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Short Order--How "Good" Is It?

Short Order opened in the Farmers Market with lots of buzz, because it's a Nancy Silverton enterprise.

The placemat is the menu, and it's pretty impressive with its seven boxes that explain just how special the ingredients are--La Brea Bakery bread, grassfed beef from the Magruder Ranch in Mendocino County, SQIRL organic preserves and pickles, made in Los Angeles; TCHO chocolate, a San Francisco outfit that helps farmers become premium producers.  

That chocolate was pretty good, melted and laced through Nancy's Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie. 

And so were the Short Order Spuds (above), golden, crisp chunks heaped in a shiny pail. If you see them on someone else's table, you won't be able to resist ordering them too.

They come plain or with a sour cream and bacon dipping sauce or seasoned with house-made truffle salt.

But these are afterthoughts to the main show--burgers. How could you not want to try Nancy's Backyard Burger (at top), bursting with applewood bacon, Comte cheese, avocado, heirloom tomatoes, onion, lettuce and spicy mayo? With her name attached, it has to be extraordinary.

For a second choice, the server recommended Ida's Old School Burger, with beef, aged Cheddar, the SQIRL pickles, rosso bruno tomatoes, griddled onion, iceberg lettuce and "secret sauce."

I know I was eating impressive food, but the excitement was cerebral. Here was good meat masked by too many additions and bun bottoms so overwhelmed with moisture that they dissolved in my hands. No wonder the restaurant supplies each table with wads of paper napkins.

The place is cute--water comes in Mason jars, and a fresh thyme plant is on each table. And you can sit outside on the terrace. But if this reflects the way Americans eat, no wonder obesity is epidemic. Even great ingredients can get involved in food that you might hesitate to eat, if you have any inkling of what is good for you.

Short Order, 3rd and Fairfax corner of the Farmers Market, 6333 W. 3rd Street, Los Angeles CA 90036. Tel: (323) 761-7970.

The Latest from Jitlada

Jitlada's menu is so long--200 dishes plus other specials posted in the dining room--that you wonder how any kitchen can master so much. 

Perhaps it can't, because you'll see variations, depending upon who is cooking. Still, the food is good enough to keep the restaurant full day after day.

If it's hard to cook such a vast collection of dishes, it's even harder to decide what to eat.

Here are four picks from my last dinner there. 

No. 99, pork short ribs with garlic (at top), is really good, if the cook puts on enough crunchy browned bits of fried garlic. The meat, cut into bite-size pieces and deep-fried, would be good even without the garlic.

Think about ordering No. 145, spicy lamb noodle (above), instead of the usual pad Thai, rad na or pad see ew. You'll get wide noodles with lots of tender chunks of lamb and fresh basil.

Several meats are cooked with garlic and peppper (No. 52), but the kitchen sent out red snapper (above), although it wasn't listed. What really stood out was the bowl of morning glory vine in lemon sauce that came with the fish.

The restaurant can get mildly creative, as in combining two sticky rice desserts, Nos. 170 and 173, so that you could have both mangoes and coconut ice cream on the same plate with the rice.

But why stop there, and Jitlada didn't, adding palm seeds and golden, syrupy garbanzos. That's the sort of surprise that turns up, once the restaurant gets to know you. 

Jitlada Thai restaurant, 5233 1/2 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, Ca 90027. Tel: (323) 667-9809.

A Taiwanese Year of the Dragon

If you had to choose just one dish to celebrate the arrival of the Year of the Dragon, it would have to be "dragon shrimp." That's what the Chinese call lobster, a costly, auspicious food perfect for greeting the lunar new year January 23.

There's lobster all over the San Gabriel Valley, but the sweetest version, symbolizing a sweet future, would have to be the lobster salad (above) at Cafe Fusion in Arcadia.

Large, succulent slices of lobster are lined up on a mountain of apples, pears and mangoes and laced with a light, creamy dressing. Orange slices surround the plate. 

Cafe Fusion, which specializes in Taiwanese food, also suggests a plate of assorted cold foods (below) that conveys the idea of family members gathering to share the special dishes of the season. 

The cafe's cold plate is nothing like the perfunctory collection of barbecued pork, cold chicken, cuttlefish and so forth that most Chinese restaurants put out.

Instead, you will eat like the Taiwanese, snacking on Taiwanese "caviar," which is smoked mullet roe in rust-colored slices, paired with fresh garlic stem and fluted slices of daikon.

Smoked shark, a country style dish, comes with finely shredded ginger and a soy sauce dip. A sweet and spicy five-flavor dip accompanies boiled squid. Because bamboo shoots are a major crop in Taiwan, you will have fresh bamboo shoot chunks to dip in sweet mayonnaise.

But the most typical Chinese cold dish, says cafe owner Arthur Chen, is fresh water clams, simmered in a mixture of soy sauce, wine, lemon juice, garlic and chile.

In the past, new year foods only appeared for the holiday, but Cafe Fusion has them throughout the year, like glistening pork belly (above) that has been braised for hours with soy sauce and such spices as star anise, Sichuan peppercorns, fennel seeds, cassia bark and orange peel.

In Taiwanese homes, the pork would be set out on a table of foods honoring ancestors, then recooked for the family to eat later.

Chicken and fish are other new year essentials, and so you would have Taiwan's three-cup chicken (above), named for the amounts of soy sauce, sesame oil and wine with which the chicken is cooked. Fresh basil also goes into this dish.   

Fish represents prosperity. You can partake of that with a whole black cod steamed with Chinese tree seeds, which are tangy pickled berries with a large seed.

A hot pot of mutton soup (above) is seasonal, only eaten in winter in Taiwan. The aromatic broth is flavored with angelica and chrysanthemum leaves.

Dessert would be a cake of glutinous rice flour and brown sugar that is cut up and pan-fried to make chewy, crisp-edged slices. Chinese markets right now have stacks of the cakes, some plain, some containing red beans, others flavored with coconut.

The most important dinner is New Year's Eve, when family members come home to celebrate, but the festival continues for days after that. And Cafe Fusion has the dessert you would eat on the final day, a sweet clear soup (above) with egg shreds, osmanthus and tiny glutinous rice dumplings filled with sweetened sesame seeds. 

Cafe Fusion, 510 E. Live Oak Ave., Arcadia, CA 91006. Tel: (626) 447-6488.

A Place That's Worth the Wait

There's nothing new about Newport Seafood Restaurant in San Gabriel. Everybody's been there and everybody goes back, so the wait for tables is a swirling mob scene. But you don't mind, because you know you're about to eat some of the most interesting Chinese food in the San Gabriel Valley.

It's a given that you'll order lobster (at top). Laden with spicy sauce and green onions, it's so delicious you don't mind the splurge. Or you could have the lobster plain, or with black beans or salt and pepper.

Probably everyone will order fish with basil too, and bo luc lac (above), glossy wok-seared Vietnamese beef. That's what sets Newport apart from other Chinese restaurants, its Southeast Asian inflection and a menu in English and Vietnamese.

But the restaurant does well with such popular Cantonese dishes as shrimp with sweet glazed walnuts. And vegetables such as brilliant green peasprouts.

The menu is long but there are still more dishes on hand. The other night there were clams with tamarind (above)--spicy, like most of the dishes I had that night, including squid with Asian basil, bean sprouts and jalapeños (below).

You think of Newport first for lobster and probably not for wine, but the restaurant has some good ones--perhaps its the Vietnamese-French influence.

Waiting for a table, my friends shared a bottle of 2008 Robert Mondavi Napa Chardonnay. But the surprise was a bottle of Caymus Vineyards 2008 Special Selection Cabernet Sauvignon, which costs $100 and up, depending upon where you buy it, plus more on a wine list.

Far from out of its element, that wine mastered the spicy dishes like a warlord subduing a fractious horde.

Newport Seafood Chinese Restaurant, 518 W. Las Tunas Drive, San Gabriel, CA 91776. Tel: (626) 289-5998.

How to Make Korea's Bulgogi

To make Korean barbecued beef--bulgogi--you need good meat and a good marinade.

Choosing the beef is up to you, but here is a really good marinade from one of the top places in Koreatown, Park's Barbecue.

Chef Jenee Kim (right) gave out the recipe and cooked the dish at the first annual Hansik Holiday Festival, a Korean food and wine party last Friday at the Wilshire Hotel in Koreatown.

She showed a variation called bulgogi ssam in which she placed the meat on lettuce along with Korean bean paste to eat like a wrap.

You can do that, serving the meat on one plate, piling lettuce leaves on another plate and setting out a bowl of bean paste for diners to make up their own wraps. It's usual to provide a dish of raw garlic cloves too.

To round out the dinner, serve rice and pick up some banchan (side dishes) and kimchi from a Korean market. 

PARK'S BARBECUE BULGOGI

2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon chopped green onion
1 1/2 teaspoons minced garlic
1/1/2 teaspoons sesame seeds
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
250 grams (about 9 ounces) beef sirloin, thinly sliced

Mix the soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, water, green onion, garlic, sesame seeds and pepper in a small bowl.  Place the beef in a bowl, add the marinade and mix well. Let stand for 30 minutes.

Heat a wok or skillet over high heat. Add the meat and pan-fry 3 to 5 minutes. 

Makes 2 to 3 servings. 

Park's Barbecue, 955 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles CA 90006. Tel: (213) 380-1717.