Revelry Recovery : Los Angeles’ Diverse Culture Dishes Up a Rich Menu of Remedies for the Common Hangover

It was more than 12 hours before midnight, but Sergio Valdivia was already preparing for the inevitable aftermath.

Valdivia, who runs Tacos Delta on Sunset Boulevard, stood at a stainless-steel sink soaking 125 pounds of cow intestines in water and vinegar shortly before noon Friday. That’s the first step, he said, in cooking 35 gallons of menudo for all those bleary-eyed customers who begin gathering outside his Silver Lake eatery as early as 6 a.m. on New Year’s Day.

“They come by and say: ‘Hey, you open?’ and then they buy big bowls to go,” Valdivia said. “The hot sauce helps them recover from all that drinking.”

A bit under the weather this morning?

Do the words on this page seem to be jumping?

Is a bowl of beefy broth more alluring than today’s plethora of bowl games?

In a city with as rich a cultural panorama as Los Angeles, the menu of hangover remedies is as lengthy as the list of ingredients on the side of your breakfast carton of Cap’n Crunch.

“A glass of good warm milk, or mix Jello powder with hot water and drink it slowly, preferably with a spoon,” suggested Gloria Leon, an Ecuadorean immigrant, as she sat in a German restaurant, the Lowenbrou Keller, sipping a French water, Perrier.

“In Hungary,” differed waitress Elizabeth Busak, “we have a special soup made with sauerkraut and with a hot dog cut in pieces. It’s called Hangover Soup.”

The restaurant’s manager, Renata Eder, cited sour fish as the last resort in her homeland, Germany.

“They just take aspirin, sleep, and wish it would go away,” Eder said. “Or they eat herring.”

Name a culture, discover a cure.

“You have to eat bananas or biscuits or drink a lot of water,” said bartender Max Lopez at the Bayanihan restaurant, a Filipino nightclub hosting a New Year’s Eve countdown party featuring disco music and San Miguel beer.

Name a cure and discover a contrary opinion.

Even though menudo may be the most popular ethnic remedy in Los Angeles, Armenian-born chef Andre Asassian says it’s just plain tripe to him.

“Ugh, it’s too heavy,” Asassian said as he puffed a cigarette during a break at the Black Sea Russian Restaurant Cabaret on Fairfax Avenue. “Strong tea or strong coffee always makes you better.”

At the Black Sea, the New Year’s Eve fare included chicken Kiev, lamb chops and unlimited vodka.

“In America, when we get drunk we go looking for a party,” said the owner, Yan Moyseyev, who left Odessa before the fall of Communism. “In Russia, when you drank a little bit, the Party came looking for you.”

At Tom Bergin’s, an Irish pub on Fairfax, owner Mike Mandekic suggested that those suffering from cottonmouth sit in front of their TV sets and watch Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl this morning--while sipping a Bloody Mary, an Irish coffee or, for those in particular distress, “coffee without the Irish in it.”

But at the Tiki-Ti on Sunset, longtime owner Ray Buhen said that coffee is simply a mistake. “No coffee. I think the best thing is fruit juices of any kind. Or V-8 juice.”

Some remedies appear to transcend specific cultures--aspirin, V-8 juice and Bloody Marys, for example.

Indeed, at the Kibitz Room bar within Canter’s Deli, the latter remedy is favored even above the fabled “Jewish penicillin.”

“A good Bloody Mary beats chicken soup any day,” said bartender Phil Bock. “Who eats chicken soup in the morning anyway?”

Several other bartenders (perhaps not surprisingly) also suggested that most un-medical of solutions--another shot of whatever you were drinking (if you recall) on New Year’s Eve.

“Actually if you take another drink it cures you. Really,” said Etsuko Takemoto, manager of the Koma Cocktail Bar in Little Tokyo. “But a lot of people are too sick to do that.”

Takemoto pooh-poohed a suggestion by Victor Barone, bartender at the Father’s Office in Santa Monica, to drop quail eggs in your sake as a precaution against hangovers.

“No way, no way,” she said. “If people have a cold or fever they can make warm sake and then beat a regular egg and put it in the sake and drink it slowly. But that’s for sick people, not for a hangover.”

Yet what is arguably the most practical idea of all came from a part-time bartender at the House of Lee in Pacific Palisades, where Zombies, Scorpions and Fogcutters grace the menu.

“The best way to stop a hangover?” asked James Fong. “Just don’t drink.”