HIT SINGLES

By JONATHAN GOLD

April 28, 1996 12 AM PT

Where to find the best Belgian waffle? A magnificent mole verde? To-die-for dim sum? Times restaurant reviewers Linda Burum, Michelle Huneven, Jonathan Gold, Max Jacobson and S. Irene Virbila give their favorite platters a spin.

The mothership of the M&M; chain of African American restaurants is, simply what you want in a soul food cafe--a spare, well-scrubbed place that serves gargantuan portions of perfect Southern food. M&M; is an outpost of rural Mississippi in South-Central L.A. And when they’re on the ever-rotating menu, baked short ribs are stupendously good, glazed with brown gravy, as intense and chewy and meaty as great barbecue.

M&M;, 9506 S. Avalon Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 777-9250. Short ribs lunch plate, $6; dinner plate, $8.

Travel & Experiences

Jonathan Gold

Jonathan Gold was the restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times. He won the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2007 and was a finalist again in 2011. A Los Angeles native, he began writing the Counter Intelligence column for the L.A. Weekly in 1986, wrote about death metal and gangsta rap for Rolling Stone and Spin among other places, and was delighted that he managed to forge a career out of the professional eating of tacos. Gold died July 21, 2018.

HIT SINGLES

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