Look for the little icons
8401 Santa Monica Blvd. (West Hollywood)
Phone: 323-654-3993 | map
12851 Riverside Dr. (Studio City)
Phone: 818-761-8985 | map
website

The interior of the Santa Monica Hugo's is typically modern, calmly lit by a field of dimpled white shades. The vibe is close but efficient and friendly; however, we like the side patio, amber glass candle holders glowing on each table.

I always peruse the beverages menu for something interesting, and I settle on the Yogi Smoothie: mango, apple, toasted almonds, soy milk, cooperating in an even-handed way until the aftertaste suddenly jumps out shouting in ginger. It's a little rude, but I'd order it again.

These are fantastic. Rice Paper Lentil Rolls. Organic lentils are mixed fine with caramelized onion, surprisingly subdued celery, green pepper shaking hands with green apple, scallions, and a vegenaise. They are good by themselves, a delicate experience, but brought to a sophisticated level by a dip in the avocado/pepita dressing. The entire affair has the confident balance of a monk.

It's a salad, Dave. That's, um, great. Please tell me how this is innovative.

Glad to. This is Hugo's Mexican Salad. What's Mexican about it? Not entirely sure, although there are black beans and avocado, and a pico de gallo involved. This is not important. What is important is that along with the above ingredients they've somehow taken romaine, black olives, parmesan and nicely grilled, skin-on chicken breast, piled it into a grand hillock, and made it into one of the best salads I've tasted all year.

The caesar dressing isn't even that strong, but creamy and polite. The salad is as strongly tasty as if there were bacon and bleu cheese to boss everyone around (there isn't). The chicken is chopped into inch-wide cubes and hidden everywhere your fork penetrates. The avocado is fresh and influential, the black olives seem freshly sliced.

Another dish that refused to take a good photo, this is Very Slowly Roasted Portabello [sic] Stew, and the fact that they painstakingly point this out in the title is prominent in its presentation. Portobello mushrooms are so often rubbery and elusive, and not worth their impressive-sounding name, but this is, apparently, very slowly roasted, and therefore soft and meaty in texture, and darned good, and other things that make me run my sentences on.

Also in this is carrots, squash, zucchini, all the things that make my inner grade schooler say "yuck", plus garlic and french green lentils, which don't. It's assembled with a tomato and red wine sauce that is hard to describe, but almost sweet. Bianca likes the vegan mashed potatoes with this, which are not as whip-creamy as they can be since there is only soy milk to deal with, but combining a bit of that with a bit of stew makes every bite ridiculous.

The Grilled Mushroom Enchiladas are a grand repast, strips of sautéed mushrooms and onions wrapped in thick corn tortillas. The three amigos are then coated with a roasted tomatillo-jalapeño sauce, which is chunky and green and fairly sparkling with spice and flavor. Occasional heat darts toward your throat to stick it with a rapier.

On the left is long grain Spanish rice. Such texture! Tiny bits of corn and carrot add to a pan-roasted feel, although the rice loses its heat quickly. To the right are white beans, stirred in a red Guajillo-chili sauce, gentle and rich. The entire dish is an illustration in contrast: gritty fluff of the rice, red blanket of beans, layered nobility of the enchilada trio.

All this is gluten-free, by the way, something with which I've been concerning myself, and the parts that aren't vegan can be made vegan when requested. Each menu item considerately details whether it's vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and whether it can be made so.

We did not take a photo of the desserts, but there is something you need to try, and that is Chef Nabor's Chocolate Mousse.

In my longtime, lantern-lit search for an honest mousse, mousse usually falls to either of two waysides: it is an airy, tasteless sponge, or it is a dense clay. This is neither. The chocolate is Cordillera, with a soft-spoken, rich finish that brings smiles and hits itself out of the park. And, oh yeah: gluten-free.

Bianca: I'm having one of those "I'm young and and I'm licking my spoon" moments.

The location on Coldwater is a distant country cousin that has its own lot. Santa Monica is next to a public parking structure with a nice four-dollar flat rate for the evening.

Oh, and related to Hugo's Tacos? Yes.

Fowl, on a spit, over wood that's on fire, and, well, that's all I need, really
764 S. Western Ave. (@ 8th, in Koreatown)
Phone: 213-382-4090 | map
16527 S. Vermont Ave. (west of the 110, in Gardena)
Phone: 310-715-2494 | map

The Pollo a la Brasa Western is the last structure remaining on a strange triangular strip that divides 8th Street from itself. There is no parking, unless you find a meter.

See that stack of wood that walls this building on two sides? That, dear friends, is the fiery chariot by which meat on a rotisserie skewer ascends to Valhalla. The scent of wood and smoke and chicken blends in a trio of intoxication.

The inside is tiny, with brushed metal and fake brick, and five tables with yellow seats which fit four if the four are reasonably at ease with each other. All the doors are open to let in a refreshing crossbreeze.

The menu has a few things that aren't chicken--grilled rib eye steak and anticucho (grilled beef heart)--but you are not concerned with them. You want the rotisserie chicken: 1/4, 1/2 or the entire bird.




The cuarto. I am unsure of words to use here, because everything seems inadequate. I am a big fan of properly crispy chicken skin, and the skin is a scarred landscape of brown, crackingly sweet darkness, ready to be pulled away and crunched. The meat has that pinkish tinge that Peruvian rotisserie does--don't worry, it's done--and is softer than a 1970s easy-listening yacht rock compilation, practically collapsing away from the bone.

A few unself-conscious minutes later I eye the bones sadly, wondering if more is hidden somewhere. I should have gotten the 1/2; I could have blown through that and still been longing for more. It is chicken, and since a quarter chicken with a couple of extras is about five bucks, it's doable.

With this you can get a few sides, like rice, salad, or beans. The salad is an eclectic mass of cool, leafy, vegetably things to crunch, the fries are big pale girders, and the rice is white, sticky and stubborn.

The black beans are ladled from a vast pot; they're saucy and infused with meat, rustic and absolutely all right with me. They are, in fact, my current favorite batch of black beans. I am also curious about the aguadito, Peruvian chicken soup, since the chicken here is so brilliant.

The aji is an airy green sauce with a tongue-bashing bite. The chicha morada is more clovey than most, and I like it.

Wins
4449 Prospect Ave. (@ Hillhurst, in Los Feliz)
Phone: 323-666-0600 | map
1200 N. Pacific Ave. (in Glendale)
Phone: 818-500-1289 | map
website

This is the first review where my notes were taken at home, and the first review where we're busting out the larger photos. Because you need to see this pizza.

Because of its casual, kewl-dude-in-a-woodie logo, you do not suspect Cruzer of offering the first all-vegan pizza. Learning about it, and finally trying this "why hasn't anyone done this before?" fare, made us shriek and dance like we'd received a basket of puppies.

We start with having the Quarrygirl.com Pizza delivered. Olive oil, garlic and softly dense strips of portobello and button mushrooms make us forget that there's no red sauce on this pie. The sausage is that rare vegan entity that tastes closer to the real thing than it looks, instead of the other way around; it's zippy and spicy as real sausage, and I could totally go through a bag of it like a road trip jerky snack.

A thick paste of Daiya cheese is melted over everything, white and grainy with little yellowed oven marks. It feels more like ricotta or goat cheese in texture and tang, and once you make that mental transition, it's all good. Daiya will save us all. Beneath all of it is a just-plain-good dough, bready and bubbled and just this side of sweet.

The Vegan BBQ Chicken Pizza also has no red stuff, but the ruddy bbq sauce is like a sweet & sour glaze, rich with molasses and I daresay hickory; it complements the already-sweet tinge of the dough. You could serve this to friends and tell them it's BBQ Pork, even, and they'd nod with approval. The texture, the grain, the flavor, is all there, firm and cooked. It's not meat, I'm told, and I laugh it off. The daiya cheese is more settled and cooperative on this pizza.

Bianca, upon her first bite: Are you kidding me.

Cruzer has a Vegan Meat Pizza, which I am nervous about trying. I am of course a slave to meat pizzas when given the option, but I can't yet imagine how sausage, pepperoni, meatball, Canadian bacon, ham and salami could all be rendered convincingly and separately as vegan. I will just need to keep placing orders.

And: a vegan Chicken Cheese Steak? A vegan Chicken Parmigiana? I must know.

The pizzas are available in a whole wheat crust as well.

The Los Feliz location uses only 100% animal-free vegan ingredients, the first ever pizza joint in Los Angeles to do so, so much applause for them. They are also incredibly nice on the phone.

They're open until ten most days, eleven on Fridays and Saturdays.

A leisurely southerly west coast span of time
4354 Melrose Ave. (just east of the 101)
Phone: 323-666-6075 | map

It's fairly difficult to find Chilean cuisine even in this hypermulticultural mecca, so I'm pleasantly surprised to find this place within a couple miles of me, something I've driven by hundreds of times.

This restaurant and deli have been sitting quietly at the corner of Heliotrope and Melrose before anyone started trying to make the area hip.

The interior is homelike and often nearly deserted. Some lazy watching of the current football match may be in progress. The music can be soft-voiced Spanish crooners, but can also be, um... Go Country 105. Despite the photos and artifacts of Chile, one is (sometimes wincingly) inundated with Toby Keith, Alan Jackson and Big & Rich.

Ponder this as you dive into the thick roll they bring you, with either a pat of butter or a spoon of pebre, a mean little green sauce similar to Argentinian chimichurri, cilantro-heavy with a nice nasal onion sting.

Chile hugs Argentina on its right hip, so it's no surprise that some culinary similarities exist. If Rincon Chileno's ability with meat pies is representative of Chile, then Argentina has serious competition. I try a spinach empanada; the shell is ultra-crispy, glowing yellow and brown, layered rather than flaky. Once past the villainous heat level, there is spinach, chopped fine and melding beautifully with long strings of white cheese. It is superb, easily the best spinach empanada I've ever tasted.

The Churrasco de Pollo is a powerpacked little sandwich. Strips of chicken are grilled perfectly, browned and stiffened outside, tender inside, cooled by fresh tomato and avocado crushed almost into guacamole. This comes on french bread, amasado (a dense, scored roll not entirely unlike ciabatta), or hallulla (pronounced ayu-ya, hard-baked and pitted like a biscuit).

The sandwich comes with super-crispy french fries, with which you can't insult me. They benefit both from ketchup (the waitstaff sees I am a gringo and places a bottle on the table) and occasional dips into the pebre.

Move past the lunchtime sandwiches to see Rincon Chileno's kitchen shine. The Filete de Pescado a la Meunniere is a baked fillet of whitefish swimming in a mild lemon garlic sauce, achingly tender. You can get it fried for the nicely rendered crunch, but this gentle slab of fish rings of perfection.

It has a small tin of warmed garlic dipping sauce that has more citrusy bite, but it is almost unneeded because of the succulence of the fish. A steaming mound of white rice helps to soak up the flavorful juices, and three small slices of astoundingly red tomatoes sit aside, dusted with parsley. I still apply pebre here and there.

There is peril. If you aren't careful--note the consumption of bread, empanada, french fries and sandwich here--the resulting carb coma will have you in its starchy manacles and unable to function for the remainder of the day except for yawns and hand waves and weak little whines. Your slide into sleepiness is exacerbated by the fact that it may take a while for them to deliver the bill.

Rincon Chileno is open 10 to 10 daily. Plenty of street parking with meters that blink and say FAIL is nearby. There's also a Rincon Chileno on Hawthorne in Lawndale, but I'm unsure of its relation.

Those cats were fast as lightning
6445 Hollywood Blvd. (@ Wilcox)
Phone: 323-465-0110 | map | website

Generating its own vibrations and some Yelpy grumbling from patrons who expected a standard Chinese delivery experience, Kung Pao Kitty holds up a corner of the Hollywood Pacific Theatre building. The inside is all red and brown and wood and sexy, dotted with reedy-textured tables and lizard print seats. KCRW plays overhead, or maybe some slick bossa nova. There are two tables out on the sidewalk if you'd like the exposure to the traffic and uniquely skewed culture of Hollywood Boulevard just west of Cahuenga, and more tables along Wilcox that feel lonely until nighttime hits.

There is a bar dominating one wall, and a selection of three-dollar brews, like Chimay, Yanjing and Corona. Start on that while you eye the ring-around-the-rosey quartet of sharp condiments: soy sauce, sriracha, red chili paste, and a vindictive-looking hot chili oil. All have treacherously balanced lids and spoons, and you should take care not to rub your eyes after inspecting them.

The kitchen is not meant to be straight out of Chengdu, certainly not with a name like Kung Pao Kitty and the retro sex-goddess Orientalist sing-song girls depicted on the menu. It's more like a kung fu movie set with a deconstructionist attitude and a surprisingly subtle hand.

The Fried Tofu with Black Scallion Mushroom Sauce is a fun starter for friends. The tofu is crisp and cratered on its bed of lettuce leaf, accompanied by a gritty little sauce that colors the tofu more than flavors it. The cubes disappear as our beers do.

This is an even more fun starter for friends, especially if it's currently 1973 and a snarling gang from the rival martial arts school has just rushed around the corner brandishing weapons. You need the 70's Style Egg Rolls to fend them off; the outside skin is fried to crackly doom, the interior is doughy and chewy and tasty. Ground pork is here, and not much else. The addition of a chutney-like plum sauce makes your kung fu superior enough to avenge the death of your teacher.

The Mushroom Pork is colorfully saturated, with thin sheets of softened carrot, bamboo shoots, and prodigious snow peas cut into hollow squares. The ruddy pork is tender and robust, the mushrooms lending their earthy, tongue-coating flavor, and I highly dig this brown sauce that ties it together. A calm hill of brown rice soaks up some, but not enough.

The Szechwan Fire Fish is firm and tasty with strings of black mushroom, green onion, bamboo shoots and water chestnuts. They may ask you if you want it mild, medium or spicy, but if you're ordering something that includes "Szechwan" and "fire" in its title, it would be ridiculous not to get it spicy.

The result is tossed in an amber-colored sauce that will cause some hiccups and snifflage if it is allowed to congregate and make its evil plans, but it is otherwise nonthreatening and nothing a beer can't defuse.

The Tofu in Lobster sauce is sunny and rich, with more of the sliced snow peas, gentle mushrooms and water chestnuts. The lobster sauce is balanced and silky, not slimy or skeevy as lobster sauce can be. It flavors the brown rice with a sweetish tinge.

They deliver if you're nearby, and as I mentioned, Kung Pao Kitty gets its share of complaint, usually when ordering orange chicken over the phone. We don't think that's the point. With a place that's open until midnight on weekdays and two on Fridays and Saturdays, you should be there soaking up L.A. culture as much as taste. Besides... lunch specials! About eight bucks, and they come with a kitschy little mixed salad.

There's a couple of parking lots in back that will allow validation.

They get Downtown
524 S. Main St. (Downtown between 5th & 6th)
Phone: 213-623-8301 | map | website

On a stretch of Main which manages to juggle wholesale outlets, aging brick buildings pretending to be lofts, and high-end dog spas, populated by thin girls with expensive bags, people just trying to get by, and grumbling homeless, the Nickel Diner is becoming a shining beacon of downtown evolution.

It is down-to-earth, but chefly more than seedy. The decor is newish but has a retro honesty: new vinyl and chipped creamer jugs, shiny dark brown panels and battered tin signs.

For breakfast, before rolling up my sleeves and going to work on the docks*, the 5th & Main is a well-constructed source of fuel.

It's spicy BBQ pork hash, tender shreds of pork with rounded wedges of just-underdone potato. A pair of poached eggs adorn the top, smeary ovoids with yellow goodness waiting to add its soft opinion to the hash. It comes with a sweet red tomato chutney and a drizzle of spicy barbecue sauce.

For less carnivorous pursuits, the Vegan Ranchero delivers much yummunence (I just made that word up). Two cylindrical cakes of tofu, fried just enough to make their surfaces scratchy, are dressed with salsa. The golden exterior barely keeps their contents in check; breaking through with a fork yields a soft blossom of tofu.

Surrounding this is the heirloom house beans, rich and meaty, perfect chili-style beans if I had them in my kitchen. A sliced wedge of avocado rests nearby, and two corn tortillas are folded at either end, tasty but too sodden to perform any taco-creation duty. A few distracted strips of yellow soy cheese colors the dish nicely.

On to lunch. The BLTA is technically a bacon-lettuce-tomato-avocado affair, but more interesting due to its being suffused with a spicy aioli instead of mayonnaise. The bacon is thick and crisp but subdued, the tomato and avocado struggling to be present and adding a tasty cushioning factor. The arugula lettuce is highly successful here, necessary to stand up to the power of the aioli.

The sandwich is buried under a lattice of crispy, whitish shoestring fries that are just fine. However, you won't finish them, because the dessert tray will pass by you at some point, and your eyes will follow it, asking silent questions.

It's been written about already, so I'll let others pontificate on the devilishly crrayyy-zay charms of the Maple Bacon Donut. We have other goals.

For instance, Bianca is automatically in love with well-made red velvet cakes, and the version at the Nickel Diner is a lovely accident: a box of Valrhona chocolate balls had apparently fallen into the frosting, but they were stirred in anyway, and the effect is a properly moist, layered red velvet cake with crunchy ricey bits between frosty layers that are just sweet enough not to hurt anyone. It is insanely, eyes-fluttering-backward good. My only regret is a failed, blurry photo.

While I sputter in disbelief over the divinity of the red velvet cake, I also cannot help but acquire a homemade Ding-Dong. I mean, come on. Ding-Dongs. The king of snack cakes in my personal realm. And these are on. I crack through the chocolate armor to a gently moist, white-striped brown cake, my childhood screaming in envy from across the fence.

Co-owner Kristen Trattner came by to describe the delights, and nodded at my Ding-Dong-induced smile: "This made you wanna watch cartoons, didn't it?"

They make homemade pop tarts too, by the way...

The coffee here is quite good, hot or iced.

Nickel Diner is constantly reconsidering its menu and its hours, but is currently closed Mondays, open at 8 the rest of the week until 11pm, with a brief afternoon break. A large and gated parking structure lurches conveniently across the street.

* I'm slipping into some kind of turn-of-the-last-century industrialized humanity-as-commodity kind of mode here, don't mind me. I've been taking a lot of nineteenth-century literature classes.