CHOW, BABY! : AN OPINIONATED GUIDE TO DINING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA : COMMUNITY STANDARDS

And then there are the unclassifiable restaurants, the ones that exist to serve a community that may not be your own--that cook to the community’s tastes, maintain the surroundings and prices that it prefers, and will let you hang out for a while if you don’t make too much fuss. This is what they mean when they call Los Angeles an international city.

ALAMEDA SWAP MEET. The crush to get into the swap meet parking lot can sometimes back up Alameda for as much as a mile, and the streets in the area teem with trucks selling tacos, fresh mackerel, bootleg rap cassettes or an odd, sweet cactus drink called lechugilla , A bewildering succession of food stalls perfume the air with grilled meat and sputtering oil and a certain high note of stickiness--every kind of Mexican food you could possibly walk around with and a few that are destined to land straight on your shoes. 4501 S. Alameda Blvd., Los Angeles; (213) 233-2764.

EL COLMAO. El Colmao seems to be to Los Angeles Cubans what Katz’s Deli on New York’s Lower East Side is to Long Island Jews: a good old place in the old neighborhood frequented mostly by suburban people who want to feel ethnic once in a while. My favorite meal includes yuca with oil, lemon and an astounding quantity of garlic; a big plateful of Moros y Cristianos , a tasty miscegenation of black beans and rice fried with garlic and gobbets of fat pork; piles of fried fresh ham, pierna de puerco , topped with an immoderate portion of caramelized onions, all washed down with cold red wine. 2328 W. Pico, Los Angeles; (213) 386-6131.

EL PATIO. This place is a shot in a million, a fast-food Mexican restaurant in Brentwood that serves pedestrian burritos and fajitas platters and also a perfect Chicago-style hot dog, right down to the Da-Glo relish and the poppy seeds on the bun. 12001 Wilshire Blvd., West Los Angeles; (310) 479-6303.

EL TAURINO TACO TRUCK. After the bars close, this parking lot is jammed with people blasting norteno music from their radios, drinking great draughts of the sweet rice drink horchata, eating plates of seriously spicy tacos from the hoods of their cars. El Taurino, the stand in front, is very fine, but somehow the truck parked in back turns out the tastiest carne asada, the crispest pork al pastor in town. Weekends only, parking lot behind 1104 S. Hoover Ave.; Los Angeles, (213) 738-9197.

KONG JOO. It feels like a latter-day speakeasy dedicated to the great brotherhood of goat eaters. The goat soup, a fiery, intensely goaty red broth is possibly the spiciest single dish to be had in the city of Los Angeles, breathtaking, rice-gobbling hot, and comes with a bowl of sliced chiles and several cloves worth of sliced raw garlic if you’re in a mood to improve on the chef’s excesses. 3029 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles; (213) 737-9487.

LAKE SPRING RESTAURANT. The prettiest Chinese restaurant in a neighborhood with hundreds of Chinese restaurants. s Locally popular for swell braised pork “pumps” and a dish of sea cucumber braised with shrimp roe, but other new-wave Shanghai-style things--steamed Shanghai pork dumplings full of fragrant juice, “jade” shrimp sauteed with creamy pureed spinach, may be more universally appealing. 218 219 E. Garvey Ave., Monterey Park; (818) 280-3571.

PHILLIP’S BARBECUE. When The Times touted another rib stand as one of the city’s best, scores of readers called or wrote in. Almost all of them mentioned Phillip’s. Phillip’s spareribs are crisp and juicy, not too lean; flashlight-size beef ribs are tasty even without the sweet, extra-hot sauce. When the wind is right, the take-out line bastes in a pungent haze of woodsmoke. 4307 Leimert Blvd., Los Angeles; (213) 292-7613.

RENU NAKORN. Isaan cooking, a fugue of herbs, animal pungencies and citrus from the northeastern part of Thailand, can be hot enough to stun even natives of Bangkok--even though it’s mostly salads. There is a blistering larb of finely ground catfish seasoned with lime, chile and nutty-brown ground toasted rice; there are the thinnest sour strands of shredded bamboo shoot dressed the same way; there is an extraordinary, coarsely chopped Isaan version of steak tartare that is so hot it can sear the hairs out of your ears. 13041 E. Rosecrans Ave., Norwalk; (310) 921-2124.

SHAHRZAD FLAME. To most people, Iranian cuisine means more or less this: kebabs. Shahrzad has kebabs--pretty good ones in fact--but also long-braised celery stews; giant green mounds of dilled rice pilaf topped with chunks of crusty grilled whitefish; enormous, crisp-crusted bricks of saffron-yellow rice that are stuffed with braised lamb and garnished with bittersweet barberries, a native Iranian fruit. But what really sets Shahrzad Flame apart is the hot tanori bread, baked to order in a spherical, tandoor-type oven that looks like a giant blue eyeball. 1442 Westwood Blvd., West Los Angeles; (310) 470-9131.

SUPER CHICKEN RESTAURANT. Super Chicken is the kind of strip-mall Thai place you’ve roared by a million times without a glance--a dingy-looking joint with a faded exterior. But Super Chicken might be one of the best places to eat Bangkok-style street food on this side of the Pacific. The family that owns it is famous in the Thai community for its griddled roti --filled with meat as an entree or wrapped around a sheen of condensed milk as dessert--and for its spicy yellow chicken, stained with turmeric and served with seriously garlicky yellow rice. 3307 E. Artesia Blvd., N. Long Beach; (213) 602-0342.

MI RANCHITO. When emigres to the East Coast miss Mexican food, Mi Ranchito is what they think they’re nostalgic for. And though the place has everything you’ve ever wanted in a neighborhood Mexican restaurant--wonderful chiles rellenos, decent No. 3 Combination Dinners--it really specializes in such regional Veracruz seafood dishes as mixed-seafood parrillada and the intricately spiced fish soup chilpachole . 8694 Washington Blvd., Culver City; (310) 837-1461.

YEEJOH. Sort of the elegant Korean equivalent of a tapas bar, Yeejoh may serve the short ribs, fried rice and casseroles that most other Koreatown restaurants seem to specialize in--but the best meals here seem to center around a big assortment of appetizers served family style: leeks fried in egg batter, crisp mung-bean pancakes, whole octopi that have been rubbed with chile paste and then grilled until crisp. 2500 W. 8th St., Los Angeles; (213) 380-3346.

BAHOOKA. The food is sort of crummy actually, candy-sweet spareribs and hillocks of greasy fried fish, but Bahooka may be the best surviving tiki restaurant in the county.Of course, there are terrific flaming drinks: Jet Pilots and Scorpions and the lethal Flaming Honey Bowl for two. 4501 N. Rosemead Blvd., Rosemead; (818) 285-1241.