Newsletter: Dinner and a movie
Happy Saturday and happy Cinco de Mayo, for which, of course, we have recipes. A reminder that Mother’s Day is next weekend, so if you’re wanting brunch reservations, we have a guide to 63 local restaurants that can set you (and your mom) up. If you’re doing the cooking, we have recipes (47 of them) for that too. (If you haven’t made a giant fruit-filled Pavlova, I highly recommend that; it’s a lot less work than it looks, and very impressive. Also: cherries.) What else is going on? Food Bowl, our second annual food festival, runs the entire month of May.
As part of this month’s progressive dinner party, not only do we have food but also movies about food. To help with that, this week our restaurant critic lists 10 of his favorite high-calorie films. If you want food on your plate rather than your screen, we tour four pretty great local fried chicken joints. We have the announcement of this year’s Restaurant of the Year. And, perhaps most importantly, we have a story about those for whom getting food at all is a constant issue. As we celebrate the dining scene in this city, let’s not forget that there are many, many folks who can’t access the restaurants we champion or the kitchens we take for granted. Have a good weekend.
10 MOVIES ABOUT FOOD
Yes, there’s “Tampopo.” And “Ratatouille.” And “Babette’s Feast.” But Jonathan Gold’s taste in food movies is rather less predictable, as you can tell from his most recent list of film favorites. For starters, it turns out that he’s seen more than his share of cannibal movies. Of course he has.
THE 2018 RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR
The second annual Restaurant of the Year award goes to Taco María, chef Carlos Salgado’s high-end Costa Mesa taqueria. (Last year’s was Locol, if you’re keeping track.) As Jonathan writes: “By regarding tortillas with a seriousness familiar to any fanatical French baker, by using perfect seasonal produce and by treating regional Mexican dishes with both imagination and respect, Salgado has propelled California-Mexican cooking into the jet stream of abstracted modernist cuisine.”
A PAEAN TO FRIED CHICKEN
This town is having a fried chicken renaissance, which you know if you’ve spent any time in the Far East Plaza, watching the hours-long lines at Howlin’ Ray’s. There are a lot of terrific fried chicken joints (my personal favorite: Tokyo Fried Chicken in Monterey Park) in and around L.A., and if you need a guide to four you might not know about, deputy Food editor Jenn Harris has one.
FEEDING THE HOMELESS
Los Angeles is in the midst of a homelessness crisis, and if you don’t have a home you do not have a kitchen — or, too often, anything to eat at all. The folks at Midnight Mission have been on the front line of this crisis since 1914. Test Kitchen director Noelle Carter talks with the Mission’s Georgia Berkovich about what they do — and what we can do as well. (The Midnight Mission is also a charity beneficiary of this month’s Food Bowl.)
MORE FOOD GOINGS-ON ABOUT TOWN
For this week’s food and drink news column, deputy Food editor Jenn Harris gets the info on four upcoming food events — you know, ones that we’re not hosting. Is there more fried chicken? Yes, there is, as well as the return of Taste of the Nation, an Israeli food festival, and a dinner pop-up inside a cube art installation.
L.A. Times Food Bowl is happening now. We hope you’ll join us for our month-long food festival, with events celebrating L.A.’s food and drink scene and helping promote sustainability and raise awareness and funds to fight food waste, hunger and food insecurity. We have guest chefs doing dinners and panel discussions, a vegetable feast supporting the advancement of young girls and the empowerment of women in the hospitality industry, the return of our Night Market and tons more. For more info and tickets, go to lafoodbowl.com.
Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants, the authoritative annual guide to local dining, is online for subscribers featuring his 2017 Best Restaurants. If you don’t have a copy of the booklet, you can order one online here.
Check us out on Instagram at @latimesfood.
And don’t forget the thousands of recipes in our California Cookbook recipe database.
Feedback? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at food@latimes.com.
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