Newsletter: Dining on MTN time and searching for Thai Elvis
Congratulations, you’ve made it to a long and restful Memorial Day weekend, filled with friends, family and good eating (we hope), and time to think about the reasons we mark this holiday. To help with the tableside aspect of this, we have not a few burger recipes for you, as well as a few thoughts on what to pick up at the farmers market (cucumbers) if you can get there.
It’s the last weekend of our food festival, which ends when the month does. So we have a few stories about some of the visiting chefs, including Attica’s Ben Shewry, who confesses his fondness for green ants, and Central’s Virgilio Martinez, who considers the humble potato. For restaurants closer to home, Jonathan Gold reviews MTN in Venice, and we go in search of a man (or men) who performs Elvis Presley covers on the Thai restaurant circuit. Did that get your attention? Yeah. So go queue up some old Presley songs and, as it were, turn the page.
THE MIND HAS MOUNTAINS
At MTN, chef Travis Letts’ Venice izakaya, Jonathan considers the mind of the chef — well, not really, but some of us have Gerard Manley Hopkins lines embedded along with PBS clips and memories of Shinjuku noodle shops. Anyway, back to MTN, pronounced mountain, and what our critic finds inside the Abbot Kinney restaurant. Crab ramen? Yes. Homemade tofu? Indeed.
ELVIS, BUILDING
As Deputy Food Editor Jenn Harris reports, Thai Elvis is not dead — though the sequinned-pantsuit-clad man performing at your local Thai restaurant may not be the guy you thought he was. If you’re among the uninitiated, no worries: Jenn explains. If, however, your idea of fun has for years been eating deep-fried trout with mango sauce at Palms Thai while the Elvis impersonator on stage sang “Love Me Tender,” you might still need some clarification.
POTATO, POTAHTO
Peruvian chef Virgilio Martinez, in town for some Food Bowl events, has a better appreciation of potatoes than most folks — given that he’s a world-class chef, from a country known for them, and that he’s checked out a few hundred of the more than 4,000 varieties of the staple food. Test Kitchen Director Noelle Carter discusses this and more and, yes, gets a recipe.
NO CAMPFIRE REQUIRED
Love s’mores but really don’t feel like incinerating marshmallows in your backyard? Jenn gets news on an upcoming shop that specializes in the stuff, called Gotta Have S’more (nice) in this week’s Restaurant News column. What else is going on? There’s a rosé festival in Malibu taking place, conveniently, on National Rosé Day, and the reboot of the restaurant Tacos Punta Cabras, now called Punta Cabras, in Santa Monica. Two words: chorizo fundido.
L.A. Times Food Bowl is happening now. We hope you’ll join us for the final week of our monthlong 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. 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.
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