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You'll Love These Crunchy Indian Fries

These are the crunchiest fries you could ever crunch on.

They're not potatoes, they're idlis, South Indian steamed cakes made from a rice and lentil batter (above). Sliced and deep-fried, they turn into an incredible snack that kids go crazy for, especially because they come sprinkled with tomatoes, onions and cilantro, almost like salsa.  

But they don't lose their Indian identity entirely. The traditional idli accompaniments come with them too. These are sambar, which is a thin lentil and vegetable soup for dipping or pouring over, and fresh coconut chutney, made extra creamy with ground cashews. 

The only place you can get the fries is Udupi Palace, a South Indian vegetarian restaurant in Artesia's Little India.  And you have to know the password, because they're not on the menu. Just say  "fried idlis," and you'll be rewarded with a sensational snack.

Udupi Palace has another innovation that you won't want to miss. It's a sort of South Indian quesadilla (above), with a golden brown dosa subbing for tortillas as the wrapper.

Inside are Jack and Cheddar cheeses, tomatoes, onions and jalapeños (above). Like idlis, dosas always come with sambar and coconut chutney so these are provided too. 

The name is Spicy Chilly Cheese Dosa, and it's in a long list of dosas on the menu (above). These large crisp crepes are as typical of South India as tacos and quesadillas are of Mexico. Maybe that's where the idea came from.

After this spicy food, you'll want something cooling, like rose lassi (above). Flavored with rose syrup, it's topped with ice cream sprinkled with pistachios. Sweet basil seeds (sabja) are mixed in, and the one in the photo includes translucent falooda noodles too.  

Also, be sure to ask for a milky Mysore coffee. One taste and you'll know why South India is as famous for its rich, deeply-flavored coffee as for its unique cuisine.  

Udupi Palace, 18635 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia, CA 90701. Tel: (562) 860-1950.

Montrésor, Elegance and Good Food

Montrésor is simply dazzling, what you see when you enter and what you get on the plate.

This is why, only a few weeks after opening, the wait to get in can take 1 1/2 hours on a Saturday night.  

In contrast to today's spare, minimalist, noisy restaurants, Montrésor is all about ornate furnishings, flowery fabrics and lush comfort that hasn't been fashionable in decades. Maybe not since the 1890s, the era of the French bordello mirror (above) that stands against one wall.  

Ann Booth Luly, the designer, calls the style "fairytale French." Luly, who did much of the work by hand, is partners in the restaurant with Lisa Long, actress and veteran restaurant owner.

The menu is overseen by executive chef Paul Shoemaker (above), who puts a lot on a plate. 

Seared foie gras, for example, comes with cocoa ginger, quince and orange sauces, powdered foie gras and crunchy bits of orange meringue (above).  

Asparagus (above) has a black truffle ragout underneath, a Port reduction, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese foam, morel mushrooms, miner's lettuce, and a sprinkle of black truffle and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. It's not ordinary asparagus either but fat stalks from Zuckerman Family Farms of Stockton. 

Crab cakes (above) come with the expected remoulade sauce but also with Meyer lemon gastrique, pepperberry and lemon sauces and a frisee salad stacked high on top.

Representing French tradition are classic onion soup and the charming gougères (above) that come with bread.  


The menu changes often, reflecting seasonal availability and inspiration. A recent addition was turbot with ramps, sweet garlic and black trumpet mushrooms (above). 

Black bass (above) was dolled up with porcini mushroom ragu, cherry tomatoes and heirloom Bloomsdale spinach.

Short ribs, which are served only medium rare, the menu says, were American Wagyu, with potato fondant and tomato confit (above). 

Desserts change regularly. The other night there were just three:

A soft, luscious creme brûlée with pistachio biscotti (above).

Milk and honey panna cotta (above) that contained berries and bits of honey comb. 

And profiteroles (above) piled high with vanilla ice cream, chocolate, toffee almond brittle and Chantilly cream. 

There's an ample wine list, and if you order by the glass, you get a refill in a carafe.

Montrésor means "my treasure," and it's a treasure for Valley residents and a destination restaurant for others. Located on Ventura Blvd. in Studio City, it's open currently for dinner and Sunday brunch but not yet for lunch. 

Montrésor, 11266 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, CA 91604.  Tel: (818) 760-7081. For more about the restaurant, its hours, menus and events, click here. 

Feasting in Private at Disneyland

Sure Disneyland is magic, but the greatest magic for me isn't the rides. It's a secret place behind a plain door. There's no line and no entry unless you're a member or invited by one (that's how I got in).

This is Club 33, a sumptuous retreat for high-flyers. The restaurant (at the top) is fantastic, with great food, wine pairings, beautifully set tables and service that takes care of anything you need, including charging your cell phone. 

Pampering starts as soon as you enter the secret door. You're led to a cooler with refreshing water flavored according to the season. Then up to a gorgeous lounge, Le Salon Nouveau (above), where the fun drinks menu includes a category of "lost drinks," which are cocktails from the past. 

I had the best rum drink ever there. It was Throws and Maskers (that's New Orleans Mardi Gras lingo), made from Demerara rum, passion fruit, lime, falernum and Spanish bitters (above). 

And then on to Le Grand Salon, decorated for Christmas when I was there, and a four-course lunch.

How could anyone resist a truffle crepe (above) with roasted salsify, fennel and Gruyère Mornay sauce? 

Or smoked Maple Leaf Farms duck breast (above) with a mousse of Saint-André cheese and huckleberry conserve? These were appetizers.

No need to resist, I had both and then moved on to cider-braised pork osso buco with ragú of bacon, roasted apple and celeriac (above).

Because it was near Christmas, the desserts included a slice of Valrhona chocolate bûche de Noël (Christmas log, above).

And I begged a taste of someone else's caramel mousse Napoleon with almond brittle and orange pomegranate caramel (above). 

What eclipsed everything was the restaurant's grand plateau selection of chilled seafood (above).

Wines are matched to each dish. To start, Scharffenberger Cellars' Brut Excellence, a sparkler from Mendocino County.

For the duck, a southern Rhone Rosé, Chêne Bleu 2016, which blends Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault, Mourvedre and Rolle.

With the pork came La Sirena's Pirate TreasuRed 2013, a blend of seven grapes from winemaker Heidi Barrett.

The sweet wine with dessert was Blandy's 15-year-old Malmsey Madeira.

And to end it all, a signature cappuccino.

And then outside to line up for the rides and wander about, logging more than six miles on foot to compensate, at least a little, for this over-the-top feast.  

How to Get Spaghettini's Top Recipes

Love mac and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs? 

Then you have to get "From Our Home to Yours," the brand new cookbook from Spaghettini restaurant in Seal Beach.

These dishes may sound ordinary, but in the hands of Spaghettini chef Victor Avila, they're anything but. Think light-textured pork meatballs combined with house-made pasta in a marinara sauce based on San Marzano tomatoes (above).  

Or macaroni in a Gorgonzola cheese sauce with broccoli (above). That box stuff you get at the supermarket is nothing like this rich blend of pasta with cream, chicken stock, both Gorgonzola and Parmesan cheeses and slightly crunchy steamed  broccoli. 

Sold? You can order the book from the restaurant's website. Better yet, go there, pick up a copy and taste the food first hand.

Spaghettini is a rarity in a trendy world where restaurants come and go in a flash. It's almost 30 years old, and executive chef Avila has been there for 27 years.

Behind this success story are co-owners Laurie Sisneros and Cary Hardwick, shown with Avila at the book's launch party.  Starting from nothing, they've built up a place known not just for food but for its Smooth Jazz Sunday Brunch, where you can hear top artists at a fraction of what you would pay at other venues.

There's a spacious new patio too, perfect for a sunny lunch (above). That's where the launch party took place, staged with Melissa's Produce, a cookbook sponsor that has collaborated with the restaurant as it developed. The other book partners are Hamilton Meats and Provisions and Wild Fish Seafood Co. Inc.

The book contains recipes for everything from creamed corn and artichoke dip (you'll want both for the holidays) to sophisticated contemporary dishes.

One of these is caramelized Scottish salmon with baby bok choy, jasmine rice and sweet potato strands (above).

Pommery shrimp, on the menu from the beginning, has a sauce of white wine, heavy cream, shallots and Pommery mustard (above). How could you not love this? 

For bruschetta (above), toasted baguette slices are accompanied by baby heirloom tomatoes dressed with olive oil, red wine and balsamic vinegars and sprinkled with basil.

The salads include a showy caprese (above). The heirloom tomatoes are drizzled with olive oil and a balsamic reduction and topped with either buffalo mozzarella or burrata.

The classic iceberg wedge salad has been updated with a dressing that incorporates premium blue cheese. That's applewood-smoked bacon on the side.


Still more dishes at the book launch were tuna tartare, a beet salad with goat cheese, roasted Brussels sprouts and peas and feta (above).

Could anything top these? Yes, white chocolate cheesecake with swirls of guava and blackberry sauces.

And to end, glasses of the house sparkling wine (above), perfect for offering a toast to "From Our Home to Yours."

Spaghettini Fine Dining and Entertainment, 3005 Old Ranch Parkway, Seal Beach, California 90740. Tel: (562) 596-2199 or (714) 960-6002.

Here's Where to Try Indo-Chinese Food

My favorite place for Chinese food right now is Little India in Artesia, not the San Gabriel Valley, Hong Kong or Taipei.  

The food isn't classic Chinese but Indo-Chinese, what people in India like to eat. I love Hakka noodles, vegetables Manchurian, chilli chicken, Szechuan fried rice and whatever else turns up on the lunch buffet at Wok N Tandoor. 

The buffet offers a tremendous variety of food for $12.95, not just Chinese, but Indian vegetarian and meats such as chicken tikka masala, tandoori chicken and goat curry.

Dishes change from time to time, but the selection is always big and includes soups such as hot and sour and sweet corn.

It's a novelty to accompany Chinese dishes with naan bread and vegetable biryani instead of the usual white rice. Even better, compose a series of plates, first Chinese, then Indian. Or try Chinese chill chicken and scallion chicken along with tandoori chicken for a cross-cultural experience. 

You could compose a fusion appetizer plate of corn chaat, khadi pakoras (in yellow sauce, above) and Chinese bhel, which is composed of crisp thin noodles in spicy sauce.

Papdi chat with garbanzo beans (the white dish in the photo) was in the lineup the other day, the sauce creamy, slightly sweet and cooling alongside the spicy dishes.

The food is promptly replaced as it disappears. Hakka noodles (Bombay style flat lo mein noodles, above) ran out because of customers like me, who scooped them up liberally, but the tray was quickly refilled. 

Vegetable balls in Manchurian sauce (above) were in demand too. 

The buffet ends with salad makings and a heavenly assortment of desserts, all the golden, syrup-soaked jalebis  you could ever want, carrot halwa, green dudhi halwa, which is made with bottle gourd; mango pudding and others, changing from day to day. 

Wok N Tandoor is very popular--every table was taken for lunch when I was last there, on a Sunday. Service is excellent. Water glasses are refilled constantly, and a waiter offered to bring naan when we didn't know it was included.  Plates were removed as soon as they were finished. And you can go back to the buffet as many times as you like. 

Names of the dishes are written on the glass sneeze guards, so it's easy to find out what they are.  

The restaurant is in a mall at the corner of Pioneer and Artesia Boulevards. Years ago, the same site was occupied by a Woodlands vegetarian restaurant. After that it had Parsi owners who occasionally put Parsi dishes on the buffet. 

Now it's a restaurant and bar. On weekends, get there early to avoid the crowds. Buffet days are Friday through Sunday, when Little India is crowded with shoppers. Tuesday through Thursday, the restaurant offers combo lunches instead. There's also a long a la carte menu of both Chinese and Indian dishes. 

Wok N Tandoor, 11833 Artesia Blvd. (corner Pioneer Blvd.), Artesia, CA 90701. Tel: (562) 424-4567. Lunch buffet Friday through Sunday, combo lunches Tuesday through Thursday. Closed Monday. 

Where to Get a Big Bowl of Moqueca

The Brazilian restaurant Moqueca is famous for one dish. It's called moqueca, like the restaurant.

What you get is a big clay pot filled with seafood in a tomato sauce brightly flavored with cilantro, coconut milk, limes, onion, garlic, olive oil and urucum.

You may never have heard of urucum, but if you've been to Yucatán, you've tasted it. It's achiote (annatto), a red seasoning also used in Filipino and other cuisines. If you like spicy, you tip in malagueta pepper sauce from a bowl on the side.

In a tasting of two moquecas, the winner was a combination of lobster tails and shrimp. Its sauce seemed more full flavored than a moqueca with seabass. Perhaps imagination, piqued by the costly ingredients ($74 for a large serving, $40 for the small size) was at work.

The handmade black pots get a lot of wear. Owner Gloria Sarcinelli (above) goes to Brazil every year to buy more. The pots, and the dish, are from her homeland, Espírito Santo state. That state is on the coast, and perhaps this is why the restaurant is located by Oxnard's Channel Island Harbor Marina.  

The menu is long, offering much more than moqueca. If I lived nearby, I would drop in regularly for a bowl of caldo verde (above), a thick green soup of collards and potato with smoky tastes of bacon and sausage.

I might add to that quibes (kibbeh), bulgur and beef meatballs from Brazil's Lebanese community (above). These come with a honey mustard dipping sauce. 

Drinks take up two pages of the menu. The obvious choice is a caipirinha, made with cachaça, a sugarcane spirit from Brazil (above). The cocktail comes in a glass provided by Leblon, the cachaça producer. On the side is house-made tapenade. 

Among the desserts is pavê de amendoim, a must if you're addicted to Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (above). It tastes so like them--a peanut and chocolate cream layered with cookies.

Moqueca recently opened a second location, in Thousand Oaks. The reason you might still want to head to the Oxnard original is the view. This is what you see while you eat there.

Moqueca Brazilian Cuisine, 3550 S. Harbor Blvd., Suite 201, Oxnard, CA 93035. Tel: (805) 204-0970.

Also at 1610 Thousand Oaks Blvd, Thousand Oaks, CA., CA 91360. Tel: (805) 230-3585.

Observing Ramadan at the Olive Tree

This sumptuous spread of food at the Olive Tree in Anaheim looks like a holiday extravaganza that takes days, even weeks, to prepare and happens just once a year.

Only it happens every night during Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month. Once the sun goes down, Olive Tree's iftar buffet opens, often to a sell-out crowd. What you see above are appetizers, salads and side dishes.  Meat, chicken and fish dishes fill six hot trays in another section. 

Up to 160 can attend, sitting at tables that line the sidewalk outside and under a tent (above) that is set up just for this observance because the restaurant is too small to accommodate so many.

The dishes vary slightly each day, because some customers come every night. Staples are  dates, which are always on hand at Ramadan dinners, and pita breads (above).

Fried zucchini with yogurt is at the bottom center of this display. Behind are hummus and baba ghanoush.

This is fattoush, a salad laced with crisp bits of fried pita bread.

Still more dishes were stuffed grape leaves, golden brown fried corn fritters, spicy chicken wings, cauliflower with eggs, falafel and labneh (drained yogurt) combined with walnuts.

There were meat pies, spinach buns, fried tomatoes with mozzarella and cheese rolls, so much food that it took two platters to hold even a small taste of everything. The soup of the day was lentil. 

This beautifully cooked rice was enriched with crunchy golden brown almonds. Rice with lentils was topped with glistening, dark brown fried onions. 

Fried tilapia and shrimp  (above) were placed on a bed of rice. There were also lamb shanks, an Olive Tree specialty; roast chicken and boiled whole potatoes stuffed with meat and onions. 

Observant Muslim women cover their heads, like these lined up at the buffet.  Some of them found a quiet corner for prayers during the meal.

Traditional Ramadan beverages include the apricot drink at the right. The dark drink is jallab, made from a syrup flavored with dates, grape molasses and rose water.

The dessert for this dinner was syrup-glazed fried pancakes with mild cheese inside (above).

Ramadan continues through the evening of July 17. If you want to attend one of the dinners at the Olive Tree, be sure to make reservations, because they are quickly sold out. The price for more food than you could humanly eat in one sitting is just $23.

Olive Tree Restaurant,  512 S Brookhurst Street #3, Anaheim, CA 92804. Tel: (714) 535-2878.

Here's the Burger of the Year

This isn't the best of all burgers, it's simply the only one I've eaten this year.

It's the prime burger at Hook Burger in Burbank. "Prime" sounds special, but this is the cheapest burger on the menu ($5.25). The contents are: lean beef, caramelized bourbon onions, lettuce, tomato and honey dijon mayo. No cheese--that's an extra.

I'm not against burgers. I don't eat them because I don't hang out in fast food places. But when a good friend has a birthday party in a burger joint, I'm there.

The prime burger is pretty light. You definitely need fries if you're making it a meal. And it has a strong char flavor that you may taste for a long time afterwards. 

One caution: If you don't know Burbank, you may have a hard time finding Hook Burger.  Even when I got to the correct mall, I couldn't spot it.  Some guys I asked for help didn't know where it was, but when they saw it, they came after me as I headed in the wrong direction.

Nice guys, and a nice party. And I got there in time for the birthday cake. 

Hook Burger Bistro, The Empire Center, 1731 N. Victory Place, Burbank, CA 91506. Tel: (818) 847.2100.

 

Tasting Wine and Food at The Bazaar

I had a sneaky reason for going to the Castilla-La Mancha wine tasting last week.

Spanish wines are appealing without extra help, but the tasting took place at The Bazaar by José Andrés in the SLS Hotel. And I knew the food would be exceptional.

Look at the plate at the top. That little green item isn't a mini green tomato, but a Japanese baby plum.  A savory hazelnut sauce balanced the burst of fruity sweetness, and a single hazelnut symbolized the concept. So cute.

And so was a tiny peeled red tomato on a bed of pesto (above), along with a little ball of burrata that splurted creamy goodness into your mouth. The dark brown dot is balsamic vinegar. 

The wine tasting spread through the restaurant, and so did the food. At one station, a carver sliced appetizingly browned flank steak to eat along with creamy rice cooked with mushrooms and idiazabal cheese.

A wine we tasted during a seminar that afternoon was called a "rice wine," meaning Spaniards would drink it with paella or other complex rice dishes such as the cheesy mushroom rice that came with the flank steak. 

This wine was the 2009 Rayuelo, a red made from Bobal, the third most widely planted grape in Spain. Bobal is mostly used for blending, but in this wine it's the only grape. Look for it if you want a fresh, elegant, organic wine that's a little spicy--and if you eat a lot of rice. The producer is Altolandón. 

Guacamole at Bazaar (above) has a special presentation. It's served in jicama sliced breathtakingly thin.

Could you match a wine to this? Possibly a seductive blend of Viognier, Chardonnay and Riesling that is flowery and fruity but dry. The producer is Bodegas Olcavina, a small, family-owned organic winery. The name on the label is 1564, and the vintage is 2012.

Still more appetizers (or should I call them tapas?) were bagel and lox cones topped with trout roe or American caviar, ruffly thin slices of serrano ham, chicken croquettes, Manchego cheese and goat cheese with marcona almonds.

Ottoman fritters composed of carrots and apricots were set on pistachio butter for a scrumptious mouthful. What looked like a hearty bun topped with cheese broke apart like air in the mouth. These astonishingly light bites were Bazaar's Philly cheesesteaks.

What to serve with such a variety of tastes? Lots of candidates, but an interesting choice would be the 2010 Finca Los Alijares Graciano, which is made from a black-skinned grape that is native to Spain.  Karen MacNeil, author of The Wine Bible, who led the seminar (above), pointed out its minerality and called it a rocky wine that has fruit. It also has a surprisingly reasonable price, about $15. 

Toward the end of the tasting, the kitchen sent out miniature frosted cupcakes, including a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting (how did that get into a Spanish event?). Wines that could have gone with these included Bodegas Verdúguez's Coeli sparkling rosé and sparkling white and its sweet Nebbia Moscatel, all from 2011. 

The tasting ranged from popular Spanish reds such as Tempranillo and Tempranillo blends to fun wines like the colorful pair at right. They're from Casa Gualda (Gualdo House), and they're both Moscatos. 

The cutest wine at the tasting was the 2010 Poker de Tempranillos from Encomienda de Cervera. Dressed up like a jaunty card shark with four aces on the label, it's a serious blend of four clones of the Tempranillo grape, each from a different area. 

Also unique was the 2008 El Linze Tinto Syrah Tinto Velasco. The 15% of Tinto Velasco blended with the Syrah came from 140-year-old vines.

"It tastes like Castilla first and Syrah second," MacNeil said, noting how "the flavor of a wine can bring you right back to a place."

Getting to Know Kosher Wines

I have always thought of kosher wines as syrupy sweet and unrelated to "real" wines.

I was wrong, of course. Totally wrong. This I learned as I toured the largest kosher winery in the United States, Herzog Wine Cellars in Oxnard (at top). I had no idea this major winery was so close to home--only an hour from Los Angeles. It opened in this location on July 5, 2005.

The winery is set up so you can do a self-guided tour, looking down from the second floor into the areas where wines are fermented, aged and bottled (above).

This is how I learned that kosher wines use the same grapes, stainless steel tanks, oak barrels and winemaking procedures as other wines.

What makes the difference is the personnel. Only Sabbath-observant individuals who follow kosher dietary laws and are approved by kosher overseers can work in the winery, and non-kosher substances cannot be used in making the wines. Pruning and other vineyard work are not affected. Kosher rules apply as soon as the grapes are harvested.

The big surprise is that winemaker Joe A. Hurliman (above) does not keep kosher. This makes no difference, he says, because he works mostly in the lab. When he needs samples, authorized workers draw and bring them to him. Here, he's in the tasting room, which has an impressive wall of wine.

Hurliman has been with the winery since 1998. "The [Herzog] family allows me a lot of leeway," he says. "If I can make it work, they leave me alone."  

Making it work is a big job, because Herzog produces some 200,000 cases a year. The value line is Baron Herzog, which I can get at my neighborhood supermarket. Other labels are Jeunesse, Weinstock Cellars and Eagles Landing, plus special reserve and premium selections. Herzog also imports kosher wines. 

You'll end your tour in the spacious tasting room and wine shop. Prices there range from $8 for a Baron Herzog Chenin Blanc or White Zinfandel to $75 and up for premium selections. The top price is $200 for a Generation VIII Cabernet Sauvignon from To Kalon Vineyard in Napa.

Hurliman is experimenting with single vineyard-designated wines like the To Kalon Cabernet, making one a year. Above, he's showing the 2008 Trestle Glen Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon from Sonoma. It's $75.

Tasting through 11 of the wines, I found quite a few I would like to have in my cellar, including the 2010 Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($40) and the Weinstock Cellar Petit Sirah 2011 ($20).

The 2010 Herzog Special Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon/Syrah (right) combines grapes from two regions, Napa and San Luis Obispo. It's $38.

Buttery but still crisp, the 2009 Eagles Landing Russian River Chardonnay (at right, $40) comes from a small production line that, says Hurliman, "gives me an opportunity to play."

The 2010 Warnecke Vineyard, Chalk Hill Cabernet Sauvignon was wonderful to taste, but a bit costly for my pocketbook--$90.

A good choice at the lower end of the price range is the 2011 Weinstock Cellars White by W ($9.99), a blend of Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay.

And, yes, there are sweet wines. But these have nothing in common with overly sweetened grape juice.

I liked a lovely late harvest Chenin Blanc (right) and a late harvest White Riesling from Monterey County that is a little more edgy than the Chenin Blanc. They're both $20. 

If you want a hit for summer barbecues, get the Jeunesse Pink Moscato ($13) or the Weinstock Moscato by W ($9.99), a safe choice for partying because it contains only about 7 % alcohol.

Time your visit so you can have lunch in Tierra Sur, the kosher restaurant that opens off the tasting room (above). The menu offers  pan seared salmon, lamb birria, an Ensenada style tostada, house made fettuccine and many other dishes, with wine-pairing available. 

Some wines are made just for the tasting room, another incentive to visit the winery. The grapes come from a variety of California vineyards--Hurliman was taking off for Dry Creek Valley in Sonoma County to look at a Zinfandel vineyard the day I was there--but all of the wines are fermented and bottled in Oxnard. 

Herzog Wine Cellars, 3201 Camino Del Sol, Oxnard, CA 93030. Tel: (805) 983-1560.