Trip Report: Los Angeles

I know that based on that last meetup down in Los Angeles that CO is a big fan of Jitlada, so I thought I'd post this link from the LA Times.

http://www.latimes.com/theguide/restaurants/la-fo-review8-2009apr08,0,55...

I'm definitely on a bit of a tequila kick lately, so if anyone is heading down to LA, I'd love to hear a report of Provecho. Here's a link to their drink menu. Ignore the cocktails, head straight down to the list of tequilas.

I'm slowly putting together a wishlist for my next trip to Los Angeles (likely this summer). High on that list is Varnish. Craft cocktails came late to Los Angeles, and for the longest time The Hungry Cat was the only game in town. But that's changing, slowly but surely.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/fashion/28boite.html?_r=2&ref=fashion

Since it opened in February, the Varnish has quickly established itself as a bulwark of the new cocktail culture, that flourishing strain of 1930’s tinged night life that emphasizes covertness — identifying outdoor signs are a big, uncouth no-no — along with fastidiously constructed vintage drinks.

Slowly compiling a to-do list for my next trip to Los Angeles, which might be some time in August. It's definitely going to include Ramen California. Here's the lowdown on Rameniac's site, as well as this recent story from the LA Times. I love the notion of a ramen shop using seasonal ingredients.

Because of its dedication to innovation, some have tagged the place as a purveyor of molecular gastronomy. Given Nakamura's friendship with Spanish master Ferran Adrià, that's understandable

But where molecular gastronomy trades in deconstruction -- the dismantling and subsequent reassembly of flavors, textures and memories to form new and novel experiences -- Ramen California operates on a more natural level, allowing ingredients themselves to challenge expectations. Nakamura's dishes are more Alice Waters than Adrià.

I've been back in LA just a short period of time, and already I've managed to accomplish a few food-related errands. One is heading to the San Gabriel Valley for Chinese food, specifically the beef roll at 101 Noodle Express. This is a dish that's hard to find outside of Los Angeles, but because of the popularity of the beef roll from 101 Noodle Express, many other restaurants began putting it on their menus with varying degrees of success. I still prefer the most famous rendition of it.

In addition to finding foods that I couldn't find in Portland, the reverse is true as well, as I'm trying to hunt down foods that I loved in Portland and wanted to continue to have in LA. One of those was the stewed pork shoulder from Ping, and I found a great rendition of it at Ruen Pair in LA's Thai Town. This is a case where knowing the indigenous name of a dish pays off, as a Thai person might not understand "stewed pork shoulder and rice" but will certainly understand khao kha muu.

The rest of the time has been spent exploring my neighborhood, and so I'm thrilled to have found a good taco stand nearby as well as a good Italian deli. The York is a gastropub a few miles away, but I gotta say that it isn't in the most savory neighborhood, which kinda adds to its appeal on some level, but sometimes you just wanna park your car and not worry about it while you drink.

The nightlife has been fun, too. Of course I made to The Hungry Cat but the cocktail demands of this city still rely heavily on infusions. One revelation, though, is that beer culture is alive and well, and is very much kind of the underground aspect of drinking here. While there are only two LA brewers, both are represented well at the better bars, as well as other Southern Californian breweries (mostly from San Diego). Of course, LA's first big gastropub, The Father's Office, and the pubs that arose in its wake all have plenty in the way of Belgians and other craft beer. The lesson is that you can drink good beer in LA, just don't expect the average person (even the average boozehound) to be able to tell you where.

Been a while since I've done one of these, so I thought I'd at least update on one of my more interesting trips. As you might know, the Korean population in Los Angeles is enormous, with K-Town itself encompassing an area the size of Portland. One restaurant sticks out, both in location and in menu offerings.

Ondal 2 sits in the middle of a predominantly black neighborhood, but is very popular among the Korean clientele, making it a bit of a local secret. The specialty here are hot pot / wok dishes that are cooked in front of you and staged into multiple courses, the most famous being their crab hot pot.

To start, there are some incredibly unique banchan dishes such as an egg custard and whole broiled mackerel as well as standbys like vegetable pancakes and the ubiquitous kimchi.

From there, it's all about the pot. The first stage involves boiling raw crab legs away in a pot filled with the typical gojuchang chili paste and assorted other vegetables in a broth. As this boils away, the crab carapaces are stuffed with a mixture of the crab roe and rice.

After all the pieces of crab are eaten, the pot (now heavily reduced) is bolstered with a bit more liquid before being used to boil hand-pulled noodles. Table-side hand-pulled noodles are something of a luxury, due to its time-consuming and labor-intensive nature, but it's a standard part of the experience here at Ondal 2, where the noodles cook in the same wok, absorbing some of the liquid used to cook the crab.

Finally, after all the pieces of noodle are eaten, the wok is emptied of its remaining liquid and the wok is used to make fried rice. A splash of the liquid is thrown back in to give it flavor, which the rice absorbs along with the qi from all the stuff that had been cooked in the wok.

We had ordered the medium crab soup, which seems pricey on the menu when it's listed as $55, but as you can see it's quite a bit of food and can stuff three people. We were a party of six that night, so we ordered one medium crab as well as a medium short rib pot, which was an accidentally shrewd move on our part, as the flavor of the beef short ribs offered a nice changeup from the crab flavor. Total cost per person to be stuffed to the gills plus beer and soju and including a nice tip came out to $30.