Newsletter: Counter: Holiday tamales, holiday nights out
It’s the last weekend before the big holiday weekend — Christmas Eve, Christmas and Hanukkah, which this year begins on Dec. 24 — and thus time to order your tamales and sort out your dinner plans. To help you out with this, Jonathan Gold has done a tamale crawl instead of a restaurant review. Thank you, Jonathan. I also had the pleasure of heading up to Paso Robles for a farm-to-holiday-table dinner at Windrose Farm, with some pretty spectacular recipes.
Continuing with the holiday theme, Jenn Harris has listed some excellent local restaurants serving New Year’s Eve dinners, and Noelle Carter has the results of our sixth Cookie Bake-Off. So basically this week’s section is an elaborate PSA: to order tamales, to make holiday reservations, to plan your dinner menu, and to bake some cookies. (Note to self: Do all that.) Happy holidays!
An East L.A. tamale crawl
Jonathan has been doing tamale lists for the holidays for more than a dozen years, so this year he decided to do something slightly different: a tamale crawl. Well, sort of. It likely won’t surprise anyone that this turned into a meditation on the traditional holiday dish, as well as the iterations of it that aren’t exactly traditional. And he did end up eating along his favorite six-stop tamale trail.
Where to eat and drink on New Year’s Eve
It’s not only time to order tamales, it’s time to make plans for New Year’s Eve. Because if you’re planning on celebrating at a restaurant instead of in your living room, you’ll need to make reservations now. Deputy Food editor Jenn Harris compiled a handy list of some terrific places serving great celebratory food and drink on the last night of the year, including the Bazaar, Gwen, Otium and Providence.
Year-end closures and other news
Restaurants open and close all the time, but there’s an added nostalgia with those that shutter at the end of the year. Govind Armstrong recently closed his Venice restaurant Willie Jane after four years. Jenn checks in on this and other restaurant news, including a new restaurant from Brendan Collins and a new Mexican place opening in Old Town Pasadena.
Vodka in a walk-in freezer
Another restaurant you might want to hit on New Year’s Eve, given that the last night of the year is also its last night of service, is Nic’s in Beverly Hills. The restaurant and bar, known for its Vodbox — a walk-in freezer with more than 50 kinds of vodkas where you’re given a fur coat to wear for tastings — is closing after 19 years.
Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants, the authoritative annual guide to local dining, is online for subscribers and now features his 2016 Best Restaurants. If you didn’t get a copy of the booklet, you can order one online here.
“City of Gold,” Laura Gabbert’s documentary of Jonathan Gold’s Los Angeles, is available on Amazon.
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