Newsletter: Counter: Izakaya food and the joys of charcuterie
Chefs are often obsessive by nature, as I think we’ve mentioned before, and it’s something that can work very well for them — and for us, the happy recipients of those culinary fixations. This week Jonathan Gold reviews a newish Japanese restaurant in downtown L.A. where he finds much to obsess about, either from the chef’s standpoint or our own.
Another collective object of desire: charcuterie. This is, of course, nothing new — the curing of meats is as old as kitchens — but a new wave of butcher shops and meat-intensive restaurants showcases some pretty deft work; we consider eight of them. Other things to obsess about: Taiwanese street food and new coffee houses. And if you need something to read while you’re doing shots of espresso, there’s a pretty fun new cookbook we’ve pulled from our stack.
Shibumi
This week, Jonathan visits Shibumi, the long-awaited izakaya from David Schlosser, a chef whose résumé includes l’Orangerie, Urasawa and some terrific restaurants in Japan. It may be jigsawed into a parking structure, but it’s a serene culinary oasis. (Order the cucumbers.)
More fun with charcuterie
Deputy Food editor Jenn Harris tours the city, finding restaurants and butcher shops doing great work with charcuterie. Terrine with Thai basil at Bestia, Singaporean candied pork at Cassia, culatello at Chi Spacca, duck speck at Gwen … we could go on, but it’s probably more fun to read the story.
Street food, by way of Taiwan and L.A.
Love Taiwanese street food but find yourself in Los Angeles instead of, say, Taipei? Food writer Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee scouts out M•CON, a recently opened restaurant near the Beverly Center. So: Chinese five-spice cured brisket and turnip cake fries instead of, I don’t know, Jamba Juice? Thank you.
5 more ways to get caffeinated
Because some of us can never have enough cortados, food writer Tien Nguyen helpfully checks out five new coffee houses around town. A “fika,” or coffee break in Redondo Beach comes courtesy of three fair-trade coffee farms in Colombia; a new outpost of Cognoscenti Coffee has opened in DTLA; and BrewWell, which closed in Koreatown, has reopened in Hollywood.
The Taste is coming: Our annual Labor Day food weekend, Sept. 2-4, will be here before you know it; here’s how to get tickets.
Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants, the authoritative annual guide to local dining, is online for subscribers.
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