Michoacan with a Melrose touch
5870 Melrose Ave. (just west of Vine/Rossmore)
Phone: 323-468-9345 | map
website (I guess)

I used to come to this unassuming spot for lunch when I worked in West Hollywood. Apparently, everyone else now does too, because there's usually a line and every table on the sidewalk patio is filled with handsome young people whom I pretend not to dislike. Your order is brusquely taken with flashing fingers over a desk calculator.

The line waiting to order weaves between the six or seven bright Italian-bistro-style tablecloths, allowing plenty of time to look over the colorful arrayed walls: bullfighting posters, village art, Mexican and U.S. flags, porcelain rooster heads, strings of fake green chiles, horseshoes, parrots, and the occasional newspaper review.

I gleefully grab a big old half-liter glass bottle of Coke, to realize that the label says high fructose corn syrup, not cane sugar, but it tastes of older days, so all's well. They have homemade Orchata too, which is mildly flavorful and clings to your uvula like paint.

The owner is from Michoacan, but adds what I daresay is a Californian sensibility to the homely, homemade food. The Pork en Chile Verde Burrito is not entirely unlike a Burrito Supreme from Taco Bell--in a good way, in that there is lettuce, sour cream, guacamole, and a slim jacket of rice and refried beans--but made succulent by gentle pork. The flour tortillas here are elastic but firm, showing slight grill-burn. The refried beans are almost billowy, really quite tasty despite the absence of lard.

The Chicken Tinga Burrito is even more plush and comfortable, with tender, pale strips of shredded chicken cradled in a guacamole sauce. There is a slight smoky flavor from the peppers in which it's marinated.

The tacos come on a single sturdy homemade tortilla instead of the feathery corn blankets underneath more traditional soft tacos. They also do lettuce here, not cabbage, which I don't mind at all; I have a fondness for the cool, neutral snap of iceberg lettuce.

The Carne Asada is cubes of well-done steak, roasty and tender, and it sleeps under a generous dash of red salsa. The Fish Tacos are even better; they are soft, fairly massive and grilled with a slight snap to the skin. Later you will realize that it was a really, really, quite good fish taco and that you wish you had another one.

Each plate has a hastily-tossed handful of chips, comfortably thick, sometimes stuck together, with a finger-sucking glisten and a suggestion of salt. The salsas at the little bar along one wall are three: a dark red which is unique but not forceful, a green thick with chiles and jalapeño, and a bulky, mild red that is the most friendly and fun.

There is a parking lot that you won't find a spot in, and some tree-shaded lanes which also probably won't welcome your car, but Cahuenga is right there, so you aren't out of luck.

Summon my Tunghaut, today we lunch in Paradise!
2827 W. Sunset Blvd. (in Silver Lake)
Phone: 213-989-0711 | map | website

I'm sure we're all aware that when we were growing up in the mall, what the bored food court employees were sweeping around the surface of a hellishly hot iron circle was not remotely Mongolian*. What we merrily call Mongolian BBQ is really a Taiwanese infatuation that grew out of teppanyaki.

Still, it's a lot of fun, so why not perfect it? The good people who brought us Pazzo Gelato had the idea to create this clean, elegantly designed place on Sunset.

You know how it goes. Grab a tray and a bowl, and move carefully along the counter, tonging frozen curls of pork, chicken, lamb, and/or rib eye into the bowl. Add fresh produce. Gobi, in keeping with its clean interior, goes for farm-fresh goodies like spinach, broccoli, mushrooms, shredded cabbage and bean sprouts, but also slivers of yam and butternut squash, which add an autumnal snap to the dish. Go ahead and make all this a teetering mound; pack it like a moving truck, for it will collapse down when cooked.

There is an array of sauces, and you should ladle these generously atop, since they too will bubble away and leave only their essence wrapped around the noodles. Go for volume rather than mixing a little of everything. I prefer several splashes of the smoked oyster sauce, the furiously seedy red pepper sauce, and enough garlic to make my pores weep for mercy. I like the Asian pesto and the green curry sauces when I want more of a vegetarian experience.

Top if off with as many noodles as you dare. Hand this off to the guy at the grill, and before you can start and finish a phone call he will have herded the whole sizzling mass around the iron, slid it expertly onto a plate, and handed it back wreathed in steam. Shake some sesame seeds over it to make it thematically complete, and add many squeezes of their house teriyaki sauce, which is rich without being cloying.

The result is a hot noodle dish with everything you ever wanted, an order of magnitude greater in quality than the Mongolian BBQ you remember. The sauces and fresh ingredients are infused, and you must remember to put down your chopsticks on occasion.

They have a selection of beers, ales and sake, but I like the organic iced pomegranate green tea, cool and subtle. They bring you a sticky bottle of agave nectar to sweeten it, rather like honey in consistency and taste. At the table they will also bring you a basket of crackly little sesame bread, on which I like to pour the agave nectar when no one's looking.

It's slightly more expensive than those days hanging around the food court--the lunch special is a totally L.A.-friendly ten dollars without a drink--but far more satisfying.

* Check out this fairly shameful history, by the company who started Mongolian BBQ, and who also offers you the chance to open your own Mongolianish chain. I like especially how these "hunters of the day and gluttons of the night" "horded" [sic] the feasts of Champions, and I also like how they offer rock shrimp and scallops, which I'm sure were treasured by the ancient warriors in the landlocked country of Mongolia.

A garlicky institution
5065 W. Sunset Blvd. (@ Normandie)
Phone: 323-665-7842 | map
1415 E. Colorado St. #D (@ Verdugo, in Glendale)
Phone: 818-244-2237 | map
website

I'm a fan of shawerma and kebab and tabouleh and hummus anyway, but the Lebanese touch brings it closer to my heart. This miniature spit-roasted empire now has nearly a double handful of locations, but the original 1984 location is in East Hollywood*.

There is no decor in the Hollywood spot, really, not unless you count violently lemon-colored walls and aluminum, and not much atmosphere except for perpetually grumbling older men and angry conversations in Armenian. The Glendale location on Colorado is the second oldest, and is set up more like a Jack in the Box than a post-war lunch counter.

What Zankou is famous for are the chicken sandwiches, wrapped in a scuffed-up pita, with a thin plaster of highly opinionated garlic sauce. Even as the foil opens up, the scent of garlic wells up. It looks very spartan--shreds of roasted dark-meat chicken, pale squares of chopped tomato, and hints of the white spackle that is the potato-based garlic sauce of which so many poets have written**.

The chicken is usually splendidly done, moist and profound, and the bits of sauce will make you check yourself with a palm over your mouth for the remainder of the day. You get a little dish of carnation-colored pickled turnips and yellow peppers, which you can safely ignore unless you want some extra crunch and spicy hiss (which I do).

The Tarna chicken is marinated chicken shawerma, which is slightly crispier around the edges but not as lush as the roasted chicken. The Sujouk [sic] is dark and rugged and rosy inside like an Armenian/Lebanese sausage can be, but unless you're a big sujouk fan it's not necessary.

The Tri-Tip Shawerma, like the chicken, is infused with its own roasty flavor, dark and juicy. Slicing up the yellow peppers with this, then filling a pita with it, is good times.

The hummus is actually quite good, finely blended with big flakes of paprika. The tahini sauce is thick, sour and a little unfriendly.

* The Sunset location is not part of the website, possibly because of the drama--legal and lethal drama--that occurred with the family. You can look it up if you like. Zankou is quite the L.A. institution.

** Not really. But it's been blogged about a lot.

I'm still unsure how to pronounce it
2606 W. Sunset Blvd. (@ Rampart Blvd.)
Phone: 213-353-9635 | map

This is a (not very) secret prize of the Silver Lake community, open until ten every night, available for those who like to come in and pick up a phoned-in order.

We like to eat in the dining room, under walls of pleasing colors: raspberry, yellow curry, pistachio, and sky blue. The tables have rich blue and gold fabric draped over them.


For Bianca, the go-to item on any Thai menu is Squid Salad, and this is one of her favorites. Cylinders of squid are hacked into pliancy, clean, clear and snappy in a lime and hot chili sauce that boasts a powerful scent. The cilantro and the onion (white, not red) are not too strong. Ordered medium spicy, it yields a subtle heat that kicks in when you try to speak.


Hello, you offer a lunch special that has pork and fried chicken? Oh, my, yes. Prik King is green beans coated in a red curry paste, a caress of ginger, garlic and lime that is not terribly spicy. The green beans are at that perfect point of a little snap without spilling open. The pork is slightly chewy, and actually takes a back seat to the chicken.

The Fried Chicken is something to get busy with. The skin is crispy to the nth degree, the meat juicy and billowing with steam, accomplished only as a result of using very hot oil. It's all presented with a standard steamed rice, useful mainly for soaking up extra Prik King curry paste.

The Shrimp Fried Rice is a heaping mound of perfectly rendered fried rice, reminding me of a neighboring Chinese family who used to whip up in a similar style; it's not too shrimpy, not too eggy, not inundated with soy sauce, and has a little pot-burn to add some gritty texture. The shrimp are flayed open and soft. You'll want to move the decorative planks of sliced cucumber and heavy tomato wedges out of the way.


This buries the needle on the New Addiction meter. The Fish Cake appetizer is a quintet of nearly burger-sized patties, dense, springy, almost balloon-like in texture, resistant to the fork but yielding to the knife. It almost doesn't need the dipping sauce, topped with sliced cucumber and chopped peanuts for contrasts. These are really, really good, and a staple of ours.


I've been on a duck kick lately, and I have a crush on the Duck Noodles, available dry or as a soup. The duck is rendered rich and softer than beef, laying atop bean sprouts and vibrant green rings of scallion. The bone-colored rice noodles (or egg noodles if you prefer them) resist the pull of the chopsticks. The broth is opaque and moody, not the clear shine of pho nor the pork-heavy comfort of ramen.

This is a small serving, by the way, and it still needs taking home as leftovers. This may be sacrilege, but cutting up one of the fish cakes and adding it to the duck noodle soup equals great fun for me.

The drinks are expected: a few good Thai beers, a sweetly bitter Thai Iced Coffee, and Thai Iced Tea.

Mae Ploy is one of those places that would be godlike in a neighborhood without the swarm of Thai joints as we have near us, and so is merely within the ruling class. The only negative reviews I've seen have been from people who order Pad Thai.

There may or may not be parking in back, but I've always managed to snag a spot along Sunset.

Give me some sweet mint iced tea and some time
640 N. Spring St. (north of Cesar E. Chavez)
Phone: 213-626-0535 | map | website

I used to pass by this on Cesar Chavez, invariably on my way to Olvera Street or Little Tokyo, until the signs got larger, darker and more vibrant so that they could not be ignored.

Corrugated metal covers the walls, ornamented with Dodger pennants and license plates from other states. The breathy hiss of exposed air conditioning ducts is drowned out only by the electric blues ambling from the speakers. A small room with racks of small-brewery beers can be seen in the back. On each table is a paper towel roll, packets of lemony towelettes, and an unopened loaf of Town Talk white bread, ready for soaking and swiping.

One can power through a number of their specialties with the Sampler Plate, basically a sauce-draped tray of carnivore-bait. The Hot Links have a gritty attitude, dark and moody inside from somehow having soaked up juices. I finished them first.

I usually don't get ribs because eating them is hell on facial hair, and these do not disappoint that particular conceit; I am thankful for the paper towels. The Spare Ribs are big girders of still-pink pork, not falling off the bone but willing to be convinced. They could be left on the grill to get a little more burnt around the ends for my taste.

The Pulled Brisket is good, tender with a fatty cap and smoky, but since I unfairly compare everything to the Passover brisket made by the mother of a good friend, I withhold any claim of beefy brilliance. The Smoked Chicken, though, is probably the strongest item here, hidden under everything else. Just shy of fork-tender but not shy at all, the chicken is the most willing to soak up the sauce and create a new personality.

Spring Street bills itself mostly as Carolinean, but the barbecue sauce has, in my opinion, a Texan vibe, darker and not as runny. The spicy sauce is sassy but not painful, and benefits from a few shakes of Trappey's pepper sauce.

The baked beans you see cringing behind the mound of spice-rubbed carnage are nice and seem homemade. Their french fries are solid, seasoned three-quarter-inch beams with a bit of crackle.

The Pulled Pork Sandwich is a good summer chowdown with some risk to your shirt. The spicy sauce is more strongly felt here, giving a slight burn to the lips; spread underneath the thumb-thick shreds of moist pork, it soaks through the long toasted bun. The chopped, blocky slaw on top adds a peppery cool. The sandwich does not want to be picked up after a few minutes of sauce-absorption.

The sincerity is here, but it does feel designed. The tables and chairs are too new, the smoky scent too crisp and fresh, the wood planks too undented to evoke the sense of bluesy-and-battered roadside joint. Give them a few years to chip the paint and scuff the floors, to create a nice black layer of char. For now, I appreciate the friendly zeal of the people here; it reminds me of Dave's Chillin-n-Grillin, young people with a real appreciation for meaningful comfort food.

There are three public parking lots within easy reach.

Hospitality on many, many small plates
17201 Ventura Blvd. (in Encino)
Phone: 818-784-4080 | map | website

If you can't make it over to the Shipudei Itzik Hagadol in Jaffa--totally understandable considering the traffic between here and Israel--bustle yourself over to the Encino location. It's taken over an old barbecue joint, and shined it up with arcs of green light, tall booths of beautiful black inlaid vinyl, and a massive fan-cooled patio.

I first came here for lunch. I don't know whether I had on a "Restaurant Reviewer, Please Bribe Me" t-shirt on, or whether I'd stumbled into the most generous kitchen around, but once they discovered that I'd never experienced Itzik Hagadol before, I found myself helplessly submerged in a deluge of no less than fourteen (!) dishes. Impossible! Too much! I protested, since I had ordered less than a fourth of which appeared on my table*, but the waitress ignored me: The owner, he wants to spoil you!

There is a fault with this kind of kingly treatment, namely that I cannot possibly remember which dish was which, let alone scribble down enough notes to encompass this grand array. All of what surrounded me were what were quaintly called salads, each more formidable than the word "salad" suggests. With this came giant wheels of puffy, sesame seeded laffa bread.

I can detail only a handful of the delights delivered to me. This is Turkish Salad, a violently red gathering of tomato, onion, bell pepper and possibly pomegranate paste; it might be acili ezme, a Turkish tomato dip, but I was too busy scooping up this murky, spicy concoction with the laffa to care about naming conventions.

Other dishes flashed by without hope of detailed analysis. The Baba Ganosh is pale white and subdued, the eggplant and tahini light on the sesame flavor. I would not expect to nod appreciatively over a dish of Roasted Cauliflower, but slightly blackened in a golden curry-like sauce, it is absolutely savory. I was even enjoying a grey ground meat dish with scallion: oh, what is this?... It's Chopped Liver. Oh, ah, really? Hmm... I still like it.

A simple, tangy red tomato salsa and a cucumber salad with strips of red onion in a tongue-coating dressing acted as the few cooling elements, made for pausing and realizing how full I was getting.

This is the revelation that is Hummus with Hot Mushrooms; whenever I come here I will get this without fail. The hummus is yogurt-smooth, superior and sans paprika, surrounding a lush pool of goodness that only mushrooms in a creamy sauce can bring.

These are just the salads. There is carnivorous fare here as well, including a skewer of five meats: chicken thigh (dark, just-off-the-bone flavor), lamb (robust), hanging tender (otherwise known as hanger steak, gentle with a grainy tang), beef fillet (a little rough, but juicy) and house kabab, all charred nicely and needing no dipping sauce. Over all of them I prefer the house kabab by itself, a veal-and-lamb symphony that's ground and seasoned and made for chopping with a fork and devouring.

I'm aware of Shalvata Cafe, Hummus Bar & Grill, and Aroma nearby, but I have the feeling that there's a new powerhouse in town. Itzik Hagadol is open daily until 11.

* I believe you probably have to tell them that you do not want any more, or be quite specific in exactly the amount of food you plan to devour. Otherwise, be prepared to hike up your expected bill. They may not charge for the things they bring you just-because, but they will ask "do you want this? Do you want to add this?" and you will probably say yes. It's wallet-pinching, but worth it.