Welcome to DiningInLA.com! We eat, write, think and take in the spectacular, sexy, occasionally seedy but never-stagnant qualities of our city.

We live in Silver Lake, over on the northeastern side of things, and slowly we're building our culinary experiences. We branch into adjoining areas as well as L.A. itself. Select a Category on the right to get started.

Got a place we need to try? Leave a comment or click the Contact link above to suggest new places to tickle and tantalize our taste buds (but don't use silly restaurant-review-style sentences like that last one).

Dave and Bianca

Outstanding Thai with design in mind
5267 Hollywood Blvd. (in Thai Town)
Phone: 323-466-6722 | map | website

Say you're in Thai Town past midnight with a credit card about you; you haven't the cash for Sanamluang, you're tired of the Thai Elvis at Palms, and the entertainment at Thai Patio is too light on the transvestitism. You want something awesome. Red Corner Asia is where you want to head.

RCA is elegantly approachable, poised in its greens and yellows and backlighting and Thai love songs overhead. Its menu as well as its interior is cleanly designed. Delightfully friendly and attractive waitstaff in apple-green aprons gesture you to a table.

Try something besides the Thai iced tea: a cold chrysanthemum drink, butterscotch in color and honeyed in flavor, highly refreshing without the aftertang of hibiscus or the syrup of soda. Agonize over the appetizers. For now we only know the joy of the Golden Shrimp Balls, deep-fried until airy and smooth like tofu, with a sweet and sour dipping sauce.

The list of entrees goes on and on, but you'll have to settle for something since the waitstaff-smiles are firmly in place and awaiting your pleasure. There are staples like Red Curry (chicken, beef, pork, or tofu), easy on the bell peppers and perfectly red-speckled orange. The RCA Noodles are thick rice noodles with minced pork, shrimp and tofu, and rad little curled-up slices of pork sausage, which is a quick way to my list of favorites. Whatever spice level you like, ask for it one lighter than you think you want, on pain of watering eyes.

To impress your friends, get the Yum Crispy Catfish. It's difficult to believe this is fish and not a crispy noodle appetizer, shredded and deep-fried into a tangy latticework; it rests on a spicy apple salad, the apple wedges sliced like a pile of pale green french fries for contrast.

Red Corner Asia is open until 2 in the morning, and there is, joy of joys, a parking lot, albeit valet.

Many prayerful bows with hands pressed together to our dear friend Andrew, who took us here to this new favorite place.

More Peruvian Coma Inducement
714 S. Brand Blvd.
Phone: 818-243-5121 | map

So in my "go get gastronomically stoned and then try to return to work" wisdom, I decide to squeeze between the grey Mercedes-Benz and BMW dealerships on Brand and enter Mamita. It's not quite tiny, but it feels like it, its stuccoed plaster interrupted by photo murals-cum-travel brochures of Peru.

Your first encounter with the Mamita Effect is a crisp, hot roll that will anoint you with crumbs. There is butter, which is important, and that Squeeze Bottle of the Gods filled with creamy green aji sauce. Mamita's aji has that back-of-the-palate cough quality of heat that will keep reminding you of its presence like a guilt-prompting grandmother.

The deeply purple chicha morada, a corn beverage I've mentioned before, doesn't help much (a Cusqueña beer would probably fare better); it's tasty but a little more cloying than lola's.

So I settle into a plate of saltado de pollo, dark-meat chicken stir-fried with red onion, tomatoes, and french fries, juice-soaked from the skillet and dizzyingly hearty enough to make your eyes want to roll back in their sockets. My nose is running from the heat of it, but do I stop applying non-Newtonian liquid streaks of aji sauce? I do not, because I am foolish.

Are we sure that Peruvian food doesn't have traces of tetrahydrocannabinol in it? Anyone done any scientific research on that? Can I help?

The slowly-growing tally of Peruvian experiences:

Mario's: Best Chance for Being Carted Home in a Basket
Los Balcones del Perú: Classiest Place for Making Yourself Useless
Lola's: Best Chicha Morada
Mamita: Most tongue-spanking Aji sauce

A strong survivor of the foodie revolution
2217 Honolulu Ave. (in Montrose)
Phone: 818-957-7827 | map | website

A sea of faux-pumpkins leered overhead when first brought here by our friend Francesca, but I imagine the interior is seasonal. Otherwise there's comfortably faded brick walls, vintage French or Italian prints of foods and wines, and what looks like shredded newspaper on the floor. It's a decor that's been attempted countless times by eateries desiring that "internationally local" feel.

Star Cafe causes a little head-scratching, especially since they're right next door to the Black Cow Cafe, and both are part of the What's Cookn Inc. family, that has kids all over Glendale (Clancy's Crab Broiler, Hamburger Central and even Jax). I suspect there's an alien mind-control cult going on here. If there is, it's fairly successful; Star Cafe has been around for almost a decade and a half, from the beginning of the whole foodie movement. You're initially hooked in by the seasoned puff of bread before you, drizzled with herbs, with a buttery stickiness to the fingertips. There is high-quality chocolate going on in the iced Caffe Mocha, all sweet and swirling strata.

Now, I hate squash and all its unevenly-shaped vegetal kin. I hate it. But the Butternut Squash soup is a tureen of deliciously spicy silk that really illustrates the "Autumnal seasonal foods" concept, and thus my alien mind-control cult theory gains evidential momentum. Bianca continued this newfound fetish with the Curry Butternut Squash Ravioli, a sunny yellow paradise contrasted with bright red chopped tomatoes, that perfectly mixes the "butter" and "nut" and "curry" flavors, and makes me--snarling, sniveling and with much hand-wringing before shrinking back into dark alleyways--admit that butternut squash can be pretty awesome, I guess.

I was a little less experimental; having heard people rave about the focaccia, I had a Chicken Dijonnaise sandwich on this pizza-style, herb-smothered bread. The chicken is breaded and moist and begs to be torn apart and eaten as is. The pasta salad had a few too many hidden green beans and peas attempting to contribute to the mind-control effect, but they didn't hurt at all and I said nay to them.

There's also a red-pepper fettuccine, with roasted garlic and shallots, in a parmesan cream sauce that I shall be returning to try, but of my own free will, not because my mind is in any way influenced. We shall also be sampling the Black Cow Cafe next door with Francesca, who is not sponsoring our entry into any cult in any manner.

(Nearly) hidden treasure
367 N. Chevy Chase #A (Glendale location)
Phone: 818-551-5540 | map
6008 Laurel Canyon Blvd. (North Hollywood location)
Phone: 818-985-5701 | map

The Glendale location is a little hard to find, despite its commanding corner location on Chevy Chase and Verdugo, if you're coming from the wrong direction. The interior is stone-tiled floor and crisp modern walls. It looks like it's order-at-the-counter, but you're smiled at and told to sit. Right away you've got a good feeling, with a basket of warm, powdery pita and a bowl of possibly the best, most perfectly-consistencied* hommos in Glendale.

Order the kibbeh balls: at least one for you, one for anyone else at your table, and one for whoever's nearby if you're feeling gracious. Chopped beef, onions, pine nuts, fried into a lemon-shaped shell of burghul that needs no dipping sauce. Say wow. Realize your newfound addiction and continue.

The cabbage salad is a nice start for your lunch, loudly peppered with herbs in a vigorous dressing. That or the lentil soup with swiss chard. Check.

I'm eyeing the maanek (Sautéed Lebanese sausage) and shish tawook (garlic-marinated, skewered chicken breast) for next time, but for my first visit I try the Chicken Shawarma. Shaved off the vertical broiler, with seasoned onion slices, rice, tahineh seed paste and yogurt sauce, it's just really good chicken with no pretense.

Baklawa? There's no room for baklawa.

As I try not to appear too rude in my wolfing-down of the chicken shawarma, I pause to take sips of my Lebanese coffee, its steam roiling from its brass rakweh. Quite strong but not buzzy like Cuban coffee, it's more a force of personality. It's coffee with charisma, and Skaf's does it carefully and well, leaving the bottoms of the brass pot and my cup painted with black sediment.

I am typing right after lunch. That is my explanation for my choppy, blissed-out sentence structure, and I'm sticking to it. Maybe it's the coffee, but I think it's the kibbeh balls.

There's a decent parking lot in back. The North Hollywood location is the original, so it's a good candidate for stopping by on my way to Thursday class.

* I just made that a past-tense verb.

Cooking for the People
7313 Melrose Ave. (west of La Brea)
Phone: 323-932-9681 | map
1512 Pacific Ave. (in Venice)
Phone: 310-581-8305 | map
website

Some might be understandably angered that a kitchen would use the name of such a demonized leader, but it is detached, almost as if peaceful people came forth and disarmed it, merely using the aesthetic of its red-tinged propaganda style. I cannot resolve this incongruity, although I realize that, say, a Nazi-themed restaurant would meet with similar friction.

Yet this is also the Melrose shopping district*, with an eye toward art and supercilious ambivalence, and I am speaking only of food and feel here.

Outside and in, the prominent color is a battered, milky concrete white, with red embellishment and propaganda posters. A mix of electro, trip-hop and even Iggy Pop's "Sixteen" and a dub version of the English Beat's "Twist & Crawl" can be heard. Time is irrelevant here, so patience is required if the waitstaff is small.

A small plate of crispy sweet wonton squares will be placed before you, and they are irresistible little bastards, especially with the gelatinous sweet & sour dipping sauce. Other appetizing choices include the Beijing Spring roll, big and blistered, and the Peasant's Onion Pancake, a thick mini-pizza. Both come with the sweet & sour sauce, and a dollop of Chinese mustard that stings the tips of your ears and makes the top of your skull sing like a wet fingertip on a crystal glass rim.

The main dishes can be tongue-in-cheek or a comforting suggestion of authenticity. The Weiwuer lamb is almost beefy in its consistency, stir-fried with cumin, red chili powder, cashews, jicama, onion and cilantro, which makes it robust and greater than the sum of its parts. The Qingjiao Rousi is shredded pork and roasted tofu in a country sauce. For drinking I recommend the homemade ginger ale, sweet and bitey and almost like Ting.

Admittedly, there is an element of distractedness. I received sweet & sour soup instead of the vegan Great Harvest (creamed rice & herbs). I got the white rice, a fluffy, spiky affair instead of the brown rice I'd ordered. For some this would be unacceptable; for me, as long as the mistaken item is as good as what I wanted, it isn't a big deal for me. Or it could be my relaxed sense of Zen.

* The Venice location is the original.