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.

Guelaguetza serves the kind of Oaxacan dishes you’ve only read about in travel magazines: dense, banana-leaf-wrapped tamales, flatbreads called clayudas, unstuffed enchiladas with cheese and Oaxaca’s famous seven moles, complex mortar-pounded concoctions of seeds, nuts and herbs. Guelaguetza serves by far the best black mole in town. But the rare verde de espinazo, a thick, spicy broth with pureed spinach, barely tart and flavored with mint, is quite unlike anything you’ve ever tasted.

Guelaguetza, 3337 1/2 W. 8th St., Los Angeles. (213) 427-0601. Mole, $6.

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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.

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