A friend recently texted me from Los Angeles, where he was visiting his kid in college:
“Can you remind me the name of that Chinese place you sent us to before on a Buford Hwy.-like stretch?”
Ah, yes, the Chinese place. It is called Shanghai No. 1 Seafood Village. It sits on the upper level of a teeming mall jam-packed with restaurants, and it is surely one of hundreds if not thousands of worthy dining destinations in the San Gabriel Valley.
But it became my L.A. Chinese restaurant after I heard some folks on a local food radio show discussing it.
I was stalled in traffic on the freeway a couple of years ago and scanning the radio for nonhorrible music. Suddenly, I heard a man’s voice rhapsodizing about shen jian bao, a kind of dumpling that crisps on the bottom like a potsticker but bursts with juice like a soup dumpling.
Good grief. My stomach grumbled, and I knew that I could never leave the city without it. I have since sent every L.A.-bound friend to this restaurant, and it has become theirs, as well. Beyond the dumplings, it serves an incredible spicy steamed eggplant, red-cooked pork and many more dishes that get added to the must-order list on every visit.
I go back to Shanghai No. 1 when I’m in town because I know it will always make me happy. I also try to make it to Din Tai Fung, perhaps the city’s most famous soup dumpling house, as well as some random others I glean from tour books, newspapers and food blogs.
I invest dearly in time to eat at these restaurants, as they can be an hour or more in traffic from the city’s westside. Once there, I look around at all the unexplored options for hot pots, Cantonese barbecue and noodle soup and wonder how anyone could begin to make sense of it all.
My greatest food dream would be to take a San Gabriel Valley dining sabbatical. I could drive a rental Kia Rio down Valley Boulevard and stop in every restaurant in every mall I see. Perhaps I’d reappear months later, wedged upright at a corner table somewhere in Rosemead, looking rather like a larger version of those dumplings I so love.
But back to my question: How does a chopsticks-wielding tourist explore the wondrous glut of Asian dining in Los Angeles?
On a recent visit, I decided to ignore the siren call of the San Gabriel Valley and instead focus on restaurants nearer the city’s kinda-sorta center. Koreatown is its own dining wonderland and is close enough (in the grand scheme of Angelino vastness) to both downtown and Hollywood, as well as the eastside neighborhoods (like Silver Lake) where your cool friends live. Little Tokyo isn’t much farther.
Sawtelle Boulevard — just next to I-405 and a quick drive from the well-touristed westside communities of Santa Monica, Venice and Marina del Ray — has turned into a fantastic destination for Japanese food and earns the nickname Little Osaka.
Even the crossover places in trendier neighborhoods have the ability to blow minds. The Asian roots run so deep in this city that the integrity of flavors shine through in design-forward places that take reservations and have noteworthy wine lists.
By the way, my most excellent sherpa for this trip was Besha Rodell, who reviews restaurants for LA Weekly and is fondly remembered locally for her tenure at Creative Loafing. If you'd like to read Besha's commentary on most of these places, they're in LA Weekly's list of 99 Essential Restaurants at features.laweekly.com/99_essential_restaurants_2014.
Pot
Location: Koreatown
Roy Choi, the impresario behind L.A.’s fleet of Kogi Korean taco trucks, runs this restaurant as well as the cafe and bar in the newish Line Hotel — one of those dark, atmospheric, boom-boom boutique places. It presents a very different reality from the strip malls packed with Korean barbecues just a few blocks away.
The restaurant lies at the end of a dim hallway with a neon green sign that suggests a medical marijuana dispensary. This is intentional, for the name plays on both the vessels used for the burbly Korean tabletop-cooked stews called jjigae and the semi-legal drug. If the cannabis-leaf appliqués used as discreet wall decorations don’t drive home this point, the menu will. Printed on a broadsheet newspaper page, it features one of those iconic images of a wizened Burmese lady smoking an oversized cheroot that, in context, appears to be the world’s biggest blunt.
Whatever your state of mind, both the food and the singular mood of this restaurant — K-town seen through a native son’s prism — should thrill any devotee of Korean dining. The room is bright and lively, like the restaurants you know, with a focus on communal dining. But the tables are cooler, with induction burners rather than gas, and the wine list is a geek’s dream, with a terrific, lean chardonnay from the Jura and a Zind-Humbrecht riesling from Alsace.
You’ll want a pot for the table. The Jamaal Wilkes, with silky tofu, pork belly and seafood, looked appealing, but we couldn’t resist the nasty fun of the Boot Knocker — Choi’s version of the famous Army Base stew that locals made after the Korean War by combining chili paste and rice cakes with U.S. Army surplus ingredients, including corned beef hash and Spam.
Then, you’ll want to try the amazing small plates: an elevated version of yukke (Korean beef tartare), kimchi fried rice and sizzling barbecued spot prawns. The “Beep Beep” unites crispy rice crust with spicy mayo and fresh uni for a flavor that will make any Asian food lover’s head explode with joy.
3515 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. 213-368-3030. eatatpot.com.
Marugame Monzo
Location: Little Tokyo
In the center of Little Tokyo is the curated pedestrian zone called Japanese Village Plaza, a sweet little tangle of streets where you can shop for handicrafts and groceries. Across the street from the plaza lies Marugame Monzo, a Shikoku-style restaurant specializing in the fat wheat noodle called udon, which a chef behind a counter crafts throughout the day.
After waiting outside for about 30 minutes, we lucked into seats right in front of the noodle man and watched as he rolled out discs of stretchy dough, cut it with a tool that looked like a ginormous hard-boiled-egg cutter and then slapped the fresh udon on the counter. I wonder if the slapping give these noodles their bespoke snap and bite, unlike any I’ve had before.
There are many ways to enjoy your udon, starting with the traditional steaming bowlful. You slurp them from a hot dashi broth, to which you can add tempura batter crumbs or, as I did, a few slices of tender duck. There are also a number of heavy fusion dishes — udon carbonara, udon in uni cream sauce — that I didn’t try. But the greatest thing ever, and a new obsession, comes in the form of cold udon outfitted with scallions, tempura crumbs, smoked fish flakes and a soft-poached egg. You splash it with a gently sweet and salty tare sauce, mix it up, and contemplate the flavor of pure finesse.
329 E. 1st St., Los Angeles. 213-346-9762, no website.
Tsujita LA Artisan Noodles
Location: Little Osaka
If your L.A. vacation remains strictly westside — Santa Monica Pier, the Getty Center, Venice Beach — you might not want to fight the traffic to venture to K-town or Little Tokyo, much less the San Gabriel Valley. But if there’s any Asian food freak in your soul, then make time for Sawtelle Boulevard, where the Tsujita restaurant group has occupied a city block. There’s a sushi restaurant and a “noodle annex,” but like everyone else you’ll want to wait for a table at the original, a purveyor of ramen that many Angelinos call the city’s best.
The specialty is tsukemen: warm, naked ramen you dip in a tonkotsu broth so intense and seasoned to such a pitch that the little that clings to the noodles reveals a world of flavor.
But, wait, there’s more: Now you reach into the little pot by your counter seat to add spicy mustard greens to your broth and kick it up that previously unkicked notch.
The regular tonkotsu ramen, with its perfectly drinkable broth, would maybe be a bit more to my taste on a regular basis, particularly with the addition of finely slivered green onion. But get a bowl of each. When you get your seat here, you deserve a piggy moment.
2057 Sawtelle Blvd., Los Angeles. 310-231-7373, tsujita-la.com.
Night + Market Song
Location: Silver Lake
Chef Kris Yenbamroong opened his first Night + Market next door to his parents’ old-school Thai restaurant in West Hollywood. It proved popular enough that he followed with this eastside spinoff.
The hilarious and colorful dining area looks like a basement rec room, right down to the creepily cheerful Christmas lights strung against the walls and the vintage Cindy Crawford poster displayed like a shrine to the gods of adolescence. (It’s like a noncorporate Buca di Beppo.)
Then comes the food, funky and weird, with slap-you-in-the-face flavors. Look, there’s blood soup! I don’t want blood soup!
But I do relish the flavor of nam prik gapi, a plate of batter-fried eggplant rounds you dip in a pungent, spicy relish of shrimp paste, bitter Thai vegetables and palm sugar. Hor ab, a tamale of catfish, pork fat and leafy greens baked in a banana leaf, was an eye-roller of “omigod, so good!” from first bite to last.
There are a half dozen varieties of larb (spicy chopped salad) on the menu. I thought our larb lanna, with chopped pork and pork liver as the featured ingredients, didn’t have the texture and brightness of a superlative version.
The crab fried rice, on the other hand, may be the single best dish of fried rice I’ve ever eaten. Of thousands. One word of advice for all spiceheads: Go!
3322 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles. 323-665-5899, nightmarketla.com.
Hinoki & the Bird
Location: Century City
Before leaving Los Angeles, I wanted to try one swish Asian restaurant, the likes of which I’d never encounter back home in Atlanta. Besha Rodell had just the place in mind. Hinoki & the Bird occupies the garden floor of a super-fancy residential tower in a super-dead part of Century City. But you push open a nearly hidden door after handing the keys to your embarrassing rental car to the valet, go down a flight of stairs, and get greeted by a central-casting L.A. hostess who appears to be wearing her boyfriend’s oxford shirt and a pair of stiletto heels.
She will whisk you through the dining room, which is paneled in lustrous hinoki wood, and out to the garden patio to join the beautiful and famous. There’s a lot of glamour to be had for a not-outrageous price, since you will be sharing intricate small plates and simple grilled items that fill you before you’ve ordered too much.
Chef Kuniko Yagi cooks with a kind of rudderless delicacy that drifts between East and West yet ultimately registers as Japanese.
You’ll want to try her green curry lobster roll, which arrives on a pitch-black bun colored with pulverized charcoal, if only to gasp. You’ll also want her melting-soft black cod, which arrives nestled among grilled maitake mushrooms and covered with a sheet of burning hinoki wood. The trailing smoke focuses both your attention and your palate.
Add in a roasted Japanese sweet potato frosted with crème fraîche and specked with bits of bacon, and a set of bite-size chili-crab toasts that gives voice to both the sweetness and funk of fresh shellfish.
The wine list is a thing of glory, and if you show interest in a producer, the sommelier might alert you to other bottles in the cellar but not on the list. The hustle and bustle of the San Gabriel Valley this ain’t, but who’s complaining?
10 Century Drive, Los Angeles. 310-552-1200, hinokiandthebird.com.
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