruvian restaurant that has been getting a lot of accolades, staged a tasting dinner.

The six courses started with a purple potato soup (right) traced with a swirl of tangy feta cheese dressing.

Zarate had fun with the layered potato dish causa (at top). He turned the potato mixture into a  fried croquette. Instead of layering the chicken filling, he piled it on top.

A deconstructed ceviche (right) combined Santa Barbara seabass and sea urchin with a couple of types of seaweed and Peruvian giant corn. Peru's aji amarillo (yellow chile) added a touch of spice.

Santa Barbara seabass (right)came on a bed of quinoa risotto with English peas, followed by tender shortribs with pureed corn and fried yuca.

Dinner ended with maracuya creme brulee, a cup of golden passion fruit custard with a crackly sugar crust. 

Mo-Chica holds six-course tasting dinners the last Thursday of each month with a different menu each time. The price  is $35.

Mo-Chica Peruvian restaurant, Mercado La Paloma, 3655 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027.  Tel:  (213) 747-2141.

Greg La Follette, Vineyard Artist

If you love outrageously good Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays, hang on until September. That's when winemaker Greg La Follette will release the first wines under his new label, La Follette.

Something of a legend in the wine business, La Follette is the sort of artisan winemaker who doesn't follow trends and doesn't tailor wines to get good reviews.

Here's the way he thinks, in his own words:

"Winemaking should be a partnership with the land. The land itself has dreams. It has a voice. If you sit quietly and you listen, really listen, then and only then does the land allow you to comingle your own dreams."

Calling himself "a translator of the soil," La Follette is giving up all consulting jobs in order to concentrate on the new label. And that's a big chunk of work. In the business for decades, he has made wine on five continents.

A Sonoma County resident, La Follette produced notable Pinot Nors for Flowers Vineyard & Winery and then founded Tandem Wines to produce small-lot Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs.

In 2009, Pete Kight, owner of Quivira Vineyards & Winery in Dry Creek Valley, bought Tandem and structured it so that La Follette would be its winemaker and public face.

Tandem then evolved into La Follette, with Pete and Terri Kight as proprietors and La Follette as winemaker and general manager.

At an inaugural presentation of the new wines at Hatfield's in Los Angeles last week, La Follette expressed glee that he is now freed from the business of running a company in order to do what he loves best, make wine.

The initial releases are three 2008 Chardonnays and four 2008 Pinot Noirs from appellations such as Russian River Valley, Sonoma Mountain, Sonoma Coast and Mendocino Ridges.

Prices start at $29.99, which seems low for small-lot wines made with such artistic intensity. The highest price is $49.99 for a Pinot Noir from Manchester Ridge Vineyard which, says La Follette, is "what God intended Pinot Noir to be."

La Follette Winery, 4900 W. Dry Creek Road, Healdsburg, CA 95448. Tel: (707) 395-3902.

French, with a Touch of Mexico

This is the way you would describe the cooking of Tijuana chef Martin San Roman, who reinterprets Mexican food through a French focus.

His restaurant, Rincon San Roman, stands on a peaceful hill at Real del Mar on the coast highway. The site overlooks the ocean, so distant from the hustle of downtown Tijuana that you could just as well be on the Riviera.

The hand-painted chargers on the tables are from Puebla. The restaurant logo in the center says "Rincon San Roman, Cuisine d'Auteur," which indicates that you will taste French-inspired food prepared with the chef's own creative touch.   

Classically trained, San Roman is a member of the Academie Culinaire de France. And he's extra busy at the moment, because he has just opened La Cocina Que Canta, a high end catering facility for weddings at Rancho La Puerta in Tecate.

He's also corporate chef for El Diego, a chain of Argentine grill restaurants in Monterrey and Mexico City that is opening new outlets in both cities.  

Originally from Mexico City, San Roman doesn't scorn Mexican food but likes to give it a French twist, and he employs Mexican meats, seafood, cheeses and produce liberally.

As one example, a sauce for New Zealand mussels (above) is based on a lobster reduction. But the corn fungus huitlacoche hides under the mussels, and the garnishes include pico de gallo and panela cheese.

A little column of tuna tartare shows off a crust of wine jelly and black pepper. The mixture includes Baja tuna, smoked apple, extra virgin olive oil and honey.  Underneath is a splash of pumpkin seed oil and on one side is a grilled tuna slice.

The crisp bread on the plate is decorated with slivered ancho chile, a rare appearance for chiles in San Roman's cuisine. 

A green peppercorn and guava sauce comes with a handsome medallion of beef tenderloin.

On the side, a few bits of crisp chicharron stand in a smear of the sauce. The beef is Mexican. The stalk of rosemary that sends its fragrance up from the plate came from San Roman's garden.

A fillet of local sole gets a topping of Baja smoked marlin and poached grape leaves (again from San Roman's garden). The chayote lasagne next to the sole isn't the usual layered Italian dish but a thin squash slice circled around cheese. A  smoked scallop sauce surrounds them. 

The red splashes on a salad plate are a reduction of the popular Mexican drink jamaica, with olive oil added. The lettuce comes from the Guadalupe Valley, the wine region near Ensenada.

The food is intriguing, but it is a dessert,  the Tijuana crepe cake, that has taken the town by storm. This light, glorious stack of crepes and fluffy white chocolate mousse dates from 1989. That's the year San Roman opened his first Tijuana restaurant, Tour de France (now closed) in the heart of town.

The cake has been widely copied, but San Roman says that government and tourism authorities will certify that he created it.

No wonder the copycats pounced. Who could resist a concoction so light and glorious, with its delicate layers, luscious mousse and white chocolate shavings?  And it's so pretty the way San Roman presented it the day I was there, surrounded by strawberries and a swirl of strawberry puree.

Anyone would certify that this is cuisine d'auteur at its sweetest.

Restaurant Rincon San Roman, Real del Mar, Kilometer 19.5, Tijuana-Ensenada toll road, Tijuana, BC, Mexico. Tel: (011-52) (664) 631-2241.

 

.

.