Newsletter: Counter: Lessons in comfort food

Comfort food can mean a lot of different things to different people; it can also be relevant to specific times, for personal or global reasons. Midway through February is a good time to find comfort in patisseries and candy shops, whether you’re sourcing chocolate for your beloved or your neighbor, your children or yourself.

And there is an enormous amount of comfort to be found in the restaurants and food stalls, food trucks and marketplaces that populate our neighborhoods. It is an article of faith that some of the best eating in this town can be done in strip malls and parking lots, in the undiscovered countries of brightly lit dining rooms and tiny kitchens. So this week Jonathan Gold explores a menu of Syrian comfort food in a little restaurant in Van Nuys. Because a plate of excellent hummus and shawarma can solve more than hunger, and there is mint tea and baklava for dessert — maybe to go with that extra box of chocolates in your car.

– Amy Scattergood

KOBEE IN THE KITCHEN

This week, Jonathan heads to the San Fernando Valley, and Kobee Factory & Syrian Kitchen in Van Nuys. There he finds some terrific comfort food in a modest storefront: plates of mjadara, an Arab dish of bulgur wheat cooked with lentils; the namesake kobee (or kibbeh), which comes in many iterations; and stuffed lamb intestines, which our critic thinks are kind of lovely. Back to that mjadara? “It is a plate that could sustain a civilization. And it has.”

Kobee Factory & Syrian Kitchen owner Wafa Ghreir at her restaurant.

(Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)

THERE ARE CRONUTS IN YOUR FUTURE

Pastry chef Dominique Ansel likes to play with his food in stunningly inventive ways. Yes, there’s his famous Cronut, also frozen s’mores, cookie shots and, most recently, 3-D churros. Now he’s preparing to open his first full-service restaurant, here in Los Angeles, along with another Dominique Ansel Bakery. Imagine what he’ll put on that brunch menu.

ICE CREAM AND TACOS FOR YOUR BELOVED

While many couples enjoy tasting menus or multicourse exercises in truffles and strawberries for Valentine’s Day, there are many of us who find taco trucks and ice cream parlors decidedly romantic. Deputy Food editor Jenn Harris catalogs a few of these no-reservations-required dinners, if you’d like to take your beloved out for burritos or boat noodles.

A banana split from Fosselman’s ice cream store can make the perfect Valentine’s Day treat for two.

(Amy Scattergood / Los Angeles Times)

FOOD HALLS, $24 SPAGHETTI

In this week’s Restaurant News column: chef Michael Mina’s upcoming food hall at Beverly Center, which will include a ramen shop, a poke project and a barbecue stall by NBA star Steph Curry’s wife, Ayesha. And that $24 bowl of spaghetti from chef Scott Conant returns, albeit in a new restaurant.

YOUR CHOCOLATE LOCATOR

If you haven’t gotten your Valentine’s Day chocolate yet, don’t panic. We have a dozen options for you: chocolatiers, pâtisseries and candy shops that can help you out. You can fill up a bag, find a heart-shaped box or get creative with a chocolate tree, a chocolate fountain, 24-karat-dusted dark chocolates or rose petal petits fours.

Boxes of truffles being wrapped at Valerie Confections.

(Cheryl A. Guerrero / Los Angeles Times)

PUNCH BOWLS FOR TWO

If you’re taking your beloved out for Valentine’s Day drinks, you could get Champagne or martinis somewhere, or you could share a punch bowl — maybe at Pacific Seas tiki bar, upstairs at Clifton’s cafeteria, or the Old One Two from the Spare Room, the bar with the bowling alley at the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel. (Bowling can be fun too.) And if you’re staying home, you can make your own punch bowls, as Jenn Harris has gotten the recipes for you.

The Old One Two punch bowl at the Spare Room at the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel.

(Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

The Los Angeles Times Food Bowl: Want to spend 31 days exploring the food of this city through a Night Market, forums, dinners, films, pop-ups and more dining and drinking? A monthlong food festival is coming to L.A. in May.

Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants, the authoritative annual guide to local dining, is online for subscribers and now features his 2016 Best Restaurants. If you didn’t get a copy of the booklet, you can order one online here.

“City of Gold,” Laura Gabbert’s documentary of Jonathan Gold’s Los Angeles, is available on Amazon.

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Check out the thousands of recipes in our Recipe Database.

Feedback? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at food@latimes.com.