Dear Chefs, kitchen staff, servers, and everyone who fed me in 2011;
I write to thank you for the wonderful memories, the delicious moments, and the extra calories this year. All well worth it and ready for more in 2012.
Chef Zarate, Picca Peru
Una cena en su restaurante me transporta a Perú, y me trae sentimientos de familia y cultura a travez de cada bocado de sus platillos Peruanos. Hasta lagrimas solté al comer el seco de pato por los recuerdos de mi abuelita. Le doy mil gracias por su talento, y que 2012 le continúe a traer éxito.
Chef Stan Ota, Takami
A delightful experience of wonderful dishes, unique presentation, and a fine dinning atmosphere. With my recent work location transfer to Downtown, I will surely be frequenting Takami more often… That carpaccio is calling my name!
A Celebration of Chefs and Others
A Celebration of Chefs
Reality Bites
Living in LA is easy. Eating out here is hard. Sure you can wear whatever you want, and reservations for most places aren't necessary, but the high prices for ho-hum food and lackluster service by kids waiting on you while waiting for their big break (this is not a myth) mostly keeps us at home where the food is at least warm, the company enjoyable and (for us) the wine cellar filled with lovely selections. When we want a fix of beautiful, inventive food, we just turn on Top Chef and watch the pans fly. That's where we discovered Nyesha Arrington.
A contestant on the recent season in Texas, we couldn't help but root for her and Chris Crary, another LA chef to win the top prize. They both seemed, not only genuinely talented, but to be decent people as well. Which is not, by the way, a requirement for a chef, though it probably helps in the kitchen and certainly when you're on reality TV. Unless you want to be cast as the villain. They say all publicity is good publicity, but that is surely a double-sword when you're "playing" yourself. Regardless, we would be able to taste their food and, yes, the fact that we saw them on TV did sway us to go to their respective restaurants. Actors are a dime a dozen. Someone who can cook perfect pork belly truly has my attention.
We met Nyesha at LudoBites 8.0 while she was waiting to be seated. We felt a bit silly, nervous and dorky approaching her to chat, but she was incredibly gracious and I think a bit surprised to be recognized. (She was not eating yet. We would never be so rude as to interrupt someone in that manner.) We told her how impressed we were with her kitchen skills, especially during the Last Chance Kitchen segments, and promised to come into Wilshire soon. (She's the executive chef.) We had been there once - before she took over the kitchen - and enjoyed the experience, so now we were doubly excited.
Discovering Mexican Flavors
Who knew from Mexico whilst being brought up in the Monopoly board
burbs of Southern New England in the fifties? It seemed a very distant
land – exotic, fantastic – as foreign and far away as California. The
word Mexico called to mind jumping beans, dancing with sombreros,
"Z's" slashed midair, Cisco and his humble sidekick Pancho galloping
away, Pancho Gonzales slamming a tennis serve, Speedy Gonzalez slamming
a cat — a lot of really speedy stuff. It's no wonder I thought the
Mexican peoples only ate fast food.
I was growing up in the miraculous new age of instant gratification
grub. Chinese food, pizza, take out burgers, and foods hunted and
gathered from pouches and frozen boxes were America's new staples. New
sorts of consumables were purchased by my parents weekly. I recall my
first corn products off a cob – daffy yellow corn chips crunched hand
over fist in front of the television console, lumped into a large
category called "snacks." Anything one ate away from the dinner table
and consumed mindlessly, endlessly, with no silverware, that soiled
your fingers and "ruined your appetite" was a "snack." So when I
visited California in seventy-two and experienced Mexican food at a
party for the first time, corn chips dipped in a tasty chartreuse
paste, it continued to seem "snack," and not to be taken seriously.
From Hunger
I was recently given a gift of an out of print cookbook called The
Molly Goldberg Cookbook. When I first saw it I was amused and when I
opened it up, I immediately saw a cabbage recipe I wanted to make.
Score! Here was a cookbook that had that “Through The Looking Glass”
aspect to it. These were recipes long forgotten, mysterious in their
1950-ness, soon to be resurrected by me!
I had a faint notion of who Molly Goldberg was; however, despite the constant ‘jokes’ in my house about my age I was actually too young to have seen The Goldbergs on TV. It still amazes me that I saw Amos n’ Andy. The premise of this prototype for all subsequent sit-coms was the lives of Jewish immigrants, usually featuring a solvable family or friend-related problem. Molly, in her infinite “Jewish Mama” wisdom would involve herself in these neighborhood and family dramas dispensing invaluable advice.
Man vs. Food: Watch It!
Once Anthony Bourdain left The Food Network in a trail of acrimonious dust, he started a second television career on The Travel Channel. The show (”No Reservations”) was better (because, among other things, they allowed Anthony to be his acerbic, outrageous self) but he was gone from my life because the Travel Channel was not available from our cable company. We ordered episodes from Netflix, took them out of the library, and once, in a media coup that rivalled the day when my brother and I tuned in what we believed to be “porn”on the TV in the living room by fiddling rabbit ears and vertical hold, we found one episode of “No Reservations” on “On Demand,” and watched it with the fervor and intensity appropriate for a bootleg copy of Tommy and Pamela.
Then, one day, the Travel Channel appeared as I was flipping up towards the Premiums, bearing the portentous channel assignment “123.” (It’s portentous because I can remember it). We fell, that evening, under the spell of a young man named Adam Richman, and a show called “Man v. Food.” We fell hard. It is fabulous beyond all reckoning that we can now see “No Reservations” before the episodes are two years old, and there are a couple of other shows on the channel that we’ve enjoyed, but Richman is a revelation of how a network can combine really smart and really commercially appealing and create something that appeals to a large and diverse audience.
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