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Savvy L.A. eaters know that to see the world — or at the very least, taste it — all you need to do is stay home. Paris, Singapore, New York — yadda, yadda, yadda. We'd argue that nowhere else can you find the ethnic varieties of cheap eats that you find in Los Angeles. (But feel free to barrage us with challenges.) Moreover, not only can you eat the food, you can also dip your toe into another culture.
Stroll Pioneer Boulevard and you're suddenly in the Gujarat state of India. Enter Fairfax Avenue just south of Olympic Boulevard and the super-relaxed cafe crowd transports you to Ethiopia. Grab a beer in Gardena and you're in a Tokyo bar minus the jet lag.
Turn the page for a quick guide to rediscovering four of our tastiest neighborhoods, including (since you're making the trip) good reasons to visit beyond the gastronomic delights.
Taiwanese treasures
Where It's At: San Gabriel, easily accessible from the 10 Freeway, is home to the San Gabriel Mission. Built in 1771, it's one of the best-preserved missions in the state and just a few minutes from your final destination: Valley Boulevard. Best time to start exploring: mornings, before the lunch rush.
You Know You're There Because ... You'll see some seriously chaotic traffic. Valley Boulevard is San Gabriel's busiest retail street, with mega shopping centers selling cellphone accessories, Chinese herbs and just about anything else. Many signs are written in Chinese or Vietnamese, and the ethnic mix extends to Italian Americans, Latinos and Taiwanese. As a result, there's good eating on nearly every block, whether you're craving Taiwanese hot pot, 99-cent dim sum or Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches.
The Taste You're Looking For: The Taiwanese just may have perfected street food, with their greasy, hand-held concoctions, and breakfast is perhaps the epitome of this. A hearty morning meal usually consists of steamed meat buns and fluffy, savory pastries, with sweet or savory soy milk soup (perhaps the one thing here requiring a utensil).
Best Bets: The Yung Ho Tou Chiang restaurant (533 W. Valley Blvd.) has a big selection of Taiwanese treats under the menu's dim sum section. A breakfast here isn't complete without salty bean milk ($1.25), a hot and soupy soy milk you eat with thinly sliced crullers (also called Chinese doughnuts) — two sticks of crispy fried dough perfect for dunking.
For meat lovers, the flaky slabs of sesame bread with thinly sliced beef and pickled vegetables can't be beat. If you're vegetarian, try the shao bing (95 cents), a baked wheat cake with no meat or filling. Another must-have: the salted rice roll ($2), a fried cruller with dehydrated salted pork wrapped in sticky rice.
We're not talking diet food here, so follow breakfast with a light beverage. Head west on Valley to Tea Station (158 W. Valley Blvd.), by the Taiwanese franchise Ten Ren, for a boba milk tea ($2.75 for take-away, $3.75 if you have a seat in the busy tearoom). Tea Station's sweetened tapioca boba tends to be chewier and its tea — served hot or cold — distinctly more fragrant than many of its competitors'. You can also pick up bags or loose-leaf tea. The store carries a range easily found at Asian markets, or even Costco, but it also stocks rarer black and green teas from Taiwan, for a price: Some are more than $100 a pound.
As Long as You're in San Gabriel ... Get a Chinese foot massage — which, at no more than $15 an hour, has to be one of the best deals in L.A. At Foot Massage (Life Plaza Center, 250 Valley Blvd., Suite H), you also get a "free" shoulder rub included in the price. No, the spa won't win any decor awards, but the acupressure-based massage (or the televised Chinese soap opera) will transport you. English isn't spoken here, but there's a banner listing services near the front, from full-body massages to cupping (the detox treatment involving heated cups placed on the skin and popularized in the West by Gwyneth Paltrow — who, we're guessing, doesn't get it done here).
For a refuge from the noise on Valley, continue heading west to San Gabriel Nursery (632 S. San Gabriel Blvd.), one of the largest and oldest independent nurseries in the Southland. Gardeners and landscapers come from as far as the East Coast, but you're welcome to just stroll through the fruit trees (mangoes, longan, cherimoya), the rose section or the excellent bonsai collection (some of the larger trees were recently donated to the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens). For $59.98, you could buy yourself the fragrant evergreen Michelia champaca alba; the nursery was one of the first in the area to cultivate this prized specimen.
— C.D.
Snacks in Little India
Where It's At: Just south of Pio Pico State Historic Park — the 19th century ranch that belonged to California's last Mexican governor — is the unassuming suburb of Artesia, home to the second-largest Indian and Pakistani population in the U.S.
You Know You're There Because ... The five sprawling blocks and nondescript strip malls that pepper Pioneer Boulevard — Little India's main drag — are a riot of color: windows crammed with bright rolls of embroidered and sequined sari fabric or mountains of rainbow-hued sweets. Grocery store aisles lined with mounds of red lentils, beige chickpeas and obscenely yellow jars of ghee (clarified butter).
The Taste You're Looking For: If you equate battered and fried with edible, then welcome to heaven. This neighborhood specializes in farsan specialties (vegetarian snacks — mostly savory, usually crunchy — found in India's western Gujarat state), but you'll find dosa and naan bread from the north as well.
Best Bets: What Rasraj Sweets & Farsan (18511 S. Pioneer Blvd.) lacks in ambience it makes up for in friendliness. The menus at the snack shops on Pioneer can be overwhelming (we counted 29 items in Rasraj's farsan section alone), but the staff will gladly make recommendations. Or consult the photographs of daily specials that line the mirrors on the walls. The Gujarati thali lunch ($5.50) — reminding expats of home — can be found at most restaurants in the area, and Rasraj's special comes with jasmine rice, roti (unleavened bread), puri (a cracker-like flatbread), dal (stewed lentils), a hot pickle and a vegetable dish of your choice (such as the fiery spinach paneer). Keep a mango lassi ($1.99) nearby for when you can't feel your tongue anymore.
Be sure to save room for sweets. Choose from the assortment of barfi (a dense, cheesecake-like cake that comes in flavors such as ginger, pistachio and rose; $1 each) if only to say, "I'd like some barfi" to the guy behind the counter.
For a cooler sweet, go to Saffron Spot (18744 Pioneer Blvd.), tucked deep within the Little India Village shopping center (flanked by a pair of lion statues). Indian ice cream (made without eggs) is called kulfi; flavors run from the traditional (mango and pista, or pistachio) to more exotic tastes such as rajbhog, a mix of saffron, pistachios, cashews, almonds and cardamom ($2.75 for one scoop). The sugarcane juice is worth a try, if only to watch how it's made: The juice is pressed out of 2 feet of sugarcane bark in what looks like a wood chipper.
Stroll Pioneer Boulevard and you're suddenly in the Gujarat state of India. Enter Fairfax Avenue just south of Olympic Boulevard and the super-relaxed cafe crowd transports you to Ethiopia. Grab a beer in Gardena and you're in a Tokyo bar minus the jet lag.
Turn the page for a quick guide to rediscovering four of our tastiest neighborhoods, including (since you're making the trip) good reasons to visit beyond the gastronomic delights.
Taiwanese treasures
Where It's At: San Gabriel, easily accessible from the 10 Freeway, is home to the San Gabriel Mission. Built in 1771, it's one of the best-preserved missions in the state and just a few minutes from your final destination: Valley Boulevard. Best time to start exploring: mornings, before the lunch rush.
You Know You're There Because ... You'll see some seriously chaotic traffic. Valley Boulevard is San Gabriel's busiest retail street, with mega shopping centers selling cellphone accessories, Chinese herbs and just about anything else. Many signs are written in Chinese or Vietnamese, and the ethnic mix extends to Italian Americans, Latinos and Taiwanese. As a result, there's good eating on nearly every block, whether you're craving Taiwanese hot pot, 99-cent dim sum or Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches.
The Taste You're Looking For: The Taiwanese just may have perfected street food, with their greasy, hand-held concoctions, and breakfast is perhaps the epitome of this. A hearty morning meal usually consists of steamed meat buns and fluffy, savory pastries, with sweet or savory soy milk soup (perhaps the one thing here requiring a utensil).
Best Bets: The Yung Ho Tou Chiang restaurant (533 W. Valley Blvd.) has a big selection of Taiwanese treats under the menu's dim sum section. A breakfast here isn't complete without salty bean milk ($1.25), a hot and soupy soy milk you eat with thinly sliced crullers (also called Chinese doughnuts) — two sticks of crispy fried dough perfect for dunking.
For meat lovers, the flaky slabs of sesame bread with thinly sliced beef and pickled vegetables can't be beat. If you're vegetarian, try the shao bing (95 cents), a baked wheat cake with no meat or filling. Another must-have: the salted rice roll ($2), a fried cruller with dehydrated salted pork wrapped in sticky rice.
We're not talking diet food here, so follow breakfast with a light beverage. Head west on Valley to Tea Station (158 W. Valley Blvd.), by the Taiwanese franchise Ten Ren, for a boba milk tea ($2.75 for take-away, $3.75 if you have a seat in the busy tearoom). Tea Station's sweetened tapioca boba tends to be chewier and its tea — served hot or cold — distinctly more fragrant than many of its competitors'. You can also pick up bags or loose-leaf tea. The store carries a range easily found at Asian markets, or even Costco, but it also stocks rarer black and green teas from Taiwan, for a price: Some are more than $100 a pound.
As Long as You're in San Gabriel ... Get a Chinese foot massage — which, at no more than $15 an hour, has to be one of the best deals in L.A. At Foot Massage (Life Plaza Center, 250 Valley Blvd., Suite H), you also get a "free" shoulder rub included in the price. No, the spa won't win any decor awards, but the acupressure-based massage (or the televised Chinese soap opera) will transport you. English isn't spoken here, but there's a banner listing services near the front, from full-body massages to cupping (the detox treatment involving heated cups placed on the skin and popularized in the West by Gwyneth Paltrow — who, we're guessing, doesn't get it done here).
For a refuge from the noise on Valley, continue heading west to San Gabriel Nursery (632 S. San Gabriel Blvd.), one of the largest and oldest independent nurseries in the Southland. Gardeners and landscapers come from as far as the East Coast, but you're welcome to just stroll through the fruit trees (mangoes, longan, cherimoya), the rose section or the excellent bonsai collection (some of the larger trees were recently donated to the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens). For $59.98, you could buy yourself the fragrant evergreen Michelia champaca alba; the nursery was one of the first in the area to cultivate this prized specimen.
— C.D.
Snacks in Little India
Where It's At: Just south of Pio Pico State Historic Park — the 19th century ranch that belonged to California's last Mexican governor — is the unassuming suburb of Artesia, home to the second-largest Indian and Pakistani population in the U.S.
You Know You're There Because ... The five sprawling blocks and nondescript strip malls that pepper Pioneer Boulevard — Little India's main drag — are a riot of color: windows crammed with bright rolls of embroidered and sequined sari fabric or mountains of rainbow-hued sweets. Grocery store aisles lined with mounds of red lentils, beige chickpeas and obscenely yellow jars of ghee (clarified butter).
The Taste You're Looking For: If you equate battered and fried with edible, then welcome to heaven. This neighborhood specializes in farsan specialties (vegetarian snacks — mostly savory, usually crunchy — found in India's western Gujarat state), but you'll find dosa and naan bread from the north as well.
Best Bets: What Rasraj Sweets & Farsan (18511 S. Pioneer Blvd.) lacks in ambience it makes up for in friendliness. The menus at the snack shops on Pioneer can be overwhelming (we counted 29 items in Rasraj's farsan section alone), but the staff will gladly make recommendations. Or consult the photographs of daily specials that line the mirrors on the walls. The Gujarati thali lunch ($5.50) — reminding expats of home — can be found at most restaurants in the area, and Rasraj's special comes with jasmine rice, roti (unleavened bread), puri (a cracker-like flatbread), dal (stewed lentils), a hot pickle and a vegetable dish of your choice (such as the fiery spinach paneer). Keep a mango lassi ($1.99) nearby for when you can't feel your tongue anymore.
Be sure to save room for sweets. Choose from the assortment of barfi (a dense, cheesecake-like cake that comes in flavors such as ginger, pistachio and rose; $1 each) if only to say, "I'd like some barfi" to the guy behind the counter.
For a cooler sweet, go to Saffron Spot (18744 Pioneer Blvd.), tucked deep within the Little India Village shopping center (flanked by a pair of lion statues). Indian ice cream (made without eggs) is called kulfi; flavors run from the traditional (mango and pista, or pistachio) to more exotic tastes such as rajbhog, a mix of saffron, pistachios, cashews, almonds and cardamom ($2.75 for one scoop). The sugarcane juice is worth a try, if only to watch how it's made: The juice is pressed out of 2 feet of sugarcane bark in what looks like a wood chipper.
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