la.foodblogging

Usually it is my wife who gives the somewhat regular reports on what is in season at the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmer’s Market. One of the many benefits of my being on family leave is that now I get to accompany her on the market trips.

It’s a turning point at the market, summer fruits are just starting to pop up. This week was the first week where we saw Cherries, bought them from two different stands. It’s obviously early in the short season, but the cherries are sweet and delicious, and a bit expensive. One farmer tolda us that they were there from Mother’s Day to Father’s Day, so get them while you can!

Stone fruits are just starting to arrive. One stand had Nectarines, with signs advertising that the fruit was picked the evening before the market (I think they even had the times that the fruit were picked, something like 6-7pm). I think that peaches and nectarines are some of my favorite bounty from the market, looking forward to the next couple of months.

There are still citrus, we made our weekly trip to Garcia Farms’ stand for tangerines and mandarins, although things seem to be winding down. Apples are gone, but strawberries are abundant.

Some other goodies we picked up were sugar snap peas, cauliflower, and some grapefruit juice. We actually had some produce left over from last week, so it was a smaller purchasing trip. Plus, we have to save up for the coming onslaught of summer fruits!

It’s a great opportunity to be able to hit up the Wednesday Market, but if you can’t make it midweek, don’t forget that there are three markets in Santa Monica over the weekend. Two on Saturday (one at the Promenade and one at Virginia Park on Pico) and one Sunday on Main Street.

By Jonah (see more of his posts). Jonah is the founder of la.foodblogging and also created Digesty, a food blog aggregator and Cheww.com, a spam free foodblog search engine.

Tucked away in an unassuming corner building on San Gabriel is a restaurant that anyone who is a fan of spicy food should try: Chung King. The restaurant’s signature dishes focus around the mouth numbing spiciness that comes from Szechwan peppercorn and chili peppers — which make those dishes delicious, but dangerous at the same time. It’s hard to gauge how spicy something is when your tongue is numb.

At the front of the restaurant is a small glass case with cold appetizers to choose from for immediate satisfaction. For the meat eaters at our table, we chose the slices of spicy beef and the smoked chicken. The slices of beef were flavorful, numbing, and they weren’t skimpy on the chili oil. The smoked chicken is a good choice for people who can’t handle spicy food because it’s not spicy, but still tasty. I don’t usually like cold chicken, but the smokiness made me keep eating it.

For the vegetarians and vegans, we also had a vegetable appetizer plate with spicy cabbage and bean sprout salad. The cabbage is different than kimchi because it’s not fermented and isn’t as sour. The bean sprout salad is deceptive because even though it’s not red, it still has a bit of that numbing mala taste from peppercorns.

The cold noodles we ordered was under the menu as “Cold Szechuan Noodles” or something similar. They’re not that spicy and the noodles have an odd starchy texture almost like they were overcooked. The sauce it came with was sweeter than we expected. The weren’t bad but I don’t think I would be ordering them again.

My favorite dish on their menu is their house spicy chicken bits. It’s bite-sized pieces of chicken that are battered and fried like popcorn chicken. Unlike popcorn chicken, they are then tossed with chili peppers, peppercorn and green onion. The dish is salty and tasty but so spicy it’s painful, but I can’t stop eating it. They should just rename this dish “Exquisite Torture”.

A signature dish when it comes to spicy Chinese food is Mapo Tofu. We ordered the vegan version, Mala Tofu which is pretty much Mapo Tofu without the ground meat. Yes, the dish was every bit as spicy as it is red. It’s the same type of numbing spicy that’s used for almost every spicy dish at Chung King, but I still haven’t gotten tired of it.

To give our tastebuds a break from the pain, we also ordered the claypot eggplant (Szechuan Eggplant on the menu) and asked them to omit the meat to make it vegan. The sauce is cloyingly sweet and the eggplant is tender, but it tastes like your usual claypot eggplant that you can get at any Chinese restaurant in the SGV.

Finally, for people who definitely can’t eat anything spicy, we ordered the crispy rice with fish. The waitress brought us a plate of crispy rice (think un-sweetened rice crispy treats) and a bowl of slices of fish with vegetables and mushroom in sauce, and then poured the bowl on top of the plate of crispy rice with a sizzle. The fish tasted like your generic white fish, and the entire dish wasn’t amazing, but with the crispy rice, it was great. I had many bites of this dish to cool off my mouth.

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Chung King
1000 S San Gabriel Blvd
San Gabriel, CA 91776

Louise absolutely LOVES filthy, cheap places! (See more of her posts). You can also find more of Louise's writing at her own website NakedSushi.

Monland Hot Pot City

251 W. Bencamp Street
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 289-4889
Roughly $20 per person to gorge yourself

It’s all about the condiments. A trio of fish paste, peanut sauce, and red berry glaze stand guard at each table, the only things other than porcelain and bamboo that hold prominence. The boisterous sounds of Mandarin, Cantonese, and even, occasionally, English permeate the room while a witches’ brew of stock and spices starts to simmer away.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble
Read the rest of this entry »

sneakypeteiii is a doctoral student in Chemistry at Caltech. He has been eating since he was a child, and reckons himself quite good at it. (see more of his posts).

I had dinner at Musha, an izakaya in Santa Monica, recently and wanted to highlight some or our favorites on the menu. The place is small and gets pretty crowded at night so we made a reservation a day or so beforehand just so we didn’t have to wait thirty to sixty minutes for a table. Some of the food is definitely worth the wait, but they have a very small waiting area so it’s nice just getting there and getting seated right away.

The pure tofu (vegan if you don’t put in bonito flakes) is something we always order. Its their home made tofu, which has a cottage cheese-like texture with some seasoning on the side: chives, sea salt, fresh grated ginger, and their special soy sauce. It’s rich, creamy, and the vegan boyfriend says that it reminds him of cottage cheese.

I also had the Butakim, which was pork belly sauteed with kim chi. The pork belly was tender, flavorful thanks to the kimchi, and delicious. This was the first time I had it and I’ll definitely order it again. The dallop of kewpie mayonaise on the side was a nice touch and added even more richness to the dish.

As a carb dish, I ordered the spicy fried rice. I forgot what it was called on the menu, but it’s in the rice section and the description said something about ground pork. It was decent, but I make better fried rice at home.

One of their specials was the rapini (vegan), which I think is under their menu as “rape blossoms”. They’re tasty and tender, but I think the price is a bit high for the portion you get.

Something we order everytime we go there is their stone pot rice (vegan). It’s rice mixed with preserved salty vegetables and some mountain vegetables all cooked in a stone pot. The stone pot makes the rice crunchy if you leave some in it for a few minutes after they bring it. Protip: ask for a cup of hot tea after you empty the pot and then pour the hot tea into the stone pot and drink it. Delicious!

Lastly, I have my favorite dish: aburi saba. It’s marinated mackerel that the server will scorch with a blow torch right at your table. Despite the cool-factor of a small hand-held blow torch, the marinated mackerel makes my mouth water just thinking about it. I think this time, it was even served with a side of real wasabi.

Musha’s a great place to go as long as you don’t have to wait too long for a table. They have some decent sake and the usual Japanese beers and even though it’s loud in there, I wouldn’t mind it if a date brought me there.

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Musha
424 Wilshire Blvd
Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 576-6330

Louise absolutely LOVES filthy, cheap places! (See more of her posts). You can also find more of Louise's writing at her own website NakedSushi.

When I was a kid, I ate in Alhambra fairly frequently. There was one restaurant in particular that I went to. I can’t recall the name of it or how the food was. I really only remember it because it was an art deco building, which stood out for that area. I drove by there about a year ago or so and I had to do a double take. The building still stood out, but not just because of its shape. It was very yellow. Of course, I had to find out who occupied the space and discovered it was a Thai restaurant, Spice Basil.

Over the weekend, I was meeting up with a few friends for dinner, and I suggested we go there. First of all, parking in front of the restaurant is very limited (about 6 spaces) and tight. I was running incredibly late and was ever so grateful that I was able to just pull right up to the front of the restaurant and park literally 7 feet from the door. Although it’s impossible to not notice the yellowness of the building, but if you missed it, let me reassure you that it’s just as yellow inside. We were immediately seated and figured out rather quickly what we wanted to order.

I find that I am very picky when it comes to pad thai. I like pad thai, but I rarely order it because most Thai restaurants can’t make it the way I like it. (I do go along with ordering it when I’m with friends if we are all sharing. It is, afterall, a favorite.) So here’s what Spice Basil did right. The flavor in general was right on. There was enough crushed peanuts and the lime juice really brought out a nice tang to each bite. There was also a good amount of chicken throughout the noodles. So what was wrong? Definitely not enough shrimp. I think there were only 3 pieces at most. While every Thai restaurant I have ever gone tend to be stingy when it comes to shrimp in the pad thai, usually there is still about 6-piece minimum. The worst offense, however, was the texture of the noodles. I understand that Pad Thai noodles are supposed to be soft, but theirs was a little too much so. For me personally, this is a huge no-no. Nevertheless, if I had to choose between the right noodle texture or the right flavor, I will choose flavor every time.

We also ordered a couple of Spice Basil’s specialty dishes, the garlic clams and the spicy fish. Some time between the cooking and plating process, some of the clams escaped from their shells. I scooped up three clams to my plate and as I eagerly picked up my fork to taste them, I found out that only one of the three on my plate had clam meat in them. This didn’t happen to any of my friends. I did eventually get to taste more of this dish. Even though I enjoyed the garlic clams, I tasted more garlic than clams. I couldn’t really tell the quality of the clams because the garlic and sauce were very strong, but I thought it was delicious. Also, it wasn’t really spicy, but there was a slight kick to it. The fish was also a very good dish. It was deep fried first, so the outside was nice and crispy while the inside was soft and moist. The pineapples went very well with the sweet and sour sauce. I did not find this dish to be spicy at all, but it was still enjoyable. As this is a whole fish, be forewarned that there are fishbones. People who are not used to eating fish that has not been deboned should proceed slowly.

While you can order steamed rice with your dinner, I recommend skipping that and going for one of their garlic rice in clay pot dishes. There are only three choices: pork ribs, beef, or shrimp. We chose beef. (We had ruled out shrimp because there was shrimp included in the pad thai, but had we known that we would only get 3 shrimps in our pad thai, maybe we would have ordered that one instead.) I was not too impressed with this one at first. Overall it was good, but I didn’t feel like there was much garlic flavor with the rice, despite the fact that I could see some minced garlic on top of the rice. As we ate more of the rice, I found the garlic flavor to be quite potent. I suspect that since I had the garlic clams right before my first bowl of the rice, the garlic taste in the rice was just more subtle in comparison. After a while, I came to really appreciate the flavor of the garlic rice with beef and was reaching for a second bowl.

I usually give exact prices for what I order, but unfortunately, I left the receipt back at the restaurant, so I don’t recall exactly how much each dish is. Roughly, the pad thai and rice were $7 each, and the fish and clams were $14 each. Thai iced tea is $1.75, and a smoothie is $2.50. Spice Basil is not the best Thai restaurant in L.A., and definitely not my favorite Thai restaurant in town. It is, however, good food at a reasonable price. You can’t miss it. It’s the yellow building.

Spice Basil
25 W. Valley Blvd.
Alhambra, CA 91801
(626) 282-3200
Hours: Sun.-Thu. 11 a.m.-midnight, Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-1 a.m.

By Pauline (see more of her posts).

I moved to Los Angeles straight from college and landed here a naive 22 year with a freshly printed engineering degree and a knowledge of the city built from Raymond Chandler novels. Contrasting with the cozy comforts of my collegiate Boston existence, LA was a cold distant mistress. Everywhere I turned, the rule was detachment and distant. As standoffish as New Englanders and Bostonians are reputed to be, Angelenos take the cake.

That changed when a college buddy arrived for a month of working at Mount Wilson. It marked my first time spending any appreciable time in Pasadena. Looking for places to eat and drink, we stumbled on an ad for Crown City Brewing Company. My buddy, now an executive chef in Manhattan, and I clocked endless stool hours at Cambridge Brewing, so score!

Walking in to the pub felt like turning the corner into a home away from home. The first night there was great, chatting with the bartenders (and one of the owners), enjoying a pint and the above
average pub grub. Shockingly on my next visit, the staff greeted us warmly, as if we were visiting friends. Wha? No surprise folks always mention Cheers when trying to describe the place.

Wasn’t long after those first visits that I became a regular. Every week, Wednesday night, Drew night. Even in the midst of 100-hour workweek projects, I still found my way to my stool for a few pints
and worked my way through several “100 Mug Club” cards on my way to a serious case of brew knowledge. The staff kindly critiqued and encouraged my first attempts at brewing. I don’t think they knew what a beer monster they were creating.

Founded by four friends and inspired by San Diego’s new born brew scene, Crown opened in 1988 just south of Pasadena’s Central Park and began serving their Arroyo Amber and Mount Wilson Wheat to the masses. On top of their house beers, the pub stocks over a hundred bottled beers and 30 more draft beers, an astonishing selection for our burg. Until the brewery finally broke down in 2002, Crown held the distinction of being Los Angeles’ oldest operating brewpub. Pasadena’s Craftsman Brewing picked up the slack and provides the pub with its flagship brews.

With the recent opening of the Del Mar Station apartments, things are changing on the south side of Old Town, starting with the Crown’s closing. A combination of inadequate parking, tough competition and their landlord’s refusal to grant a new long-term lease is forcing the boys out. The remaining partners are searching for space to open the “Crown 2″, but there are no firm plans yet.

Now as the brewery prepares to close on May 31st, the beer list is winding down and customers with their names on the wall can fetch
their plaques. I have four waiting for me! Stop in, grab a pint and a
lavosh and say goodbye to a piece of LA brewing history and the great
folks that made it happen.

Crown City Brewing Company (until May 31st)
300 S Raymond (at Del Mar)
Pasadena, CA 91105
626-577-5548

When Drew's not eating or cooking, he's probably busy contemplating fine malted beverages and the best way to enjoy them. In fact, you can usually catch him writing a column for BeerAdvocate, the Magazine.

It must be a sickness. After updating the look of la.foodblogging, I have been working on an update to the Digesty family of sites.

Here is a preview look at the new design:

Digesty Los Angeles

I worked hard to accomplish some very basic goals with this design. I wanted to focus on a few features.

• The latest posts from all blogs are now listed on the top left of the page, I estimate that this is the number one reason that people come to Digesty, so I made it the first thing they see.
• The main section of the page is now more compact. Instead of listing a number of headlines, I know just show the latest headline from each site, and then allow the reader to mouse over the dates for earlier posts to see the headlines pop up.
• I added search back to the page. This is a customized search that will only look at sites listed on Digesty. I used to have it on the pages and it was used fairly often.
• Added a list of random posts under the most recent posts on the left. The theory here is that many foodblog posts are relatively timeless. A review that is useful this week will also be useful six months from now, and the random stream will help highlight posts.

There are more features to come, including:

• The ability to receive a list of new topical foodblog posts via email. Digesty is meant to make it easier to find new content, this will make it even easier for people so that you don’t have to come to the page
• Adding more sites, please let me know if you have any local foodblogs that you would like to see added.
• An updated user submission method. I am working to make it easier for people to add individual posts to the stream
• Site wide, I am adding more topics, including the return of Wine and the addition of topics like Coffee and Molecular Gastronomy

Digesty LA test site

My request of you is to take the site for a test drive, let me know what you don’t like or what isn’t working. I appreciate any constructive criticism you can muster. Email to Digesty [at] gmail.

By Jonah (see more of his posts). Jonah is the founder of la.foodblogging and also created Digesty, a food blog aggregator and Cheww.com, a spam free foodblog search engine.

[photo from their website]

I occasionally like to imbibe a cocktail or dine in a hotel. It feels extra glamorous and I can pretend I’m a traveller in a foreign land. So when a visiting friend suggested we meet for lunch at the Hotel Intercontinental, on Avenue of the Stars, I jumped at the chance to put on a pretty frock and heels (despite LA’s pre-emptive June gloom – okay, I added a chic cardie, aka sweater) and tool over there.

The Park Grill dining room at the Hotel Intercontinental is surprisingly unpretentious. Diners can relax in the clubby atmosphere of the dining room, with its gay, striped carpeting and comfy, upholstered armchairs.

Beyond the large, glass french doors lies the garden patio, where I’m sure we would have dined had it been a sunny day. It’s an attractive and intimate little garden and the umbrella’d dining tables skirt an expanse of lawn. Apparently this is a popular venue for weddings.

The menu offers a decent range of two soups, several salads and sandwiches, a few hot meals and desserts. My dining companion went for the great sounding watermelon and spinach salad ($15). This came out as a kind of log cabin of sticks of watermelon with a mass of baby spinach, chunks of chevre and candied walnuts in the middle. On either side of the ‘cabin’, the long, rectangular plate was attractively drizzled with the mango dressing as well as cross-hatched drizzles of vibrantly ‘kermit’ green basil oil. Now, while this looked impressive, in fact it’s a little tough to get the dressing off the plate and onto your food. But the baby spinach was also lightly dressed and sprinkled with black sesame seeds (love them!) so this wasn’t an issue, just a tiny bit irksome.

She also ordered a prosciutto and arugula pizza ($19) that was, shall we say, extremely disappointing. Suffice to say, upon reflection, one probably shouldn’t go to a hotel and expect them to have a roaring pizza furnace…

I opted for the ‘Bento Box’ ($35) as it gave me four small courses with two options per course. It arrived all at once, on a large, white, square ceramic platter with four smaller square dishes within.

The soup was the soup du jour; a chicken broth with a hint of lime, neat cubes of breast meat and finely chopped vegetables. Delicious! Of the two salads, I went with the wild rocket salad. It was studded with candied walnuts (actually, too many…), sweet slivers of dried pear, and a couple of teeny little heirloom tomatoes. The rocket was generously dressed with a rich balsamic vinaigrette that was perfumed with white truffle oil. Rich and satisfying. I couldn’t imagine a whole bowl of it; it worked really well as one small course of four. It also came with two batons of plain but toasted crostini.

The ‘entree’ portion of this bento was one of their cooked entrees, and I would recommend dining at the Park Grill for this dish alone. A small but sufficient hunk of Chilean Sea Bass, beautifully cooked, was resting on a bed of ‘forbidden’ black rice that actually looks dark red. The modest portion of fish was served with two gorgeously braised and grilled wedges of endive and a sprinkling of soft greens. It was superb!

For my fourth course I went with the plate of fruit over the pastries, and I was glad I did. A sprinkling of blueberries, boysenberries and raspberries were complemented by a slice each of honeydew melon, cantaloupe, orange and pineapple. All the fruits were exquisitely ripe. This was a perfectly balanced, filling and delicious meal.

I noticed they are doing a special buffet for Mother’s Day. I definitely think hotels are the ideal place to pamper the grande dame in your life. I’ve already raved about the exquisite afternoon tea at the Peninsular Hotel.

But the Hotel Intercontinental might be just the place for a family gathering. If it’s a nice day, you can dine outside and the kids can run about on the grass. There will be a band performing soul, jazz and Latin music.

The buffet menu is pretty extensive and has something for everyone. Highlights from the menu include:

Kid friendly choices such as wild berry mini pancakes, triple decker peanut butter sandwich, mini BLTs, mini nutella and banana club sandwiches and baby sliders.

Assortment of miniature breakfast pastries and a seasonal sliced fruit display. Egg dishes include omelettes by request and crab eggs benedict with paprika hollandaise.

There are salads such as mushroom and shrimp salad with green papaya, multicolored heirloom tomato salad with bocconcini and aged balsamic reduction, ahi tuna salad ‘a la nicoise’, grilled marinated artichoke salad with Asian beef and so on.

In addition to a sushi and sashimi display, there’ll be shrimp, mussels, oysters, clams and crab claws. Pasta dishes include truffle gnocchi with sage and brown butter or wild mushroom risotto.

Barbecue items include prime rib eye steak, citrus marinated organic white salmon, and baby lamb chops marinated with whole grain mustard and lavender. Loads of grilled and roasted vegetables, such as parmesan grilled corn on the and roasted vegetables with fresh cilantro and lemon oil.

Assorted cakes and desserts, including panacotta, tarts, pies, cookies, brownies and blondies and even a sweet crepes station with fresh fruit sauces.

This gastronomic spread will cost $68 for adults and $34 children 4-12, (with no charge for children 3 and under).

Happy Mother’s Day!

Park Grill, Hotel Intercontinental

2151 Avenue of the Stars,
Los Angeles
Front Desk: (310) 2846500

[FYI – Validated valet parking was $6.00]

By MaxMillion (see more of her posts). Max Million is the nom de 'net of Pauline Adamek. Born in Sydney, Australia, Pauline has lived in Los Angeles for the past thirteen years and finds it agrees with her. She has been reviewing films and filing celebrity-based interview articles since 1991, and has filed stories from various international film festivals, including Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance. She completed a family cookbook and has also written novels for 8-12 year olds. She is the creator and host of ArtsBeatLA.