I have really been lying low for the past month or so, working a ton and not going out much. But today, a good friend came to town for a little bit and I decided to take her to A16 for lunch. As usual, I asked if we could sit at the chef's bar -- which is by far my favorite place to sit in the restaurant. And we were treated to quite a show. It turns out that every Wednesday the crew breaks down an entire pig and preps the meat for the rest of the week. While we ate our Pizza Margherita and our meatballs, we were able to watch as every part of the pig was butchered and prepped. At least six staff used knives, a mallet, a saw, a meat grinder and other implements and really elegantly got the pork ready to be used. When we arrived at 1:15, the pig was already cut down somewhat. You can bet that next time, I will try to arrive a bit earlier to watch the process from beginning to end.
As most of you know, I grew up in Southern California and still spend quite a bit of time there with my family. I was in Long Beach over the Thanksgiving weekend, and mom and I showed around a couple of out-of-town guests.
I've written about our day in a two-part series on Bay Area Bites. Part 1 Part 2
As much time as I spend in Southern California, I don't often get the chance to play tourist in my own hometown -- I grew up in LA, went to college there, and lived there until I was 26. When a good friend from here wanted to experience the true Southern California, I was happy to play tour guide last week. It was fun to show her some of my favorite places, and take a lot of photographs at the same time.
The above sign can be found at Zuma Beach in Malibu. To tell you the truth, I have never seen the stand open, but love seeing the food stand as you turn the big curve on Pacific Coast Highway heading north. The first couple days we were there were unseasonably warm, and the beach was lovely -- complete with a pod of dolphins playing in the nearby water.
The Southern California growing season is always a bit ahead of our Northern California season. The Wednesday Santa Monica farmers market was full of visions of spring, and it was really wonderful to see the abundance that we have to look forward to in Northern California soon. My find of the day was La Nogalera walnut oil -- a nicely balanced, light walnut oil that is grown and processed in Central California.
While firmly in the "Californian Mexican" camp, I have always loved Border Grill for their appetizers and cocktails. We stopped in one afternoon and shared a shrimp & hearts of palm salad, and a mushroom quesadilla along with about 20 pounds of chips and their wonderful salsas.
Nearly every Southern California trip in the past couple years has included a stop at Patisserie Chantilly in Lomita. A Japanese bakery with French-style pastries, everything I have ever eaten here has been impeccably executed. The epitome of perfection at Chantilly is the cream puff. As soon as I walk into the patisserie, I usually have a huge smile on my face that remains during the whole trip.
We stopped by the old farmers market on Fairfax and Third -- just a quick run-through to check it out. This particular farmers market (much more of a tourist destination with permanent store booths than the modern farmers market) makes me feel very old and curmudgeonly as it's hard for me to believe that a modern mall has sprung up around the market in what used to be the parking lot. This photo is of the famous diner called Du-Pars which is famous for its pies and breakfasts.
The trip was great. Additional food highlights included Mozza Pizzeria and Sunday Supper at Lucques, a vegetarian dinner we cooked for my family, along with other bites and nibbles throughout the Southland. Even five days felt short, and I feel like I didn't do my hometown justice. But there's always next time ...
Thanks for hanging with me while things have been a little quiet around here. I usually work freelance doing (data) consulting projects from home. But in the past few months, I've had a project that requires me to go into an office in the East Bay several days a week. I love the project, and am thrilled for the opportunity but it's thrown my entire schedule out of whack and it's my blog and my writing that suffer.
Things are good around here -- they have been for a while, which is fun and lovely.
So this morning I woke up to go to my East Bay job. Got dressed and ready and then received a phone call from my contact there asking me to work from home. It's a good day.
Other things that are making me happy this week:
- A fantastic gin and tonic from Bix the other night: (local) 209 Gin and Fevertree tonic. Doesn't get much better than that.
- The great speech from Marketa Irglova last night at the Oscars. She is one half of the Once duo and she and Glen Hansard won for best song. She didn't get a chance to speak because the music was brought up before she spoke. In my favorite moment of the night, Jon Stewart brought her back and had her make her speech:
"The fact that we're standing here tonight, the fact that we're able to
hold this, it's just proof that no matter how far out your dreams are,
it's possible. And, you know, fair play
to those who dare to dream, and don't give up. This song was written
from the perspective of hope, and hope, at the end of the day, connects
us all, no matter how different we are."
- Hog Island Oyster Company's Happy Hour. I hadn't been there in quite a while, and it's as good as ever. $1 oysters and $3.50 beers. Monday and Thursday nights, 5pm to 7pm. We also had a delicious cooked scallop dish that's worth a try if it's still on the menu.
- Did you catch Governor Huckabee on SNL this weekend? Politics aside, it was an entertaining skit. (Sound quality on this video is terrible).
- I finally made it to Sebo. Holy delicious temple of sushi.
- This "freeze project" that took place in Grand Central Station last month and was repeated in San Francisco this weekend. I wish I would have seen it.
I know that many phone calls lately have gone unreturned, blog posts have gone unwritten, and photos have gone un-uploaded. The truth is that I've been busy. Eating.
About week ago, it was cold and rainy here in San Francisco. My throat was hurting, and I was tired from a weekend of parties. I sat across from a friend at Thai House Express. M had suggested the location for a bowl of chicken noodle soup.
I took a bite.
"This is the best thing I've eaten in a week," I said.
It was sublime. After a second bite, it had become my favorite chicken soup in San Francisco. The broth was clean and flavorful, the wide rice noodles and chicken transcendent with tiny crispy bits of God-knows-what that added an extra punch of flavor that I loved.
"What about Shin Toe Bul Yi?" he asked.
"Oh yah, and then there was that good dish at King of Thai Noodles, and -- oh yah! Pizzetta 211!"
When you've found your favorite chicken noodle soup in San Francisco and it is probably the third or fourth best thing you've eaten in 10 days, you know it's been a great few days.
M lived in San Francisco for years and was back visiting. He had a restaurant list, scribbled on the back of an envelope, in his back pocket the whole time he was here. I was game to join him at quite a few (but not nearly all), and added a couple suggestions of my own to create a memorable trip of food in my own city.
Shin Toe Bul Yi. This Korean restaurant in the Sunset is known by many to have the best fried chicken in San Francisco. I love it, find the beef kalbi and panchan to be ok, and think that they have the best menu translations in all of San Francisco. Can't find the fried chicken? Look for "Chicken Small Pieces. Little spicy. (Deep fried)." Tip: the fried chicken is only available at dinner time.
Hing Lung. I've only ever had Hing Lung duck jook to go, but it's like
magic to eat it late at night with chili paste stirred in. It's on
Broadway in Chinatown and I've heard that the only thing to eat here is
the jook and the donuts.
SPQR. M knew I wanted to take him here, and at 8 pm on a Saturday night announced that we should go. "No way in hell," was my response. I knew how popular it had gotten, and put my foot down. He persisted and we ended up getting in 45 minutes later though the quoted time was 2.5 hours. I didn't pull any weight (not that I have any to pull), or ask for any special favors. It was just a fortuitous question that got us in. And I'll never tell how.
Pizzetta 211. If I ever leave San Francisco, Pizzetta is one of the restaurants that I miss the most. There is not much that compares to whiling away the afternoon in the corner seats of Pizzetta with perfectly executed pizzas, good company, and a quintessential San Francisco feel. We shared two pizzas and a salad -- the winner was a rich no-tomato pizza with chard and potatoes. Delicious.
NOPA. I won't go on record with
the number of hours that Stephanie and I were bellied up to the bar
table here, but it was a fun Sunday afternoon/evening. M. joined us
a bit later in the evening (after we'd tasted most of their absinthe
cocktails) and we had a good meal, highlighted by white beans in tomato
sauce and a fantastic dessert.
King of Thai Noodles(Clement at 4th location). Pad Kee Mao, spicy with beef (stir fried dal rice noodles green long bean, bell pepper, thai chili and basil) is the best thing in the city to eat at 2 in the morning.
Incanto. This was my favorite meal at Incanto ever and went a long way in helping me understand why people love it so much. We sat at the bar, and had a quick bite of pastas before leaving for a busy Saturday night.
Tajine. Tajine wasn't on his list, but hit the spot one day as I picked it up to go. A highlight was the chicken with preserved lemons and olives.
Thai House Express (Larkin location). As stated above: Best. Chicken. Noodle. Soup in the City. We had other great things, but it was all eclipsed by the soup.
A16. You all know how much I love the new little sister to A16 (Yes, I've decided that SPQR is a woman -- sassy and cool and oh-so San Franciscan). So the truth is that A16's glory had dulled in my mind a tad in the past few months. I have so many memories of A16, though, and have had so many stellar meals that this apathy was not going to last long: My love for A16 is back in force. Arriving close to 10 on a Tuesday night, we were seated immediately. With four of us, we were able to order a good portion of the menu. I am pleased to say that the pizzas were spot on, the tuna conserva appetizer was remarkable, and that Liza Shaw must be performing miracles in the kitchen.
Yamo. This is a Burmese restaurant in the Mission -- a place that M has mentioned many times as something he craves. The take-out food that he brought me -- especially the curry chicken -- was good enough that I would go back.
Cafe Rouge. I have to admit to mixed feelings about Cafe Rouge. While I think that it's fine, I've never found it to be revelatory. However, it's difficult to knock a place with a $1 oyster happy hour with deliciously executed oysters. This restaurant wasn't on his list or mine -- was just a last minute decision as he headed out of town. It was a lovely meal, and a good way to end a grand run of restaurants.
Speaking of Flickr, I've been slowly going through the Vietnam trip photos and posting a couple a day. The photo above is one that I posted this week. Nine months after the trip, I am finally feeling like I can start to digest parts of it and talk about it. It took that long to not be completely overwhelmed by that amazing trip. So I've been writing a small amount about my impressions with the photos. You can see it all in the Vietnam Collection of my Flickr. You can subscribe to a feed of my Flickr photos using this link.
Also, if you read this site through an RSS reader, you may not notice the site's new look. I am happy to have new digs. Thanks for everyone who weighed in months ago about the new look. I chose a design that will allow me to swap photos in and out of the banner fairly easily.
(If you are reading this post on a RSS reader, you might want to click through to Life Begins @ 30 for the slideshow.
As we entered the Taco House last week, I steadied my grandfather on my arm. "The taco is $1.29," he said. "When I bought the Taco House, we sold it for 25 cents." Two women in front of the restaurant became really animated when they saw him. "You know who I just met," one exclaimed into her cell phone, "I met Bill. You know THE Bill."
My grandfather's name is Hank Silva, but in the Los Angeles community he is often known as "Bill". He bought Bill's Taco House in 1960 from the original Bill who had owned it for eleven years. Grandpa owned the restaurant for 25 years and many of his customers just assumed his name was Bill. He never corrected them.
The story that led my grandfather to own the Taco House is a real up-by-your-bootstraps, American-way story. He grew up very poor -- moving around, but mainly in the Central Valley -- and went to school very sporadically only through elementary school. During some of his youth, he picked fruit and cotton up and down the Central Valley -- figs, prunes, rhubarb, and strawberries. When the workers would break for lunch, grandpa and his best friend Tony would pretend that they were going to lunch as well. But they didn't have any money and didn't eat. When lunch was over, they would come back to the field, chewing on a toothpick and pretending that their bellies were full from the feast that they'd just eaten.
In 1939, grandpa had a small amount of money saved and felt that he was destined for something greater than ranch work. He wanted to leave the valley, but didn't know where to go. "San Francisco or Los Angeles," he told his friend Tony at the bus station. Grandpa had been waffling about which direction to go. "Just go buy me a ticket to either place." Tony chose Los Angeles. "You're going to Hollywood," Tony told grandpa, in a decision that was pivotal for grandpa's life and the future of our family.
Grandpa met my grandmother in 1945 (a great story for another day), served in the Navy in World War II, and then returned home to support his family. He held many jobs including working at a bra factory (where grandma worked as well), selling Baby Butler children's furniture, and selling tract homes in Riverside County. In the late fifties he was working at a trucking company and had an accident -- he fell from the dock and injured his elbow. The insurance company compensated him for his injury by giving him $10,000 (the equivalent of $69,000 today).
That $10,000 insurance check is the money that grandpa used to buy the Taco House. The restaurant is on Martin Luther King Blvd. in Los Angeles, about a mile east of USC. "We were open until four a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays," mom recently told me, "and there would be a line down the block after the clubs in the area let out." The taco that they were all lining up for is, what I could imagine, the perfect drunk food. It's greasy and full of spices and a fully craveable meal.
Every once in a while, someone who had just been released from jail would come into the Taco House because they'd been craving Taco House food in the slammer. Celebrities also came into the Taco House -- sometimes limos would pull up and people like Barry White and the singers of the Fifth Dimension would come in to get their taco fix. Many people who grew up in the neighborhood and became successful -- singers, boxers, politicians -- would continue to return to Bill's Taco House. "I remember when Barry White was coming in and no one knew who he was," grandpa told me recently, "and then he kept coming back when he was famous."
Recently on a trip to the Taco House alone, I tried to assess the taco. It's a seasoned hamburger patty, grilled and cut into three pieces, with a slice of cheese ("What kind of cheese, Grandpa?" "Yellow cheese."), diced tomatoes, shredded lettuce, and a spicy chili gravy all wrapped with a fried taco shell that is more soft than crunchy but with a fried flavor. Today's taco is pretty true to the original recipe, and the one that grandpa used. I laughed the other day at a user review on the Internet recently that called it "good Mexican food." I agree more with a different user who called it "good junk food."
"We would get a delivery of fresh ground beef every day," grandpa said on the drive home last week, "and on Saturdays, we would order 500 pounds of beef." Each taco uses less than a quarter of a pound of beef, so that's a heck of a lot of tacos.
Grandpa was really well known in the community. It's still a treat to run into people who went to Bill's as kids in the sixties and seventies and talk to them about what they remember. Aside from selling popular food, he provided the land for a Head Start school next door to the Taco House that is there to this day, and gave back to the community in many other ways. When the Watts riots occurred in 1965, neighbors urged grandpa to leave as the riots were breaking out, and spray painted "brother" on the wall of the Taco House. The Taco House was saved from being burned or looted while businesses all around were destroyed.
Grandpa sold the Taco House in 1985. It's still in existence, and in fact there are now one or two other "Bill's Taco Houses" around town, though I have never been to them.
It's hard to know where our family would be had grandpa not come to Los Angeles, or had he not owned the Taco House. Much of the family -- my mom, my uncle, my godmother, my grandmother and even my dad -- worked at the Taco House at one point or another and it's a major part of our family history. My grandparents have taught me so many life lessons, but grandpa's ownership of the Taco House taught me some big ones:
Make people happy by giving them good, honest food.
Treat them with respect, no matter what their background or social status.
Intuition and real world experience trump formal education.
Once you have a dream, work and work and work until you see it to fruition.
The original Bill's Taco House is located at 219 E Martin Luther King Jr Blvd., Los Angeles, 323-233-1587.
There's a conversation going on over at Chowhound and participants are separating restaurants into several categories. Here's my list, with a bit of a twist on the categories. There is no priority within the category - the restaurants are just listed how they came out of my head.
Restaurants that I know to support local farmers are marked with an asterisk (*).
You'll probably notice that I don't have a ton of super high-end restaurants on the lists. I feel much more comfortable at the mid-level places, especially in San Francisco.
I'm not a meme girl, but if I were, this would be a fun one to pass around - dontcha think?
My creme de la creme: *A16 *Coco500 *Zuni Cafe
Bodega Bistro *Pizzetta 211 Absinthe Maki
Pesce
The Helmand
*SPQR
Favorite Hole in the Walls: My Tofu House Yummy Yummy Darbar San Tung El Tonayense Taco Truck La Palma Mexicatessen Chavo's La Corneta *Primavera Stand at the FPFM
May be a favorite, but I need to go a few more times: Alembic *Delfina *Pizzeria Delfina *Kokkari Cav Ino *Rubicon *Canteen Dosa *Foreign Cinema *Slanted Door *Spruce Koo
Sebo
Liked it better the second time *Piccino *Nopa
Underwhelmed by, but may retry given the overwhelmingly positive reports: Bar Tartine Maverick (I've gone for brunch only) *Incanto (retried in 1/08. No longer underwhelmed.) *Nopa (moved up 12/2007) Piccino (moved up 11/25/2007)
Underwhelmed by, and no plans to return: *Bacar (pre Robbie Lewis) Acquerello Ozumo (pre Mike Yakura) Cassis
Nua
Cannot wait to go to: *SPQR (Moved up, 10/1/07 then moved up again 11/7/07) Sebo (tried 02/08. Moved up.) *Quince
Haven't been, and want to go: *Aziza Ame Ducca Bar Crudo Spork Perbacco Ritz Carlton Dining Room Myth *La Folie Terzo 1550 Hyde Zushi Puzzle Nua (moved, 11/7/07)
Anyone who knows me and is reading along is probably chuckling right now, as "a bit" is probably an understatement. It runs in the family. One day, my mother asked the ex how the three generations of women in our family are alike. He deadpanned, "well you're all stubborn!"
Weird things make me dig my heels in. When it comes to food, I get incredibly stubborn about going to places that are wildly popular, or that everyone seems to love. I don't want to be one of the herd of cattle, all shuffling off to the Cheesecake Factory, so I often try and find a lesser known restaurant or one that's not as popular but just as good.
This was the case for years with La Super Rica Taqueria in Santa Barbara. It's the taqueria that Julia Child allegedly loved when she lived in Santa Barbara. It's the taqueria that was mentioned by Michael Vaughn on Alias when he was trying to woo Sydney up the coast on a vacation with him. It's the taqueria that is on the top of the "must go" list of many Californians. Every time I drive by LSR, there are lines out the door. And so I got stubborn. I found excellent tacos nearby and decided that I wasn't missing much by never going there.
Last December, I drove down the coast with my friend Jeanne. She and I were both going to visit our respective families in Southern California, and so we decided to make a fun road trip out of the journey. The theme of this road trip? Tacos along the coast. It was a fun drive, and I believe we tasted 20 tacos over two days.
One of the highlights of the trip was La Super Rica. I took a deep breath, and prepared myself not to like it. When we snaked through the line and into the door, I noticed fresh tortillas being made in the back. My resolve began to crack a bit. By the time we got to the counter, we had broken our "two tacos per location" rule and tried four tacos. The one that stood out -- the one that still makes my mouth water 10 months later -- was calabacitas in a dark sauce with pork. Delicious with an herbal flavor made from a generous helping of epazote, the taco was one of the best that I've had this year ("I think it was epazote," Jeanne said when I just called her to fact check, "I don't remember, I was in a taco haze.").
I stopped by LSR for a second time yesterday. It was late afternoon so the line was relatively short, and I had an article that I'd been wanting to read, so I didn't mind the wait. After about 10 minutes, I tucked into my rajas taco and a taco of pork adobado -- a marinated pork with chiles. Rajas has been my dish of the summer, and I have made it several times at home. This rendition had a small amount of heat and was runny with cheese and studded with onions. Though it didn't make for a very good picture, the result was delicious and worth jumping on the bandwagon for.
La Super Rica Taqueria 622 N. Milpas Street, Santa Barbara
Closed Wednesday
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