Jonathan Gold for The Times
2:45 PM PDT, March 22, 2013
Jonathan Gold food quizzes
Jonathan Gold tests your knowledge of beef, food and Islam and more.
March 30, 2013
COUNTER INTELLIGENCE
Jonathan Gold | L.A. restaurant review: Muddy Leek gets comfortable in Culver City
Muddy Leek is in kind of an odd location, just a block or two away from the restaurants in Culver City's Helms complex yet seemingly well outside of the area. It's part of a building that briefly served as a design museum before it was converted into architects' offices, in an awkwardly proportioned space that runs through restaurant identities like Spinal Tap goes through drummers.
March 16, 2013
Counter Intelligence: Jonathan Gold | L.A. restaurant review: Littlefork takes a big-eats turn north
Across the street from the Hollywood post office, a few short blocks from the 1930s complex that calls itself Crossroads of the World, Littlefork is an improbably rustic roadhouse in the middle of old Hollywood — a spare tavern, a slash of neon scrawl and a slender apron of parking lot you could imagine filling up with Packards instead of Lexus hybrids.
March 9, 2013
COUNTER INTELLIGENCE
Jonathan Gold | Restaurant review: Hunan Mao for fish heads and fire
When you tell somebody about a Hunan restaurant, always begin with the steamed fish head. The fish head will be large, probably from an enormous carp or similar freshwater species, thus comical, and it will be frosted with the chopped blend of dried, fresh and fermented chiles that give Hunanese cooking its reputation for head-snapping heat.
March 2, 2013
Counter Intelligence: Stylish, deluxe Japan-inspired cuisine at Hinoki & the Bird
Hinoki is a fragrant cypress most Japanese associate with extremely expensive bathtubs, popular with the wealthy because the wood is used to build the soaking tubs at onsen, Japanese hot springs. Hinoki wood is also used to build the counters of the most prestigious sushi bars; long, smooth planks that are sanded every day and given weekly baths of milk.
February 16, 2013
Counter Intelligence: Hostaria del Piccolo lives the fantasy — almost — in Venice
California rarely feels more like California than it does from a window seat at the new Hostaria del Piccolo in Venice, where life's great pageant rolls by. Graying tax attorneys cruise by on Rollerblades, women toss yoga mats into the back of their Porsches and handsome young families roll by on their bicycles as serenely as if they were ducks. As you regard the glass of wine in front of you, you may contemplate a Westside drinking game, doing shots of on-tap Merlot every time you spot a dude with interesting facial hair, a knit cap, tie-dye and a skateboard; hear a distant drum circle; or smell a clove cigarette.
February 9, 2013
Counter Intelligence: Le Ka's a bit of this and that, for the beautiful people
Le Ka is one of those difficult places to figure out, not because the cooking isn't good — it is, very — but because in the narrative of Le Ka, food seems like such a secondary thing. To get to the restaurant, you leave your car with a valet in an underground garage, hike back up the ramp (the elevator goes nowhere near where you want to be) and walk around the corner, passing two or three false entrances you may try to access, finally ending up in a dim vestibule that is far grander than you may imagine it to be.
January 26, 2013
Counter Intelligence: A little taste of Cortez
What you think about Cortez is going to depend in large part on what you think about crowds, and noise, and screechy jazz, about well-meaning servers who are slightly impatient with the idea of service, and about spending most of an hour leaning up against a shoe box-narrow windowsill waiting for a seat to open up.
January 19, 2013
Counter Intelligence: Josef Centeno gives Tex-Mex a twist at Bar Amá
When you talk to Texas expatriates about the food they miss most from home, after a few grumbly sentences about Los Angeles chili, and barbecue, and coffee-shop chicken-fried steak, it comes down to the queso every time. I am not one of those writers who harps on authenticity, and when I have a shot or two of tequila in me, I can even admit the merits of Tex-Mex as a regional Mexican cuisine. Migas, the spicy Tex-Mex equivalent of chilaquiles, are among the greatest breakfast foods ever invented. My favorite cooking video ever is the clip of Texas director Robert Rodriguez making his breakfast tacos: "Get those flour tortillas, the ones you usually find at the store … and throw them in the trash."
January 12, 2013
Counter Intelligence: The just-right cooking at Bestia
If you want to understand Bestia, you should probably take a look at the cassoeula, a version of a traditional cabbage stew popular in Milan.
December 29, 2012
Counter Intelligence: Storefront Deli in Los Feliz
Have you ever had the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich at the new Storefront Deli in Los Feliz? Because that sandwich, less made from scratch than reverse-engineered from a meat lover's fondest late-summer daydreams, is at the heart of one of the strongest culinary movements in the country at the moment: the radical reinvention of everyday dishes by deconstructing them and rebuilding them to the tiniest detail.
December 22, 2012
Counter Intelligence: Spago makeover smooths aging star's wrinkles
The first responsibility of any great restaurant is to keep you in the bubble, the soft-serve cocoon of illusion where you forget the world exists for anything but your pleasure. And the newly redesigned Spago, from the moment you toss your keys to the valet to the moment you stagger back out again, gives good bubble.
December 8, 2012
Counter Intelligence: Ari Taymor's Alma stands apart in L.A.
If you had asked an observer a few years ago whether the future of dining in Los Angeles was more likely to be influenced by its mobile restaurants or its pop-ups, the money would have been on the trucks. Food trucks seemed to draw from everything about L.A. in 2010 — mobility, multiculturalism, social-media compulsion and the ceaseless drive toward novelty. The food truck culture rewards the short attention span. It rewards it with kimchi cheesesteaks.
December 1, 2012
Counter Intelligence: Tasty Dining in San Gabriel brings the heat of Wuhan
Let's say that a correspondent has asked if you have been to the new Wuhan restaurant in San Gabriel, and let's say that you answer him, to save face, with the Internet equivalent of a smile and a nod. It is easy enough to find this restaurant — a quick Google search turns up a Facebook page, a post on a friend's blog and a Chowhound post by your correspondent, the San Gabriel Valley spicy-food maven Jim Thurman, whom I suspect has been the first customer at more than one Rosemead dan dan mian establishment. It is easy enough to find the restaurant, Tasty Dining, which is in a strip mall you have been frequenting since the 1990s, in a space you remember as a boba parlor.
November 24, 2012
Counter Intelligence: At MessHall in Los Feliz, fall in for fun
We are second to none in our admiration for pie, which, at its best, marries homeyness with elegance. It is the great American dessert. But we don't make it athomenearly as often as we should, because the crust, at least the right crust, is kind of a pain. This is why we love ordering pie in restaurants — somebody else has done the rolling and the chilling, worried about the correct shortening and performed the rituals of blind baking that too often leave us with burnt or shrunken dough.
November 10, 2012
Counter Intelligence: The basics of life at Kang Ho-dong Baekjeong
Meet Kang Ho-dong. Kang Ho-dong is a South Korean celebrity, a former wrestler turned TV personality whose ubiquity on Korean television approaches what you might get if you added Ryan Seacrest's TV appearances to those of Charlie Sheen's. Last year, before his career was briefly interrupted by accusations of tax evasion, since tossed out of court, Kang starred in four prime-time shows: three variety hours, plus a reality show that combined travelogue with aspects of "Celebrity Rehab."
November 3, 2012
Counter Intelligence: Laurel Hardware nearly nails it
It is 10 in the evening, West Hollywood has just begun to ramp up into the night and three dozen people are lined up outside Laurel Hardware, the fashionable restaurant of the moment. It is the weekend before Halloween, which means bits of the usual sorts of costumes are on the boulevard: size 13 heels and ragged scraps of lace, kitten ears and satin bow ties. A woman saunters up to the restaurant, bouffant freshly blond, wrapped in what looks like a replica of a Mead three-ring notebook. A few paces closer to the door is a redhead also wearing Staples' finest. The blond glares. The redhead shrugs. A moment later they are together in the line, two binders full of women talking and giggling.
October 27, 2012
Counter Intelligence: Tom Bergin's Tavern, reinvented
Have you been to Tom Bergin's Tavern lately? No — not Molly Malone's, the pub with the bands; the other one on Fairfax, a few blocks south, with the Irish coffee and the old Bing Crosby vibe. Bergin's has been a fascinating place since Brandon Boudet took it over last summer, partly because you're unsure whether you have fallen prey to an elaborate put-on or whether you really have stepped back into Raymond Chandler's L.A., whether the names of the paper shamrocks still stapled to the ceiling are of authentic provenance and whether the dinginess of the barroom is real.
October 20, 2012
Counter Intelligence: Plan Check, where food meets the future
When I am trying to explain the concept of modernist cooking to a friend who has experienced neither encapsulated olives nor edible menus printed with organic ink, I sometimes bring up the burgers concocted by Nathan Myhrvold, a software pioneer who has lately diversified into maximum-tech cooking, among other things. His recipe, which appears in his 2,400-page opus, "Modernist Cuisine," involves sous-vide, liquid nitrogen, a deep-fat fryer and homemade processed cheese, and is not much less complex, I suspect, than the directions for rebuilding a Porsche.
October 13, 2012
Counter Intelligence: Starry Kitchen breaks hearts with cult dish
Are you a connoisseur of agony? Then drop by Starry Kitchen for a bite some evening, somewhere around 9 p.m. if you can swing it, and listen to the customers who have been denied a shot at the Singaporean chili crab. They will be muttering imprecations when they think the staff is out of listening range, grinding teeth, staring up at the glittering pastels of the high ceiling as if they expect a unicorn to flutter down from the rafters with a sackful of British Columbia's finest culinary export.
October 6, 2012
Counter intelligence: Superba Snack Bar in Venice
If you were to invent a restaurant whose specialties include a cauliflower T-bone, you probably couldn't do any better than Superba Snack Bar. It occupies what looks like a corrugated shoe box sliced open at one end, a giant version of the dioramas you may have constructed for social studies in fourth grade. Superba is at the heart of its Rose Avenue neighborhood in a stretch of Venice Beach where the fixed-gear bicycles outnumber cars some afternoons and even the elderly seem acquainted with kombucha and Lululemon.
September 29, 2012
Campanile closing? The dining scene loses a standard-setter
The restaurant business is remarkably volatile, and anyone who has spent much time around it is used to seeing his or her favorites sputter out of business after good long runs. You grow up going to Angeli, you have your first date there, you become a regular when you get your first grown-up job, and — boom, it's gone. Your favorite chef meets a payroll he can't handle; your favorite bar turns into a shul. It's sad, but it's understood.
September 22, 2012
Counter Intelligence: Hannosuke and Ramen Iroha arrive in U.S.
In Los Angeles, your next great meal could be anywhere, from a pop-up installed in an art gallery to the truck parked outside the place where you get coffee in the morning. If you've been here awhile, you almost expect your bliss to come from that place in the mini-mall next to the dry cleaners.
September 8, 2012
Counter Intelligence: Thou shalt not make substitutions at the Parish
Sang Yoon started the no-substitutions or modifications trope at Father's Office, I think, where he refused to serve his notorious hamburger without blue cheese or countenance ketchup on his fries. Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook turned it into an aesthetic at Animal; you ate their pig's ears and oxtail loco moco their way or you didn't eat it at all. The chefs at sushi bars like Nozawa and Hiko famously threw patrons out of their restaurants when they asked for spicy tuna rolls, and I have no idea what Jordan Kahn at Red Medicine might do if a table asked for the sauce on the side.
September 1, 2012
Industriel's aggravating fusion
Industriel, it should be mentioned, is a restaurant that can leave a certain kind of person sputtering with rage. It is decorated in a kind of Depression chic, for one thing. Walls are paneled with old wooden soda crates. Banquettes are upholstered in a gold vinyl you may have never seen outside cocktail lounges attached to ancient Midwestern bowling alleys. And the not-unplentiful homeless people on the street outside are confronted with the enormous blowups of Dorothea Lange's photographs of starving Depression-era migrant workers that flank the doors.
August 25, 2012
Casual crazy vibe at Sycamore Kitchen
The atmosphere at Sycamore Kitchen is relaxed, but make no mistake: The husband-and-wife team behind the restaurant obsesses over every detail of every dish.
August 19, 2012
Hui Tou Xiang Noodles House has a star dish
Hui Tou Xiang Noodles House in San Gabriel done a lot of things just fine, but the reason to go is in the name.
August 11, 2012
Shunji is no ordinary sushi bar
Shunji Japanese Cuisine, from chef Shunji Nakao, is located in what looks like a big chili bowl but is upscale and inventive, with special attention paid to vegetables.
July 28, 2012
Next Door by Josie scales down the dishes but not the ambition
If you're keeping score at home, Next Door by Josie was probably first on bacon popcorn — practically a pioneer — although it opened just last fall in Santa Monica.
August 4, 2012
Red Hill brings a folky modernism to Echo Park
To understand Red Hill, Jason Michaud and Trevor Rocco's newish place in a converted Chinese bakery just north of Sunset, you could do worse than to look at the bread-and-butter plate, a once-free nicety that has evolved into an item of competition in L.A.'s new surge of small-plates restaurants.
July 21, 2012
At modern Mo-Chica, the alpaca question
Have you been to the new Mo-Chica? Ricardo Zarate's Peruvian restaurant seems to define the downtown thing at the moment: It's a high-style warren on 7th Street, down the block from Bottega Louie, where the scene is as important as the drinks, and the drinks are as vital as the food.
9:42 AM PDT, July 6, 2012
The Pikey, simply a pub with better food
Pulling back from the whole gastropub scene, the Pikey offers three beers on tap, food kicked up a notch with fresh ingredients and a little imagination, and an atmosphere even an Iron Maiden roadie could appreciate.
11:01 AM PDT, June 29, 2012
Maison Giraud in Pacific Palisades
At Maison Giraud, the croissants are as good if not better than ones you'd find in Paris. Alain Giraud may be the last true French chef standing in Los Angeles.
1:56 PM PDT, June 27, 2012
With foie gras ban, chefs say state is force-feeding morality
A law against serving the fatted liver of ducks and geese goes into effect Sunday. As some restaurants host farewell dinners, a gaggle of chefs, farmers and connoisseurs sees it as a feather-headed intrusion on culinary freedom.
2:10 PM PDT, June 1, 2012
Bizarra Capital, a dreamland Mexican-style gastropub
Ricardo Diaz has another hit with this Whittier spot, offering excellent fried huauzontle, best-in-town guacamole, fiery tacos, satisfying mole fries and a sweet capirotada.
12:31 PM PDT, May 11, 2012
Umamicatessen in downtown L.A.
A wealth of imagination is on the menu at the multi-kitchen restaurant: Rethink that pastrami sandwich, a bourbon cocktail, the PB&J.
May 5, 2012
A little crunch with your Chianti at Tar & Roses
Wine is important at Andrew Kirschner's new restaurant, but so is the food, starting with the lardon- and chile-laced popcorn appetizer. From there, it's a serious but playful mix of wood-fired small-plate temptations.
11:26 AM PDT, April 20, 2012
Bombs away at Wang Xing Ji
Have you ever been frightened by a dumpling? Truly, genuinely scared? Because the juicy crab and pork buns at Wang Xing Ji — smoking-hot dumplings the size of water balloons, sneakily full of boiling juice — could probably be weaponized.
April 14, 2012
At Rocio's in Sun Valley, moles reign
Cactus is everywhere at Rocio's Mole de los Dioses, but what you come for is mole. A Mt. Olympus of mole.
2:25 PM PDT, March 23, 2012
Cooks County, fresher than modern
At the new restaurant from chef Daniel Mattern and pastry chef Roxana Jullapat, it's not a dish you fall in love with, it's a sensibility.
March 17, 2012
LàOn Dining
LàOn Dining, from Jenee Kim (Park's BBQ, Don Dae Gam), offers 'Korean tapas.' Whatever you call the food, this may be L.A.'s first modern Korean restaurant.
March 10, 2012
Los Angeles' reflection in a plate
Once every four years, always on Feb. 29, the downtown L.A. restaurant Border Grill becomes for an evening a reprise of City Restaurant, the La Brea Avenue dining room that launched its chefs, Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, to fame 25 years ago.
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