Chiu on This

Family tested, family approved

The last restaurant I ate at during my March trip to Los Angeles elicited excited recommendations from my mom and dad - "are you going to eat the fried crabs?" they each asked when they heard I was going to meet up with my uncle, aunt, and cousin for dinner. I don't eat crabs often; one factor is that I'm too lazy to deal with the shells, but more to the point because I've never been wowed by crabmeat anyway (thus making my college years in Annapolis somewhat pointless from a culinary standpoint). So I wasn't entirely giddy at the prospect of eating at Seafood Village in Temple City, even though I knew good things had to be in store if my folks gave it not just a regular thumbs up but endorsements along the lines of "I could eat there every day!"

 My cousin Pauline did the kindness of picking me up from my extended stay hotel in Arcadia (which I commented frequently about on my Facebook account, to help keep my sense of humor intact), and we arrived fairly quickly at the restaurant, passing by the Santa Anita Race Track and taking a route similar to the one my colleagues and I used to get to the Sherriff's Department HQ. My uncle Jonathan (my dad's brother), my aunt Jenny, and my other aunt Sophie had already gotten us a table.  The place was sparsely occupied at 6pm-ish but filled up steadily over the course of our meal.

We started off with a soup course that at first had me feeling a bit worried; I could spot lots of innards floating around in the light broth and I was frankly worried about what I might encounter.  Unfortunately, I don't have the taste buds to truly appreciate a lot of what the world's diners enjoy - stuff like liver, kidney, tripe, eyeballs, etc.  In this instance, I believe I wound up with tongue, and that I can handle and I did enjoy it and the soup overall.

But the real star of the meal, of course, was the crab, deep fried with a huge heaping mass of deep fried garlic encrusting the crab itself. Yowza. No one had told me about that! I love garlic but I made a note to get myself a pack of gum before my flight, as a courtesy to my fellow airline passengers. The crab was tasty - just lightly greasy, not too salty, obviously garlicky - and it was fried to the point where I could eat some of the thinner pieces of the shell, kind of like being able to eat fishbones when you have deep fried fish in a Thai restaurant. Not being a big connoisseur of crab myself, I thought the crab meat was nice, but Pauline pointed out to me later that our crab wasn't as fresh or good as she'd had during previous visits. My relatives are sticklers for quality control!

In addition to the crab, we had several other excellent dishes, including steamed chicken with ginger sauce, scallops with sugar snap peas and other vegetables in a white sauce, fried rice made with egg whites and crab meat, and beef fried with sa cha sauce. The flavors of all the dishes were bright, clear, and distinctive. They didn't suffer from oversaucing or greasiness as you'd encounter in lots of mediocre Chinese restaurants, where the dishes just seem like blobby masses of stuff. Here the dishes worked well on their own and in combination, so we hit a good balance between spicy / emphatic and subdued / subtle flavors. My favorite dish was the beef in a spicy sa cha sauce, a condiment I find hard to describe and can't find a good description of on the internet - it is neither satay nor barbecue sauce, although it's been couched as either. Maybe a reader can provide a more accurate rendering via the comments.  The last items we had were two desserts - one provided by the house, the other ordered - tong sui soups (man, I hope I got that right) with gingko nuts and a transparent, crisp, and nearly tasteless fungus. The soups were too sweet for me to finish off completely, but I enjoyed crunching on the fungus, which I think provides some benefit to one's health other than feeling a sort of kid-like light-heartedness at the idea of eating a see-through crunchy fungus.

Seafood Village: tested, approved, and recommended by many in the Chiu clan. I'll definitely go back if I can swing it. One more reason for me to get a drivers license.

Fun with enclaves

I was originally going to title this post "you don't make friends with salad,"* however, having used that for a previous posting in 2005 <yikes!>, I had to opt for something else.

Just a few days ago, I was in Los Angeles for the start up of a new project to examine and address the county's jail overcrowding problem. My colleagues and I had a packed schedule.  We had lots of people to meet and plenty of things to learn, not least of which was how to navigate traffic using a GPS device that we had yet to trust fully.  Travelling with co-workers is a low cost way to establish team building, I can tell you that much.

Eating with colleagues while on the road is also a great way to get to know one another.  We managed to find plenty of good restaurants in Arcadia, where we lodged, and in the city proper.  It was also surprisingly easy for us to agree on where and what to eat.  I say "easy" not to indicate that the personalities of my colleagues were difficult, but rather to compare this to other occasions where I've had to coordinate and wrestle agreements from groups of people as to where to eat (something I seem to have done thru almost my entire adult life, and some of my teenage years).  Throw in these additional factors - our days were exhausting, we hadn't done a lot of research in advance about food options, and I had an unstated (and possibly shared, though never confirmed) desire to avoid eating in chain restaurants as much as possible - and you can imagine things going awry easily.

One item in our favor was the advice of my former colleague Heidi, whose friend sent in a recommendation for Soot Bull Jeep, a Korean restaurant downtown on 8th and South Catalina. After a slight struggle with fatigue and street parking (they've got a big ol' parking lot, btw), we plopped into a booth and went straight for the basics - an order of kalbi and what I figure was bulgogi (referred to as the "Spencer" cut).

Ah, luscious meats!  They were grilled over a charcoal fire rather than a gas flame, which I found surprising, having never encountered that setup in NYC Korean joints.  Just those two orders were enough for us four hale and hearty women to feel comfortably satisfied as opposed to stuffed.  The panchan were fine, although I don't think I got to try the kim chee (that may have been hoarded by one of my colleague).  I particularly liked the spicy scallion salad for the starter.  Note to diners: I don't think the ventilation system did a damn bit of good. Plan on emerging smelly but happy.

I wouldn't rate this the best Korean restaurant I've been to - that would be one in Manhattan's Koreatown whose name now escapes me - but I definitely recommend this.  Good flavors, good fumes, laid back, and a good value, to boot.

More L.A. items to follow...

* I also just learned that the phrase from the Simpsons is actually "you don't win friends with salad," as this wondrously annoying website indicates.

Tommy's

I'm cleaning out my email and just dumping recommendations from folks here w/o much comment.  Dan says to go to Tommy's Burgers at 2575 W. Beverly Blvd. (Rampart Blvd.) in Los Angeles.  Check out the picture of their burger on their web site.  Mmmm.

California dreaming

There's just not enough time to eat.  The final installment of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons' road show takes us out to Los Angeles, but this is no junket, no siree.  There's work to be done, no time to check out the sights and flavors of this sprawling metropolis.  But one can aspire.  Colleague Van, who inspired last year's quest for Manhattan banh mi and is the in-house expert on southern California eats, has provided a number of recommendations.  I haven't experienced West Coast Thai food, so I'm hoping that a trip to Thai Town is in my near future.  Van's comments start right...now!

Palm Thai Restaurant
5273 Hollywood Blvd.
323/462-5073
(This restaurant is off the 101 Hollywood Freeway. I can't remember the exit)

Palm Thai Restaurant is in a little strip mall, as are most restaurants worth their salt. The parking lot is normally always full, especially at night. You may have to park on the street, but the food is worth it. I think they make good beef jerky with sticky rice, a crispy battered fish with a mango onion "salsa," and papaya salad. but i don't think you can go wrong with anything there. that's just what i always order when i go. also, a couple of stores down is a thai sweet shop. This restaurant is in what they call "Thai Town" because there are some Thai food stores and restaurants.